Still not *much* of a problem any more. And still congratulations, just a little premature, it turns out.
Going forwards, I would suggest that your new hobbies should be (a) keeping it off (b) working out what on earth is going on, and (c) trying to work out what's wrong with your carb metabolism and fixing that too, followed by (d) saving the world from the apocalypse of ill health currently overwhelming it.
Having lived in Asia for a few years, where every girl will tell you "Wow you're so tall how tall are you?" I quickly memorized that I'm 1.85m tall. I hence use "weight in lbs / 2.2 / 1.85 / 1.85" which is much easier.
If you can handle an espresso, I suggest having one with a glass of iced water. There needs to be actual ice. Also a gauloise or small cigar, a beret, and a copy of Libération. And if you can arrange it a beautiful brunette philosophy student with issues always goes well. I don't know how common they are in the States but cafés near universities are usually a good place to look and they'll have all the other things as well.
Atlas Shrugged totally, but the hat will have to be worn ironically. Maybe wear it the right way round? But I don't know, diversity is our strength, and all that.
Yes I know, I was complimenting you on constructing a parody that was better than the original.
The saying I'm really known for locally is 'It's not pain, it's information', from my rowing-coaching-days.
I meant it perfectly literally, once you're used to rowing the feelings that novice rowers perceive as pain become a sort of head-up display telling you about glycogen and glucose and oxygen levels and fat metabolism that you can use to calibrate your race so that you get tunnel vision towards the end of the race, and start vomiting over the side of the boat and losing control of your limbs just after you've won by a canvas.
But somehow it became one of those shit-eating phrases that get on T-shirts.
Some people thought of it as inspirational, and some people took it as evidence that rowing was a sport for the insane and should be avoided. I'm not sure which is the better interpretation, but neither's what I actually meant.
Pretty obviously, in biology/evolution, pain IS information. Hard agree, don't blindly push through just cause you "have a good work ethic" or some such nonsense, try to understand the information.
Fasting swing weight comprises salt water, sugar water aka glycogen, and, ah, gastrointestinal contents, I think. Half-teaspoons of salt daily, or LMNT packets if you're cool, help. Now you know: five days, eat before going to bed the fifth day: happiness.
Oof, that's not good!! I've tried a few and some were not good or quite mid, but I eventually found one which was really good with a rich taste and aroma and thankfully it's from a local place as well which makes it easier to get, but yeah, decaf gets a bad rap for a reason as most places seemingly don't know what to get nor how to properly handle decaf as it becomes bad way quicker than regular caffeine due to the process they go through.
Related to your CGM use, here's a hilarious excerpt from the physician notes at my recent doctor visit: "DISCUSSED AT LENGTH THAT PATIENT CANNOT GET A CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITOR UNLESS HE IS A DIABETIC"
I was hoping they'd at least give me a Rx and I could pay out of pocket if my insurance didn't cover it. Alas.
Lol sounds like you need to get a better doctor. The pharmacist recently told me that you can even get them without an Rx, it's just more expensive (even though I pay out of pocket!). Like $200 instead of $75 for a month, I think she said.
Could try that, just go to the pharmacy and ask for a Freestyle Libre 3.
It seems worth mentioning that “avoiding PUFA [LA specifically]” sort of requires “white knuckling” considering how prevalent it is in the U.S. food supply.
This brings up an interesting distinction that many people don't make. E.g. with diets being "restrictive" and "sustainable."
My diet is very "restrictive" in that I can't eat most things or dishes. But it's not restricted in a way that would long-term biochemical issues in my body. E.g. it's not calorie restricted.
If I told you to eat anything you wanted but only 1,000kcal/day it would also be "restrictive" if less "restrictive" in the "what can you eat" sense. But these 2 types of restrictive are fundamentally different, since you likely can't sustain such low food intake forever, at least not without incurring biochemical penalties.
So that's my basis for what "white-knuckling" is. Yea, I had to restrict PUFAs very strictly for 2 years, but the fasting didn't put me in that "crazy caloric restriction starvation mode" it did previously.
This is a good point and a valuable distinction between restriction and sustainability.
What I find most difficult is the peer pressure component. If I’m dead set on avoiding all seed oils, it requires me to sometimes be rude to other people (and usually my family or friends).
