ex150nosauce+ACV-2 review: Blasted through plateau, new record low weight

Choo choo goes the vinegar/polyol pathway train

author, about to break year-long weight plateau

Oops, I did it again

After last month’s experiment was a huge success, during which I lost 10lbs and just barely poked through my old weight plateau of 217lbs for 1 day toward the end, I just repeated the exact same experiment.

The experiment is called ex150nosauce+ACV-2:

• 150g of beef a day

• no sauce, unlike my normal ex150 diet

• ~1tbsp equivalent of apple cider vinegar a day

• all other carolies from ad-lib heavy cream intake, much of it in coffee

The results were quite good. I didn’t lose 10lbs this month, but just over 7lbs - and it happened very rapidly and linearly toward the beginning.

Not everything went perfectly. At one point I added mushrooms and hot cocoa (from 100% cacao powder) and stalled for about a week. After I quit those, the weight loss resumed and I hit 209lbs for the first time since 2016.

In this graph, the red line helps me track when I previously weighed as much as I do now. This shows that even when trying to fast in early 2017 and more recently in fall of 2025, I didn’t quite make it below 210lbs. The last time I was below 210lbs was in late 2016, almost 9 years ago.

Cheating

On several occasions during this experiment I cheated with extra beef or venison, and that might’ve arrested further weight loss for a few days. Or maybe not.

The “nosauce” part definitely makes this diet way less delicious than it is with the sauce. I’d say the meal goes from a 10/10 to a 8/10 in terms of flavor. It does seem like I have more cravings and cheat more often than on my regular, high-sauce variant. I’ll try to address that in the next experiment.

Hitting 209lbs was still an amazing milestone.

Differences vs. last month

A few things were different this time:

• I moved my one solid meal of beef & vegetables from lunch to dinner

• No whipping the cream - I drank all my cream, most of it in coffees from morning to about 3pm. A few times I made hot cocoa with 100% cacao powder, or had decaf tea after dinner. A handful of times I even drank cream straight when I didn’t feel quite satiated after dinner.

• Due to no whipping, I didn’t get true cement-truck satiety even once this month. I don’t really get it from drinking cream, but my cream intake still doesn’t go higher on average. It’s a bit less like “running into a wall” in terms of satiety, and more just adjusting day to day. Some days I tend to drink a lot of cream, and then the next day I’ll just end up drinking less automatically. It averages out to about the same amount.

I’ve done no whipping, or almost no whipping, for longer periods before, but not sure I’ve ever done it for an entire month. Some speculate that the whipping is what really makes my heavy cream diet work, but it seems to work pretty decently even when all cream is consumed in liquid form.

I continued limiting my sodium intake in the forms of energy drinks, which means no Monsters. I mostly switched to Ghost energy drinks, which are very low sodium (30-40mg instead of Monster’s 380mg per can). Still ~2 diet sodas many (most?) days, which are 75-100mg of sodium each.

Tale of the Tape

Let’s look at the weight graph:

The yellow line is the 7-day rolling average. You can see that I ended last month’s nearly identical experiment around 218lbs. I spiked up to 227lbs on the refeed, which only lasted one day.

After that, it took me about 5 days to drop back to the 219lbs, and then I kept going rapidly until I settled in around 212-213lbs for a longer period.

During this period I had actually started adding lots of mushrooms to my daily meals. Mushrooms contain almost nothing except water, I thought, not even fiber. And they made my sauce-free meal taste much better.

But it turns out they actually contain significant amounts of protein, up to 7% by weight. 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.

As soon as I dropped the mushrooms, my weight started dropping again and I dropped below 210lbs for one day.

That same day and the next I cheated: friends of mine shot a deer and we skinned & processed it, and found ourselves with 100lbs of delicious, fresh deer meat that we turned into steaks, stew meat, and jerky. Unable to resist, I ate a bunch of steak & jerky.

Still, my average ended around 211lbs for a loss of around 7.5lbs.

Plus, it wasn’t “just” re-losing pounds that I’d lost earlier. If one believes in either set points or settling points, getting back down to e.g. 220lbs was always pretty easy for me in the past. It was breaking significantly through those 220lbs that gave me trouble in the past.

But not this time. 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), and I easily blasted through my old plateau and kept going, seemingly settling at a comfortable 212lbs even with the mushrooms, and then going slightly below.

Another variable was hot cocoa. I made quite a bit of hot cocoa this month, mostly in the evenings, with lots of 100% pure cacao powder and heavy cream. But I did it intermittently. Intuitively, I actually did extra much cocoa on at least a few days and woke up to a new low the very next day, so it’s not as clear as “cocoa blocks fat loss.” But it could be a variable.

Had a cold

I completely forgot about this, but upon reading my notes: I got a cold around day 12. Sniffles, runny nose, coughing. It went away after 3-4 days, but I had a latent dry cough and a bit more runny nose pretty much the exact time the plateau lasted. So maybe it was that?

