I'm most interested to see what happens next. Your graph looks like exponential decay to a set point just below where you are now. I'd be actively surprised if your second go causes another big drop, so if it does, call me on it and remind me that I've made a confident false prediction; and so must be wrong about something important (probably the whole lipostat idea).
This 'food anhedonia' that you describe sounds awfully like what I get if I overeat, or what I'm currently getting trying ex150ish+fruit. You're just not interested in eating at all.
I think that's 'lipostat realises you're carrying too much fat, and so stops motivating you to eat (at least as long as you're not short of protein or micronutrients, in which case you get very specific cravings).
My guess for what's going on is that dropping the sauce has reduced your protein intake, and that that's important for some reason. But it might be the vinegar, acetic acid bypasses beta-oxidation and glycolysis and gets fed straight into the Krebs Cycle, and that might be important too. Did you get similar results trying either separately, I can't remember?
You're probably sailing awfully close to protein deficiency now. If you get cheeseburger cravings, have a cheeseburger as soon as possible!
I got about half the results and also appetite reduction just from the ACV but with tomato sauce. I haven't tried tomato sauce without ACV.
I am also interested in what happens next! Is this just bouncing into the plateau again, or will it break through significantly? Spoiler: was 215.x the last 2 days. But that's still within noise range of 217; getting to say 212 or even sub 210 would be a clear signal.
Yes, 210 is roughly the threshold where that graph stops looking like exponential decay and I'll be surprised. If you get another vast drop like you did this time I'll be very surprised.
Good luck! Surprises are good. Being wrong is unavoidable; realising that you're wrong is how to be less wrong.
Yea, 80g of tomato sauce shouldn't have very much protein. 125ml are supposed to have 2g protein, and I would use less than that most days (target 80g, but sometimes I overshoot to maybe 100, so let's say 90 on average).
It's only a tiny bit, but you're only eating about the amount you need to avoid protein deficiency anyway, so if 'protein above deficiency level' is an important variable here, it *might* make a difference...
>If tomato sauce at lunch makes whipped cream at dinner more palatable, that’s some quantum entanglement stuff if I’ve ever seen it.
Weirdly for me when I eat lean protein (chicken breast, protein powder, etc) I feel some kind of urge to eat in waves all day. I have no idea what are the "timings" on the different "feedback loops", but I think it's possible to trigger hyperphagia from one meal to another.
I was waiting with bated breath to read your results on this; it's great that you're seeing such success even after the water weight drop.
I actually decided to try vinegar + low sodium + low umami + low protein as well after reading the polyol research from you and mct4health, and 10 lbs fell off in a single week despite being normal BMI (on the high end of it, but still). Obviously mainly water weight, but I'm also experiencing the low food cravings you describe, and the scale keeps ticking down steadily. This is great considering I've been hovering at this close-to-overweight number for like a year no matter what low-PUFA foods I ate.
I really want to believe "the signal is actually not caused by total salt intake, but by salt concentration in the blood" but I feel the addictive "hit" you describe as soon as salt hits my tongue and have an immediate urge to consume as much of the food as possible. Then again, I've been feeling general salt cravings too, and had some electrolyte-imbalance fatigue. Maybe there is a low-but-not-bottoming-out sodium sweet spot. Also, by this logic, I would assume that things like energy drinks, which are 99% water, would not trigger it at all... and yet.
It continues to blow my mind how so many "commonsense diet advice" things ARE right after all... just not the way people pretend they are. I've heard "Fermented food is associated with better health! Uh, because, fiber maybe?" which sounded stupid so I never tried until now. Spoiler: probably the acetic acid causing the health boosts. I've heard "Oh, too much salt is bad" for ages but all people could ever follow up with was "because high blood pressure I guess?" But we'd see these generalized associations with heart disease and general chronic ills if it triggered overeating and inappropriate fat storage.
What would you estimate your daily salt intake is in mg on this diet, compared to before?
Yea we certainly don't understand it all haha. Not even very much, I'd say. Great to hear you're having results, keep me updated!
150g ground beef seem to have about 100mg of sodium, and 500ml of heavy cream about 135mg. If you add in maybe 1-2 energy drinks of let's say another 80mg a day.. somewhere around 300-400mg sodium/day?
Seems founded on the idea protein shortfall is a real risk. I'm not sure if the system was being designed from scratch whether it would be worth including?
That said, humans are cyclical creatures. day/night; week/weekend; work/holiday, feast/fast. We are not machines. Perhaps the commitment to experiments would not be still going after so many years if the author didn't occasionally rest and reset, diet-wise.
When I originally started ex150, I wasn't aware of any protein restriction research and didn't know anybody doing it. I was thinking it might legitimately be a problem.
