ex150salmon review: Failure after only 14 days
Fish is still trying to kill me
tl;dr: ex150salmon failed
Toward the end of my last ex150 run, I ate salmon for 5 days and saw a 1lb drop to a new all time low weight.
The following refeed I saw satiety from high-carb and swampy foods like I’d never experienced before: satiety from bread, from ice cream sandwiches..
Hence I decided to do ex150salmon. Could I break through my 207-ish plateau by eating salmon every day instead of beef?
In short, no. I didn’t even make it back to my previous plateau in 14 days of salmon. Not even close. I plateaued quickly, felt sort of a perennial background “dis-ease” and non-satisfaction from food, and got a sunburn - so I stopped after 14 days.
Details of the diet
I only used wild caught Alaskan sockeye salmon. There is quite a fat profile difference between farmed & wild salmon, so I made sure to get only wild caught.
I was frying my salmon at high heat in butter and/or beef tallow to get the skin crispy. I don’t know if that’s relevant, but it could be.
I also continued doing 2x my usual dose of apple cider vinegar capsules, one after waking up, one in the evening. This didn’t seem to help.
And, of course, I used no sauce during the experiment, similar to my recent ex150 variant.
The first week I was whipping my heavy cream in the evening, which I hadn’t done in a long time. But after even that didn’t seem to lead me back to even my previous low weight, I gave up on it. At this point I’m just so used to just drinking cream that the whipping seems like a huge amount of wasted effort, lol. And I’ve previously reached new lows, not having whipped it for like half a year now. I don’t think the whipping makes much of an actual difference, besides providing a different texture that feels more like a real meal.
Why salmon?
In short, salmon is a pretty good natural source of omega-3 fats, specifically EPA and DHA. It’s thought by some that these can balance out the effects of excess omega-6 PUFA, mostly linoleic acid, from seed oils.
I’ve been on a mission for about 3 years now to deplete the high omega-6 levels in my body fat.
Some people claim this is not necessary because you can just eat some “oily fish, rich in omega-3 PUFAs” and you’re golden.
I didn’t believe this, and after this experiment, I believe it even less.
But what I did suspect after those 5 fish days at the end of last month’s experiment: maybe the combination of limiting o6 strictly had put me into a range where adding o3 might finally make a dent?
I had previously done a month of salmon on ex115salmon and ex115sardines for IIRC 20 days.
I didn’t really enjoy either much. Eating only fish, without any beef, is just sort of.. unsatisfying. Feels like something is missing.
It can’t be protein; salmon is higher in protein per weight than the fatty 80/20 ground beef I usually eat.
In fact, this is why I’d previously done 115 gram on ex115salmon and ex115sardines - 115g of either are about the protein equivalent of 150g of 80/20 ground beef.
You’ll notice that this experiment is called ex150salmon. That’s because, in the beginning, I thought I’d try 150g of salmon. It’s not that much more protein, after all, right? 115 vs 150g?
But the first 4 days of 150g of salmon left me with surprisingly bad satiety, and I noticed I was consuming way more heavy cream than I’m used to on ex150 with beef.
So I dialed it back to 115g of salmon on day 4.
With the higher protein per weight and 115g vs 150g, I was getting nearly double the protein from the salmon!
Starting day 5, my satiety was a bit better, but it never felt as good as I’m used to on ex150. I always felt somewhat unsatisfied or unfulfilled in a weird way.
A little bit like the very acute “protein hunger” when I don’t eat enough protein, but weaker and more in the background, and it didn’t get fixed by eating more protein.
I do wonder if there’s something in beef besides just protein and fat that I’m missing on these all-fish diets.
Results
Let’s take a look at the damage:
Toward the end of last month’s ex150 run, I was averaging about 208lbs. Using salmon instead of beef for 5 days got me just below 207lbs. (Or maybe it was just coincidence.)
After the refeed, eating salmon instead of beef, I only ever got back down to 212lbs on average, a whopping 5-6lbs higher.
