Looking for ex150 trial volunteers

Let's see if this thing works for anyone else. The proof is in the cream.

In short: if you’re overweight/obese, don’t take blood sugar medication, tolerate dairy well, have good control over your food environment (you’ll have to cook every day, or precook), and are interested in trying ex150, the diet on which I lost over 50lbs since September, email me at hello@exfatloss.com.

Starting a small-scale ex150 trial for 30 days

Hello Friends,

I am once again asking for your help: do you want to lose 50lbs*? Then donate partake in the First Official Small Scale Cargo Cult ex150 trial, maybe. Or don’t, if you don’t feel like it. (* No guarantees.)

It’s all fun and games reading about some random dude on the internet who had to cut 4 inches off his belt the other day. But I don’t blog for entertainment. I want to fix this thing, obesity.

And to fix it, it should probably work for somebody else. Anybody. I’ve done small scale n=1 trials with friends, some readers have partially adopted the diet, e.g. by adding heavy cream to their coffee or eating whipped cream desserts. Some of these have had some success, some didn’t see any improvement or change whatsoever.

But there hasn’t been an exact replica in somebody who actually had a significant amount of fat to lose.

As the crazy scientists at Slime Mold Time Mold have recently suggested, the intermediate step between “anecdote” and “science” is a small size trial. I’m imagining something like 5-10 people, as I’ve never run a trial before.

Predictions

I suspect that, similar to other diets, ex150 will work really well for some people, not so well for others, and not at all for some unfortunate souls. That’s because I think obesity is slightly complicated.

So my expectation/prediction is this: about 25-30% of overweight/obese people who try this will love it and lose quite a bit of weight in the first 30 days. Half of it will be water weight, but there will also be a significant amount of fat loss. I lost 20lbs my first month on ex150, but I’m quite sure half of it was water. These people might not lose quite that much, depending on a lot of factors, e.g. how much they have to lose to begin with.

There will be a group that will lose a little bit of weight, but nothing major. And a third group might not lose any weight, or even gain some.

The whole point of the trial is to establish:

1. Does ex150 work for anyone else?

2. If so, what percentage?

3. Bonus question: can we find a common factor, or even a reason?

What we’ll be doing in the trial

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: cargo cult how I am doing ex150. Not because I’m super cool, but because I don’t currently know why exactly it works. So why not just copy it as closely as possible?

Cargo culting, for those who haven’t heard the term, is the idea of just blindly copying something without understanding it, hoping to get the same effect.

The downside is it might not work, because you’re missing the point. The upside is, it might work even when you don’t understand it. It’s a useful tool for beginning to unravel a complex system.

Therefore I’ll try to describe ex150 not just in terms of macros, but also other modalities/dimensions I can think of. No clue which of them are important, maybe all of them. Maybe none of the ones I can think of are causal. You probably don’t have to do everything exactly down to the letter if you partake in the trial, but the closer you get, the higher the chance you’ll hit the “magic button” we’re trying to find.

The Official ex150 Cargo Cult Instructions

• By heavy cream I mean the cream that contains 30-36% fat. Sometimes it’s called heavy whipping cream. I can’t tell the difference. Not half & half, not what the Brits call “double cream.”

• For UK participants: I’ve been informed that “whipping cream” there is the closest equivalent. If not available, you can also mix “single cream” and “double cream” 1:1 to reach a similar fat percentage.

• I keep 2-3 quart containers (quart ~= liter, for our metric friends) in the fridge at any given time. One lasts me about 2 days, but this might vary for you.

• Morning through 3pm: drink copious amounts of coffee, tea, or some other beverage. Add a generous amount of heavy cream (I just eyeball it, but I weighted it once and it was ~60g) each time. Hot, cold, or iced is fine. Instant coffee is fine, as long as it’s not sweetened and you don’t use any “creamers” besides actual cream. I drink about 5 coffees every day. I stop drinking coffee around 3pm so it won’t disturb my sleep.
  If you really hate coffee/tea/beverages, you could just take a few sips of heavy cream ever few hours until it adds up to about a cup?