So the refeeds were both to ensure I wouldn't undereat protein chronically, but also at the time I was coming off Standard American Keto and was missing many of my staples when on ex150.
Over time I've done several months in a row without any refeeds, and never got any issues from lack of protein. I also read much more research & know more people now, so I think that the amount I'm doing (~40g/day or more) is not actually a problem, even if it's close (20g is a problem).
I did over the years lose most interest in my former SAK staples like dark chocolate, keto protein bars, steak, huge amounts of meat, and so on.
Since I discovered I can eat carbs & not bring my Non-24 back about a year ago or so, I've usually used the refeeds to eat foods I'm currently interested in, but can't eat on an experiment.
For example I hadn't eaten beans & rice for nearly a decade, or lentils. So the last few refeeds have been stews with beans and rice. A few swampy things like shortbread, butter croissants, still occasional dark chocolate, eggs, macadamias..
If you were to go purely by the function of the diet, I don't think the refeeds would be necessary to top up protein - 40g is enough for most people.
But the roughly monthly interval is nice to give me an opportunity to try new foods, indulge, satisfy certain flavor cravings that might pop up.. in that sense it acts as sort of a pop-off valve I suppose.
I distinguish refeed from "cheat day" by that they're planned, and that I don't spontaneously lose control because of some unsustainable lack or issue with my diet.
When I think cheat day, I think of someone starving himself for 5 days, but on the weekend he caves and eats a bucket of fried chicken (this used to be me, literally - I've done 5 day fast/2 day feast cycles before, lost no weight).
30 days is a pretty long period and if I don't have any particularly strong cravings during the experiment, I assume the diet is sustainable.
I'm actually open to the idea tomatoes could be a relevant part of the obesity epidemic.
It seems crazy but the Circumstantial evidence is as strong for tomatoes as it is for things like pfas or lithium.
They're a new world food, so most of the world wasn't exposed to them until the last few hundred years. Global production has absolutely skyrocketed since 1990. Egypt, which has very high obesity, is one of the world's biggest tomato producers. America produces them by the megaton and imports a huge amount too . Vietnam and Japan - some of the thinnest countries out there - are not tomato cultures.
It doesn't hold together perfectly though - France imports a lot of tomatoes and has the lowest obesity in Europe. It's worth holding in mind though, even just as a sanity check when considering other types of correlation evidence!
Yea it certainly seems intriguing. Interestingly, a random dude today told me about how glutamate is obesogenic and it wasn't at all about the polyol pathway, some other pathway. He was thinking more of MSG and stuff, but if you believe that, the leap to tomatoes isn't crazy.
Congrats, very exciting for you. I'm curious does the ACV really matter or is it the lack of salt/unami that seems to done the plateau. have you done the no salt/taste without ACV yet?
Which I'd consider to be a very reasonable value. At least that was the BMI I maintained without thinking about it for most of my adult life. Awesome work. Do you still look fat?
not sure if this was mentioned already but could the zinc in the ACV supplements have anything to do with it? here is a study about zinc supplementation & body weight management. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6889702/
I also took Bragg's w/o zinc but with B vitamins for a month. Also, I did lose weight on ex150vinegar on which I just used real vinegar, not the capsules.
Another data point but I tried your exact pills, 750mg of ACV, and it absolutely NUKED my appetite for 24 hours. Liquids only for the day. You might be on to something.
Interesting that it happened so quick. For me it seemed to take about 2 weeks of the pills for the effect to set in. With higher dose liquid vinegar, it was much faster, like you say.
Hi, I am a "friend" (inside joke) of CriticalMAS (though I do about the opposite of his diet, I currently do ketovore = mostly carnivore, with a few veggies thrown in. sometimes dairy for variety, though I do not digest dairy well. E.g., I couldn't do ex150 with the heavy cream, because all of that dairy would about do me in. Sometimes I eat fruit, but that's "cheating," basically).
Question: I have perused many of your recent posts, and I wonder - since you are a "tough case," have you ever done a fasting insulin test? I haven't, but per Professor Tim Noakes latest livestream (haha, I know you don't trust MD/PhDs as the final authority, per your other article), see "Noakes Foundation" youtube channel for more info: if your "fasting insulin" number is 4-5, then you are at your ideal body weight because that indicates "excellent metabolic health." (google "fasting insulin close to 5" for more info). Obviously, you would probably say you are not, but I wonder what your number is, as a reference point.
If I'm being frank, I think you should focus less on bringing your weight down, and more on bringing your fasting insulin number down, because that number will indicate health improvement.
