Ah, noisy signals... that's why I like 30 day experiments. I have the same issue right now - day 10 of a fat fast. Until yesterday it looked like the trend was UP this time! Inconceivable?! But then today was lower again... sigh!
Ten days of up is a lot of noise. I am avid for premature details. Maybe you have made a new discovery!
Is a fat fast "eat nothing but fat?" (I am a bit new to all this and the terminology confuses me. A lot of words don't mean what I think they mean) Presumably heavy cream only?
I would love to see what happens if you wait for a bit until the trend is clear and then switch to crème fraîche...
It's more flat/noisy really. Yesterday and today I was basically where I was before I started the fat fast. Which is definitely not what I expected.
date | wght
2024-02-01 | 224.3 <-- start of ex_savoryfatfast
2024-02-02 | 224.5
2024-02-03 | 223.9
2024-02-04 | 224.2
2024-02-05 | 225.4
2024-02-06 | 223.8
2024-02-07 | 225.4
2024-02-08 | 225.0
2024-02-09 | 224.8
2024-02-10 | 224.3
2024-02-11 | 224.2
ex_savoryfatfast isn't technically quite "nothing but fat." For one, even cream has some carbs & protein. And the point of the savory part is to keep using my alfredo/tomato sauce, which also have some carbs. I'd have to eat only tallow to make it a strict fat fast I suppose.
I'm also taking 1 scoop (10g) of Fortagen EAA protein every morning, mainly because it was very expensive and I still had some I wanted to use up. I was also using it in the exact same amount/weigh during my last 2 fat fasts.
The weird thing is, I have severely limited appetite vs. normal ex150. I haven't even attempted making my full 200-250g whipped cream dinner for 5 days or so, only making 100-150. Usually I still don't finish it, splitting it across 2 days. So, while I'm not counting cArOliEs, I'd estimate that I'm eating dramatically less overall than I was on ex150.
Could just be a plateau/whoosh thing honestly, but I'm not sure I want to extend ex_savoryfatfast to a full 30 days to find out.
On the other hand, the main goal was to find out if a savory fat fast would be more psychologically sustainable, and I suppose it is - but also it doesn't make me lose weight in the same drastic fashion, so what's the point? :D
The interesting part about the last 2 fat fasts was that the signal was so insanely strong I didn't need to do more than 14 days. This time, I'm flat on day 11. Hm!
Is it the salt in the sauces? Is it something something inflammatory in tomato sauce? Am I undereating to a point where it's actually counter productive? Was it just a coincidence last time, and I happened to encounter a big whoosh both times that would've occurred anyway?
Also interesting: during both the other fat fasts, I had severely limited workout performance and would nearly black out during some workouts. So far, I've hit 3-4 new PRs (although I'm also worse in several exercises) and I haven't had anything even close to blacking out. My blood sugar also isn't as low as I hit during the last time, although the CGM did wake me up several times last night because I hit <55mg/dL..
Extra salt could be binding a lot of water, or something of that nature, or maybe you're somehow replenishing your glycogen stores?
You may have gained a load of water weight while losing a lot of fat, and the two effects have just got round to cancelling each other out. If that's true then you should see dramatic results over the next few days!
Nice, and presumably a couple of pounds went missing overnight?
We need to account for actual body fat changes (very slow but usually a consistent trend, which I think is exponential decay onto set-point), water gain and loss (for me max about 1.5kg over a few days depending on whether I'm eating carbs or not), and also some kind of day to day random fluctuation (for me up to 2kg spikes, but your consistency probably lessens that effect), as well as the circadian rhythm (about 1kg always breathed out overnight)
That sounds like a real puzzle, eating noticeably less, still plenty of energy, and yet not losing weight. Has your waking temperature stayed high?
It might be worth working out what the differences are between this and the previous successful fat fasts, and then subtracting things one by one until you get the expected effect? The actual thing that is making the difference could be important to know.
Haven't checked temp in forever, but it was just 98.5F. That's actually somewhat high for me unless I just ate, but then I just had some (black) tea.
Yea I'll have to make a list of deltas. What's confusing too is, this is pretty much exactly the same as ex150, minus the beef, plus the Fortagen. But I had the Fortagen last time.
Ah, noisy signals... that's why I like 30 day experiments. I have the same issue right now - day 10 of a fat fast. Until yesterday it looked like the trend was UP this time! Inconceivable?! But then today was lower again... sigh!
Ten days of up is a lot of noise. I am avid for premature details. Maybe you have made a new discovery!
