This sounds worth paying attention to, 'dry skin' is 'not producing enough oil' in some form or other. It's rather famously a symptom of thyroid trouble/hypometabolism, although not one I've ever suffered from.
I've no idea what might be causing it, but it it goes away on your 'cheat days' and for a few days afterwards, it might be some sort of nutrient deficiency?
Careful with all this. A plain rice diet really is asking for trouble. Listen to your cravings!
This is fascinating, and I think there's something going on here which we need to understand. You mentioned that your muscles don't look as big, and that might just be loss of water from being salt deprived?
But the rest of what you're seeing seems both mysterious and significant. In particular that huge drop in ad-lib calorie intake. What is going on??
It's often the "that's funny" observations that end up being significant. Beri well done!
I think I pretty much never reheated cooled rice, unless you count the pre-cooked instant rice. In which case nearly 100% of that, because it comes pre-cooked and is sold cold and then you microwave it.
Thanks, I've been looking forward to this review. I've tried eating ad libitum plain rice (white and brown) and never made it more than ~5 days because it was so boring. Regarding the dry skin, it's something I also noticed when eating very low fat but I was never sure if it was real or imagined. Regarding the 1500 calorie Kempner diet, I struggle to get my head around that. That might be the number for a relatively small inactive elderly person/woman? On a day of moderate to high physical activity (walking, yardwork, housework, etc.) my activity trackers (mainly Oura ring) estimate 500 to 1000+ calories just from exercise. I'd hit the wall very quickly trying to eat so little.
Yea as did I. And he actually had most people on less than that, closer to 1,000kcal maybe. Maybe people back then just had better access to their fat stores, or maybe he was so "motivating" that they white knuckled it the whole time lol.
Welcome to the low-fat team, hahaha. Glad to see progress in your quest. I wonder if having plain boiled potatoes will work the same way, or only rice does the trick. I would also suggest casein to increase the satiety (50 grams per day), but that would go against the only rice rule. Cheers.
> I had 2 old zits break open and bleed, and then completely disappear. Very weird. As if an old wound broke open and healed itself completely.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. What are 'old zits'? I do occasionally get spots but they disappear, they don't leave anything behind long term. Do yours leave long term scars which have now healed, or do you think that you've had long term infections which have now cleared up?
I mean that in spots where I used to have zits, they came back, sort of exploded (pus came out), and then vanished and I can't tell they were ever there. Sort of like a "memory" or maybe part of them was there the whole time?
No, they usually don't leave long term scars and I barely ever had pimples even as a kid.
But something must've been there, I suppose? Or some sort of skin memory lol.
Fun fact, beriberi is vitamin A toxicity, and when you eliminate intake the body starts to flood the system with it as part of the detox cycle. B1 simply reactivates the gene expressions that excess retinoid signaling turns off.
Probably not anytime soon. My honey/sugar experiences so far have been quite bad, and there's way less anecdotal evidence of people even sustaining this.
People keep saying not to mix this and that. Don't eat protein and carbs together, don't eat carbs and fat together et etc, but we also know that it's good to eat everything and to go in and out of ketosis, so how's this: The no-mix diet:
Eat only beef and salt for 3 days.
Fast 1 day
Eat only fruit, honey (sugar+fiber no starch) for 3 days
The "sugar diet/sugar fast" thing seemed to come and go very quickly but the protocol that they appeared to settle on there appeared to be fruit/honey/sugar/rice for a few days then a low fat protein "refeed", then back to the sugar.
Joe Binley / Joe English seems to be the only one still preaching it now and perhaps Mark Bell
Yes - things like paleo, low carb, keto etc had a slow burn growing over months or years before hitting some critical mass and bursting into the broader mainstream. The sugar diet was like well premature ejaculation - it got massive quickly then blew up and died
The opposite also works, being mostly keto/high protein with one carb refeed day. Ckd is a very popular, well known, known to work. And Tim Ferris slow carb diet is an offshoot of that, very similar but with some insane results, I think he adjusted it to where people were losing 4lb of fat a week while gaining muscle mass at the same time which most people think it's impossible.
I tried Tim Ferriss' slow carb back in the day when he came up with it; never did anything for me. I've never seen even moderate results in people doing it heh.
I've read up a lot on Slow Carb since you posted this. (I had never heard of it before, so thanks!) It seems like Ex150 is within the rules of Slow Carb? (Except Ex150 doesn't need any cheat days?)
I guess the "don't drink your calories" and "don't consume anything that is white" are broken with HWC. But if you eat it with a spoon then you're technically not drinking it. 😂
heh I would say the point of slow carb is to replace high glycemic carbs with low glycemic ones like beans. contrasting with just straight up eliminating carbs ("low-carb" or keto).
so i'd say it fails the central tenet of slow-carb?
> Dry skin
This sounds worth paying attention to, 'dry skin' is 'not producing enough oil' in some form or other. It's rather famously a symptom of thyroid trouble/hypometabolism, although not one I've ever suffered from.
I've no idea what might be causing it, but it it goes away on your 'cheat days' and for a few days afterwards, it might be some sort of nutrient deficiency?
Careful with all this. A plain rice diet really is asking for trouble. Listen to your cravings!