If you go to the website OwnYourLabs (dot) come, the fasting insulin test is $14.50 and you don't need a physician referral, you can just order it on your own. Independant like. There are other labs where you can order this as well. So, whatever is convenient. I know ownyourlabs doesn't operate in every state.
Oh yea, I've tested my fasting insulin a bunch of times:
6.8
10.1
18
10.8
11.8
8.2
8.8
10.4
By that definition I am not yet at my ideal body weight, which matches my own estimate heh.
Interestingly, I was much heavier (244lbs) at the 6.8 than e.g. at the latest 10.4. For the 18, I was nearly the exact same weight at 243.7lbs.
But it sure seems like maybe excess body weight puts a higher floor on fasting insulin?
What do you think are methods to bring my fasting insulin down? I think that fasting insulin is basically a downstream effect of effective fuel partitioning, just like body fat - I'm therefore working on both at the same time.
Addendum: Your post today reminds me a show that I watched on Tubi the other day, it's called "The Secret Lives of Slim People" Season 1, Episode 2 shows a woman who is quite thin (I think 115 pds, IIRC) and she enjoys/is addicted to vinegar in her food. Maybe there is something to it? She says she has never dieted and is basically underweight for her height. Check the episode out if you're interested.
I'm in the process of working through possible treatments for a couple of mild defects in my fatty acid metabolism. One thing I'm noticing is that sometimes for full functioning I just need something closer to 4500 kCal/day than the 2500 to 3000 Oura usually recommends, and sometimes there's just no way to consume the right kCal without a sauce of some kind, such that I'm feeling fatigued, I've already eaten all the mashed potatoes and rice and bread I can stomach, I'm already replete on protein, but it feels like it would be good to eat a pizza.
> working through possible treatments for a couple of mild defects in my fatty acid metabolism
did you go through one of the chris masterjohn programs? interested in your experience. i guess you have poor complex ii function, are addressing hypoxia signalling and insufficient riboflavin and sulfur amino acids?
i recently received mitome results and have been working through some early recommendations
I got his full genetic screening program; my main issues seem to be heterozygous defects for making both ACAD9 and SCAD. So far the cheap recommendations don't seem to have done much on their own (often I feel better the first day and then back to baseline; with creatine it was more like a few weeks). Oxaloacetate's helping a lot but it's also VERY expensive in the doses recommended; I'm looking into ordering it directly from Cima (and getting it tested independently) but so far they're reporting delays. There are a couple more things to try.
Separately, reasoning independently (and with the help of Claude and ChatGPT) about the identified defects got me trying a low-fat diet seriously for the first time (and it seems to help, I tolerate carbs well IF I have enough in the morning), exogenous ketones (they make me feel fantastic), and eating often about a thousand more kCal/day than my Oura ring thinks I burned. (If I balloon up too much I may reconsider this, but I do seem to need the extra energy.)
Chris unfortunately didn't answer followup questions after my first couple of questions, including one on dosage that could have saved me a few weeks' error, so I'm a little annoyed at that for a premium product. But overall there's a good chance that in the long run it delivers value commensurate with the price, that I didn't know how to get elsewhere.
I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp (on helping people actually fix stuff). I like understanding mechanism as much as the next guy, but Masterjohn seems 99% mechanistic speculation and 1% result oriented.
I think his premium/custom work is clearly worth a try for people with net worth $10M and above (or income net of necessary expenses with a similar NPV), but so far can't report results strong enough to affirmatively recommend it to people where the cost is a meaningful % of their discretionary budget.
ETA I don't regret trying it, though! So my standard for "can recommend" seems to be different than "would do."
thanks for writing this, adds clarity to the sort of recommendation he's giving. i had a conversation with chris about his premium program, after which i decided not to do it -- expensive (for my budget), i felt that i hadn't done enough of the low-hanging fruit to know how much margin i could hope for, and i figured it would be easy enough to have claude write up a genetic analysis pipeline and help me with interpretation.
something that's still not clear to me is how large the space of interventions really is. for my mitome report, he lists <10 things to try, and several of them are within the realm of meeting a dietary baseline. to be sure, problems with transport of molecules across membranes or other issues that require supraphysiological doses to treat go beyond meeting a normal dietary baseline, but it's still hard not to wonder how far a medium-sized decision tree could get you.
i will say, i've gotten a lot out of following his recommendations to track nutrient consumption in cronometer and to track lactate on waking. ultimately far from sure that it was the right call not to pay for the program, given the severity of the limitations my health imposes on my activity
More detail on what "helping a lot" means; when I take oxaloacetate I'm more present with my kids when I'm hanging out with them, and I'm basically not inclined to speed on the highway anymore when there's no real emergency. Just, slightly but noticeably a better person all-round.
