ex150creamsauce+ACV review: Failure, but Why?

Quitting the experiment early; not sure I learned much

The 2 last experiments, mostly based on cutting out my habitual tomato sauce & supplementing apple cider vinegar (ACV), were extremely successful: I broke through my previous plateau of 217lbs with ease, stayed below it pretty much the entire time, and even hit a new low of 209lbs at one point.

To find out if it was really caused by cutting out the sodium & glutamate from the commercial tomato sauce, I decided to simply add heavy cream to my meal as a sauce. As I was already on an ad-lib heavy cream diet, surely this was the minimal intervention: I was just adding a little more cream to a meal, which wouldn’t add any more sodium or glutamate, but also wouldn’t change the macros or anything else dramatically. The diet might go from 90% heavy cream to 92% heavy cream or so.

ex150creamsauce+ACV was born.

It Didn’t Work

Frankly, I was surprised by how ineffective the creamsauce experiment was. This has happened a few times before: an experiment that I was 99% certain would go a certain way went very differently.

In short, I lost some water weight but then stayed extremely weight stable and didn’t lose any more weight over 2 weeks. I also developed a weird Protein Leverage style hunger 8 days in, which reminded me of my sugar diet experiment a while ago, and I drove to Walmart in the middle of the night to buy & eat (in the car) a package of beef franks.

But in fairness to the experiment, it coincided with some pretty big confounders: I got a viral infection and was coughing & sniffling for a few days, I was physically pretty active, I spent a lot of time in the cold, and I got a physical injury that swelled up for a few days until it finally healed.

One thing that was quite different compared to the last 2 months of “nosauce+ACV” experiments, too: I didn’t experience the reduced hunger at all that would always come with the weight loss. That makes me think it wasn’t just that the confounders masked some fat loss via water weight gain, it was probably just that I didn’t actually lose any fat.

Let’s look at the graph:

You can see that, even after the initial water weight loss, I never went back down to the average of 211lbs or so from before the refeed. I probably actually gained ~3-4lbs of fat during the 3.5 day refeed, it was pretty excessive. (Seed oil-free butter cookies abound around Christmas!)

I settled around 214-215lbs and stayed there pretty much the entire time, until I abandoned the experiment on day 17.

If this were an experiment last year or much earlier this year, during some of which I only lost 3-5lbs in a whole month, a 17 day plateau might’ve been fine.

But I just went to 209lbs very linearly last month, and this month it just didn’t seem to be working at all.

So why did I quit, instead of riding it out to day 30 as is my usual M.O.?

For one, it not producing the intended weight loss was pretty annoying. Second, I realized that the many confounders didn’t necessarily prove much; it might’ve been any combination of the cold weather, the physical activity, the injury, and the flu/cold I’d gotten.

The mere presence of the weird protein-hunger on day 8 already made me skeptical very early; this NEVER happened on ex150 in 3 years. Something else was afoot.

To top it all off, logistically with travel & life plans around the holidays, it fit better to quit the experiment then & there and start something else instead.

I would consider this experiment a failure: not just in the sense that I failed to lose weight, but in the sense that I didn’t actually learn much.

Tallow me Maybe

One weak anecdotal point: I had rendered my own tallow once again during this experiment, and ended up using it liberally to cook with. Usually, tallow is very self-limiting for me, because pure tallow just makes me gag, even just when my cooked food is swimming in it. (I.e. not just when I’m trying to eat tallow with a spoon.)

The addition of the cream as an emulsifying sauce, though, seemed to completely counteract this: I could add near-infinite amounts of tallow and it would taste & digest great.

It is thus possible that 1. something something tallow bad or 2. the coincidental addition of both tallow AND creamsauce allowed me to eat vastly more cArOliEs and prevented weight gain.

I had previously designed my nosauce+ACV experiments to specifically disprove “you ate less carolies!” as an explanation, since the removal of the sauce did NOT coincide with eating less at that given meal.

But this time, with the emulsified cream & tallow, I accidentally added a massive confounder in terms of heat units to that same meal.

Most of the first 2 weeks I only added a little bit of tallow, surely not enough to explain the difference between “massive, linear fat loss” and “no fat loss at all.” But then, disappointed by not having lost anything, I began testing out the limits of how much tallow I could add to the emulsion - and couldn’t fine one. I distinctly remember adding a lot of tallow (maybe 50g) to the sauce, and then ADDING TWICE THAT ON TOP. I’m talking a thick soup of tallow, made palatable with cream.