Of course, it’s also possible that the plateau would’ve happened anyway, and neither mushrooms nor cocoa nor cold had anything to do with it.

As always, sciencing is hard!

Summary

The nosauce+ACV strategy kept working very well. I lost almost as much as last month, despite having 10 less pounds of fat on me, and plateauing for about 7-10 days, maybe due to the mushrooms. All this in previously uncharted weight territory, and breaking through to my lowest weight since 2016.

Is nosauce sustainable?

I keep wondering this: is the lack of sauce making the diet unsustainable in a way? Did I get cravings because I’m missing something that my usual sauce provides?

Or is it that nosauce+ACV drives my cream consumption down far enough that I’m missing something from the cream? After all, at 3,300kcal on regular ex150, I get about half my daily protein from the cream, about 20g. By roughly halving my cream consumption, is nosauce+ACV driving me under the thin blue line of getting enough protein in? Am I craving mushrooms, deer & jerky because while 40g of protein is enough, 30g isn’t?

I’ve thought about upping the beef content a little to make up for this. On the other hand, the cravings don’t seem very strong and only appear after a few weeks. So maybe it’s fine, and cheating a few times with some extra protein is how it goes. I think I’ll just have another go at it, and if I persistently get cravings or cheat, I might up the daily dose a bit.

Notes

I took some notes, but honestly it was pretty boring. It’s almost entirely like ex150, which is just “normal eating” for me now.

Day 2

Pretty unspectacular, just more of the same
Basically already forgot I am doing a diet
Drank very little today despite being quite active, probably absorbing all that water weight heh

Day 7

It’s really pretty unspectacular so far
Added mushrooms last 2 days cause they make it more delicious; hopefully no
other effect

Day 10

Had 2 cups cacao w/ heavy cream after dinner

Day 12

Got a calf cramp upon waking up, think I had a smaller one a few days ago
Usually never get cramps on ex150, so extra low sodium might be doing that?
Think I’ve been getting a bit of a cold the last few days, sniffling & irritated chest

Day 13

As an example [of reduced appetite]:
- It’s 7pm, I’ve had 2 creamy coffees this morning and no other carolies yet
- I’m not particularly hungry
- Haven’t finished a diet soda I started.. 2h ago?

Day 14

Pretty uneventful, feels normal like I’m not even doing an experiment
Still doing mushrooms, pretty good addition and don’t seem to hurt
Had half a deviled egg
Pretty much over that cold, started as sniffling & sore throat, maybe a light fever one night, now gone except for a dry cough & runny nose

Day 20

Really not much to write about
Especially with the mushrooms (which I add most days) it tastes like a 9/10 again even w/o the sauce
Feels like I’m not doing a diet at all
Keep slowly but pretty linearly losing weight
Ate 170g beef sticks, extra protein and 7 * 400mg of sodium... oh my
After that, pretty thirsty but diet sodas all taste like salt water
Really funny how the salt perception changes on low salt
Even hours later, mouth is almost painfully dry & feels salty, ugh. Like after
ex_plainrice w/ my first salty rice ball

Thought: on nosauce+ACV I consume significantly less cream than before, and half of my daily protein comes from cream. Could it be that my cheat days w/ beef toward the end of the 1st and now 2nd experiment are me slowly walking into protein deficiency and intuitively making up for it?

Day 23

Been drinking quite a bit of hot cocoa with 100% cacao the last few days
I think all that fiber is making me gain water & digestive weight

Day 25

I think the last few days (weeks?) I’ve been drinking more cream despite ACV intake, reached new plateau?
Ate deer tenderloins w/ some salt & pepper instead of usual dinner

Day 28

Binged on deer jerky. Jerky is just like crack for me, if I eat one piece I eat it all.
Also had cocoa (didn’t last few days)

Day 29

Cheated again: deer steak, jerky, cheese, a bit of liverwurst

Wondering if I’m lacking something to cause all this cheating, or just cause I feel like it’s already in the bag at 209lbs

Next Up: ex150creamsauce+ACV

Honestly, the daily ACV supplementation might just become a core part of ex150. I see little downside to it: ACV is ubiquitous, cheap, and especially with the Bragg’s capsules, easy & convenient. They cost 50-75c per day depending on where you buy them. The fact that it’s not an extreme mega dose but just the normal 1tbsp equivalent makes it very easy.

I am noticing that my daily meal is quite a bit less delicious without the sauce. I was adding the mushrooms to make up for it and that helped, but those might’ve blocked the fat loss - they are not as macro-inert as I had thought.

Therefore I’ll just use heavy cream as my sauce for the next experiment. Since this experiment was already ad-lib heavy cream, I don’t suspect this will change anything in terms of it working. I’ll see if it improves the meal.

The meal isn’t terrible without the sauce, but it’s more a 8/10 than the 10/10 it was with the sauce previously.

I shall call this next experiment: ex150creamsauce+ACV.