Another Go

The Burnt Fool's Bandaged Finger Goes Wobbling Back to the Fire

11/08/23 94.6

10/08/23 94.4

09/08/23 94.3

08/08/23 94.2

07/08/23 95.3

06/08/23 95.8

05/08/23 95.1

Well, everything seems to have gone back to normal, I'm back to 'mysteriously tired a lot of the time', and my precipitous and terrifying weight loss has stopped. I can eat pizza without going into a coma, and the thyroid dose needed to maintain my waking temperature at 36.7C and keep me functional has gone back up to normal.

Booooring!

So, a third pop is in order.

As I recall, ex150ish has two main pillars. The first is to keep carbohydrate intake very low, and the second is strictly to limit the amount of protein consumed.

I'm going to see what happens if I just do the carbohydrate restriction. Lots of double cream in the fridge for snacks, but I'm going to put as much beef as feels appropriate in my everlasting stew, and I'm going to eat as many steaks and as much cheese and as many beans as I like.

This is so far from ex150 that I don't even feel comfortable calling it ex150ishish, so I'm going to call it heart-attack-keto.

heart-attack-keto is:

No PUFAs

No sulphites

Carbs only from green vegetables. No milk, no yoghurt, no fruit... sigh.

Otherwise eat ad-lib whatever. No willpower use whatsoever. In fact any temptation to use willpower to influence weight measurements is to be countered by doing exactly the opposite of the thing I was about to try to use willpower to do. (I call this 'No Goodharting', and it's going to be rule 5 when I get round to writing that post).

And let's see what happens.

The things I'm interested in seeing are:

(a) water-weight loss

If there's not a precipitous weight drop of around 1.5kg in the first few days, then I'll know I'm keeping my glucose reserve and its associated water, which probably means no ketosis, and probably means that sufficient glucose for brain fuel is being made from dietary protein by gluconeogenesis. But who knows? All this is opaque.

(b) endless energy

The most welcome and most surprising feature of ex150ish, boundless inexhaustible energy, probably a sign that my keto backup system still works properly, even though my foreground carbohydrate-burning system is buggered. But who knows? All this is opaque.

(c) actual body-fat type weight loss

I'm not actually that unhappy at ~95kg and apparently stable or even dropping, it's a lot less scary than hitting 100kg and apparently unstoppable rapid gain.

But still, a nice to have. It would be good to be 85kg again. Maybe if I can resume my youthful svelte shape I'll be able to play tennis or cricket again without my knees collapsing under me. (What was admirable flexibility in a young athlete is “Joint Hypermobility Disorder” in an old cripple. Another ‘syndrome’ which looks awfully like hypothyroidism…..)

Average weight over the last week seems to be 94.8 kilos, with no reason to expect up or down to come, so this is a success from a weight-loss point of view if, when everything finally stabilizes again, I'm eating carbs, and all the water weight is back, it's unambiguously lower than that.

I'm going to keep an open mind, and do this for as long as seems sensible. If it doesn't work I'll probably just switch to ex150ish or maybe give up and regroup.

I ate all the remaining fruit and I drank the last of my milk on Wednesday, so heart-attack-keto starts Thursday 10/08/2023.

I'm already getting slight headaches which aren't really a problem, and I've had a bout of mild unexplained tiredness, which is probably the keto flu. I'm not taking painkillers because masking something unpleasant that you're doing to yourself is a bad idea. I am drinking salt-water and taking keto-specific electrolytes in case that helps with the kflu.

Wish me luck.