No, I didn't. While I often agree with Masterjohn, I also find him obtuse, especially on weight loss, and have clashed with him on Twitter before.
I looked into his Mitome thing but it was super expensive, and given what I've seen so far from him, didn't seem worth it.
For example, I've supplemented riboflavin before, and sulfuric amino acids are actually suspected to be a problem! It might be why protein restriction works for me, heh.
What are your recommendations and are you seeing results from them?
what are your disagreements with him about? i imagine he's not too supportive of your essentially zero micronutrient consumption
re what i've learned- tracking blood lactate has really rubbed in the extent to which allergies & asthma impair my sleep, and supplementing coq10 has given me quite lot of energy. not sure i needed this program in order to learn those two things specifically, but it will take another few months before i know whether other recommendations prove to be helpful
may be worth mentioning that my issues aren't about weight, they seem to be primarily about immune dysfunction / excess inflammation / oxidative stress
1. He doesn't seem to have any useful ideas on fat loss, yet keeps shit talking about it and pretending it's solved
2. I don't agree with his mostly mechanistic (vs blackbox/result oriented) thinking
3. I basically don't believe in micronutrients; I think focusing on them is largely a mistake (with a few small exceptions)
Maybe his stuff is more interesting with those issues you mention. Like Peat, that's just not the camp I'm in I suppose. From what I care about, Masterjohn has contributed very little. Pretty much the only thing I can even think of is that he uncovered that the mouse study lard is 20-30% LA, not 10% as previously believed.
Sure, though the fatty acid metabolism defects kinda make the extra kCal through fats an unhelpful option for me. Mainly I'm just noting that "sauce increases appetite" works both ways.
Hi, long-term lurker here! I find this newsletter fascinating and I appreciate you sharing all your experiments with us!
I'm not overweight but I'm interested in the satiety/food noise reduction aspect of all this. I did a long keto trial (almost a year) a few years ago, and it was amazing for many things (My skin was glowing! I didn't get sore after exercise! Zero sunburnt!) but unfortunately, I did have a lot of cravings and I started experiencing bad cramps that wouldn't go away no matter how many electrolytes I'd add or in what proportions.
I was wondering if ketosis is crucial here, or if you could mimic some aspects of this diet while eating some targeted carbs to avoid the side effects some might have when in long-term ketosis.
I know swamping is bad, but maybe isolated carbs with zero fat? Maybe before/after exercise?
Apologies if it's a stupid question, and thanks again for all your work!
The idea is to get acetic acid; not sure if that's what you're allergic to or something else? I think Jaromir (https://mct4health.blogspot.com/) also mentions certain other short chain fatty acids besides acetic acid, maybe you do better on one of those? I forget which ones and how to get them in :(
I'm most interested to see what happens next. Your graph looks like exponential decay to a set point just below where you are now. I'd be actively surprised if your second go causes another big drop, so if it does, call me on it and remind me that I've made a confident false prediction; and so must be wrong about something important (probably the whole lipostat idea).
This 'food anhedonia' that you describe sounds awfully like what I get if I overeat, or what I'm currently getting trying ex150ish+fruit. You're just not interested in eating at all.
I think that's 'lipostat realises you're carrying too much fat, and so stops motivating you to eat (at least as long as you're not short of protein or micronutrients, in which case you get very specific cravings).
My guess for what's going on is that dropping the sauce has reduced your protein intake, and that that's important for some reason. But it might be the vinegar, acetic acid bypasses beta-oxidation and glycolysis and gets fed straight into the Krebs Cycle, and that might be important too. Did you get similar results trying either separately, I can't remember?
You're probably sailing awfully close to protein deficiency now. If you get cheeseburger cravings, have a cheeseburger as soon as possible!
I got about half the results and also appetite reduction just from the ACV but with tomato sauce. I haven't tried tomato sauce without ACV.
I am also interested in what happens next! Is this just bouncing into the plateau again, or will it break through significantly? Spoiler: was 215.x the last 2 days. But that's still within noise range of 217; getting to say 212 or even sub 210 would be a clear signal.
Yes, 210 is roughly the threshold where that graph stops looking like exponential decay and I'll be surprised. If you get another vast drop like you did this time I'll be very surprised.
Good luck! Surprises are good. Being wrong is unavoidable; realising that you're wrong is how to be less wrong.
214.0
oooooh!
> I haven't tried tomato sauce without ACV.
Hang on, isn't that just OG ex150? What else has changed?
Oh wait, you're right :D I probably meant that I haven't tried nosauce but without ACV.
Wouldn't he be getting most of the protein from the meat? The sauce is just tomatoes and salt.
