Yea, you basically can't. Unless you only consumed protein from supplements and mixed your own ;)
You can go low-BCAA, but even there the ratio isn't that easy to manipulate. The highest-BCAA foods have about 20% of their protein from BCAAs (e.g. dairy), the lowest seem to be around 7.5% (gelatin/connective tissue). So it's at best a factor of 2.5, if you were getting all your protein from dairy before.
Realistically, what Brad at Fire in a Bottle is doing is probably the extent to what can be done: replace dairy/muscle meat with connecting tissue, eat very low protein overall, get some of it from gelatin. (obligatory warning: gelatin is NOT a complete protein, you need to consume at least some other protein or you'll die from lack of tryptophan)
I wonder if it would be feasible for us to kickstarter our own custom BCAA blend without isoleucein. A quick google and I see at least 2 companies that advertise they'll make custom blends. I don't know what they charge. Or maybe we can convince Brad to do it and sell it at fire in a bottle LOL.
How similar in performance (and reasons for that performance) do you think your ex150 is? Heavy cream seems low in protein, right? How much do you think those r-ALA/sea/pu-eh supplements that Brad lists help?
Hard to say, but it seems quite similar - ex150 trial had 9.6lbs avg weight loss, potato diet had 10.4lbs IIRC. But my trial ran over July 4th for almost all participants, and 100% of those where it did cheated the entire weekend. So it's within noise level range I think.
150g of 80/20 ground beef have 1.14g.
500ml heavy cream have about 0.73g isoleucine.
2,300g of potatoes, the caloric equivalent to 500ml heavy cream, have 1.52g isoleucine.
1,100g of cassava, again equivalent in calories, has 0.3g (!) of isoleucine.
So if you just go for the "energy component" of the diet, cream is better than wheat/rice/potatoes, but cassava is even lower in isoleucine.
I don't think we know exactly how the restriction works - the mouse studies just reduce regular mouse chow's isoleucine (21% protein) by 2/3 (7%).
In humans, is this per body weight? Per lean body weight? Is it a linear sliding scale or a thin threshold we have to hit? Does it help to be way lower after a certain point?
Not sure. I think we barely "know" that isoleucine is involved here and will have to test a lot more.
I don't know about those supplements - haven't tried them.
Okay, perfect, that's (part of) exactly what I was trying to work out. The other part is, he keeps harping on increasing metabolism (calories out) - I left a comment on his site, but he doesn't seem to be responding. To what extent is the 500g of carbs he's consuming a necessary component? What exactly from his diet (or yours, or anyone's) is actually provoking higher burn? The science is all very interesting and I enjoy reading it, but sometimes I want to nail down what the actual take-away is for "what should I eat/do tomorrow?"
I think the low isoleucine is causing the increased burn. At least that's what happened in the mice. IleR mice had vastly increased (resting!) metabolism. Not more exercise, more resting energy expenditure. They also ate more, but still lost weight compared to the other mice.
Wow, I was looking forward to this but this is really stellar! My email address is not hard to find. I can see most of the literature. If there are studies you can't see but would like to read in full, send me the dois you need by e-mail and I'll see what I can do....
Thanks! It was a lot of fun but also work to go through all these studies :D But it was almost like following a crime series, lol. I couldn't wait for the next study!
The authors have gracefully provided me with a link to that one study that wasn't available on a certain hub of scientific works, *cough*, so now I've got access. Thanks!
Officially my favourite blogger! Lovely to have all the research in one place and the salient points highlighted 👌
There is lots of research on methionine restriction too.
I wonder if one can focus on restricting either isoleucine or methionine?.. 🤔 rather than having to restrict both? As long as you restrict one of them (kind of thing).
I’m excited about this low protein thing as I think it’s the missing link! Crazy how it’s the exact opposite of what all health gurus are saying - the one thing you MUST do is eat more protein - if nothing else!