I suspect this is the case for many other people as well. In fact, I’m astonished you can keep up ex150 so well.
Ha, and here we probably come to the trade-offs of being a member of a tight-knit, high-community religious group. TBH I'm fascinated by Mormons :) And sometimes jealous.
On the other hand, I expect peer pressure to be quite high, and am not surprised by what you describe.
Stupid dietary experiments is probably one of the areas where being anti-social is a huge advantage. People in my family know not to pressure me about my diet, because I'll bully them back relentlessly. My friends have all accepted it, as I've been on weird diets before I knew most of them.
I also don't have a problem being rude to people.
This is probably one of my autistic "diet superpowers" - I can actually, consistently do diets if they are biochemically sustainable. Most people blame their diet failures on "not sticking to the diet." I've stuck to a ton of diets and almost none of them worked, but most people never get there and so live under the illusion that they were the problem.
One thing I'm thinking about reading this - as you approach your goal weight; like I totally get why you want to go back to your ad libitum after the fasts, but I'd think you'd want to do more like "ad 90% libitum", especially on a fat-based eating plan.
As you're approaching the goal weight, to the extent that ideas like setpoint and rebounding are real, you're at a real peak for those systems to be working, your weight loss speed is slowing a bit, etc. I see myself in your charts - really similar timelines, I hit 200 lbs in 2019 for the first time in years, now coming down from a peak at 330+. I imagine that once im in the 210-225 range I'm going to need to be really careful about "ad libitum" anything to avoid letting myself creep back up.
Related: have you thought about what you hope to be doing once you're 'done'? Ex150, do you want to try modifications on that for your longterm diet once you're done with "the" weight loss, or are you planning on more experiments from there to try to find your lifelong eating plan?
This first 30 lbs for me is the slowest 30 lbs I've ever lost but I'm pretty happy with how I'm doing it. Not lifelong sustainable, but like, 85% lifelong sustainable.
My goal is definitely to not gain fat eating ad-lib, anything else would be a failure in my view.
But I do expect that I'll lose less and less, and eventually reach a plateau eating ad-lib, simply because my appetite will increase to match the lower energy form adipose tissue.
Where exactly that is, I don't know.
For "after", since I'm pretty big on the PUFA depletion thing I'd expect to keep being strict at avoiding PUFA at least until my OmegaQuant comes in at <11% LA. Maybe I'll try to eat an occasional (monthly?) meal out then. Not sure.
I do expect to be able to eat more protein, and I'll probably play around with variety. A lot of things could easily be done that I just don't do cause they could mess up an experiment right now. E.g. different cuts, difficult to measure cuts like steak, BBQ, and so on.
But is it, if I wasn't even hungry at all, never had any cravings like the previous times, and my RMR wasn't suppressed on day 4? I would say that if any of those things had happened.. I suppose maybe it started exactly on day 5, not sure.
I think 8 is still fine. Especially since I'm not diabetic, so my body can just make insulin and make it go away.
I'm not sure that if your Psyche went beyond a massive decisive point, you couldn't sustain it. but your symptom description implies you had serious physical hunger situation. I guess others don't have it due to misc physiological differences (or you'll say........ haha)
Yea must be some massive physiological differences. I bet I could stretch it by another 2 days with willpower/lying on the bed/gritting my teeth. But adding another 375 days???
Keto people commonly talk about this. I think basically inability to fast for even a handful of hours means you're not metabolically flexible, you can only use glucose, and your glucose went low.
Definitely lots of people like that around in modernity.
If you switch to keto and become fat adapted, you can now go much longer even if you're not metabolically flexible, simply because you have so much more body fat than stored glucose. Like, 100x more even if you're lean.
Of course it would be nice to be metabolically flexible so you can burn glucose OR fat and switch between the 2 seamlessly, without feeling terrible.
I’ve done ≈24-hour dry fasts once/month for religious reasons every month since age 10 or so. (I’m late 30s now.)
Dry fasting is much more difficult for me than regular fasting. I wouldn’t recommend doing it longer than 24 hours, 36 max. For me, 48 hours normal fasting is about the same as 24 hours dry fasting (in terms of unpleasantness). At the very least you should work your way up to it.
