> Spending almost the entire day thinking of food, never getting any real satisfaction from your meals, counting the minutes until you’re allowed to eat again… even if this actually worked (and I doubt that) it wouldn’t “work” in any real sense. Almost nobody’s going to stick to that. If your diet only works on prisoners, go back to the drawing board.
It’s wore than that IMO.
I can willpower-through relatively low caloric diets and lose weight. I’m doing it right now, mostly because I don’t have AC and I prefer being hungry than being too hot in summer.
If I cut myself while cooking, tho, even superficial wounds won’t heal in less than ~1mo. If I catch any bug, like a cold, it’s also going to linger forever.
Losing weight that way is not being healthier. It’s just trading some symptoms (overweight) for others (inadequate energy supply) — and it’s very unclear to me which side of the tradeoff is "better". "Working" would be having no symptom.
The wound healing aspect is interesting. I've experienced the infection/immune system thing myself in the past. But seems like just your entire body doesn't work right.
That weird sized Asian rice cup is called a "gou" (合 in Japanese). It's a traditional rice measurement unit equal to approximately 180ml or about 150g of uncooked rice, historically thought of as a "ration" for a single adult.
I'm still interested in seeing if some more minor amount of calorie restriction would work. I'm also interested if you can swamp without gaining weight if you keep it PUFA free!
Isn't this the problem with calorie restriction though that you can always argue that if it works it was calorie restriction and if it doesn't then calories weren't restricted?
Yup it's unfalsifiable because we can't measure either CI or CO. Even the "gold standard" methods are completely unreliable, as my $1,000 DLW experiment proved haha.
Yeah, I'd be very interested in this too. Considering his working theory is all about PUFAs, I wish we got more attempts to test that mechanism in isolation rather than monodiets!
Your description of the hyperphagia waves makes me wonder one thing: what if you started a refeed as normal, but attempted to sate the waves with ex150-style cream instead of more refeed/protein material? Maybe this is in fact what happens after your daily ex150 meat, where you've inadvertently found a way to stop the hyperphagia without discomfort?
I haven't tested it in real detail, but my intuition is that even infinite cream does not turn off the hyperphagia. I'll just eat insane amounts of cream on top of the other stuff.
For example, I had very high cream intake most of the decade before I discovered ex150, throughout most of my 100lbs regain on keto. The addition of cream didn't seem to do anything on its own.
Interesting! I ask mostly because, looking at your charts, I always find myself thinking "if only those refeeds didn't spike your weight so much, you could keep losing weight even at the current slower rates". But a lot of that is probably water weight anyway, so I don't really know how much of a difference it would make
Yea historically on my refeeds between ex150, it would spike and then come down nearly immediately. Despite the spikes, I lost weight very rapidly and reliably until I hit around 220-230lbs.
Eventually I tried not doing the refeeds, I think once I did no refeeds for 3-4 months in a row, but it didn't help either.
Ever since I discovered I can eat carbs last year, I've actually seen the phenomenon where I didn't lose the refeed weight at all, but instead seemed to gain it as fat lol - but that was only when I went to a high-carb diet after the refeed.
Could be that it's that my refeeds now include carbs too instead of just high protein keto, and that in combination with a high-carb diet.. or maybe cause I'm not adapted to high-carb after years of keto... so gotta be more careful now :)
It still seems to come off immediately w/ ex150, but then stall again at nearly the same weight.
Informally, decades ago. I think when I was getting started with low-carb etc. But it's been so long and was probably not very strict/regimented, so it doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't work now.
I suspect that if it works, it works similarly to super low cal Kempner. IIRC the original PSMF is 400-800kcal/day? So maybe it's just an "inefficient fast."
The way Lyle McDonald sets it up is a bit different - protein is set depending on current level of leanness and activity. But it would be maybe 200g of lean protein for you, lots of fibrous veg, plus water. Focus would be on white fish, egg white, lean chicken etc. Basically lots of protein with carbs and fat as low as possible.
To me that sounds worse than just water fasting since the protein would just trigger more hunger and the vegetables might cause some bloat but not necessarily prevent hunger.
> Spending almost the entire day thinking of food, never getting any real satisfaction from your meals, counting the minutes until you’re allowed to eat again… even if this actually worked (and I doubt that) it wouldn’t “work” in any real sense. Almost nobody’s going to stick to that. If your diet only works on prisoners, go back to the drawing board.
It’s wore than that IMO.
I can willpower-through relatively low caloric diets and lose weight. I’m doing it right now, mostly because I don’t have AC and I prefer being hungry than being too hot in summer.
