I am a bit confused now. I can't see why it would make much difference if you got your cream from Starbucks or from a pot of cream. I sure find liquid cream satiating.
I see that it would screw up your calorie-counting, but since you're not supposed to be working out what to eat by calorie-counting, I can't see why that would matter. Satiety-wise it should be the same.
The obvious experiment is to do ex150 but just with liquid cream throughout and see whether that works.
My money says it will, and there's something else going on.
I don't think the Starbucks cream vs. my own cream is the difference - I think that you can (relatively easily, apparently) consume so much cream that there is almost no actual deficit left.
I have actually done ex150 just with liquid cream the last week, just out of laziness. Instead of whipping it into solid shape I'd just whip it lightly into milkshake form and drink it.
It was satiating in the sense that it killed any hunger pangs/appetite, but not in the cement-truck sense.
Maybe my liquid cream satiety is influenced by my coffee cravings? I drink a lot of coffee, but I do have a "stopping point" after 5-7 cups where I just don't want more. So since I only drink my cream in the morning with coffee, that might randomly regulate my cream intake? And then in the evening, I always make the same portion size.
"Starbucks uses different amounts of heavy cream for each cup size. For the tall cup, the standard amount of heavy cream is 1 ounce. The Grande gets 2 ounces, the venti 3 ounces, and the Trenta 4 ounces. The amount of heavy cream is measured using the 2 middle lines in the cup." From https://starbmag.com/how-many-calories-are-in-starbucks-heavy-cream/ Roughly 100 calories per ounce...
Interesting! I wonder now what they put in mine, since I got the Breve (which I think is just made entirely with half & half) for months first. Did they give me Breves w/ splashes of heavy cream?
All-breve would be 450kcal, and 300kcals of cream on top (I always got the venti/24oz), so 750kcal per drink or just under 1000kcal/day (multiplied by 1.3).
Or just all heavy cream? Or 2% with splashes?
I suppose this means the extra calories I was getting are basically undetermined. I'm fine cutting out Starbucks entirely, so that random noise in the experiments should be gone now.
I think that's just what happens if you ask for heavy cream in a drip coffee. For an espresso drink, I don't believe Starbucks adds extra heavy cream on top of whatever the drink's main dairy is.
Hi, update on my low protein and cream exp. Losing 0.2 g of fat a day - eating to satiety. Normally to lose even that I would be intermittent fasting , starving and hungry and craving.
wondered if you had any experience with butter vs cream for satiety? I’ve been adding lashings of butter as well.. wondering if I should focus on the cream for satiety rather than butter?
Weirdly, my bone mass went down by 0.2 last night too. It’s been completely stable since I got these scales a year ago. Wonder if it’s a deficiency or just cos I got to my lowest weight since I got the scales?… I’ve been eating more egg and less beef - maybe a deficiency?..
So far so good- I’m eating to satiety and still losing . Loving the fact I can get away with eating breakfast too 🙌
I just prefer the taste of cream. Butter is probably even better for satiety; at least I can't eat a whole stick of butter before I have to stop haha. So if you want to try it with butter I'd suspect it should work just as well. Please let me know if it does or doesn't!
Weird on the bone mass, is this on one of these electric scales? Has it fluctuated since? I'd be surprised if you lost bone mass in 1 night. Maybe just a fluke in the scale, not sure.
The DEXA I get checks my bone mass, and it's basically been exactly stable for over a year. Tiny fluctuations when I started working out, maybe that had a beneficial impact. But really minuscule. Went from like 7.9 to 8 to 7.7 or something.
Sooo update: I’ve finally hit the low appetite zone that I experienced 25 years ago the first time I ever tried The Atkins diet. I’ve been trying to recapture this unsuccessfully for 25 years 😅 I knew it existed but I could never get there again. Lost a pound yesterday - mostly fat - because I was easily fasting. (Apart from creamy teas and a couple of eggs with butter) Something I had heard people talking about but thought I would never achieve again. (Going to calorie cycle to prevent metabolic slowdown)
I think the key has been the cream . The cream has been like morphine - helping me through the withdrawal from carbs and protein phase and keeping my calories up so I don’t get too hungry and binge on carbs and protein before I can ever get there.
Like you- I found it hard to eat enough cals and get enough satiety from butter. The cream is it. But I had been scared off cream by so many carnivores and keto people saying cream was a huge problem for them! 🤷♀️ I guess it is if you’re still too high in protein…
So thank you for restoring my confidence in cream!
It seems as though getting into the low carb/low protein low appetite zone is harder when you have a history of yo-yo dieting and you really need that help from the cream to get you through.