Is it a Mormon thing? I have heard that dry fasting is similar to 2-3x the amount of water fasting, so your experience makes sense. I don't plan on doing it for a while, but yea planning on starting with a day.
i am once again asking you to buy a medium-sized kettlebell for zone two cardio as a tool for depleting glycogen. Or if you live somewhere mountainous go for a real hike (at 220 pounds, you should be able to burn 1500 calories over 2500 feet of elevation gain.
python3 -c 'print((210/2.2046)/ ((6*12+3)*0.0254) / ((6*12+3)*0.0254))'
26.248200308550967
You don't actually have a weight problem any more. You have won and it is time to find a new hobby.
Congratulations!
True. I think he just has a caffeine problem now! :D
It's not a problem. I can stop any time.
I don't know what those strange numbers mean, but since I'm back up to 215... I'm still at almost 29!
eh? 6'3" is 1.905m, 215lbs is 97.522kg, 97.522/1.905/1.905 = 26.872
I suppose you could say that was 'almost 29', but it's a weird way to phrase it.
Or are you using some sort of 'freedom BMI' that I'm not familiar with, or have I cocked something up?
I'm 6'1, not 6'3.
Oops,
python3 -c 'print((215/2.2046)/ ((6*12+1)*0.0254) / ((6*12+1)*0.0254))'
28.365830494557038
Still not *much* of a problem any more. And still congratulations, just a little premature, it turns out.
Going forwards, I would suggest that your new hobbies should be (a) keeping it off (b) working out what on earth is going on, and (c) trying to work out what's wrong with your carb metabolism and fixing that too, followed by (d) saving the world from the apocalypse of ill health currently overwhelming it.
Seeing as these are pretty much my existing hobbies, I won't have to change much!
he's translating your numbers to metric. then calculating BMI the way metric way it was designed for (weight / height squared iirc)
He knows perfectly well what I am doing. Do not be fooled by his helpless little old lady act.
Having lived in Asia for a few years, where every girl will tell you "Wow you're so tall how tall are you?" I quickly memorized that I'm 1.85m tall. I hence use "weight in lbs / 2.2 / 1.85 / 1.85" which is much easier.
hahaha so this is how they calculate metrics in the strange places
If you can handle an espresso, I suggest having one with a glass of iced water. There needs to be actual ice. Also a gauloise or small cigar, a beret, and a copy of Libération. And if you can arrange it a beautiful brunette philosophy student with issues always goes well. I don't know how common they are in the States but cafés near universities are usually a good place to look and they'll have all the other things as well.
I have a ball cap w/ the U.S. flag on it and a copy of Atlas Shrugged, think I can pass? As if the French knew anything about liberatiön :D
Atlas Shrugged totally, but the hat will have to be worn ironically. Maybe wear it the right way round? But I don't know, diversity is our strength, and all that.
Would be fun tho to park my 4x4 truck in front of the French cafe and get out carrying a baguette and smoking a cigarette ironically.
Tea, both regular and caffeinated, might be a good solution to the flavor cravings.
I did drink a lot of herbal teas. Can't do black teas w/ cream though during a fast :(
-- I resist willpower at all cost.
I have never said that, but I will!
Yea I was paraphrasing. You said something similar.
Yes I know, I was complimenting you on constructing a parody that was better than the original.
The saying I'm really known for locally is 'It's not pain, it's information', from my rowing-coaching-days.
I meant it perfectly literally, once you're used to rowing the feelings that novice rowers perceive as pain become a sort of head-up display telling you about glycogen and glucose and oxygen levels and fat metabolism that you can use to calibrate your race so that you get tunnel vision towards the end of the race, and start vomiting over the side of the boat and losing control of your limbs just after you've won by a canvas.
But somehow it became one of those shit-eating phrases that get on T-shirts.
Some people thought of it as inspirational, and some people took it as evidence that rowing was a sport for the insane and should be avoided. I'm not sure which is the better interpretation, but neither's what I actually meant.
Pretty obviously, in biology/evolution, pain IS information. Hard agree, don't blindly push through just cause you "have a good work ethic" or some such nonsense, try to understand the information.
