ex_sugar review: Spectacular failure in 9 days

Unimpressive weight loss, acute liver pain

Warning: in over 2 years of running pretty stupid diet experiments, this was the first one that made me legitimately concerned for my health. I recommend you DO NOT try this at home, at least not the way I did. I’ll have some guesses on what I did wrong, and how you could do it better, toward the end.

man drinking from giant barrel of sprite soda

Why do the Sugar Diet?

Just like the Honey Diet a few months ago, the Sugar Diet was making the rounds on Twitter and on podcasts over the last few weeks.

Similar to the original Honey Diet hype, despite the diet being brand new, people were suddenly confident this was THE SOLUTION that would totally and absolutely work for EVERYBODY. (Not like that stupid keto or carnivore, lol!)

The same things were said confidently about the Honey Diet, and then it didn’t work for a whole bunch of people, including myself.

So, I thought, this is similar enough to the Honey Diet, and it might actually work better - or if not, at least we can find some failure cases earlier this time.

And, oh boy, fail it did.

Differences to Honey Diet

The Honey Diet is a very specific diet developed by Anabology. It’s not just about eating honey. There is a feeding window during which you can eat only sugar (fruit, honey, table sugar, ..) from waking up until 3pm. Then you fast from 3-7pm. At 7pm, you eat your only protein/fat meal of the day, which is low-carb.

This temporal limitation tries to ensure that, while you’re swamping during the day on average, you’re done metabolizing the morning sugar by the time dinner rolls around.

The Sugar Diet does not have any such intra-day segmentation. You do “sugar fast” days on which you only eat sugar, but ad-lib sugar - fruit, honey, table sugar, soda, candy - and then every few days, you do a lean protein refeed day.

The proponents were in disagreement about a lot of the exact details, often not even explicitly. For example, how many days in a row should you sugar fast before doing a protein refeed?

The vague consensus I heard was that the more fat you have to lose, the longer you should be able to go. Lean people were getting shredded on this thing doing 2-4 days between protein refeeds.

I decided to just see how long I could make it, and go from there.

Many proponents were also (implicitly) doing pretty different versions of this diet, often seemingly without their knowledge.

For example, some were saying you should fructose-maxx on this diet, because fructose goes straight to the liver, unlike glucose. The more fructose, the more FGF21, the more fat loss!

Others were telling tales of eating gummy bears & sour patch kids all day. But all chewy candy contains glucose syrup (typically from corn or tapioca starch) which is pure glucose, and would actually lower your fructose:glucose ratio dramatically.

Some were saying to limit the fresh fruit, and make sure you get enough refined sugar in. This would help both with digestibility and price. This made sense to me; on the Honey Diet I’d had trouble eating enough via fruit, leaving me starving. On a per calorie basis, most fruit is a scam - you’d probably starve to death if you could eat nothing but watermelon, and you’d spend $100/day for the privilege.

Some were doing/recommending nearly a 100% Coca Cola fast. While this sounded fun, I was advised to avoid caffeine to start off because that’s what some old time fruitarians recommended. I therefore settled on sprite and A&W root beer (non caffeinated).

Rules of Engagement

1. I would try to sugar fast for as many days as I could before noticing weird side effects or protein cravings, then do a protein refeed and repeat

2. Sugar fast days would include honey, moderate amounts of fresh fruit, table sugar, non-caffeinated soda, fruit juices, lemonade, non-starchy candy

3. No coffee

4. I would water fast for 1 day before starting, just to make sure any excess protein/fat from the refeed wouldn’t be in my system on day 1 of the Sugar Diet

How it went

It sort of went in a few phases.

1. Day 1-4: I actually felt pretty great. Unlike on the Honey Diet, I could eat sugar to satiety. The refined sugar went down a lot easier than the fresh fruit, which helped with digestion & not starving. I quickly lost weight from the refeed peak, too.

2. Day 5-6: I felt… weird. Somehow unwell, queasy. I distinctly felt like I was suddenly eating way more than the first 4 days, yet wouldn’t reach strong satiety. But I thought I may be imagining things and continued. My weight was stalled at this point.

3. Day 7: I crashed very hard. No satiety from sugar at all, just nausea and protein cravings. Hunger pangs that turned into painful stomach cramps. Ended up eating lots of lean protein, which helped with the cravings & hunger.