All this talk of carbs and fats when the protein has been causing problems in plain sight! 🤯
I’ve only just started loosely but already noticing I can get away with eating a lot more without regaining weight. So already it’s working against the dreaded yo-yo effect. Getting strict with the protein restriction today so we’ll see..
Yea protein is the "sacred macro" haha. Low carb, low fat.. but tell people you're doing low protein and everybody loses their minds!
Not sure about the isoleucine or methionine restriction. It's pretty difficult to restrict individual AAs unless your diet largely consists of AA isolate powders lol. Any whole food will have most of the AAs, even collagen and similar foods merely have 2/3 lower BCAAs, but they still have them.
Nice, it's crazy how suddenly your body can deal correctly with energy if you stop clogging it with protein :) Keep me updated!
Ill keep you updated - had a few very hungry days - there are so many variables aren’t there. Had a lot of fruit past few days and wondering if that upset things ?..
It’s crazy - when you think how advanced AI science etc is but we are still so far from solving the obesity thing. Inching closer though, bit by bit…
Still unsure about beans, salt, sugar, fat, fruit, calorie density 🙈
1. Many vegans have pretty low body fat, which one would expect
2. I don't think BCAAs are a problem per se; they are a problem if you're in a certain metabolic context ("torpor"). Restricting BCAAs is likely (hopefully!) an intervention that you do for a few months or years, and then you don't need to do it any more.
If you restrict BCAAs forever, you'll likely lose muscle mass, like many long-term vegans do. I knew a long-term vegan when I was a kid and she looked like a skeleton. It was scary. That's obviously not healthy.
The hope is that I do this for another 6-18 months, or however long it takes, and then hopefully I'll be able to eat "normal" foods (while still cutting out PUFAs).
Ex, Lamming has mentioned that turkey is low in isoleucine. Would there be a downside to substituting 85% (lowest I can find around me) ground turkey in Ex150? Maybe re: PUFAs or any other negative “biochemical” reactions with ground turkey compared to 80% ground beef?
Ex, thanks for taking the time to reply. If turkey is worse in terms of isoleucine, then I'm definitely not doing that. I asked because Lamming mentioned turkey was low in isoleucine at the end of one of the videos he was in that I watched. So, I wanted to get your take on it. I'll just stick with 80% ground beef. Your Ex150 got me from 244 to 185 since September of last year so thank you for all the time and effort you have put into this!
Weird, different USDA entries have very different isoleucine ratios. Some have 2.9%/total protein, which is quite low - others are around 5% like "normal" muscle meats. I'm not sure why this is.
244 to 185 - wow, that's amazing! Congrats :) Sounds like you don't need to change anything, haha. Would you be interested in writing up a little experience report of the whole thing that I could post on the blog?
You could obviously do it whatever way you want, but if you want some inspiration, you could check out some of the n=10 trial reports that I wrote up a while back:
1. "apparent fact" I'm not convinced this is meaningfully true
2. "more protein?" how much more, and from how much to how much?
3. are these elderly people obese?
4. the protein phenomenon does not seem to happen in all people. I'd estimate maybe 30% of people? So, on average, it might not be true, only if you're in the 30%.
Lots of studies on this... higher protein in elderly prevents sarcopenia, specifically they add leucine to the diet. I have seen crepey skin disappear by more protein... but not talking high amounts.. around 65gm per day.
Some obese people don't seem to have this effect where BCAAs block their Krebs cycle. Not exactly sure why that is.
And eventually, even by this theory, you become "untorpid" and thus your BCAA metabolism will hopefully return to normal.
Unfortunately I have no clue why some people experience this and others don't, or how to determine objectively if you're in torpor or not, or how you know you're out of it.
The level of BCAA seems to generally correlate with protein (presumably BCAA) intake in one study, but yea we don't exactly have great data.
I have done a blood amino acid test, but it's hundreds of dollars and I don't know a single other person (even Brad from Fire in a Bottle!) who's done it. It's nearly $1,000 where he lives and he'd need to drive many hours to get to a lab to do it.