Yea, 80g of tomato sauce shouldn't have very much protein. 125ml are supposed to have 2g protein, and I would use less than that most days (target 80g, but sometimes I overshoot to maybe 100, so let's say 90 on average).
https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product/365-by-whole-foods-market-365-by-whole-foods-market-organic-fat-free-marinara-pasta-sauce-25-oz-b074h5z5t4
It's only a tiny bit, but you're only eating about the amount you need to avoid protein deficiency anyway, so if 'protein above deficiency level' is an important variable here, it *might* make a difference...
Interesting, thanks for sharing!
>If tomato sauce at lunch makes whipped cream at dinner more palatable, that’s some quantum entanglement stuff if I’ve ever seen it.
Weirdly for me when I eat lean protein (chicken breast, protein powder, etc) I feel some kind of urge to eat in waves all day. I have no idea what are the "timings" on the different "feedback loops", but I think it's possible to trigger hyperphagia from one meal to another.
Same for me! 45-60min after the lean protein, when the "fullness" disappears, I'm hungry again.
I was waiting with bated breath to read your results on this; it's great that you're seeing such success even after the water weight drop.
I actually decided to try vinegar + low sodium + low umami + low protein as well after reading the polyol research from you and mct4health, and 10 lbs fell off in a single week despite being normal BMI (on the high end of it, but still). Obviously mainly water weight, but I'm also experiencing the low food cravings you describe, and the scale keeps ticking down steadily. This is great considering I've been hovering at this close-to-overweight number for like a year no matter what low-PUFA foods I ate.
I really want to believe "the signal is actually not caused by total salt intake, but by salt concentration in the blood" but I feel the addictive "hit" you describe as soon as salt hits my tongue and have an immediate urge to consume as much of the food as possible. Then again, I've been feeling general salt cravings too, and had some electrolyte-imbalance fatigue. Maybe there is a low-but-not-bottoming-out sodium sweet spot. Also, by this logic, I would assume that things like energy drinks, which are 99% water, would not trigger it at all... and yet.
It continues to blow my mind how so many "commonsense diet advice" things ARE right after all... just not the way people pretend they are. I've heard "Fermented food is associated with better health! Uh, because, fiber maybe?" which sounded stupid so I never tried until now. Spoiler: probably the acetic acid causing the health boosts. I've heard "Oh, too much salt is bad" for ages but all people could ever follow up with was "because high blood pressure I guess?" But we'd see these generalized associations with heart disease and general chronic ills if it triggered overeating and inappropriate fat storage.
What would you estimate your daily salt intake is in mg on this diet, compared to before?
Yea we certainly don't understand it all haha. Not even very much, I'd say. Great to hear you're having results, keep me updated!
150g ground beef seem to have about 100mg of sodium, and 500ml of heavy cream about 135mg. If you add in maybe 1-2 energy drinks of let's say another 80mg a day.. somewhere around 300-400mg sodium/day?
That's pretty low, nice job. Absolutely blew me away when you looked up how much sodium was in a single can of Monster.
Yea wild how energy drinks fluctuate. I drink Ghost now, which has 30-35mg of sodium instead of 11x that amount lol (380 in Monster).
Plus 150 mg of sodium in that serving of ACV supplement.
Ah, good point. Even attempting to do near zero sodium is still half a gram of sodium!
1. I sense records in your future. sub-210 by end November. Maybe even sub 200 early next year!
2. Can you explain the philosophy of the refeeds?
1. Let's hope so :)
We're all rooting for sub-200!!
I can't even fathom what sub 200 would look/feel like lol. Size S shirts? Heh
I also had a question about the refeeds. It sounds to me like a euphemism for "cheat days"
I just found this https://www.exfatloss.com/p/what-my-protein-refeed-looks-like
Seems founded on the idea protein shortfall is a real risk. I'm not sure if the system was being designed from scratch whether it would be worth including?
That said, humans are cyclical creatures. day/night; week/weekend; work/holiday, feast/fast. We are not machines. Perhaps the commitment to experiments would not be still going after so many years if the author didn't occasionally rest and reset, diet-wise.
When I originally started ex150, I wasn't aware of any protein restriction research and didn't know anybody doing it. I was thinking it might legitimately be a problem.
So the refeeds were both to ensure I wouldn't undereat protein chronically, but also at the time I was coming off Standard American Keto and was missing many of my staples when on ex150.
Over time I've done several months in a row without any refeeds, and never got any issues from lack of protein. I also read much more research & know more people now, so I think that the amount I'm doing (~40g/day or more) is not actually a problem, even if it's close (20g is a problem).
I did over the years lose most interest in my former SAK staples like dark chocolate, keto protein bars, steak, huge amounts of meat, and so on.