4. Day 8-9: I tried going back on the sugar fast, but every single time I ate sugar I’d get acute liver pain and nausea long before reaching any sort of satiety. Going to bed hungry but nauseous on day 8, I committed to trying to have a fruit salad for breakfast on day 9 to see if it got better. It did not, instant nausea/liver pain, and I decided to stop the experiment then.

Here’s my weight during the experiment:

I was a pretty flat 230lbs after ex150-14. During a few days of starchy protein refeed I went up to 241lbs. Reminder, the last day before ex_sugar was actually a 24h water fast, which is why you see the weight come down from 241 to around 238lbs before the diet even starts.

Still, quick water weight losses continued on the sugar diet for 4 days. But then it started to plateau around 233lbs - not even back down to my pre-refeed weight of 230lbs.

The crash & burn protein refeed put me back up to 238lbs. If the cycle continued like this, even absent any of the nauseau/liver stuff, I probably would’ve never made it back to my pre-refeed weight.

For comparison, let’s take a look at my previous refeed which was very similar, almost the exact same foods: swampy, starchy, moderate protein. That time, I didn’t do a 24h water fast, I just went straight back on ex150.

You can see uninterrupted, rapid water weight loss back down to 230lbs.

That’s right, ex150 provided faster water weight loss than the sugar diet following a 24h fast, without any of the issues, and it’s sustainable & doesn’t make me crash & burn after 7 days.

So let’s just say I’m unimpressed by the weight loss on the Sugar Diet.

Liver-shot satiety?

Eating ad-lib sugar, I actually got something similar to the cement-truck satiety I get on my normal heavy cream diet.

I called it liver-shot satiety, because I vaguely felt something where I suspected my liver to be, and because it was a lot less pleasant than cement-truck satiety.

Cement-truck satiety from cream can sort of blend over into nausea a little, but it’s usually just a very strong and sudden disinterest in food.

With the sugar, it was mostly nausea, and it wasn’t nearly as pleasant. If I overshot even a little bit, I’d be very nauseous for hours, and just wanted to lay down on my back and groan. With cement-truck satiety, my mind would suddenly be hyper focused or interested in something else. With liver-shot sugar “satiety” it just wanted to be left alone. I literally felt sick, just wanting to be in bed and do nothing.

Days 5-6, this feeling got worse: I’d now get the liver-shot and nausea feeling before I got the satiety. Day 8-9 were even worse, despite a full day of protein refeeding. I basically stopped eating much because the discomfort was so punishing.

The day 7 protein refeed

Day 7 was wild, and reminded me of the first few days of the Honey Diet. Even then, when doing low-fat/low-protein dinners (until I added more fat later) I would get these super strong hunger pangs. I would have them before, during, and after eating!

This was very weird, because it’d just be intense, very painful hunger that would not go away with eating! Back then I added in more fat, but then people said that was too much fat. This time, on the refeed, I just did leaner protein as best I could. This made the acute hunger pangs & stomach cramps go away.

Here’s what I had:

• 1/2lb deli roast beef

• 1 protein style (no spread) in-n-out double double

• 1 package of shrimp (maybe 15-20 shrimp)

• 2 cans of wild salmon in tomato sauce/black bean/spinach "chowder"

I definitely got pretty hyperphagic, only stopped eating due to bloat. For some reason, I was craving beans and tomato sauce, so I cooked the 2 cans of wild salmon and made a chowder.

This wasn’t a crazy amount of protein. Maybe 100-150g total? And pretty low-fat.

The Ugly

Here are my notes for the last 2 days:

Day 8

Ugh, not feeling great today. Nausea after meals 3x. Feeling sick every time, just want to lie down. Like weird pressure in my stomach or on my liver, too.
Seriously considering quitting.
Was still 240lbs in the evening, 2lbs up from the morning.

Day 9

Breakfast of watermelon, mixed berries, a few tbsp of fruit spread, a few tbsp of honey, some OJ.
Mild nausea after.
At this point I'm basically afraid to eat because of impending nausea and fear of liver damage, so I'm quitting it.

The Refeed

I had originally planned on fasting for 2 days, but I forgot how hard fasting is when you're not in ketosis lol. Or maybe it was something specific to the sugar diet, but I had very strong cravings for lots of savory foods. Mostly vegetables & starches, of all things, not even meat: black beans, beef, green beans, tomato sauce, mushrooms, spinach, onion, even beets.. so I made a giant stew pot w/ almost no caloric food in it.