If I cut myself while cooking, tho, even superficial wounds won’t heal in less than ~1mo. If I catch any bug, like a cold, it’s also going to linger forever.
Losing weight that way is not being healthier. It’s just trading some symptoms (overweight) for others (inadequate energy supply) — and it’s very unclear to me which side of the tradeoff is "better". "Working" would be having no symptom.
The wound healing aspect is interesting. I've experienced the infection/immune system thing myself in the past. But seems like just your entire body doesn't work right.
That weird sized Asian rice cup is called a "gou" (合 in Japanese). It's a traditional rice measurement unit equal to approximately 180ml or about 150g of uncooked rice, historically thought of as a "ration" for a single adult.
That neatly fits in to a koku of you assume three rations per day for a year.
I'm still interested in seeing if some more minor amount of calorie restriction would work. I'm also interested if you can swamp without gaining weight if you keep it PUFA free!
Isn't this the problem with calorie restriction though that you can always argue that if it works it was calorie restriction and if it doesn't then calories weren't restricted?
Yup it's unfalsifiable because we can't measure either CI or CO. Even the "gold standard" methods are completely unreliable, as my $1,000 DLW experiment proved haha.
Yeah, I'd be very interested in this too. Considering his working theory is all about PUFAs, I wish we got more attempts to test that mechanism in isolation rather than monodiets!
There's also the fact that I just prefer mono diets. Always have naturally done it. I tend to have a favorite meal and eat only that.
Your description of the hyperphagia waves makes me wonder one thing: what if you started a refeed as normal, but attempted to sate the waves with ex150-style cream instead of more refeed/protein material? Maybe this is in fact what happens after your daily ex150 meat, where you've inadvertently found a way to stop the hyperphagia without discomfort?
I haven't tested it in real detail, but my intuition is that even infinite cream does not turn off the hyperphagia. I'll just eat insane amounts of cream on top of the other stuff.
For example, I had very high cream intake most of the decade before I discovered ex150, throughout most of my 100lbs regain on keto. The addition of cream didn't seem to do anything on its own.
Interesting! I ask mostly because, looking at your charts, I always find myself thinking "if only those refeeds didn't spike your weight so much, you could keep losing weight even at the current slower rates". But a lot of that is probably water weight anyway, so I don't really know how much of a difference it would make
Yea historically on my refeeds between ex150, it would spike and then come down nearly immediately. Despite the spikes, I lost weight very rapidly and reliably until I hit around 220-230lbs.
Eventually I tried not doing the refeeds, I think once I did no refeeds for 3-4 months in a row, but it didn't help either.
Ever since I discovered I can eat carbs last year, I've actually seen the phenomenon where I didn't lose the refeed weight at all, but instead seemed to gain it as fat lol - but that was only when I went to a high-carb diet after the refeed.
Could be that it's that my refeeds now include carbs too instead of just high protein keto, and that in combination with a high-carb diet.. or maybe cause I'm not adapted to high-carb after years of keto... so gotta be more careful now :)
It still seems to come off immediately w/ ex150, but then stall again at nearly the same weight.
Have you ever experimented with a PSMF? Eg Lyle McDonald’s rapid fat loss diet?
https://youtu.be/BXLVj1vs3KU?si=1W0tetWLyKVPG_Ij
https://store.bodyrecomposition.com/shop/rapid-fat-loss-handbook/
I’m not necessarily recommending it just adding to the various experiment options.
Informally, decades ago. I think when I was getting started with low-carb etc. But it's been so long and was probably not very strict/regimented, so it doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't work now.
I suspect that if it works, it works similarly to super low cal Kempner. IIRC the original PSMF is 400-800kcal/day? So maybe it's just an "inefficient fast."
The way Lyle McDonald sets it up is a bit different - protein is set depending on current level of leanness and activity. But it would be maybe 200g of lean protein for you, lots of fibrous veg, plus water. Focus would be on white fish, egg white, lean chicken etc. Basically lots of protein with carbs and fat as low as possible.
He sees it as a limited intervention - 2, 3 or 4 weeks perhaps - then you transition to a maintenance position basically adding more carbs and fat. (He likes a crash diet https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/facts-about-rapid-fat-loss)
The video I linked to is a good as an intro to his approach, but is long.
I'm not recommending - it always gives me constipation.
To me that sounds worse than just water fasting since the protein would just trigger more hunger and the vegetables might cause some bloat but not necessarily prevent hunger.