Very excited as I’m at my lowest weight for 10 years. When I get below 11 stone it’s going to be celebrations 😄💃
Haha, nice, congrats! I suspect many people do suboptimally on high cream. Not everybody has pastoral genetics. But hey, if you do, you better make use of it!
The morphine thing is true for me too haha. Cream just seems to massively activate whatever satiety sensor is in me like nothing else does. And fast, too! I've timed it to 4 minutes.
What were the exact parameters of this trial? Was everything the same except no Starbucks coffees at all? Did you replace the Starbucks coffees with coffee made at home? Any other change in cream consumption?
This whole experience seems to validate the insulin hypothesis. I can apparently consume about 4,000kcal/day on ex150 and not gain any weight, even slightly lose weight.
But when I up the protein, I gain insane amounts of fat."
Are you saying protein contains insulin, whereas heavy cream does not?
In answer to your question about what happens to the calories, I wonder if Herman Pontzer would answer "inflammatory processes". If your body insists it needs 4k daily despite no exercise, It's doing something with all those extra calories. He isn't one to shame people for eating carbohydrates and in fact laughs about how much honey hunter gatherers will eat if given the opportunity so you'd probably say that even if all the calories are coming from fat and can't be converted into stored body fat in the absence of insulin it's still going to other stuff that you would really prefer to not have going on.
It's got to be turning it into heat one way or the other, whether that's 'inflammatory processes' or just 'general maintenance'.
Your body may just be overjoyed to have the energy available to keep a nice high temperature throughout and radiate lots of heat through the skin. That's a good thing to do because because pathogens don't like it.
4000kcal is enough to raise the temperature of 100kg of water (our host) by 40C, which isn't actually that much. You can radiate that fairly easily I imagine over the course of a day. And exfatloss does claim to have a high surface temperature.
Do we actually know how many calories a healthy man who didn't do much exercise in 1940 needed/ would eat if available? It might be quite a bit more than the current figure if we're all running a bit cold these days.
I'd argue it doesn't have to turn it into heat. There are known ways for fatty acids to get peed or pooped out. Even after being in the bloodstream (in the #1 case, not sure about the #2 case).
But allegedly that turns your pee foamy and weird, and I didn't notice anything.
I wouldn't say my body insists it needs 4k - more that, if I consume 4k, it seems to tolerate it w/o putting on fat. It seemed perfectly fine at 2.3k, and has again the last 45 days.
Could be that there is other stuff going on - I'm not advocating people do this :)
I also found that I could drink a huge quantity of liquid heavy cream and it did not particularly provoke satiety, much less than whipped or gelatin-stabilized cream did.
I drank a lot of breves during my experiment, but I used MacroFactor's record of a Starbucks breve. MF says a grande/16oz breve is 568 kCals, 14P, 50F, 20C. So I believe the macros I recorded were accurate.
I tended to prefer breves to regular lattes because 1) delicious and 2) has less sugar from milk; but MacroFactor thinks a regular latte has 190 kCal, 12P, 7F, 18C, so the difference is not really significant! Still, they are very delicious...
That seems to check out if you mean a hot 16oz (the iced adds 8oz of ice in a bigger cup), my half & half math gives me around 450kcal, so similar range.
There might be something to liquid cream not causing satiety like whipped/gelatin does. I'll be doing gelatin every day for the ex150collagen experiment. Have only done that a handful of times, so interested to see how it works out for satiety.
How are you planning to consume the gelatin? I only used a teaspoon per pint of cream, so it couldn't have been that significant an amount. 40g is a lot!
So I bought Vital Collagen peptides which is technically not gelatin (it's uncooked, cooked collagen is gelatin). I'm taking 40g of that.
And then I bought these gelatin packets from the store (I think they're like 2g each?). I've used these before, just warm up cream, mix these in, and it becomes a pudding consistency. I'll just try to dump the 40g of collagen in there.
I definitely wish you good luck going forward!
Thanks!
I came for the blog info, I stayed for the Gilbert & Sullivan
Takes one to know one ;)
To paraphrase Leslie Nielsen, "Good luck. We're all counting on you."
I am a bit confused now. I can't see why it would make much difference if you got your cream from Starbucks or from a pot of cream. I sure find liquid cream satiating.
I see that it would screw up your calorie-counting, but since you're not supposed to be working out what to eat by calorie-counting, I can't see why that would matter. Satiety-wise it should be the same.
The obvious experiment is to do ex150 but just with liquid cream throughout and see whether that works.
My money says it will, and there's something else going on.
