Oh cool, I'm now totally off on one, making a great stack of intuitive theoretical leaps-of-faith well beyond what I can justify. If you're thinking the same sorts of things then that reassures me that I've not just lost it.
Is there some other way you can relax ex150 without introducing too much BCAA? It may not be protein itself that you need to keep down, just the BCAA bits.
Also, after two weeks I am now pretty sure that sour cream and crème fraîche are working well as double-cream substitutes. So you can probably stick them in *ad lib* if you like the taste.
I don't even care about ex150, I still love it. I was just sooooo convinced that, certainly, 225g of beef couldn't be too much?! Only 13g of extra protein?
Maybe because everybody keeps yelling at me how I'm killing myself on such low protein :D
I was more thinking that for the periods *between* ex150 bouts, you might want to do something other than 'eat as much protein as possible'. Because for some reason that causes you raging hunger.
Maybe for some reason protein is blocking PUFA metabolism? That would explain both our experiences!
I really can't parse Brad's videos at all, I wish he'd write his bloody stuff out and simplify it. But his latest graphs are arguing strongly that he really is onto something, I just can't figure out what.
I'm getting a vague impression that he thinks PUFAs and BCAAs are fighting for a rate-limited pathway.
My original idea was that breaking double-bonds in fats might be rate-limited, hence why people seem to manage to be 'starving on a full tank'. But it makes a lot more sense that we don't already know that if that effect is modulated by another interacting cause. That would make it much less obvious.
If you can keep the protein low (or just the BCAAs down??) you might find that your weight loss just continues even on a much more liberal regime....
My reading of your graphs is "ex150 works fine, the problem is the rapid weight gain when you're not doing ex150". That's only happened to me twice, and both times I was eating a lot of extra meat and cheese.
If I just put the carbs back in the weight loss etc just seems to carry on regardless.
OK, you can't do carbs... But maybe there is some non-carby way of keeping it going?
Or maybe some carbs are fine? You seem to have been quite happy eating chocolate e.g? (Watch the sucrose. Bad s.mutans....)
Yea, I think if I can just keep from eating 999999 proteins between ex150 periods, I'll be fine. That said, this last bout was way more successful than doing ex150 for a month and only losing 1-2lbs! So there's something else mysterious going on, maybe the "even lower protein." Or maybe the difference between 80% and 85% lean meat (which I used sometimes on grassfed) is big enough? Could be that I accidentally found my exact threshold w/ ex150. Just my luck.
Presumably if my completely unsupported by either theory or evidence new idea that I have just made up about BCAAs and PUFAs competing for some resource that we have no reason to believe exists is true,
then 'the lower BCAAs, the better you can sense the size of your fat reserves'.
and thus 'the lower the BCAAs, the more your appetite collapses'
I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that ex150 is close to the threshold where it starts to work for you. Presumably you tried less extreme versions that didn't work until you finally dared to protein-restrict hard enough to get an effect?
For me I suspect there's some slack, I probably had a lot less stored PUFA than you did.
I would imagine there's a protein level where you're getting enough to maintain body tissues, but not enough that spare protein is heading for the citric acid cycle to be used as fuel.
Protein cravings and pica might be signs of such a level.
But do be careful pissing about with this idea, you'll give yourself kwashiorkor.
You're winning! Be happy to win slowly and surely! Make minor modifications to your proven techniques. Avoiding eating entire cows immediately an ex150 bout is over will probably do the trick.
Good point. Of course I "miraculously" found ex150 about 20 years into trying to lose weight ;) And yea, it explicitly followed other trials of restricted protein before, though never as thorough/systematic. I only became really sciency about it after reading the Slime Mold Time Mold series.
> and thus 'the lower the BCAAs, the more your appetite collapses'
It sure felt like that. I mean I was eating a baseline of 2,300kcal/day before on ex150, probably quite a bit higher on average.
And on this I just couldn't even finish the 2,000. I would WAKE UP FEELING FULL. Not just satiated (= &1 :not_hungry), FULL. Very weird.
Ha, you've summarized my current "thoughts about obesity and how they interplay" better than I can!
As a reminder, I can't eat carbs because of my Non-24.