Since I discovered I can eat carbs & not bring my Non-24 back about a year ago or so, I've usually used the refeeds to eat foods I'm currently interested in, but can't eat on an experiment.
For example I hadn't eaten beans & rice for nearly a decade, or lentils. So the last few refeeds have been stews with beans and rice. A few swampy things like shortbread, butter croissants, still occasional dark chocolate, eggs, macadamias..
If you were to go purely by the function of the diet, I don't think the refeeds would be necessary to top up protein - 40g is enough for most people.
But the roughly monthly interval is nice to give me an opportunity to try new foods, indulge, satisfy certain flavor cravings that might pop up.. in that sense it acts as sort of a pop-off valve I suppose.
I distinguish refeed from "cheat day" by that they're planned, and that I don't spontaneously lose control because of some unsustainable lack or issue with my diet.
When I think cheat day, I think of someone starving himself for 5 days, but on the weekend he caves and eats a bucket of fried chicken (this used to be me, literally - I've done 5 day fast/2 day feast cycles before, lost no weight).
30 days is a pretty long period and if I don't have any particularly strong cravings during the experiment, I assume the diet is sustainable.
The reason tomato sauce and salsa are like crack is because they work on your nicotine receptors. They are nightshades, as is nicotine.
What does nicotine do? I've never smoked, so am not familiar. I thought it makes you eat less?
I'm actually open to the idea tomatoes could be a relevant part of the obesity epidemic.
It seems crazy but the Circumstantial evidence is as strong for tomatoes as it is for things like pfas or lithium.
They're a new world food, so most of the world wasn't exposed to them until the last few hundred years. Global production has absolutely skyrocketed since 1990. Egypt, which has very high obesity, is one of the world's biggest tomato producers. America produces them by the megaton and imports a huge amount too . Vietnam and Japan - some of the thinnest countries out there - are not tomato cultures.
It doesn't hold together perfectly though - France imports a lot of tomatoes and has the lowest obesity in Europe. It's worth holding in mind though, even just as a sanity check when considering other types of correlation evidence!
Yea it certainly seems intriguing. Interestingly, a random dude today told me about how glutamate is obesogenic and it wasn't at all about the polyol pathway, some other pathway. He was thinking more of MSG and stuff, but if you believe that, the leap to tomatoes isn't crazy.
Fascinating stuff. Anecdotally I've noticed that tomato sauce makes me eat more. Unhinges the satiety signals just a smidge, somehow.
It would be interesting to test whether potassium salt is ok to eat
Yea I have no clue how to even think of that. I don't understand the chemistry enough.
The chloride anion seems to be the problem. So potassium salt isn't going to help.
I guess that was the thrust of my question. Respectfully, what is the evidence for that?
Test it ! Respectfully, you wouldn't be on this substack if you (only) followed mainstream evidence.
Congrats, very exciting for you. I'm curious does the ACV really matter or is it the lack of salt/unami that seems to done the plateau. have you done the no salt/taste without ACV yet?
I haven't done that branch, but just ex150acv plus tomato sauce already did about half this effect. So I think it does something.
Oh well done, more buttons is good! And congratulations on your new PB.
As I remember you're 6'3"?
python3 -c 'print((216.7/2.2046)/ ((6*12+3)*0.0254) / ((6*12+3)*0.0254))'
27.085642889823784
Which I'd consider to be a very reasonable value. At least that was the BMI I maintained without thinking about it for most of my adult life. Awesome work. Do you still look fat?
I'm 6'1. Your memory is waning, old man! I get 29.1 BMI.
I have a spare tire, but in regular (size L shirts) clothes I just look like a stocky guy. At Walmart, I'd consider myself in the leaner 20% :)
> Your memory is waning, old man!
I should not have come back.
python3 -c 'h=(6*12+1)*0.0254; print((216.7/2.2046)/ (h*h))'
28.59011845660702
What have I messed up this time?
You're right, my script is taking the rolling average weight of the last 5 (I think) days. So it's just lagging behind a bit. Plus some rounding.
not sure if this was mentioned already but could the zinc in the ACV supplements have anything to do with it? here is a study about zinc supplementation & body weight management. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6889702/
I also took Bragg's w/o zinc but with B vitamins for a month. Also, I did lose weight on ex150vinegar on which I just used real vinegar, not the capsules.
Another data point but I tried your exact pills, 750mg of ACV, and it absolutely NUKED my appetite for 24 hours. Liquids only for the day. You might be on to something.
Interesting that it happened so quick. For me it seemed to take about 2 weeks of the pills for the effect to set in. With higher dose liquid vinegar, it was much faster, like you say.
It's scary how much I relate to the "hit" you describe from certain foods 😅
Really interesting writeup, though, thanks! Makes me lowkey wanna do my own run of this and see how it affects me..