I don't think the Starbucks cream vs. my own cream is the difference - I think that you can (relatively easily, apparently) consume so much cream that there is almost no actual deficit left.
I have actually done ex150 just with liquid cream the last week, just out of laziness. Instead of whipping it into solid shape I'd just whip it lightly into milkshake form and drink it.
It was satiating in the sense that it killed any hunger pangs/appetite, but not in the cement-truck sense.
Maybe my liquid cream satiety is influenced by my coffee cravings? I drink a lot of coffee, but I do have a "stopping point" after 5-7 cups where I just don't want more. So since I only drink my cream in the morning with coffee, that might randomly regulate my cream intake? And then in the evening, I always make the same portion size.
No clue. Satiety - how does it work?!?!
"Starbucks uses different amounts of heavy cream for each cup size. For the tall cup, the standard amount of heavy cream is 1 ounce. The Grande gets 2 ounces, the venti 3 ounces, and the Trenta 4 ounces. The amount of heavy cream is measured using the 2 middle lines in the cup." From https://starbmag.com/how-many-calories-are-in-starbucks-heavy-cream/ Roughly 100 calories per ounce...
Interesting! I wonder now what they put in mine, since I got the Breve (which I think is just made entirely with half & half) for months first. Did they give me Breves w/ splashes of heavy cream?
All-breve would be 450kcal, and 300kcals of cream on top (I always got the venti/24oz), so 750kcal per drink or just under 1000kcal/day (multiplied by 1.3).
Or just all heavy cream? Or 2% with splashes?
I suppose this means the extra calories I was getting are basically undetermined. I'm fine cutting out Starbucks entirely, so that random noise in the experiments should be gone now.
I think that's just what happens if you ask for heavy cream in a drip coffee. For an espresso drink, I don't believe Starbucks adds extra heavy cream on top of whatever the drink's main dairy is.
Hi, update on my low protein and cream exp. Losing 0.2 g of fat a day - eating to satiety. Normally to lose even that I would be intermittent fasting , starving and hungry and craving.
wondered if you had any experience with butter vs cream for satiety? I’ve been adding lashings of butter as well.. wondering if I should focus on the cream for satiety rather than butter?
Weirdly, my bone mass went down by 0.2 last night too. It’s been completely stable since I got these scales a year ago. Wonder if it’s a deficiency or just cos I got to my lowest weight since I got the scales?… I’ve been eating more egg and less beef - maybe a deficiency?..
So far so good- I’m eating to satiety and still losing . Loving the fact I can get away with eating breakfast too 🙌
Great news, congrats! Satiety is amazing :)
I just prefer the taste of cream. Butter is probably even better for satiety; at least I can't eat a whole stick of butter before I have to stop haha. So if you want to try it with butter I'd suspect it should work just as well. Please let me know if it does or doesn't!
Weird on the bone mass, is this on one of these electric scales? Has it fluctuated since? I'd be surprised if you lost bone mass in 1 night. Maybe just a fluke in the scale, not sure.
The DEXA I get checks my bone mass, and it's basically been exactly stable for over a year. Tiny fluctuations when I started working out, maybe that had a beneficial impact. But really minuscule. Went from like 7.9 to 8 to 7.7 or something.
Sooo update: I’ve finally hit the low appetite zone that I experienced 25 years ago the first time I ever tried The Atkins diet. I’ve been trying to recapture this unsuccessfully for 25 years 😅 I knew it existed but I could never get there again. Lost a pound yesterday - mostly fat - because I was easily fasting. (Apart from creamy teas and a couple of eggs with butter) Something I had heard people talking about but thought I would never achieve again. (Going to calorie cycle to prevent metabolic slowdown)
I think the key has been the cream . The cream has been like morphine - helping me through the withdrawal from carbs and protein phase and keeping my calories up so I don’t get too hungry and binge on carbs and protein before I can ever get there.
Like you- I found it hard to eat enough cals and get enough satiety from butter. The cream is it. But I had been scared off cream by so many carnivores and keto people saying cream was a huge problem for them! 🤷♀️ I guess it is if you’re still too high in protein…
So thank you for restoring my confidence in cream!
It seems as though getting into the low carb/low protein low appetite zone is harder when you have a history of yo-yo dieting and you really need that help from the cream to get you through.
Very excited as I’m at my lowest weight for 10 years. When I get below 11 stone it’s going to be celebrations 😄💃
Haha, nice, congrats! I suspect many people do suboptimally on high cream. Not everybody has pastoral genetics. But hey, if you do, you better make use of it!