  Summary:

  • Drink a lot of coffee/tea with a lot of added heavy cream from the moment you wake up until 3pm. If you hate coffee/tea, sip on a cup of heavy cream throughout the day (keep it in the fridge).

• (Optional) Starbucks/coffee shops: I get “normal” coffee shop lattes 1-2x a day. If you ask for “breve” they’ll use half & half instead of milk (U.S.) for slightly more fat and slightly less sugar. DO NOT get the syrup based drinks, they are insanely loaded with sugar. Just get the regular espresso based drinks like latte, cappuccino, flat white, americano.. if in doubt, check their website for the nutrient information. Even at the biggest size, the regular espresso based drinks have <20g of sugar, all of which comes from milk.
  Summary:

  • Starbucks espresso-based drinks (latte, cappuccino, flat white) are fine, syrup-based/sweetened drinks are not.

• Lunch: Cook 150g of fatty (80/20 or ribeye) beef in a bit (~15g) of butter. That’s about 1/3 of a pound, so I just buy 1lb ground beef and slice it into thirds, which lasts 3 days. That’s uncooked weight, it’ll lose weight during cooking. Grain-fed, regular store bought beef is fine. I mostly use 80/20 ground, but sometimes I slice a ribeye steak into thirds. Add green vegetables so it looks roughly similar to the cooked meat, which for me is usually ~60g. I use frozen spinach, okra, turnip greens, asparagus, that sort of thing. Add pasta sauce to taste, which is usually 80g for me. I use tomato sauce or alfredo sauce. I like Rao’s, but especially tomato sauce is often fine to get store brand. Make sure it doesn’t have crazy high sugar and I’d avoid seed oils in it. Rao’s is made with olive oil and real cream, not seed oils. Tastes better, too.
  Summary:

  • 150g (1/3lb) beef

  • 60g of green vegetables

  • 80g of tomato/alfredo pasta sauce

  • This is your only “real” meal of the day!

  • It should be super delicious, and you’ll get very good at making it because you’ll be practicing it every day for 30 days.

• Dinner: Whip up 200-300ml of heavy cream until it’s a nice dessert consistency. I find it hard to overwhip cream, but eventually it’ll turn into butter, so don’t overdo it. You can freeze it for 10-20 minutes for an ice cream texture. I add G7 instant coffee powder to mine, which you can get at many Asian food stores or on Amazon. Don’t buy the 3in1, that has sugar and “creamer.”
  Eat as much of the whipped cream as you feel like. I usually don’t feel like seconds, but sometimes I do and then I make another bowl. I have almost never finished a second bowl.
  If you don’t feel like finishing the bowl, put it in the fridge for the next day. You can dump spoonfuls of whipped cream into your coffee the next morning, too.
  During this dessert I often hit what I call “cement-truck satiety” - the feeling that I won’t be able to eat another spoon, often from one second to the next. If you get that, cool! Write it down. If not, that’s probably fine. I don’t always get it either.
  I use a cheapo stick blender with a whisk to whip up the cream. Anything that produces whipped cream will work. Whisks go for $25+ at Target and blenders seem to be $50+.
  Don’t add sweetener! I tried this a few times and it seemed to really mess with me in some weird way. It made the whipped cream both disgusting but at the same time less satiating… weird feeling. Even with “healthy” and “natural” sweeteners like monk fruit.
  Summary:

  • Make 200-300ml whipped cream for dinner and eat as much as you want.

• Drinks: This is implied, but don’t drink anything with stuff in it. No alcohol, nothing with sugar, nothing sweetened. Yes, no sweeteners. Not even monk fruit/stevia/allulose. Just drink water if thirsty. Sparkly/mineral water is fine. Teas are fine if unsweetened. Make sure to check it’s not loaded with sucralose.

Equipment

You’ll need a few items:

• Bathroom scale, to weigh yourself daily. A regular, boring $20 scale is fine.