I tried eating more salmon on day 12 or so, thinking that maybe my increased appetite for cream was caused by protein hunger, but it didn’t seem to do much.
So not only did I not get to a new all time low weight, I didn’t even reach my previous weight. Not even close! This is pretty bad, as I usually always get back to my previous low within 7-10 days of being back on ex150.
In addition, I just felt.. generally not great. Not super bad either, but I was always just at 80-90%, not quite 100%. A weird feeling.
One strange phenomenon that was part of it: people complain about “fish burps” from supplementing o3. I didn’t really get burps but weird throat issues. Sort of like things would get into my windpipe when they shouldn’t. It was pretty noticeable. I don’t mean the salmon was getting in my windpipe while eating, it was happening throughout the day. The sort of thing where you swallow and have to cough. I usually almost never get this any more, and it seemed dramatically more common the last 2 weeks.
And I got sunburn after just a few hours in the sun. Not a bad one, but I haven’t had sunburn in a long time. Just a few weeks ago I spent considerably more time in the sun without getting any.
None of these alone would be a KO, but the combination of all these factors and my previous experience with fish being not so great..
Possible explanations
I honestly can’t tell you why it didn’t work. That’s always difficult when diets don’t work as expected.
Maybe fish (omega-3?) is bad after all (Ray Peat talked about this lol)
Maybe there is a benefit to some small amount of added o3, as I got from the 5 days toward last experiment’s end, but there’s also such a thing as too much?
Maybe beef contains something I’m missing on all-fish diets? Creatine? Creatinine? Some B vitamins?
Maybe it was completely unrelated and I just have bad luck on these fish diets?
I was cooking my salmon on pretty high heat to get it nice and crispy, maybe this oxidized all the o3 and made it go bad?
After I did 30 days of salmon last time, my weight plateaued for 1 year straight lol. We’ll see if that happens again. I hope not ;)
Thoughts
I’m as interested in mechanisms and epidemiology as many people in the diet space, but at the end of the day, I treat it as a black box - it actually has to produce results. Fish is down 3. Every single time I’ve tried it, it hasn’t gone well for me.
One reason could be that I’m eating “too much” of it. Almost nobody eats as much fish as I do on a experiment, not even the Japanese. Maybe fish is better suited for “medicinal” use than as a staple meal, or at least salmon is?
My somewhat autistic tendencies & mono diet experiments just default to eating the same meal each day, and if fish was beneficial at 1 meal a week but bad at 7 days a week, I wouldn’t be able to find out with the way I structure my diets.
Then again, nothing in the mainstream “omega-3 balance good!” discourse or mechanisms seems to hint even vaguely at such a thing as “too much” omega-3.
Even after 30 days of wild salmon in the past, my OmegaQuant didn’t show me having “vastly too much” omega-3. I barely got below a 5:1 ratio of omega-6:omega-3 after eating salmon daily for an entire month last time, which doesn’t even begin to touch the “decent” range at 4:1. Good would be 2:1, and perfect would be 1:1.
Of course, these are all ratios - maybe you need to have a low ratio AND a low total amount of PUFAs? Since none of the tests measure totals, we don’t even know.
Or maybe Ray Peat was right and all PUFA is bad.
I have long suspected that the omega balance is at best a symptom/marker, but not actionable - supplementing o3 might be pushing on a rope. Mistaking a symptom for a lever.
One failed experiment doesn’t prove much either way, but this is the 3rd out of 3 fish experiments failing. It certainly doesn’t look like fatty fish is a miracle intervention, at least for me.
Notes
As usual, I took notes. They are mostly me wondering why it’s not working, lol.
nosauce, 2x ACV (morning & evening)
decided to whip cream after not doing it for months
not being super exact with the 150g of salmon since the filets come frozen in somewhat odd weights of e.g. 160g and cutting frozen salmon is a pain
Day 1
Whipped cream hits, got cement truck satiety & did not finish
Day 2
Cooking salmon from frozen is possible but annoying, think I’ll start just thawing them overnight. Makes cutting to exactly 150g easier, too.