The morphine thing is true for me too haha. Cream just seems to massively activate whatever satiety sensor is in me like nothing else does. And fast, too! I've timed it to 4 minutes.
Hope you get below the 11 stone soon :)
“It doesn’t look like any calories to me”
-- my body, my whole life!
What were the exact parameters of this trial? Was everything the same except no Starbucks coffees at all? Did you replace the Starbucks coffees with coffee made at home? Any other change in cream consumption?
Yea, same except no Starbucks. I think I drank a little more coffee at home, but since the diet is "ad-lib coffee & cream" I didn't track it.
Thanks for the reply. How much money did you save with no Starbucks for 45 days?
Probably over $400. Another reason :)
"Insulin is necessary for fat gain
This whole experience seems to validate the insulin hypothesis. I can apparently consume about 4,000kcal/day on ex150 and not gain any weight, even slightly lose weight.
But when I up the protein, I gain insane amounts of fat."
Are you saying protein contains insulin, whereas heavy cream does not?
Not contains insulin, causes an insulin reaction in the body.
In answer to your question about what happens to the calories, I wonder if Herman Pontzer would answer "inflammatory processes". If your body insists it needs 4k daily despite no exercise, It's doing something with all those extra calories. He isn't one to shame people for eating carbohydrates and in fact laughs about how much honey hunter gatherers will eat if given the opportunity so you'd probably say that even if all the calories are coming from fat and can't be converted into stored body fat in the absence of insulin it's still going to other stuff that you would really prefer to not have going on.
It's got to be turning it into heat one way or the other, whether that's 'inflammatory processes' or just 'general maintenance'.
Your body may just be overjoyed to have the energy available to keep a nice high temperature throughout and radiate lots of heat through the skin. That's a good thing to do because because pathogens don't like it.
4000kcal is enough to raise the temperature of 100kg of water (our host) by 40C, which isn't actually that much. You can radiate that fairly easily I imagine over the course of a day. And exfatloss does claim to have a high surface temperature.
Do we actually know how many calories a healthy man who didn't do much exercise in 1940 needed/ would eat if available? It might be quite a bit more than the current figure if we're all running a bit cold these days.
I'd argue it doesn't have to turn it into heat. There are known ways for fatty acids to get peed or pooped out. Even after being in the bloodstream (in the #1 case, not sure about the #2 case).
But allegedly that turns your pee foamy and weird, and I didn't notice anything.
I have his book, but I haven't read it yet.
I wouldn't say my body insists it needs 4k - more that, if I consume 4k, it seems to tolerate it w/o putting on fat. It seemed perfectly fine at 2.3k, and has again the last 45 days.
Could be that there is other stuff going on - I'm not advocating people do this :)
Yes, the metabolic set-point is his thesis, not yours.
You'll love his book. One more thing to laugh at CICOists about.
I'm a fan of https://www.heb.com/product-detail/chameleon-organic-vanilla-flavored-cold-brew-coffee-concentrate/1779821
Yea in the summer I drink something similar. Just cold brew with generous splashes of cream.
Very interesting!
I am this case study: https://exfatloss.substack.com/p/ex150-trial-case-study-38-yo-female
I also found that I could drink a huge quantity of liquid heavy cream and it did not particularly provoke satiety, much less than whipped or gelatin-stabilized cream did.
I drank a lot of breves during my experiment, but I used MacroFactor's record of a Starbucks breve. MF says a grande/16oz breve is 568 kCals, 14P, 50F, 20C. So I believe the macros I recorded were accurate.
I tended to prefer breves to regular lattes because 1) delicious and 2) has less sugar from milk; but MacroFactor thinks a regular latte has 190 kCal, 12P, 7F, 18C, so the difference is not really significant! Still, they are very delicious...
That seems to check out if you mean a hot 16oz (the iced adds 8oz of ice in a bigger cup), my half & half math gives me around 450kcal, so similar range.
There might be something to liquid cream not causing satiety like whipped/gelatin does. I'll be doing gelatin every day for the ex150collagen experiment. Have only done that a handful of times, so interested to see how it works out for satiety.
How are you planning to consume the gelatin? I only used a teaspoon per pint of cream, so it couldn't have been that significant an amount. 40g is a lot!
So I bought Vital Collagen peptides which is technically not gelatin (it's uncooked, cooked collagen is gelatin). I'm taking 40g of that.
And then I bought these gelatin packets from the store (I think they're like 2g each?). I've used these before, just warm up cream, mix these in, and it becomes a pudding consistency. I'll just try to dump the 40g of collagen in there.