And then we'd have 2 data points. So it's way worse (so far) in terms of data points than even OmegaQuant :) And we don't know if it'll show us anything significant once we have enough data..
People will fight over what is the root cause of torpor, but my money is on "excess energy is caused by torpor" not the other way around.
Heavy whipping cream has 1g of Leucine, .5 gram of Isoleucine, and .5g of Valine per 100g, which is about a third of bcaa density of chicken. If we’re eating cream ad lib, how is that considered low bcaa diet?
Where do you get that data? I'm seeing 0.15g/100g heavy cream in the USDA database.
Plus, of course, 100g of cream has 2x the calories than 100g of chicken breast does, and you have to compare on a by-calories or by-protein basis, not by weight.
Okay that makes much more sense, I got that from chatgpt which probably made it up. Still if you’re eating 3k calories from heavy whipping cream, which iirc you’ve done or gotten close to, and I’ve definitely done 16oz of heavy whipping cream in a day, then we are talking about numbers that aren’t low in bcaa, right? Actually maybe it is, according to that calculator 3k calories of heavy whipping cream is about equivalent to eating 200 grams of chicken in a day or 253 calories of chicken which is pretty minimal amounts compared to other diets. It seems pretty unreasonable to eliminate bcaa or even eat tiny amounts of it. How are you approaching it? I know one thing my experience has shared with yours is that my appetite is so much smaller. I’m clueless as to the mechanism (as demonstrated by this comment) but fascinated by the difference in how I approach food. I’m not even that strict right now about only eating heavy whipping cream, I find similar effects with foamy milk lattes(sore subject for you I know) but I’m kind of indifferent to food 95% of the time, whereas I used to be ravenous about 30-40% of the day. I’m not overweight (BMI 20.5) but was always frustrated with the loss of energy after lunch and the general distraction of food. This diet kind of feels like how people describe their new relationship to food after taking ozempic. I suspect it’s a little more complicated than just experiencing cement truck level satiety because I’ve experienced that a lot before (even though the physical discomfort of having too much in your stomach is different from the discomfort of eating too much cream) it’s got to be the same signal. Also, I haven’t experienced the cement level satiety in weeks and I am still experiencing the same indifference to food and consistent weight loss. Also, didn’t mean to come in with a point of invalidation, I’m a long time lurker and was trying to understand how whipped cream diet compares brad’s low protein diet because when you look up high in bcaa foods, dairy comes up consistently. Love what you’re doing and have found your journey fascinating!
Well the thing is "dairy" is a useless term. Most dairy is high in protein, and dairy protein is higher in BCAAs than just about anything else.
But cream is nearly devoid of protein, as is butter.
So excluding "dairy" will throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I do think you're right that Ozempic is doing something similar when it works. It doesn't seem to work in everyone, and it doesn't seem to work spectacularly in everyone it does work in. But there's probably some sort of "fixing the broken thing" or "plastering over the brokenness" part.
Excellently written thanks! I see you mentioned HC instead of HF, in "Interestingly, this was apparently because, while the HF and SC rats at the same amount of food, the HC/BCAA rats ate significantly less." is it a typo or there was High Carb data?
If I ate till I am full and that is restricted calories than eating more, while keeping BCAAs <8gm a day will I still lose weight?
What if I ate in swamp macros, high fat and high carb but isoleucine be lower than 8gm a day would it work?
If I have to eat more on Brad's low fat <8gm bcaas macros (I notice hunger increases when low fat and low protein usually), would I be able to achieve success in fat loss?
I am having very suicidal thoughts because of my weight because i am reaching 290lbs and have done keto before just to regain the 100lbs I lost and more, then trying calories restricted low fat high carb diet (but not low protein I added chicken breasts).
I can't do high fat ex150 diet as cream is so expensive I belong to a poor Asian community.