Day 3
Thawed salmon, SO much easier & better to cook, almost perfect today
Surprisingly not as satiating though, maybe cause I still need to get back into full ex150 mode after the 6 day refeed
Day 5
Found smaller sized wild alaskan sockey fillets of about 115g, will use those going forward starting today
Noticed I’m getting.. not burps, but like “stuff in windpipe” incidents, sometimes several times a day. I don’t remember having this at all.
Been sort of hungrier than expected the last few days, not in terms of eating more cream (tho maybe I just didn’t count) but I just feel hungry several times throughout the day. I usually don’t get that on ex150.
Definitely more hungry than normal. Drank 2 cups (!) of cream after dinner.
Day 6
Weird, got hungry directly after eating the (120g of) salmon
Drank huge amount of cream today, hm
Didn’t whip today or last night, just don’t care for it any more I suppose lol
Day 7
Drinking insane amounts of cream. Quite sure I went over 1 quart yesterday.
Salmon has almost no fat compared to 80/20 ground beef. But all the fat in the beef would only be 270kcal, which is less than 100ml of cream. But I’m consuming probably a pint more than I’m used to!
It’s almost like PLH but it can’t be because I’ve been eating way more protein than on ex150
Day 8
Appetite felt pretty normal today. Maybe the 2x protein from the first few days was messing with my appetite?
Day 12
Couldn’t get satiety, ate all the salmon while still cooking the vegetables. Maybe PLH so I cooked one of the bigger salmon filets on top, maybe 2.5x total protein?
Day 13
Ate 1 chocolate
Really just not that into the salmon. Even if it tastes very good, there’s just something missing vs. beef
It’s just sort of.. not fulfilling, like something is missing. It can’t be the protein..
Day 14
Reader speculates that some o3 is good, but too much is bad, which would jive with my experience last time I did 30 days of salmon and this time (end of last experiment)
SFA/UFA trending up slowly over time
General feeling of unwellbeing again, lol. Except.. stronger than last time?
About to quit lol, watching myself rationalize quitting the diet in real time..
Did a little evening refeed w/ Royal Dansk butter cookies, cheese.. and threw both out before finishing lol. Just couldn’t.
Also ate a can of beans lol
Someone suggested “salmon has fewer nutrients” could be true for all I know
What now?
You might recall that I’d been planning on doing a longer term HCLF (high carb/low fat) experiment of maybe 3 or 6 months for a while now, before the fish thing popped up on my radar again.
That’s the plan now. I plan on doing sort of a regular (beef) ex150 “induction phase” to hopefully get my weight back down, just so I don’t come out of a refeed when starting the HCLF. Typically this takes 7-10 days. That way the HCLF has more of a fair chance, if that makes sense? Think of it like a washout period.
Also I just have almost a gallon of single ingredient cream in the fridge I don’t want to waste :)
I’ve eaten a bunch of starch the last few refeeds and this current one, and I really like beans/lentils & rice, home made bread with organic flour, and my newest addition.. oats.
The plan is to do ex150 until I’m roughly back at my previous ATL (unless the fish messed that up long term again), and then do ex150hclf. The goal on HCLF is to stay within 80/10/10 macros:
150g of (leaner, 90/10) beef a day with some vegetables
ad-lib rice w/ up to 1 cup lentils or beans a day
ad-lib home made bread
ad-lib oats
No coffee (I hate coffee w/o cream), but ad-lib energy drinks & diet (zero) soda
That should give me some variety, so hopefully it’ll work out for at least 3 months, maybe even 6. I haven’t quite decided if I’ll do refeeds every month, but probably?
Isn't oat pretty PUFAed ?
https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrition-facts/168872/100g/1
Fat is 16% of calories, and ~40% of that fat is omega-6.