What’s funny is that this stew hit the spot SO BAD despite being nearly noncaloric. The only even slightly nutritious things in there were mild starches like the beans and the beets. But it was very satisfying on a primal-feeling level.

I don’t know if that means I was depleted in some nutrients, or if I had made myself so sick of the sweet taste that anything savory hit the spot in a psychological sense.

Because of my liver concerns, I didn’t want to jump straight back into high-fat like ex150. Fat can also tax the liver, and dairy fat is 11% MCT, which goes straight to the liver just like fructose.

I wanted to give my liver a little bit of a rest.

The Aftermath

I did a bunch of travel over the next few days. Originally, I had planned on just doing fruit & sprite for this, since those are easily available and can readily be consumed on the go.

Of course, with the Sugar Diet aborted, and not quite confident enough in my liver to restart ex150 or something similarly ultra-high fat, I decided to just continue my vaguely-moderate protein/savory/starchy refeed for a few more days.

This turned out, in some ways, pretty disastrous. I actually PUFA’d myself for the first time since learning about the whole topic 2 years ago.

I couldn’t tell you if it was the lack of ketosis, or some lingering deficiency or starvation mode from the Sugar Diet, but I threw all caution to the wind and ate several very-likely-PUFA’d foods like a bread roll served on a flight, and even some that definitely had vegetable oils in the ingredient, like a crappy airline dessert. After landing, I ate ice cream made with palm oil (9% linoleic acid).

This is quite an outlier for me. I had zero issues with willpower or discipline avoiding PUFA like a m*******er for the last 2 years straight.

Heck, I did last months ex150-14 experiment completely, 100% strict despite traveling for 3 weeks of it, and and it was way more difficult travel in a region with way less reliable grocery stores & less known-good food supply.

But the thing is, with a super-ketogenic diet like ex150 I always have an easy way out: fasting. I can just not eat for up to 5 days without noticing anything. As long as I could buy cream every couple days, I was fine. Just like charging a battery.

On the sugar diet, I was hungry again every 2 hours.

Maybe the crash & burn on day 7 or the liver issue did something else with cravings. Maybe I was malnourished or deficient in something due to the sugar, I’m not sure.

During the 2 years of super strict PUFA avoiding I’ve sat through plenty of flights without touching just about any of the airplane food. But this time, I just couldn’t.

This is, to me, another reminder that “willpower” or “discipline” when it comes to diets don’t exist, and neither do habits. It’s just biochemistry. If you put your body in a compromised biochemical context, it will convince you that you’re starving. If your diet strategy is to fight a body convinced it’s starving, you’ve already lost.

That said, I immediately got a sunburn after eating somewhat-mild amounts of seed oils for only a few days.

Granted, it took several hours in the full-on summer sun, but still: I’d previously spent 2x as long in the same sun without as much as getting pink. I hadn’t gotten sunburn since experimenting with salmon over a year ago.

The sunburn went away after about a day and a half, and it was never really painful - but definitely not as resistant as I’m used to being.

Now I didn’t eat anything deep-fried. I didn’t eat any salad sauce or dressing. I didn’t eat any bacon or fatty pork/chicken.

This was just from eating some PUFA’d bread rolls, eggs likely cooked in seed oils, shitty airline pastries, and ice cream with palm oil for a few days.

That shit really is in EVERYTHING.

I’m hoping that, despite the acute sunburn, this won’t set my PUFA-depletion back too far.

And for future travel, I’ll try to set myself up better, e.g. by being in keto for the duration of travel, which makes things much easier.

Weird disinterest in coffee

Another side effect that’s persisted: I mentioned how I wasn’t having coffee or caffeine on the Sugar Diet.

I’m usually a very heavy coffee drinker, 10 cups a day isn’t unusual for me. But I’ve quit it relatively effortlessly several times before.

As usual, I just got a headache the evening of the first day, and then it was fine. I didn’t even miss the coffee.

Normally after not drinking coffee for a while, I am really eager to get back into it.

Somehow, not this time. It’s 10 days after I quit the sugar diet as of this writing, which means I haven’t had coffee in nearly 3 weeks.

And I sort of don’t miss it.

It’s a very curious feeling because I’m also not feeling super glad/happy that I’m “finally over coffee” or anything. It just happens to be a mild disinterest. To the point that I will stand in front of a coffee shop and consider going in, but then decide against it. I have coffee in my kitchen right now, I just don’t care for making any.

