ex150ish-sccf

Tactical Ketosis

31/07/26 93.5 36.6 0 0 138/83/57 0

30/07/26 94.1 0 0 145/89/54 1

29/07/26 94.3 toohot 0 0 133/79/50 1

28/07/26 94 36.6 0 0 141/83/54 5

27/07/26 93.8 0.001 0.001 131/80/57 2

26/07/26 93 toohot 0 0 2

25/07/26 93.1 toohot 0 0 130/81/48 2

24/07/26 92.1 36.7 0 0 133/86/58 2

23/07/26 91.8 toohot 0 0 130/79/51 0

22/07/26 92.6 36.4 0 0 148/87/54 0

21/07/26 93.4 36.7 0 0 134/84/55 2

20/07/26 94.1 toohot 0 0 138/82/48 2

19/07/26 92.9 36.85 0 0 129/75/57 3

18/07/26 94.3 toohot 0 0 150/92/58 4

17/07/26 94.2 36.4 0.002 0.002 6

16/07/26 94.6 toohot 0 0 134/84/54 4

So it was bumps week, and I had pushing-off duties at 1700 every day, and cycling-around-like-a-lunatic duties after that, which was not really going to fly since I am regularly going to sleep involuntarily at 1700 every day.

And I thought “I am pretty sure that ex150ish used to completely fix all my fatigue symptoms, even though that doesn’t really show up on my sleepy index”. So I hid all the carbs and bought a load of sour cream and crème fraîche, and did a very short bout of ex150ish-sccf.

I didn’t make any predictions, this was a sudden spontaneous whim, but I would have made all the usual ones about ex150ish, to wit (consults previous predictions):

Headaches on ketosis entry. But if I take electrolytes I suspect I’ll be fine and enter ketosis smoothly with maybe a slight ‘ghost of a headache’. Although I have been in ketosis recently and I suspect that doing it twice with not much of a break makes the keto-flu worse.

Non-existent appetite, rapid weight loss, excellent mental clarity, the “two fuels” problem where I can get my mind tired while still having plenty of physical energy. If any of these things don’t happen I’ll be surprised.

I expect to lose 1.5 kg of water-weight immediately as I shed my glycogen reserves, then to lose body fat at around 1kg per week.

Current average is 94 kg, so in one week’s time I expect to be 92 kg, and then to bounce back up by 1.5kg over two or three days whenever I add significant carbs back in, and end up at 93.5kg.

What Actually Happened

Looking at my notes I got a keto-flu headache the first day, despite taking electrolytes, fixed it with ibuprofen and paracetamol, tried to go to sleep early at 1540 just in case, failed to sleep, and then got out of bed around 1700 and did my thing fine and didn’t feel tired until 0100 when I went to bed.

On the second day I got up at 1100, with another headache, fixed it with ibuprofen and paracetamol, and then spent the whole day talking to people and got the two-fuels problem at about 1630¹. I went for a lie down to try to fix that, and at 1700 I was fine again, and continued to be fine until 2330 when I went to bed.

After that I my notes just say ‘fine all day’ for a couple of days. I didn’t drink at all, partly because by 2100 I didn’t feel like it, and partly because I didn’t want to risk adding a hangover to my usual tiredness problem.

Not feeling like drinking during bumps week is a sign that all is not well, usually the after-races drinking and going on about the old days is half the point. But I felt much better than I have done recently, and had no temptation to go to bed until after midnight, which is normal for me and always has been.

I didn’t actually note any change in my appetite but I wasn’t paying attention. I was living on bits of stew and sour cream so I probably didn’t eat much?

On Friday, the last day, I woke up feeling fine, and noted that I felt the clarity of mind that I expect from ketosis, but then at 1300 I got all weary, went to bed but couldn’t sleep, got up feeling fine at 1400, did all the things, and then decided that I’d recarb and see what happened rather than going to the big post-bumps party.

And then surprisingly I didn’t just fall immediately asleep even though that’s what I’d expect if I ate a load of carbs while in deep ketosis, but I didn’t feel like partying either, I just sat up reading and finally went to bed about 0045 and didn’t wake up until midday the following day.

The funny thing is, although this pretty much worked as expected and allowed me to fulfil bumps-related duties at a time when I’d usually feel pretty shattered and not trust myself to do anything both complicated and slightly dangerous, it hardly shows up on my sleepy index at all.

There were two days of feeling fine, and four days of ‘napfail’, and although if you look very closely at the graph you can just make that out as an improvement, it doesn’t show up as a dramatic difference in the seven day average sleepy index at all.

In its defence I didn’t feel entirely well, people who are entirely well don’t suddenly feel like going to sleep in the middle of the day and then find nothing happens and get up again, but it was much better than usual.

Weight-wise my seven day average went down from 94kg to 92kg and then went back up to 94kg, which is sort of as expected, except that I would have expected that to be 1.5kg of water-weight and (5/7)kg of actual fat loss, which doesn’t seem to have happened.

This does not shake my faith in ex150ish-sccf, which does seem to have worked pretty much as I expected it to do, but it does make me think that there’s a bit of a run-in period at the start for a couple of days, and that the good effects mostly happen after that so that five days in total isn’t enough to see much of them, although I did get a couple of days of feeling normal and one bout of mental clarity worth noting.²

I am no more confused now than I was before.

Since then I’ve been pretty much back to my new normal, which involves failing-to-take-an-afternoon-nap every day around 1700, but there’s been one day when I actually slept, and one day (yesterday) when I felt a bit sluggish for half-an-hour but didn’t feel like actually going to bed so just read for a bit and then felt better.

Oh yes, and a couple of times I’ve felt slight hypothyroid symptoms (plantar fasciitis, achy legs and would you believe a sodding acne outbreak), and taken a very very tiny bit of thyroid, which has seemed to both fix the symptoms and result in me feeling far too hot for a few days. Scylla... Charybdis...)

So, now going back to ‘hands off the controls’ and let everything settle down for a bit and see what I’ve got left. I might experiment with even tinier doses of thyroid if that seems warranted, but honestly at this point I really can’t believe it’s enough to make any difference at all even though it does seem to... OK I am a bit confused about that.

1. Which is to say, I didn’t feel physically tired at all, but my brain just suddenly seemed to stop working and I couldn’t think straight.

2. I suspect that the mental clarity is just ‘what it feels like when my brain is actually working’. But I don’t get that much these days.