Hi, I am a "friend" (inside joke) of CriticalMAS (though I do about the opposite of his diet, I currently do ketovore = mostly carnivore, with a few veggies thrown in. sometimes dairy for variety, though I do not digest dairy well. E.g., I couldn't do ex150 with the heavy cream, because all of that dairy would about do me in. Sometimes I eat fruit, but that's "cheating," basically).
Question: I have perused many of your recent posts, and I wonder - since you are a "tough case," have you ever done a fasting insulin test? I haven't, but per Professor Tim Noakes latest livestream (haha, I know you don't trust MD/PhDs as the final authority, per your other article), see "Noakes Foundation" youtube channel for more info: if your "fasting insulin" number is 4-5, then you are at your ideal body weight because that indicates "excellent metabolic health." (google "fasting insulin close to 5" for more info). Obviously, you would probably say you are not, but I wonder what your number is, as a reference point.
If I'm being frank, I think you should focus less on bringing your weight down, and more on bringing your fasting insulin number down, because that number will indicate health improvement.
If you go to the website OwnYourLabs (dot) come, the fasting insulin test is $14.50 and you don't need a physician referral, you can just order it on your own. Independant like. There are other labs where you can order this as well. So, whatever is convenient. I know ownyourlabs doesn't operate in every state.
Oh yea, I've tested my fasting insulin a bunch of times:
6.8
10.1
18
10.8
11.8
8.2
8.8
10.4
By that definition I am not yet at my ideal body weight, which matches my own estimate heh.
Interestingly, I was much heavier (244lbs) at the 6.8 than e.g. at the latest 10.4. For the 18, I was nearly the exact same weight at 243.7lbs.
But it sure seems like maybe excess body weight puts a higher floor on fasting insulin?
What do you think are methods to bring my fasting insulin down? I think that fasting insulin is basically a downstream effect of effective fuel partitioning, just like body fat - I'm therefore working on both at the same time.
Addendum: Your post today reminds me a show that I watched on Tubi the other day, it's called "The Secret Lives of Slim People" Season 1, Episode 2 shows a woman who is quite thin (I think 115 pds, IIRC) and she enjoys/is addicted to vinegar in her food. Maybe there is something to it? She says she has never dieted and is basically underweight for her height. Check the episode out if you're interested.
Vinegar vindicated again! Definitely lots of good anecdotal evidence. Thanks!
I'm in the process of working through possible treatments for a couple of mild defects in my fatty acid metabolism. One thing I'm noticing is that sometimes for full functioning I just need something closer to 4500 kCal/day than the 2500 to 3000 Oura usually recommends, and sometimes there's just no way to consume the right kCal without a sauce of some kind, such that I'm feeling fatigued, I've already eaten all the mashed potatoes and rice and bread I can stomach, I'm already replete on protein, but it feels like it would be good to eat a pizza.
> working through possible treatments for a couple of mild defects in my fatty acid metabolism
did you go through one of the chris masterjohn programs? interested in your experience. i guess you have poor complex ii function, are addressing hypoxia signalling and insufficient riboflavin and sulfur amino acids?
i recently received mitome results and have been working through some early recommendations
I got his full genetic screening program; my main issues seem to be heterozygous defects for making both ACAD9 and SCAD. So far the cheap recommendations don't seem to have done much on their own (often I feel better the first day and then back to baseline; with creatine it was more like a few weeks). Oxaloacetate's helping a lot but it's also VERY expensive in the doses recommended; I'm looking into ordering it directly from Cima (and getting it tested independently) but so far they're reporting delays. There are a couple more things to try.
Separately, reasoning independently (and with the help of Claude and ChatGPT) about the identified defects got me trying a low-fat diet seriously for the first time (and it seems to help, I tolerate carbs well IF I have enough in the morning), exogenous ketones (they make me feel fantastic), and eating often about a thousand more kCal/day than my Oura ring thinks I burned. (If I balloon up too much I may reconsider this, but I do seem to need the extra energy.)
Chris unfortunately didn't answer followup questions after my first couple of questions, including one on dosage that could have saved me a few weeks' error, so I'm a little annoyed at that for a premium product. But overall there's a good chance that in the long run it delivers value commensurate with the price, that I didn't know how to get elsewhere.
I'm in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp (on helping people actually fix stuff). I like understanding mechanism as much as the next guy, but Masterjohn seems 99% mechanistic speculation and 1% result oriented.
I think his premium/custom work is clearly worth a try for people with net worth $10M and above (or income net of necessary expenses with a similar NPV), but so far can't report results strong enough to affirmatively recommend it to people where the cost is a meaningful % of their discretionary budget.