Got Gemini to compare the protein details between the two.
When comparing wild-caught salmon and beef purely in terms of their **protein composition**—assuming you are consuming an equal amount of total protein from each—the discussion boils down to three main factors: **amino acid profiles**, **digestibility/bioavailability**, and the **"package"** that protein arrives in.
Because both are high-quality animal proteins, they are "complete" (containing all nine essential amino acids), but their structural breakdowns differ significantly.
### 1. Amino Acid Profile (The Building Blocks)
While both sources easily meet human requirements for essential amino acids (EAAs), their specific concentrations lean in different directions.
* **Wild-Caught Salmon** generally boasts a higher concentration of **sulfur-containing amino acids** (methionine and cysteine) and is exceptionally rich in **lysine**.
* **Beef** typically leads in **branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs)**—leucine, isoleucine, and valine—which are the primary drivers of muscle protein synthesis. Beef also contains significantly higher baseline levels of **glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline** because of its higher collagen content, as well as functional amino acid derivatives like **creatine, carnitine, and carnosine**.
Here is how they stack up relatively when matching gram-for-gram of total protein:
| Amino Acid / Compound | Wild-Caught Salmon | Beef | Highlighted Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Leucine** | High | **Higher** | Primary trigger for muscle protein synthesis. |
| **Methionine & Cysteine** | **Higher** | High | Crucial for cellular health, metabolism, and detoxification. |
| **Lysine** | **Higher** | High | Essential for growth, tissue repair, and immune function. |
| **Glycine & Proline** | Low to Moderate | **Higher** | Structural components for connective tissue and collagen. |
| **Creatine** | Moderate (~4g/kg) | **Higher** (~5g/kg) | Recycles ATP for short-burst cellular energy. |
### 2. Digestibility and Absorption
To understand how effectively your body utilizes these proteins, we look at the **DIAS (Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score)**, which is the modern standard for measuring protein quality.
* **Beef** scores incredibly high on the DIAS scale (typically between 1.1 and 1.3). Its amino acid balance closely mirrors human skeletal muscle, and it is highly digestible.
* **Salmon** scores similarly high, but it possesses a distinct structural advantage: **lower connective tissue content**. Fish protein contains very little collagen compared to land animals, and its muscle fibers (myotomes) are much shorter.
> **The Digestibility Takeaway:** Because of this lack of tough connective tissue, salmon protein is broken down and digested more rapidly by the stomach and upper GI tract than beef. If you match the protein gram-for-gram, salmon will deliver its amino acids into your bloodstream slightly faster, whereas beef provides a more sustained, slower release of amino acids.
>
### 3. The Structural "Protein Package"
While the prompt assumes equal protein eaten, the structural matrices of these two foods alter how the protein behaves during cooking and digestion.
* **The Myofibrillar Matrix:** Beef protein is dense, bound tightly by collagen sheaths that require heat to soften into gelatin. Salmon protein is delicate; its proteins denature and coagulate at much lower temperatures. Overcooking salmon easily squeezes out moisture, compressing the protein matrix, whereas beef handles (and often requires) longer or higher heat profiles to optimize chewability.
* **The Micronutrient Add-ons:** The protein in wild salmon is inextricably bound to a matrix high in selenium, vitamin D, and astaxanthin (the antioxidant that makes it pink). Beef protein is bound to a matrix exceptionally rich in highly bioavailable heme iron, zinc, and vitamin B12.
### Summary
If you eat 30 grams of protein from wild salmon and 30 grams of protein from beef, your body gets a fantastic, complete dose of EAAs either way. Choose **beef** if you are prioritizing maximal leucine delivery for muscle building, creatine accumulation, or a slower, more satiating digestion rate. Choose **wild salmon** if you want rapid protein utilization, higher lysine/methionine ratios, and an easily digestible meal that won't sit heavily in the stomach.