Oh cool, I'm now totally off on one, making a great stack of intuitive theoretical leaps-of-faith well beyond what I can justify. If you're thinking the same sorts of things then that reassures me that I've not just lost it.
Is there some other way you can relax ex150 without introducing too much BCAA? It may not be protein itself that you need to keep down, just the BCAA bits.
Also, after two weeks I am now pretty sure that sour cream and crème fraîche are working well as double-cream substitutes. So you can probably stick them in *ad lib* if you like the taste.
I don't even care about ex150, I still love it. I was just sooooo convinced that, certainly, 225g of beef couldn't be too much?! Only 13g of extra protein?
Maybe because everybody keeps yelling at me how I'm killing myself on such low protein :D
Good idea with the sour cream! I'll try that.
> I don't even care about ex150, I still love it.
I was more thinking that for the periods *between* ex150 bouts, you might want to do something other than 'eat as much protein as possible'. Because for some reason that causes you raging hunger.
Maybe for some reason protein is blocking PUFA metabolism? That would explain both our experiences!
I really can't parse Brad's videos at all, I wish he'd write his bloody stuff out and simplify it. But his latest graphs are arguing strongly that he really is onto something, I just can't figure out what.
I'm getting a vague impression that he thinks PUFAs and BCAAs are fighting for a rate-limited pathway.
My original idea was that breaking double-bonds in fats might be rate-limited, hence why people seem to manage to be 'starving on a full tank'. But it makes a lot more sense that we don't already know that if that effect is modulated by another interacting cause. That would make it much less obvious.
If you can keep the protein low (or just the BCAAs down??) you might find that your weight loss just continues even on a much more liberal regime....
My reading of your graphs is "ex150 works fine, the problem is the rapid weight gain when you're not doing ex150". That's only happened to me twice, and both times I was eating a lot of extra meat and cheese.
If I just put the carbs back in the weight loss etc just seems to carry on regardless.
OK, you can't do carbs... But maybe there is some non-carby way of keeping it going?
Or maybe some carbs are fine? You seem to have been quite happy eating chocolate e.g? (Watch the sucrose. Bad s.mutans....)
Yea, I think if I can just keep from eating 999999 proteins between ex150 periods, I'll be fine. That said, this last bout was way more successful than doing ex150 for a month and only losing 1-2lbs! So there's something else mysterious going on, maybe the "even lower protein." Or maybe the difference between 80% and 85% lean meat (which I used sometimes on grassfed) is big enough? Could be that I accidentally found my exact threshold w/ ex150. Just my luck.
Presumably if my completely unsupported by either theory or evidence new idea that I have just made up about BCAAs and PUFAs competing for some resource that we have no reason to believe exists is true,
then 'the lower BCAAs, the better you can sense the size of your fat reserves'.
and thus 'the lower the BCAAs, the more your appetite collapses'
I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence that ex150 is close to the threshold where it starts to work for you. Presumably you tried less extreme versions that didn't work until you finally dared to protein-restrict hard enough to get an effect?
For me I suspect there's some slack, I probably had a lot less stored PUFA than you did.
I would imagine there's a protein level where you're getting enough to maintain body tissues, but not enough that spare protein is heading for the citric acid cycle to be used as fuel.
Protein cravings and pica might be signs of such a level.
But do be careful pissing about with this idea, you'll give yourself kwashiorkor.
You're winning! Be happy to win slowly and surely! Make minor modifications to your proven techniques. Avoiding eating entire cows immediately an ex150 bout is over will probably do the trick.
Good point. Of course I "miraculously" found ex150 about 20 years into trying to lose weight ;) And yea, it explicitly followed other trials of restricted protein before, though never as thorough/systematic. I only became really sciency about it after reading the Slime Mold Time Mold series.
> and thus 'the lower the BCAAs, the more your appetite collapses'
It sure felt like that. I mean I was eating a baseline of 2,300kcal/day before on ex150, probably quite a bit higher on average.
And on this I just couldn't even finish the 2,000. I would WAKE UP FEELING FULL. Not just satiated (= &1 :not_hungry), FULL. Very weird.
The insanely high ketone levels too.