Fasting swing weight comprises salt water, sugar water aka glycogen, and, ah, gastrointestinal contents, I think. Half-teaspoons of salt daily, or LMNT packets if you're cool, help. Now you know: five days, eat before going to bed the fifth day: happiness.
If you meditate on night 5, you will probably get some trippy visuals.
If you love coffee and cream but need to quit caffeine for some time I'd highly recommend a (good) decaf!! ^^
Yea I might have to do that at one point. Problem is, most of the decafs I've tried were horrible. Might have to spring for the good stuff.
Oof, that's not good!! I've tried a few and some were not good or quite mid, but I eventually found one which was really good with a rich taste and aroma and thankfully it's from a local place as well which makes it easier to get, but yeah, decaf gets a bad rap for a reason as most places seemingly don't know what to get nor how to properly handle decaf as it becomes bad way quicker than regular caffeine due to the process they go through.
Related to your CGM use, here's a hilarious excerpt from the physician notes at my recent doctor visit: "DISCUSSED AT LENGTH THAT PATIENT CANNOT GET A CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITOR UNLESS HE IS A DIABETIC"
I was hoping they'd at least give me a Rx and I could pay out of pocket if my insurance didn't cover it. Alas.
Lol sounds like you need to get a better doctor. The pharmacist recently told me that you can even get them without an Rx, it's just more expensive (even though I pay out of pocket!). Like $200 instead of $75 for a month, I think she said.
Could try that, just go to the pharmacy and ask for a Freestyle Libre 3.
It seems worth mentioning that “avoiding PUFA [LA specifically]” sort of requires “white knuckling” considering how prevalent it is in the U.S. food supply.
This brings up an interesting distinction that many people don't make. E.g. with diets being "restrictive" and "sustainable."
My diet is very "restrictive" in that I can't eat most things or dishes. But it's not restricted in a way that would long-term biochemical issues in my body. E.g. it's not calorie restricted.
If I told you to eat anything you wanted but only 1,000kcal/day it would also be "restrictive" if less "restrictive" in the "what can you eat" sense. But these 2 types of restrictive are fundamentally different, since you likely can't sustain such low food intake forever, at least not without incurring biochemical penalties.
So that's my basis for what "white-knuckling" is. Yea, I had to restrict PUFAs very strictly for 2 years, but the fasting didn't put me in that "crazy caloric restriction starvation mode" it did previously.
This is a good point and a valuable distinction between restriction and sustainability.
What I find most difficult is the peer pressure component. If I’m dead set on avoiding all seed oils, it requires me to sometimes be rude to other people (and usually my family or friends).
I suspect this is the case for many other people as well. In fact, I’m astonished you can keep up ex150 so well.
Ha, and here we probably come to the trade-offs of being a member of a tight-knit, high-community religious group. TBH I'm fascinated by Mormons :) And sometimes jealous.
On the other hand, I expect peer pressure to be quite high, and am not surprised by what you describe.
Stupid dietary experiments is probably one of the areas where being anti-social is a huge advantage. People in my family know not to pressure me about my diet, because I'll bully them back relentlessly. My friends have all accepted it, as I've been on weird diets before I knew most of them.
I also don't have a problem being rude to people.
This is probably one of my autistic "diet superpowers" - I can actually, consistently do diets if they are biochemically sustainable. Most people blame their diet failures on "not sticking to the diet." I've stuck to a ton of diets and almost none of them worked, but most people never get there and so live under the illusion that they were the problem.
One thing I'm thinking about reading this - as you approach your goal weight; like I totally get why you want to go back to your ad libitum after the fasts, but I'd think you'd want to do more like "ad 90% libitum", especially on a fat-based eating plan.
As you're approaching the goal weight, to the extent that ideas like setpoint and rebounding are real, you're at a real peak for those systems to be working, your weight loss speed is slowing a bit, etc. I see myself in your charts - really similar timelines, I hit 200 lbs in 2019 for the first time in years, now coming down from a peak at 330+. I imagine that once im in the 210-225 range I'm going to need to be really careful about "ad libitum" anything to avoid letting myself creep back up.