Is a fat fast "eat nothing but fat?" (I am a bit new to all this and the terminology confuses me. A lot of words don't mean what I think they mean) Presumably heavy cream only?
I would love to see what happens if you wait for a bit until the trend is clear and then switch to crème fraîche...
It's more flat/noisy really. Yesterday and today I was basically where I was before I started the fat fast. Which is definitely not what I expected.
date | wght
2024-02-01 | 224.3 <-- start of ex_savoryfatfast
2024-02-02 | 224.5
2024-02-03 | 223.9
2024-02-04 | 224.2
2024-02-05 | 225.4
2024-02-06 | 223.8
2024-02-07 | 225.4
2024-02-08 | 225.0
2024-02-09 | 224.8
2024-02-10 | 224.3
2024-02-11 | 224.2
ex_savoryfatfast isn't technically quite "nothing but fat." For one, even cream has some carbs & protein. And the point of the savory part is to keep using my alfredo/tomato sauce, which also have some carbs. I'd have to eat only tallow to make it a strict fat fast I suppose.
I'm also taking 1 scoop (10g) of Fortagen EAA protein every morning, mainly because it was very expensive and I still had some I wanted to use up. I was also using it in the exact same amount/weigh during my last 2 fat fasts.
The weird thing is, I have severely limited appetite vs. normal ex150. I haven't even attempted making my full 200-250g whipped cream dinner for 5 days or so, only making 100-150. Usually I still don't finish it, splitting it across 2 days. So, while I'm not counting cArOliEs, I'd estimate that I'm eating dramatically less overall than I was on ex150.
Could just be a plateau/whoosh thing honestly, but I'm not sure I want to extend ex_savoryfatfast to a full 30 days to find out.
On the other hand, the main goal was to find out if a savory fat fast would be more psychologically sustainable, and I suppose it is - but also it doesn't make me lose weight in the same drastic fashion, so what's the point? :D
The interesting part about the last 2 fat fasts was that the signal was so insanely strong I didn't need to do more than 14 days. This time, I'm flat on day 11. Hm!
Is it the salt in the sauces? Is it something something inflammatory in tomato sauce? Am I undereating to a point where it's actually counter productive? Was it just a coincidence last time, and I happened to encounter a big whoosh both times that would've occurred anyway?
Also interesting: during both the other fat fasts, I had severely limited workout performance and would nearly black out during some workouts. So far, I've hit 3-4 new PRs (although I'm also worse in several exercises) and I haven't had anything even close to blacking out. My blood sugar also isn't as low as I hit during the last time, although the CGM did wake me up several times last night because I hit <55mg/dL..
Extra salt could be binding a lot of water, or something of that nature, or maybe you're somehow replenishing your glycogen stores?
You may have gained a load of water weight while losing a lot of fat, and the two effects have just got round to cancelling each other out. If that's true then you should see dramatic results over the next few days!
Spoiler alert: beat my old low by .5lb this evening before even going to bed lol. Whoosh active?
Nice, and presumably a couple of pounds went missing overnight?
We need to account for actual body fat changes (very slow but usually a consistent trend, which I think is exponential decay onto set-point), water gain and loss (for me max about 1.5kg over a few days depending on whether I'm eating carbs or not), and also some kind of day to day random fluctuation (for me up to 2kg spikes, but your consistency probably lessens that effect), as well as the circadian rhythm (about 1kg always breathed out overnight)
1.2lbs to be specific, woke up at 222.0 - new low and officially 70lbs from when I started ex150. Yay!
Yea it's crazy hard to disambiguate these though, even on a ridiculously structured diet like ex150 and my experiments.
Haha let's hope so :)
That sounds like a real puzzle, eating noticeably less, still plenty of energy, and yet not losing weight. Has your waking temperature stayed high?
It might be worth working out what the differences are between this and the previous successful fat fasts, and then subtracting things one by one until you get the expected effect? The actual thing that is making the difference could be important to know.
Haven't checked temp in forever, but it was just 98.5F. That's actually somewhat high for me unless I just ate, but then I just had some (black) tea.
Yea I'll have to make a list of deltas. What's confusing too is, this is pretty much exactly the same as ex150, minus the beef, plus the Fortagen. But I had the Fortagen last time.
I keep daily waking temperature records for thyroid purposes, but it's also a good way of checking that you haven't crashed your basal metabolism.
It's got to be waking temperature, you want information about how much heat you're generating while you're asleep.