I seem to have previously made myself sick of dark chocolate via a 14 day experiment, maybe the sugar diet somehow made me sick of coffee? Maybe a liver/detox thing?

Curious. I think I’ll just let that one run for a bit and observe. Plus, it ties neatly into the next diet experiment.

What could I have done better?

As I mentioned above, there are several Sugar Diet proponents out there, and they don’t exactly agree on everything. Sometimes they even have implicit disagreements, i.e. they don’t explicitly say not to do what X says to do, but what they end up doing & recommending is quite different.

1. Fructose:glucose ratio. I suspect this is the biggest point. Even big proponents of eating high-sugar diets, like Peaters & Fruitarians, acknowledge that many people cannot tolerate very high amounts of fructose. On the other hand, a high fructose:glucose ratio is recommended by some for the increased liver/FGF21 effect.
   As someone who’s not metabolically super well, and hasn’t eaten much sugar for the last decade, maybe I require a lower fructose:glucose ratio than the roughly 50:50 I aimed for.
   Sucrose is about 50:50, and high fructose corn syrup is usually similar (e.g. 45:55).
   I didn’t eat fruits like bananas, and didn’t eat chewy candy. Many fruitarians use bananas as a staple, and many of the Sugar Dieters seem to use chewy candy as a staple. Both of those are higher in glucose than 50:50.
   Maybe this would help, since my liver was clearly not able to tolerate the extreme levels of fructose?

2. Ignoring feeling weird/queasy & lack of satiety on day 5-6. I felt pretty great on day 4, but day 5 was already weird in retrospect. Instead of trying to power through, what would’ve happened if I’d taken my protein refeed on day 5?
   When I posted about my day 7 experience on Twitter, most Sugar Diet proponents said they’d never done more than 4 days. It seems that “just see how long you can go” might’ve set me up to crash & burn and I might’ve lasted a bit longer had I done 4:1 or 2:1 days.

Conclusion: Sugar Diet doesn’t work for everyone, either

It was sort of funny, because the Sugar Diet did a speed run (any%) of this typical diet hype arc:

1. Diet is invented and “works for everyone!”

2. Is marketed to the moon

3. Random people try the diet

4. It doesn’t work for everyone (shocker)

5. Proponents are in disbelief, demand more proof that it doesn’t work

6. Plenty more people comment it didn’t work for them

7. It is reluctantly accepted that the diet doesn’t work for everyone

The Sugar Diet did this entire cycle in about 2 weeks.

When I first posted that it wasn’t working, several people didn’t believe me, with comments like “Do you know of ANYONE ELSE whom it didn’t work for?!”

Another 3 days later, there were dozens of us.

Disclaimer

Even during the honey diet, I never had any liver pain and not as much nausea. If you try this, PLEASE BE CAREFUL. I highly advise you to keep your fructose lower than 50:50. Also please listen to the first signs of nausea/feeling uneasy, so you don’t crash & burn like me.

If you have a history of metabolic dysfunction (and you likely do if you read diet blogs), this diet might not work for you. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and say it likely won’t work for you.

Similar to the honey diet, the best success stories for this one are people who were always healthy, pretty lean, and got shredded even more.

Besides being overweight, I’m a pretty robust dude who’s never gotten seriously sick and I have zero prior liver issues.

I could see this going way, way worse in someone with existing liver problems, or who has a slightly less robust constitution.

Oh, did I mention I haven’t had alcohol in over a decade, and only rarely before that? I definitely wouldn’t combine this with drinking alcohol.

What’s next?

I complained last time about those stupid high-carb diets making me gain weight/not lose weight, and now this Sugar Diet has messed with my liver… so surely I’m going back on the cream, right?

WRONG!

Somehow, after the Sugar Diet, I am weirdly craving starches more than meat or fats.

So ex_kempner it is!

Unlike my previous ex_rice experiment, this time I’ll be following the original Kempner fat loss protocol.

That means: no tomato sauce, in fact no sauce at all. Plain white rice, fruit, and INSANE CALORIC RESTRICTION.

I have previously never done well on caloric restriction, so I’m curious to see if I even make it to day 9 on this one, lol.

If not, at least it’ll be a quick one to check off the list. Plus, I am really craving rice somehow lol.