Kindly guide me do I eat calories restricted with low Isoleucine/low bcaas(bcaas<8gm) diet or ad libitum calories till I am full as long as I keep low Isoleucine/low bcaas(bcaas<8gm)?
Can I eat in swamp macros or have to choose a route like ultra low fat?
Thank you very much.
I will eat fruits and rice and potatoes and even sugar to add more carb calories if I have to.
Whoops, that was a typo, thanks for the catch! I fixed it.
> If I ate till I am full and that is restricted calories than eating more, while keeping BCAAs <8gm a day will I still lose weight?
I think so. Easiest way to find out is to try it.
> What if I ate in swamp macros, high fat and high carb but isoleucine be lower than 8gm a day would it work?
I'm not sure on this. I know of several people for whom it worked even in the swamp. That said, maybe it's not for everyone? (Btw, BCAAs <8g/day, not just isoleucine, I think you mean?)
> I am having very suicidal thoughts because of my weight because i am reaching 290lbs and have done keto before just to regain the 100lbs I lost and more, then trying calories restricted low fat high carb diet (but not low protein I added chicken breasts).
I'm sorry to hear this. Don't worry, you'll figure it out. I was in a very similar situation, fluctuating between 290-300lbs no matter how hard I keto'd or carnivore'd. I was never suicidal but I sure felt like shit.
If cream is not for you, I'd try Brad's low-fat, high-carb, low-BCAA diet. It actually seems inspired by a lot of Asian cuisine so maybe it'll work well for you?
If you don't have glass noodles, I honestly think doing it with rice will work pretty well, too. At least I'd try it - after all, the potato diet works for a lot of people! You can do potatoes too, if you have access to those.
If I were in your shoes, I'd just try something like full-on potato/rice diet for a month. A month should give you a very strong signal - I lost 20lbs the first month of ex150, and Brad just lost 14.5lbs in 1 month of the glass noodle diet. Maybe it won't be that much, but you should lose 5-10lbs if the diet really works well for you. You can add a little bit of animal fat (butter, beef fat I'd suggest) just so you get some fat in, going zero fat isn't healthy either and many people experience problems on it. Just keep it to 10% or less, I'd say.
If that doesn't work, you know that likely the BCAA thing isn't for you.
If it does work, you can experiment more! Maybe add some low-BCAA meats like Brad does, or just a tiny amount of muscle meat like I do on ex150, or try going into the swamp by increasing fat. Add fruit.
On fruit: I'm a little bit skeptical of fruit, but I might just be wrong on that. Fruit is super low in BCAAs, so it's actually great from that standpoint - but the fructose works differently than the glucose in starch like rice or potatoes.
So I'd treat them as 2 separate experiments just to be sure.
A tour de force. Thanks for this great analysis. The practical application here is the challenge... hopefully lower PUFA can mean a benefit without living on beef tendon.
In a normal human diet, how can I cut just isoleucine out? Assuming I can’t persuade my handlers to rebalance my chow.
Yea, you basically can't. Unless you only consumed protein from supplements and mixed your own ;)
You can go low-BCAA, but even there the ratio isn't that easy to manipulate. The highest-BCAA foods have about 20% of their protein from BCAAs (e.g. dairy), the lowest seem to be around 7.5% (gelatin/connective tissue). So it's at best a factor of 2.5, if you were getting all your protein from dairy before.
Realistically, what Brad at Fire in a Bottle is doing is probably the extent to what can be done: replace dairy/muscle meat with connecting tissue, eat very low protein overall, get some of it from gelatin. (obligatory warning: gelatin is NOT a complete protein, you need to consume at least some other protein or you'll die from lack of tryptophan)
I wonder if it would be feasible for us to kickstarter our own custom BCAA blend without isoleucein. A quick google and I see at least 2 companies that advertise they'll make custom blends. I don't know what they charge. Or maybe we can convince Brad to do it and sell it at fire in a bottle LOL.