• Stick blender with whisk, or other method of whipping cream. A cheap one from Amazon or Target is fine.

• (Optional) Kitchen scale, to weigh your food. I did without for the first 2 months, so you don’t need it. Just eyeball everything. Cut a pound of meat into thirds, and add green vegetables and sauce to taste. The cream is ad libitum (to satiety) anyway.

Experiment design

• The intended effect of ex150 is dramatic fat loss, 5-10lbs/mo in the beginning.

• The experiment runs for 30 days. Not all participants have to start/stop at the exact same time, so you can move it around a little to fit into your schedule.

• Weigh yourself every morning at the same time, in the same conditions. Keep a spreadsheet/note to record all your weights.

• Also record a little comment at the end of the day noting if you adhered/had a cheat meal, how it felt, that sort of stuff.

• You should actually start weighing in 3 days before you begin ex150. That way you’ll get a feeling for your current weight and fluctuation. You will therefore have 33 weight recordings.

• For the unfortunate case that you should gain weight, set an upper limit for yourself. Say you start the trial at 250lbs, and your natural fluctuation is 5lbs. Your range is therefore 250-255lbs. You could set an upper limit of 260lbs, at which you would abort the trial. Hopefully you’ll have gotten a feel for your weight fluctuations from the 3 pre-trial weigh ins. Anecdotally, it seems people seem to maintain weight even when eating insane amounts of cream on ex150, but it’s not impossible you’ll gain weight. So let’s plan for it.

• Exercise: I don’t exercise beyond going for walks sometimes. No exercise is required. If you are currently exercising, I don’t think you need to stop. Just be aware that your performance might plateau for a bit as you change your diet. So don’t expect too many records that month. Take it easy.

• If you’re not very used to high fat consumption, read this post on how to ease into it. Consider slowly ramping up the cream, and ramping down whatever you were previously eating. I would add this after the initial 3 day weigh-in, but as an additional week. Just make sure you’re already weighing yourself. So, for you, the experiment could look like this:
  3 day weigh-in on regular diet → 1 week slow ramp-up to ex150 → 30 days of ex150

Who should/could volunteer for this trial?

While I’m happy for everybody to try ex150, there are some criteria that probably make it easier to find an effect.

• You are overweight/obese. I’ve lost 50lbs on it while obese, but a lean friend didn’t see any meaningful weight loss. If you’re already lean, it probably won’t do much.

• You don’t have diabetes/take blood sugar medication. ex150 is heavily ketogenic and will tank your blood glucose. That’s actually really good for diabetes management, but you’ll have to work with your doctor to make sure the change in blood sugar doesn’t cause issues with your diabetes or medication. Therefore, this might not be a thing you can easily experiment with.

• That reminds me: I AM NOT A DOCTOR. Please contact your doctor if you’re unsure, or if you feel sick or encounter health problems at any point. Don’t die for science.

• You tolerate dairy well. ex150 involves a lot of heavy cream. If you can’t digest dairy, or it causes you other issues, cargo culting ex150 won’t go well. You could replace the heavy cream, but that involves making educated guesses: will coconut milk work? Will other sources of fat work? Who knows.

• You have good control over your food environment. If you have to attend business lunches, and eating only 150g of meat will look weird, then you won’t be able to do the diet consistently.

• I think it helps if you have experience with low-carb/keto/carnivore/paleo. This isn’t necessary, but you’ll be a lot more familiar with the food choices and effects, and just plain how a very low carb diet feels. Yes, it does feel different.

• Should you experience success/enjoy the diet/want to continue for longer, that’s fine. But I recommend you treat it as a series of 30 day experiments, between which you take a couple of days off. That’s how I do it. If you do more than 3 months, it’s a good idea to get your micro nutrients checked.

Interested? Join the free trial now!

If you’re interested, or should you have questions about any of these points, please email me at hello@exfatloss.com. Not sure if one of these applies to you? Email me. You think you won’t quite be able to officially do the trial, but are thinking of doing something slightly different? Still cool, email me, I want to know.