Accidental Lipostat Test: Interim Results

Premature Gloating

02/02/24 96 36.63 1 1

01/02/24 95.3 36.72 0 1

31/01/24 95.4 36.68 0 1

30/01/24 96.2 36.6 0 1

29/01/24 95.6 36.41 0 1

28/01/24 96.5 36.62 1 1

27/01/24 0 1

So, only six new data points since:

https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/accidentally-testing-the-lipostat

But it looks to me like my weight is tracking back towards 95kg at a rate of around 0.5 kg/week, which is what it seems to do when I'm not doing anything odd and just living normally.

I think that's what I would have expected. You can temporarily make your weight go up by guzzling a load of alcohol and eating when you're not hungry, just like you can temporarily make it go down by starving yourself.

CICO is a law of physics.

But the homeostat that controls your weight will notice, and adjust your hunger to compensate, and as soon as you stop forcing it and eat according to hunger you'll track gently back to your set point.

CICO is a stupid plan.

It's also pretty clear that I've overshot my thyroid dose, I'm feeling bouncy and energetic and breaking into a sweat at the slightest exertion. Yesterday morning I got a waking temperature reading of 36.72.

Over many years I've learned that anything over 36.7 is usually a bad sign, because it seems to mean that my body is generating more heat than it can shed at night, and it goes with a risk of hypomanic behaviour and poor sleep.

I'm not going to call it yet. I want to see some more data points to confirm these first impressions, so I'll hold off my next mad diet experiment for another week or so, but I think both weight and necessary thyroid dose are now stable, with thyroid dose possibly on a long-term but very slow downward trend, and weight under homeostatic control with a set point of 95kg since last August.

---

These are both wonderful things! A year ago my weight was around 98kg and was rising inexorably, apparently 4kg/year and probably accelerating.

And my thyroid dose was at 1 grain NDT and 100ug T4 every day. In spite of that, my hypometabolic curse seemed to be returning, with tiredness and some of the early symptoms of hypometabolism coming back. And raising the dose didn't help, it just made me anxious and overheated without any benefit.

If that trend had continued, today I'd be at least 102kg, 'tired all the time', and likely on the path to poor general health and morbid obesity, as seems to be happening to increasing numbers of people in the West these days.

Today I feel well, I'm optimistic that I'll eventually be able to do without taking metabolic stimulants at all, and I'm no longer worried about my weight.

I am still very curious, and further weight loss would be a 'nice to have'.

But I think my problems are pretty much solved after about eight months of "no-PUFAs, no sulphites", or as u/exfatloss would describe it: "eating ad-lib high-protein swamp".

And I'm increasingly confident that the principal cause of all the unpleasantness that has affected me over the last decade or so is polyunsaturated fats, and that the good effects are mainly coming from slowly clearing the PUFAs stored in my adipose tissue.

There are still mysteries to explain. I am still curious. I am still confused.