You can make your own, just buy the other EAAs at Bulk Supplements and shake well. I was actually kinda planning on doing this myself, hah.
i might be willing to take this on via kickstarter
Making this at home should be easy enough. It's on my roadmap in the next few months.
How similar in performance (and reasons for that performance) do you think your ex150 is? Heavy cream seems low in protein, right? How much do you think those r-ALA/sea/pu-eh supplements that Brad lists help?
Hard to say, but it seems quite similar - ex150 trial had 9.6lbs avg weight loss, potato diet had 10.4lbs IIRC. But my trial ran over July 4th for almost all participants, and 100% of those where it did cheated the entire weekend. So it's within noise level range I think.
150g of 80/20 ground beef have 1.14g.
500ml heavy cream have about 0.73g isoleucine.
2,300g of potatoes, the caloric equivalent to 500ml heavy cream, have 1.52g isoleucine.
1,100g of cassava, again equivalent in calories, has 0.3g (!) of isoleucine.
So if you just go for the "energy component" of the diet, cream is better than wheat/rice/potatoes, but cassava is even lower in isoleucine.
I don't think we know exactly how the restriction works - the mouse studies just reduce regular mouse chow's isoleucine (21% protein) by 2/3 (7%).
In humans, is this per body weight? Per lean body weight? Is it a linear sliding scale or a thin threshold we have to hit? Does it help to be way lower after a certain point?
Not sure. I think we barely "know" that isoleucine is involved here and will have to test a lot more.
I don't know about those supplements - haven't tried them.
Okay, perfect, that's (part of) exactly what I was trying to work out. The other part is, he keeps harping on increasing metabolism (calories out) - I left a comment on his site, but he doesn't seem to be responding. To what extent is the 500g of carbs he's consuming a necessary component? What exactly from his diet (or yours, or anyone's) is actually provoking higher burn? The science is all very interesting and I enjoy reading it, but sometimes I want to nail down what the actual take-away is for "what should I eat/do tomorrow?"
I think the low isoleucine is causing the increased burn. At least that's what happened in the mice. IleR mice had vastly increased (resting!) metabolism. Not more exercise, more resting energy expenditure. They also ate more, but still lost weight compared to the other mice.
My brain is just having trouble figuring how "less of a theoretically vital nutrient --> increased activity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-exercise_activity_thermogenesis
How does macaroni do in terms of bcaa percentage?
I'd suspect just like the flour it's made of? So probably about 14-15% of protein?
Wow, I was looking forward to this but this is really stellar! My email address is not hard to find. I can see most of the literature. If there are studies you can't see but would like to read in full, send me the dois you need by e-mail and I'll see what I can do....
Thanks! It was a lot of fun but also work to go through all these studies :D But it was almost like following a crime series, lol. I couldn't wait for the next study!
The authors have gracefully provided me with a link to that one study that wasn't available on a certain hub of scientific works, *cough*, so now I've got access. Thanks!
Officially my favourite blogger! Lovely to have all the research in one place and the salient points highlighted 👌
There is lots of research on methionine restriction too.
I wonder if one can focus on restricting either isoleucine or methionine?.. 🤔 rather than having to restrict both? As long as you restrict one of them (kind of thing).
I’m excited about this low protein thing as I think it’s the missing link! Crazy how it’s the exact opposite of what all health gurus are saying - the one thing you MUST do is eat more protein - if nothing else!
All this talk of carbs and fats when the protein has been causing problems in plain sight! 🤯
I’ve only just started loosely but already noticing I can get away with eating a lot more without regaining weight. So already it’s working against the dreaded yo-yo effect. Getting strict with the protein restriction today so we’ll see..
Yea protein is the "sacred macro" haha. Low carb, low fat.. but tell people you're doing low protein and everybody loses their minds!
Not sure about the isoleucine or methionine restriction. It's pretty difficult to restrict individual AAs unless your diet largely consists of AA isolate powders lol. Any whole food will have most of the AAs, even collagen and similar foods merely have 2/3 lower BCAAs, but they still have them.