ETA I don't regret trying it, though! So my standard for "can recommend" seems to be different than "would do."
thanks for writing this, adds clarity to the sort of recommendation he's giving. i had a conversation with chris about his premium program, after which i decided not to do it -- expensive (for my budget), i felt that i hadn't done enough of the low-hanging fruit to know how much margin i could hope for, and i figured it would be easy enough to have claude write up a genetic analysis pipeline and help me with interpretation.
something that's still not clear to me is how large the space of interventions really is. for my mitome report, he lists <10 things to try, and several of them are within the realm of meeting a dietary baseline. to be sure, problems with transport of molecules across membranes or other issues that require supraphysiological doses to treat go beyond meeting a normal dietary baseline, but it's still hard not to wonder how far a medium-sized decision tree could get you.
i will say, i've gotten a lot out of following his recommendations to track nutrient consumption in cronometer and to track lactate on waking. ultimately far from sure that it was the right call not to pay for the program, given the severity of the limitations my health imposes on my activity
Given the price I don't think I'd have ever tried oxaloacetate without this program.
More detail on what "helping a lot" means; when I take oxaloacetate I'm more present with my kids when I'm hanging out with them, and I'm basically not inclined to speed on the highway anymore when there's no real emergency. Just, slightly but noticeably a better person all-round.
No, I didn't. While I often agree with Masterjohn, I also find him obtuse, especially on weight loss, and have clashed with him on Twitter before.
I looked into his Mitome thing but it was super expensive, and given what I've seen so far from him, didn't seem worth it.
For example, I've supplemented riboflavin before, and sulfuric amino acids are actually suspected to be a problem! It might be why protein restriction works for me, heh.
What are your recommendations and are you seeing results from them?
what are your disagreements with him about? i imagine he's not too supportive of your essentially zero micronutrient consumption
re what i've learned- tracking blood lactate has really rubbed in the extent to which allergies & asthma impair my sleep, and supplementing coq10 has given me quite lot of energy. not sure i needed this program in order to learn those two things specifically, but it will take another few months before i know whether other recommendations prove to be helpful
may be worth mentioning that my issues aren't about weight, they seem to be primarily about immune dysfunction / excess inflammation / oxidative stress
1. He doesn't seem to have any useful ideas on fat loss, yet keeps shit talking about it and pretending it's solved
2. I don't agree with his mostly mechanistic (vs blackbox/result oriented) thinking
3. I basically don't believe in micronutrients; I think focusing on them is largely a mistake (with a few small exceptions)
Maybe his stuff is more interesting with those issues you mention. Like Peat, that's just not the camp I'm in I suppose. From what I care about, Masterjohn has contributed very little. Pretty much the only thing I can even think of is that he uncovered that the mouse study lard is 20-30% LA, not 10% as previously believed.
Yea could try to swamp it up (bread + butter + fatty meat?) or try for more calorically dense foods (typically fats).
Sure, though the fatty acid metabolism defects kinda make the extra kCal through fats an unhelpful option for me. Mainly I'm just noting that "sauce increases appetite" works both ways.
Yea I suppose that makes sense. I sure did eat a lot more white rice when it was drowned in marinara sauce vs. plain :)
Hi, long-term lurker here! I find this newsletter fascinating and I appreciate you sharing all your experiments with us!
I'm not overweight but I'm interested in the satiety/food noise reduction aspect of all this. I did a long keto trial (almost a year) a few years ago, and it was amazing for many things (My skin was glowing! I didn't get sore after exercise! Zero sunburnt!) but unfortunately, I did have a lot of cravings and I started experiencing bad cramps that wouldn't go away no matter how many electrolytes I'd add or in what proportions.
I was wondering if ketosis is crucial here, or if you could mimic some aspects of this diet while eating some targeted carbs to avoid the side effects some might have when in long-term ketosis.
I know swamping is bad, but maybe isolated carbs with zero fat? Maybe before/after exercise?
Apologies if it's a stupid question, and thanks again for all your work!
You could either go full ketard, or you could try the opposite - very low fat, moderate protein, high carbs?
Or since you're not looking to lose weight, maybe staying on either side of the swamp isn't important for you and you could just eat a mixed diet.
It's possible that swamping is only bad for obese people, or even a subset.
I read your piece of how “obesity” is complex and felt seen.
I’m badly allergic to acv(tablet or any form).
Is there any other mechanism that can be tried out?
The idea is to get acetic acid; not sure if that's what you're allergic to or something else? I think Jaromir (https://mct4health.blogspot.com/) also mentions certain other short chain fatty acids besides acetic acid, maybe you do better on one of those? I forget which ones and how to get them in :(