I shall not use tallow if I ever try this experiment again. But I suppose it’s interesting to find out I can actually eat near-infinite tallow simply by emulsifying it with cream.

Creamsauce tastes decent

The first few days I was disappointed with the flavor: adding cream just made the meal taste watery, and the cream didn’t seem to convey much flavor. Then I dialed it in: you just have to cook the cream low & slow until it turns brown and nearly falls apart, and it makes a pretty great brown sauce that isn’t too thin.

That said, it wasn’t a 10/10 like my normal tomato/alfredo meals were on ex150, more of a 9/10. But taste-wise, a pretty good upgrade over the 8/10 that was nosauce.

BUT WHY DID IT NOT WORK!

You and me both, buddy. You and me both! I think I just let too many confounders mess up this experiment. It’s hard to draw any real conclusions.

Protein Leverage Hunger like on Sugar Diet

By far the most interesting & “different” day was day 8, when I experienced a weird hunger that couldn’t be satiated by seemingly any amount of cream. This felt very similar to my experience on the sugar diet, when I eventually could not get ANY satiety even after eating sickening amounts of sugar.

That day, I consumed 3 pints (!) of cream, which might be my all-time record - and I’ve literally been on a heavy cream diet for most of the last 3 years!

For reference, 3 pints of cream alone is about 4,600kcal, and that doesn’t include the beef, butter, and tallow from my meal that day, nor the beef franks I used to up my protein! I probably clocked over 6,000kcal that day.

Starting around the afternoon of that day, I began experiencing a profound feeling of “stomach emptiness” and eventually hunger pangs in my stomach, similar to that time on the sugar diet. This usually NEVER happens on ex150, so I was very confused.

In the evening, after battling 3 rounds of hunger pangs, I decided something was not right. I drove to Walmart and bought a 6 pack of beef franks that I ate on the way home.

I experienced 1 more wave of hunger pangs after that, and drank more cream. But then it settled, and I never experienced anything like it for the remainder of the 17 day experiment despite returning to the lower protein intake.

What I conclude is that the Protein Leverage Hypothesis is real, but the amounts required are way, way lower than most people think. This is probably just because most people have no idea how low our protein requirements really are.

As I wrote in Please Eat Less Protein, actual experiments show that most active, young men are in nitrogen balance, aka getting enough protein, around 40g/day. Almost none of them are getting enough on 20g/day.

Ex150 usually puts me around 40-45g/day, and I’m usually not THAT active. But during this experiment, I was more active than usual, and both a viral infection & physical injuries probably somewhat increase protein demands.

In terms of “what should I eat?” the Protein Leverage Hypothesis can probably comfortably be ignored unless you’re running an extreme protein restriction diet, like I am.

I’m usually around 6% protein, which is difficult to even achieve. For reference, white rice and similar starches are typically 8-10% protein, with some wheat flours even higher.

The only real way to go below 10% is to rely mostly on fats (heavy cream for me) or sugars (sugar/honey diet) for your staple foods. These protein-restricted diets are very unpalatable to most people, very “out there” socially, and it’s unlikely that you’ll accidentally do them.

That said, if you experience a “stomach emptiness” & insatiable hunger that goes away upon consumption of 6 beef franks at 9pm in a Walmart parking lot, recognize the signs.

“Protein → eat less carolies” is stupid

There’s a contingent of gym bros touting the Protein Leverage Hypothesis, saying you should maximize the protein you eat so that you’ll “fill up” on less carolies.

This is pretty ignorant. For one, that’s not at all what the PLH says. But then, none of them have actually read it.

But also, the body can turn up metabolic rate very dramatically in absence of protein. There’s a whole bunch of research out there on FGF21, and it explains why low-protein ketards can eat near-infinite carolies without gaining weight.

“Try eating 5,000kcal on keto and not gaining weight hahahahah!” says the stupid gym bro.

Yea, it’s been done. A lot. I’ve averaged 4,200kcal/day over a month myself and lost a small amount of weight during that time. Plenty of ketards have done periods of averaging over 5,000 or even 6,000kcal/day.