Nice, it's crazy how suddenly your body can deal correctly with energy if you stop clogging it with protein :) Keep me updated!
It’s not an easy sell is it? 😅
Ill keep you updated - had a few very hungry days - there are so many variables aren’t there. Had a lot of fruit past few days and wondering if that upset things ?..
It’s crazy - when you think how advanced AI science etc is but we are still so far from solving the obesity thing. Inching closer though, bit by bit…
Still unsure about beans, salt, sugar, fat, fruit, calorie density 🙈
i have a really stupid question. if BCAAs are the problem then why aren’t vegans healthier?
1. Many vegans have pretty low body fat, which one would expect
2. I don't think BCAAs are a problem per se; they are a problem if you're in a certain metabolic context ("torpor"). Restricting BCAAs is likely (hopefully!) an intervention that you do for a few months or years, and then you don't need to do it any more.
If you restrict BCAAs forever, you'll likely lose muscle mass, like many long-term vegans do. I knew a long-term vegan when I was a kid and she looked like a skeleton. It was scary. That's obviously not healthy.
The hope is that I do this for another 6-18 months, or however long it takes, and then hopefully I'll be able to eat "normal" foods (while still cutting out PUFAs).
makes total sense. thank you!!
Ex, Lamming has mentioned that turkey is low in isoleucine. Would there be a downside to substituting 85% (lowest I can find around me) ground turkey in Ex150? Maybe re: PUFAs or any other negative “biochemical” reactions with ground turkey compared to 80% ground beef?
If you do turkey, I'd actually go with the leanest you can find. Turkey fat is nearly 25% linoleic acid:
https://foods.exfatloss.com/food/174493
In principle if you avoid the turkey fat, it should work well. You could do the leanest turkey you can find and just add dairy fat or beef suet.
Interestingly, according to the USDA database, turkey isn't even lower in isoleucine per protein than beef, compare to this:
https://foods.exfatloss.com/food/171796
I've had people say it though, so not sure...
Ex, thanks for taking the time to reply. If turkey is worse in terms of isoleucine, then I'm definitely not doing that. I asked because Lamming mentioned turkey was low in isoleucine at the end of one of the videos he was in that I watched. So, I wanted to get your take on it. I'll just stick with 80% ground beef. Your Ex150 got me from 244 to 185 since September of last year so thank you for all the time and effort you have put into this!
Weird, different USDA entries have very different isoleucine ratios. Some have 2.9%/total protein, which is quite low - others are around 5% like "normal" muscle meats. I'm not sure why this is.
244 to 185 - wow, that's amazing! Congrats :) Sounds like you don't need to change anything, haha. Would you be interested in writing up a little experience report of the whole thing that I could post on the blog?
Absolutely. It's the least I can do. Let me know what I should address in it and I'll get started.
You could obviously do it whatever way you want, but if you want some inspiration, you could check out some of the n=10 trial reports that I wrote up a while back:
https://www.exfatloss.com/i/137953312/trials-with-other-people
A new source of BCAA's (metabolites from microbiota who enjoy sugar-sweetened beverages) correlated with worse metabolic traits: https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(24)00486-8
Oh, interesting! Thank you.
How does this mesh with the apparent fact that elderly people do better if you feed them more protein?
1. "apparent fact" I'm not convinced this is meaningfully true
2. "more protein?" how much more, and from how much to how much?
3. are these elderly people obese?
4. the protein phenomenon does not seem to happen in all people. I'd estimate maybe 30% of people? So, on average, it might not be true, only if you're in the 30%.
Lots of studies on this... higher protein in elderly prevents sarcopenia, specifically they add leucine to the diet. I have seen crepey skin disappear by more protein... but not talking high amounts.. around 65gm per day.
I guess the elderly do have a tendency to undereat protein. Getting below 65g/day seems difficult on a normal SAD, hm.
How do some people manage to lose weight on a high protein diet, a la Ted Naiman?
