32 Comments
User's avatar
Julian's avatar

congrats on the new low! excited to see if this'll keep working and maybe get you past 200lbs.

i still wonder if there's a better way to refeed that doesn't spike your (water) weight like your current strategy has been: imagine if you could just keep that constant downwards slope for months on end…

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea I'm not sure how I could do that while still doing a refeed..

John Lawrence Aspden's avatar

> My set point has been changed (I don’t believe in set points), or the settling point is different on nosauce+ACV (my money is on this)

Well, it sounds like however we phrase this we both expect you to hover around 210 for the next month? I'd love to know what it is about the sauce/ACV it is that's doing this....

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

My money is on polyol pathway for the nosauce (sodium + glutamate) and SCFAs (acetic acid) for the ACV..

Sybella's avatar

Super stuff . Great to read about the weight loss and that you feeling good. Interesting regarding mushrooms. I always thought they were ‘a nothing’ kind of thing. Seems these flavour enhancers, even if natural, can affect us in strange ways. Looking forward to reading about the next experiment.

Anonymous Coward's avatar

I just saw this on the instagram from Ben Bikman, PhD https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSAxqgnkgyn/ He encourages the use of ACV.

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

haha late to everything ;) wasn't he finally promoting protein restriction the other day, after years of denying it?

Anonymous Coward's avatar

ohhh, I don't know!! I admit that my favorite teachers in the low-carb, keto, or carnivore community are all physicians (outside of Bart Kay, PhD - professor in NZ). for some reason I like the physician perspective the best. (maybe because they are used to explaining to their patients). I have a friend who likes Ben Bikman, PhD - but I think it's because she's Morman (Bikman teaches at BYU) so perhaps she feels a kinship with him. But I generally find Bikman hard to follow.

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I tend to nerd down into any topic so deep that I'm out of the typical physician's target audience within a day or 2 of encountering the topic (e.g. the Ken Barry's of the world). Bikman goes a bit deeper, but still he seems too myopic to me and he's yet to say anything about keto that I didn't already know and found helpful. Then again, I'm pretty sure I was keto long before Bikman ;)

Asa's avatar

So this is a low protein, low carb, high fat diet? Do you have macro breakdown? Is anyone else you know doing this? Just trying to figure things out and kind of relate to how I can do my own version of this using your basic principles

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yes, and yes: https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex150-diet-macros-2294kcal-88-fat

I ran a trial a while ago and 7/10 people finished, and they lost 9.6lbs on average over 30 days.

JaziTricks's avatar

Congratulations!

Kim Nari's avatar

> And they’re also very high in glutamate, similar to tomatoes. That’s why they make the meal taste so much better I suppose, lol.

I guess that's also why I always LOVED mushrooms... lol. Heck, there's been times just stir frying shrooms and eating them like that, as they just taste that good to me.

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Yea that's what I was adding here haha. Maybe too good?

Kim Nari's avatar

I wonder if I'd get six pack abs if I were to ditch the MSG powder, tomatoes, shrooms, salt, certain spices at this point because of your results. 😭 But idk if I'd be able to do it, ahhh. (Which by itself says something about how potent they are, lol)

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

One way to find out :D

JS's avatar

Lol. Well, if you are dropping weight as far as I know it is never 100% adipose accumulation. Our bodies source extra energy because it likes homeostasis.

And while your response is funny, you are validating the proposition that eating less than what you have been eating regularly will result in weight loss. That's called calorie restriction... GLP-1, apple cider vinegar... Same idea. Oh the horror, lol.

I am amused at all the esoteric hypothesis people come up with about why we gain weight and don't lose any. The more I learn from real people like you the more it looks like there is a strong correlation between lower food intake and weight loss. The challenge is to make sure that you are not starving or feeling hungry all the time, because people then binge and regain all the lost weight. .

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

> Well, if you are dropping weight as far as I know it is never 100% adipose accumulation. Our bodies source extra energy because it likes homeostasis.

99.9% of what we "know" is in the CICO paradigm, so I don't believe this

> the proposition that eating less than what you have been eating regularly will result in weight loss. That's called calorie restriction...

Exactly the opposite; fixing fuel partitioning allows me to eat less. GLP-1 agonists literally prove that caloric restriction was always false. They modify your hormones, namely GLP-1.

The proof is in; caloric restriction was false.

JS's avatar

That's an elegant explanation, and so far our best hypothesis. I am now fixated with the idea that we have to find a way to recommend the right fuel partioning to each person based on... DNA? Metabolic testing?

I get cement truck satiety with lean proteins and cruciferous veggies, but others don't. Whipped cream does nothing for me. Keto is unpleasant for me as well. Potato diet didn't work at all. Why?

Anyway bottom line, I am thrilled things are going so well for you!

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

I don't think we know enough about either DNA or what to test to determine this, trying random things seems better heh.

There are a bunch of things to try, but it's honestly not that many. If you run rigorous experiments monthly, you should probably be able to cycle through most categories in 6 months. Some of them you'll be able to quit on much sooner, e.g. me on potatoes (and maybe you). I did not need 30 days to tell it wasn't going to work.

bertrand russet's avatar

would love to see your take on experiment design to determine what diet a person loses weight on best. i guess it would be a decision tree?

JS's avatar

Congratulations, and using my Dad voice let me tell you "please do some resistance training, with fat loss there is also some muscle loss".

I have been reading your most recent posts, and at the end of the day, what you seem to be doing now is the oldest axiom in the playbook: "eat less" without being hungry or feeling that you need to eat more.

If I read you correctly, since eliminating the tomato sauce and controlling the beef portion, plus the apple cider vinegar supplementation, your appetite has declined so the cream portion has gone down.

Under this scenario, fat stores should shrink, until homeostasis kicks in again at the food intake level you can sustain without starving or filling hungry. And it does look like certain food groups affects your weight loss, which is what I experienced way back then.

Congrats again!

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Why is there muscle loss with fat loss? Because most people lose fat by eating too little. Therefore their body burns some lean mass.

> "eat less" without being hungry or feeling that you need to eat more.

I mean yea, how to do that is sort of the whole trick isn't it ;)

That's like saying "What you're doing is just making more money than you're spending." Yes, that's the definition of getting richer :)

☔Jason Murphy's avatar

I started wondering about histamine, which is present in tomato and cocoa, and can be present in mushrooms. But, based on the limited amount of published research it seems to be a weight loss enhancer not a weight gain risk factor...

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

Isn't beef also high in histamines?

G Travis's avatar

From what I’ve read, a chunk of fresh, unaged beef has the fewest histamines. They increase with aging, grinding, and sitting in the refrigerator.

Posdata's avatar

No, fresh meat isn’t high in histamine — in fact, beef is one of the less allergenic foods. Cured or processed meats are, because of the conservation process. Tiramine and histamine are powerful biogenic amines, and people tend to underestimate their neurochemical effect. But not only histamine intolerance is well-documented (yet poorly understood): when I studied drug-nutrient interactions in University histamine-containing foods (as well as histamine-releasing foods) were a huge concern (for example, with antidepressants, antihypertensives, etc.).

Kim Nari's avatar

Yeah, unless you use it or freeze it right after killing the animal, which almost nobody is doing.

Victoria F's avatar

When you removed the sauce, did you remove all vegetables as well?

Experimental Fat Loss's avatar

No, still eating the vegetables