Related: have you thought about what you hope to be doing once you're 'done'? Ex150, do you want to try modifications on that for your longterm diet once you're done with "the" weight loss, or are you planning on more experiments from there to try to find your lifelong eating plan?
This first 30 lbs for me is the slowest 30 lbs I've ever lost but I'm pretty happy with how I'm doing it. Not lifelong sustainable, but like, 85% lifelong sustainable.
Keep it up man.
My goal is definitely to not gain fat eating ad-lib, anything else would be a failure in my view.
But I do expect that I'll lose less and less, and eventually reach a plateau eating ad-lib, simply because my appetite will increase to match the lower energy form adipose tissue.
Where exactly that is, I don't know.
For "after", since I'm pretty big on the PUFA depletion thing I'd expect to keep being strict at avoiding PUFA at least until my OmegaQuant comes in at <11% LA. Maybe I'll try to eat an occasional (monthly?) meal out then. Not sure.
I do expect to be able to eat more protein, and I'll probably play around with variety. A lot of things could easily be done that I just don't do cause they could mess up an experiment right now. E.g. different cuts, difficult to measure cuts like steak, BBQ, and so on.
The insomnia is your body giving you an adrenaline surge and telling you to get off your ass and hunt down a wild beast to eat before you starve!
Seriously, isn’t a ketone level of 8 starting to approach danger level?
But is it, if I wasn't even hungry at all, never had any cravings like the previous times, and my RMR wasn't suppressed on day 4? I would say that if any of those things had happened.. I suppose maybe it started exactly on day 5, not sure.
I think 8 is still fine. Especially since I'm not diabetic, so my body can just make insulin and make it go away.
the Scottish guy fasted > 1 year. and he got some mineral tablets every day + supervised in hospital
Yea, I know. Crazy, no idea how he did it :)
my best guess is:
1. individual differences.
2. lying on bed and doing nothing. kinda.
3. no sleep issues before
4. greeting teeth.
I'm not sure that if your Psyche went beyond a massive decisive point, you couldn't sustain it. but your symptom description implies you had serious physical hunger situation. I guess others don't have it due to misc physiological differences (or you'll say........ haha)
Yea must be some massive physiological differences. I bet I could stretch it by another 2 days with willpower/lying on the bed/gritting my teeth. But adding another 375 days???
i used not to be able to fast 4 hours!
it changed massively after doing the l-nutra FMD 5 days semi fast. I think it's kinda switched without in my metabolism?
but it also slowly changed over several years. where now I can not eat for hours without feeling it
Keto people commonly talk about this. I think basically inability to fast for even a handful of hours means you're not metabolically flexible, you can only use glucose, and your glucose went low.
Definitely lots of people like that around in modernity.
If you switch to keto and become fat adapted, you can now go much longer even if you're not metabolically flexible, simply because you have so much more body fat than stored glucose. Like, 100x more even if you're lean.
Of course it would be nice to be metabolically flexible so you can burn glucose OR fat and switch between the 2 seamlessly, without feeling terrible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri's_fast
I’ve done ≈24-hour dry fasts once/month for religious reasons every month since age 10 or so. (I’m late 30s now.)
Dry fasting is much more difficult for me than regular fasting. I wouldn’t recommend doing it longer than 24 hours, 36 max. For me, 48 hours normal fasting is about the same as 24 hours dry fasting (in terms of unpleasantness). At the very least you should work your way up to it.
Is it a Mormon thing? I have heard that dry fasting is similar to 2-3x the amount of water fasting, so your experience makes sense. I don't plan on doing it for a while, but yea planning on starting with a day.
Yep! Good luck.
If you're going to try dry fasting, I really recommend getting and reading Sergey Filonov's book. Lots of really good info about how to do it safely.
https://dryfasting.info/
I should give this a try. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks I'll read up on it!
i am once again asking you to buy a medium-sized kettlebell for zone two cardio as a tool for depleting glycogen. Or if you live somewhere mountainous go for a real hike (at 220 pounds, you should be able to burn 1500 calories over 2500 feet of elevation gain.
What if the only effect exercise has on fat loss is it burns through your glycogen, allowing you to actually use your fat reserves..
makes sense to me - is that a downside though?
Not necessarily, but something to be aware of. If it's true. Probably not the only thing it does.