Can too high protein have a different effect?
Some obese people don't seem to have this effect where BCAAs block their Krebs cycle. Not exactly sure why that is.
And eventually, even by this theory, you become "untorpid" and thus your BCAA metabolism will hopefully return to normal.
Unfortunately I have no clue why some people experience this and others don't, or how to determine objectively if you're in torpor or not, or how you know you're out of it.
And the level of BCAAs in the blood does not always correspond to the diet.
Could the state of torpor have another cause, such as excess circulating energy? Or is excess circulating energy a symptom of torpor?
In this case, insulin resistance, high glucose, high NEFA, all may have a cause that we still don't understand, and feed back on each other.
The level of BCAA seems to generally correlate with protein (presumably BCAA) intake in one study, but yea we don't exactly have great data.
I have done a blood amino acid test, but it's hundreds of dollars and I don't know a single other person (even Brad from Fire in a Bottle!) who's done it. It's nearly $1,000 where he lives and he'd need to drive many hours to get to a lab to do it.
And then we'd have 2 data points. So it's way worse (so far) in terms of data points than even OmegaQuant :) And we don't know if it'll show us anything significant once we have enough data..
People will fight over what is the root cause of torpor, but my money is on "excess energy is caused by torpor" not the other way around.
Heavy whipping cream has 1g of Leucine, .5 gram of Isoleucine, and .5g of Valine per 100g, which is about a third of bcaa density of chicken. If we’re eating cream ad lib, how is that considered low bcaa diet?
Where do you get that data? I'm seeing 0.15g/100g heavy cream in the USDA database.
Plus, of course, 100g of cream has 2x the calories than 100g of chicken breast does, and you have to compare on a by-calories or by-protein basis, not by weight.
https://foods.exfatloss.com/food/170859
Okay that makes much more sense, I got that from chatgpt which probably made it up. Still if you’re eating 3k calories from heavy whipping cream, which iirc you’ve done or gotten close to, and I’ve definitely done 16oz of heavy whipping cream in a day, then we are talking about numbers that aren’t low in bcaa, right? Actually maybe it is, according to that calculator 3k calories of heavy whipping cream is about equivalent to eating 200 grams of chicken in a day or 253 calories of chicken which is pretty minimal amounts compared to other diets. It seems pretty unreasonable to eliminate bcaa or even eat tiny amounts of it. How are you approaching it? I know one thing my experience has shared with yours is that my appetite is so much smaller. I’m clueless as to the mechanism (as demonstrated by this comment) but fascinated by the difference in how I approach food. I’m not even that strict right now about only eating heavy whipping cream, I find similar effects with foamy milk lattes(sore subject for you I know) but I’m kind of indifferent to food 95% of the time, whereas I used to be ravenous about 30-40% of the day. I’m not overweight (BMI 20.5) but was always frustrated with the loss of energy after lunch and the general distraction of food. This diet kind of feels like how people describe their new relationship to food after taking ozempic. I suspect it’s a little more complicated than just experiencing cement truck level satiety because I’ve experienced that a lot before (even though the physical discomfort of having too much in your stomach is different from the discomfort of eating too much cream) it’s got to be the same signal. Also, I haven’t experienced the cement level satiety in weeks and I am still experiencing the same indifference to food and consistent weight loss. Also, didn’t mean to come in with a point of invalidation, I’m a long time lurker and was trying to understand how whipped cream diet compares brad’s low protein diet because when you look up high in bcaa foods, dairy comes up consistently. Love what you’re doing and have found your journey fascinating!
Well the thing is "dairy" is a useless term. Most dairy is high in protein, and dairy protein is higher in BCAAs than just about anything else.
But cream is nearly devoid of protein, as is butter.
So excluding "dairy" will throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I do think you're right that Ozempic is doing something similar when it works. It doesn't seem to work in everyone, and it doesn't seem to work spectacularly in everyone it does work in. But there's probably some sort of "fixing the broken thing" or "plastering over the brokenness" part.