If you believe Total Energy Expenditure is fixed, and if you go above “your” number in any way, that magically causes weight gain, you have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s clearly been disproven many times and contradicts just about all existing metabolic science.

Comments

As always I took notes. Most days, they’re not very interesting - ex150creamsauce was nearly exactly like ex150 w/ alfredo sauce. The only really interesting day was day 8, when I got the weird Protein Leverage Hunger.

Day 3

Almost no difference [to regular ex150]
Not getting any sort of “hit” from the sauce unlike with commercial (high-sodium?) sauces

Day 4

Hm think I might be getting another cold!

Day 6

My cold was really only 1-2 days, immune system kicking butt this time!

Day 7

Today the cream sauce tasted really good, not sure what was different
Funny. Feels like “Dang sure takes a long time to lose that refeed water weight!” But I am actually 18lbs down from the refeed peak.

Day 8

Hm, mild protein cravings?

Sort of like on sugar diet, feeling emptiness in the stomach, despite very high cream consumption today I feel unsatisfied.. this normally never happens on ex150

Wow. Hunger pangs came in waves, similar to sugar diet, really unpleasant. Drove to Walmart at night and bought a 6 pack of beef franks, ate them on the way home. Total of 48g of protein and 3,900mg (!) of sodium.

Also had a little injury a few days ago, maybe healing requires more protein?

A few hours later, no hunger pangs. Seems to have worked?

Guess I am not getting enough protein with the lower amount of cream, or when being more active or getting injured

Nope, 1h later hunger pangs again. Drank a cup of cream. Then immediately another. This might be my highest cream day of all times with 3 pints.

3 pints of cream alone is 4,600kcal. Plus my meal of beef cooked in lots of butter & tallow, plus the 6 beef franks. This has got to be a 6,000kcal day or so. Wtf.

Day 9

Back to normal today, hm. No weird appetite or hunger pangs or anything.

Day 11

Ate a burger patty w/ cheese & a piece of salmon for lunch, did not eat beef for dinner (just fried vegetables in butter+tallow+cream sauce)

Day 17

Really pretty unspectacular, palatability of my dinner is definitely up with the cream sauce, I’d say it’s a 9/10 instead of my old 10/10

But also zero weight loss, am extremely flat for over 2 weeks now

Aborting due to travel & logistics and since it doesn’t seem to work or at least not enough to overcome confounders

Hello Plateau, My Old Friend

Really, experiments not teaching you much is the default in science. The majority of my experiments in the last 3 years did NOT result in weight loss, or I would’ve been done long ago.

But the last 2 months did work pretty spectacularly (nosauce+ACV 1 & 2), and the 2 months before that (ACV, plain white rice diet) worked pretty well too.

It therefore feels like a huge disappointment to stay flat for 17 days.

Then again, staying flat for 17 days despite pretty insane food intake of up to 6,000kcal/day, with pretty much the most energy-dense foods possible (tallow emulsified in heavy cream w/ beef and butter) on ad-lib intake is not bad.

What’s next?

I’m currently on day 3 of my new experiment, acv_fast. I fasted twice for 5 days each about a year ago. The 5 days were easy, but on the evening of day 5, it was like hitting a wall - hard. There was 0 chance of willpowering through, it just switched from “no issue at all” to “impossible” within the span of a few hours - similar, actually, to that weird hunger pangs/emptiness feeling of the protein hunger I experienced this time.

But I have since discovered the Magic of Vinegar, and maybe that’ll help me fast longer?

I suppose I’ll find out.

The smart money would probably still be on just being able to fast for 5 days or so again, or at least not MUCH longer.

After that, the scientific thing would be to just re-run ex150nosauce+ACV for a 3rd run - will it get me to a new low again, even directly after a fast? Or has my settling point simply shifted down from 217lbs to 209lbs after another year of low-PUFA eating, including some pretty weird stunts like the plain white rice diet?

The stupid thing, on the other hand, would be to triple the amount of protein, lift hard for a month, and see if I gain fat doing it - ex450acv+x3.

It’s such a stupid idea that my friend John proposed Intentional Yo-Yo Dieting to Deplete PUFAs Faster merely to spite me, knowing I can’t possibly resist it.

Hrm. We will see.