Yea I figured that's the D part of EFAD :) We do need fats.. but for the 30 day experiments it has been fine so far.
This is fascinating, and I think there's something going on here which we need to understand. You mentioned that your muscles don't look as big, and that might just be loss of water from being salt deprived?
But the rest of what you're seeing seems both mysterious and significant. In particular that huge drop in ad-lib calorie intake. What is going on??
It's often the "that's funny" observations that end up being significant. Beri well done!
What percent of the calories came from reheating cooked and cooled rice? That will lower the calories by about 10-25% (according to Claude AI).
I think I pretty much never reheated cooled rice, unless you count the pre-cooked instant rice. In which case nearly 100% of that, because it comes pre-cooked and is sold cold and then you microwave it.
Thanks, I've been looking forward to this review. I've tried eating ad libitum plain rice (white and brown) and never made it more than ~5 days because it was so boring. Regarding the dry skin, it's something I also noticed when eating very low fat but I was never sure if it was real or imagined. Regarding the 1500 calorie Kempner diet, I struggle to get my head around that. That might be the number for a relatively small inactive elderly person/woman? On a day of moderate to high physical activity (walking, yardwork, housework, etc.) my activity trackers (mainly Oura ring) estimate 500 to 1000+ calories just from exercise. I'd hit the wall very quickly trying to eat so little.
Yea as did I. And he actually had most people on less than that, closer to 1,000kcal maybe. Maybe people back then just had better access to their fat stores, or maybe he was so "motivating" that they white knuckled it the whole time lol.
Welcome to the low-fat team, hahaha. Glad to see progress in your quest. I wonder if having plain boiled potatoes will work the same way, or only rice does the trick. I would also suggest casein to increase the satiety (50 grams per day), but that would go against the only rice rule. Cheers.
I previously tried plain boiled potatoes but couldn't digest them. I think I have issues with potato starch.
> I had 2 old zits break open and bleed, and then completely disappear. Very weird. As if an old wound broke open and healed itself completely.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. What are 'old zits'? I do occasionally get spots but they disappear, they don't leave anything behind long term. Do yours leave long term scars which have now healed, or do you think that you've had long term infections which have now cleared up?
I mean that in spots where I used to have zits, they came back, sort of exploded (pus came out), and then vanished and I can't tell they were ever there. Sort of like a "memory" or maybe part of them was there the whole time?
No, they usually don't leave long term scars and I barely ever had pimples even as a kid.
But something must've been there, I suppose? Or some sort of skin memory lol.
Fun fact, beriberi is vitamin A toxicity, and when you eliminate intake the body starts to flood the system with it as part of the detox cycle. B1 simply reactivates the gene expressions that excess retinoid signaling turns off.
Interesting. Are you willing to try a honey only trial? Or probably an ACV+honey test run?
Probably not anytime soon. My honey/sugar experiences so far have been quite bad, and there's way less anecdotal evidence of people even sustaining this.
what kind of marinara sauce did you use in previous experiments?
Fat-free marinara from Whole Foods (365 brand)
People keep saying not to mix this and that. Don't eat protein and carbs together, don't eat carbs and fat together et etc, but we also know that it's good to eat everything and to go in and out of ketosis, so how's this: The no-mix diet:
Eat only beef and salt for 3 days.
Fast 1 day
Eat only fruit, honey (sugar+fiber no starch) for 3 days
Fast 1 day
Repeat.
Could work. I haven't tried a cyclical thing like that before.
The "sugar diet/sugar fast" thing seemed to come and go very quickly but the protocol that they appeared to settle on there appeared to be fruit/honey/sugar/rice for a few days then a low fat protein "refeed", then back to the sugar.
Joe Binley / Joe English seems to be the only one still preaching it now and perhaps Mark Bell
Haha yea "sugar fasting" has got to be the fastest diet flash/burnout I've ever seen :D
"It literally works for everybody!" and 1 week later, when "everybody" had tried it.. yea no, it works for almost nobody like most diets ;)
Yes - things like paleo, low carb, keto etc had a slow burn growing over months or years before hitting some critical mass and bursting into the broader mainstream. The sugar diet was like well premature ejaculation - it got massive quickly then blew up and died
The opposite also works, being mostly keto/high protein with one carb refeed day. Ckd is a very popular, well known, known to work. And Tim Ferris slow carb diet is an offshoot of that, very similar but with some insane results, I think he adjusted it to where people were losing 4lb of fat a week while gaining muscle mass at the same time which most people think it's impossible.
I tried Tim Ferriss' slow carb back in the day when he came up with it; never did anything for me. I've never seen even moderate results in people doing it heh.
I've read up a lot on Slow Carb since you posted this. (I had never heard of it before, so thanks!) It seems like Ex150 is within the rules of Slow Carb? (Except Ex150 doesn't need any cheat days?)
I guess the "don't drink your calories" and "don't consume anything that is white" are broken with HWC. But if you eat it with a spoon then you're technically not drinking it. 😂
heh I would say the point of slow carb is to replace high glycemic carbs with low glycemic ones like beans. contrasting with just straight up eliminating carbs ("low-carb" or keto).
so i'd say it fails the central tenet of slow-carb?
sounds sort of like the honey diet in super slow motion