Excellently written thanks! I see you mentioned HC instead of HF, in "Interestingly, this was apparently because, while the HF and SC rats at the same amount of food, the HC/BCAA rats ate significantly less." is it a typo or there was High Carb data?
If I ate till I am full and that is restricted calories than eating more, while keeping BCAAs <8gm a day will I still lose weight?
What if I ate in swamp macros, high fat and high carb but isoleucine be lower than 8gm a day would it work?
If I have to eat more on Brad's low fat <8gm bcaas macros (I notice hunger increases when low fat and low protein usually), would I be able to achieve success in fat loss?
I am having very suicidal thoughts because of my weight because i am reaching 290lbs and have done keto before just to regain the 100lbs I lost and more, then trying calories restricted low fat high carb diet (but not low protein I added chicken breasts).
I can't do high fat ex150 diet as cream is so expensive I belong to a poor Asian community.
Kindly guide me do I eat calories restricted with low Isoleucine/low bcaas(bcaas<8gm) diet or ad libitum calories till I am full as long as I keep low Isoleucine/low bcaas(bcaas<8gm)?
Can I eat in swamp macros or have to choose a route like ultra low fat?
Thank you very much.
I will eat fruits and rice and potatoes and even sugar to add more carb calories if I have to.
Whoops, that was a typo, thanks for the catch! I fixed it.
> If I ate till I am full and that is restricted calories than eating more, while keeping BCAAs <8gm a day will I still lose weight?
I think so. Easiest way to find out is to try it.
> What if I ate in swamp macros, high fat and high carb but isoleucine be lower than 8gm a day would it work?
I'm not sure on this. I know of several people for whom it worked even in the swamp. That said, maybe it's not for everyone? (Btw, BCAAs <8g/day, not just isoleucine, I think you mean?)
> I am having very suicidal thoughts because of my weight because i am reaching 290lbs and have done keto before just to regain the 100lbs I lost and more, then trying calories restricted low fat high carb diet (but not low protein I added chicken breasts).
I'm sorry to hear this. Don't worry, you'll figure it out. I was in a very similar situation, fluctuating between 290-300lbs no matter how hard I keto'd or carnivore'd. I was never suicidal but I sure felt like shit.
If cream is not for you, I'd try Brad's low-fat, high-carb, low-BCAA diet. It actually seems inspired by a lot of Asian cuisine so maybe it'll work well for you?
If you don't have glass noodles, I honestly think doing it with rice will work pretty well, too. At least I'd try it - after all, the potato diet works for a lot of people! You can do potatoes too, if you have access to those.
If I were in your shoes, I'd just try something like full-on potato/rice diet for a month. A month should give you a very strong signal - I lost 20lbs the first month of ex150, and Brad just lost 14.5lbs in 1 month of the glass noodle diet. Maybe it won't be that much, but you should lose 5-10lbs if the diet really works well for you. You can add a little bit of animal fat (butter, beef fat I'd suggest) just so you get some fat in, going zero fat isn't healthy either and many people experience problems on it. Just keep it to 10% or less, I'd say.
If that doesn't work, you know that likely the BCAA thing isn't for you.
If it does work, you can experiment more! Maybe add some low-BCAA meats like Brad does, or just a tiny amount of muscle meat like I do on ex150, or try going into the swamp by increasing fat. Add fruit.
On fruit: I'm a little bit skeptical of fruit, but I might just be wrong on that. Fruit is super low in BCAAs, so it's actually great from that standpoint - but the fructose works differently than the glucose in starch like rice or potatoes.
So I'd treat them as 2 separate experiments just to be sure.
A tour de force. Thanks for this great analysis. The practical application here is the challenge... hopefully lower PUFA can mean a benefit without living on beef tendon.
Haha we might just have to rediscover old-timey cooking methods ;)
Personally I'm doing just fine on total protein restriction.