20/07/24 93.7 36.63 0 0.25
19/07/24 94.3 0 0.5
18/07/24 93.2 36.62 0 0.5
17/07/24 94.7 36.57 0 0.5
16/07/24 93.7 36.59 0.25 0.5
15/07/24 95 36.73 0 0.5
14/07/24 93.5 36.75 0 0.5
13/07/24 94.1 0 0.5
12/07/24 93.9 36.65 0 0.5
11/07/24 36.92 0 0.5
10/07/24 94.2 36.65 0 0.5
09/07/24 94 37.14 0 0.5
08/07/24 94.1 36.7 0 0.5
07/07/24 94.2 36.83 0 0.5
06/07/24 0 0.5
05/07/24 94.8 36.17 0.5 0.5
04/07/24 36.77 0 0.5
03/07/24 93.8 36.81 0 0.5
02/07/24 94.5 36.75 0 0.5
01/07/24 36.9 0 0.5
30/06/24 93.8 36.63 0 0.5
29/06/24 94.2 36.73 0 0.5
So, the plan was to try low-protein mixed macros and see whether swamping was actually worse than all-carbs or all-fat, which both seemed great from a general energy and cleverness point of view.
But I've managed to totally bugger up the experiment by spending pretty much all of the last three weeks either drunk or hungover, and I've eaten quite a lot of protein too.
July is always a bit like this, it's my birthday, and it's bumps week again (https://theheartattackdiet.substack.com/p/bumps-week) , but on top of that my sister came to visit and brought vast amounts of booze, and an American friend I haven't seen in years came back to the UK and organised a party where I got more drunk than I've been in a year.
Even my notes are chaotic, so I'll just give general impressions of the last three weeks, don't read too much into any of it.
Firstly, I really really like swamp-food. A staple of the last three weeks has been large amounts of mashed potato with lots of butter and lots and lots of double cream, plus spices and seasonings, particularly French's mustard stirred in.
This is both decadent and delicious and I've eaten huge tracts of it.
Also fruit, porridge, buttered toast, black puddings, milk, eggs fried in coconut oil, oranges and grapefruits with cinnamon, lamb steaks, beef steaks, kebabs, cheese, pizzas, and lots and lots and lots of gin and vodka.
There haven't been many days in the last three weeks when I wasn't either on a bender or recovering from one.
I've also, concurrently, spent five days either cycling madly up and down the towpath shouting at boat races or sadly pushing my broken bicycle back to town. My normally invulnerable kevlar-reinforced bike tires have exploded on three separate occasions for no apparent reason. I think I must have offended the gods. Dinner on one of these days was five croissants, two pains-au-chocolat and half a bottle of vodka. Also cigarettes.
Sometimes I've been bright and bouncy, energetic and clever, sometimes I've been sluggish and depressed and stupid with achy legs and generally feeling like my old malaise has come back in full force.
I feel like I'm alternating randomly between hypothyroid/slow metabolism symptoms and thyrotoxicity/fast metabolism symptoms, with periods of feeling perfectly normal as well.
Sometimes I've been really cold, much more often I've been far too hot and needing cold showers to stop sweating, sometimes I’ve been perfectly comfortable, and this doesn't really seem to have had much to do with the weather outside, which has been everything from cold and rainy to the full 30C July sunshine.
I’ve been cold on hot days, and hot on cold days. This morning I found myself sitting on my front deck in bad weather wearing only shorts, wishing that the rain was a bit heavier and colder so I could stop sweating. This afternoon I was sitting in full summer sunshine at 30C with a fleece on.
Sometimes I’ve stayed up until four in the morning feeling great, sometimes I’ve crashed at ten o’clock feeling like a zombie.
None of this has seemed at all associated with my waking temperature, which has been fairly stable, maybe a little on the high side.
The only obvious pattern has been that I tend to overheat immediately after eating lots of carbs, even if those carbs are mixed in with plenty of fat.
If I had to guess, I would think that my mind is not working as well in the swamp as it was doing on either low-protein high-carb or low-protein high-fat. But some days it’s seemed fine. Certainly I have not learned many new things about biochemistry these last three weeks, but there have been some things.
But most of this up-and-down could be perfectly well explained by the appallingly dissolute and drunken/hungover sleep-deprived state that I've been in for the last three weeks. I have no clue.
The extraordinary precipitous drop in thyroid dose that went on during my 'carbohydrate surprise' has not continued, but neither has it reversed.
The dose of thyroid that I need to stay functional is about one-sixth of what it once was, and I feel it's a bit too high at that.
Only the occasional bouts of malaise and tiredness and my boringly stable normal waking temperature are keeping me from cutting it further.
My weight seems to have stayed stable despite all the chaos and drinking and exercise and delicious food. My last seven day average was 94kg, just like it was at the end of the four weeks of ketosis.
A month of ex150ish and then less-fascist ketoing knocked 1kg off, and since then it's been stable at 94kg through five weeks of all-carbs and then mixed-macros.
It looks like it's under perfect homeostatic control and it doesn't matter what I do. Which is what weight should behave like, according to me. It's still too high though! (BMI 29.6)
I am pretty confident that roughly a year off the PUFAs, off the sulphites, has had some very beneficial effects.
My thyroid dose has fallen by a huge amount, in a fairly slow and steady fashion.
Various food choices are clearly interacting with this in a way that I don't understand, but the underlying trend seems clear and steady.
I think that's a sign of gradual metabolic recovery and I'm very pleased about it.
Weight-wise, I've gone from from 99kg (and rising at around 4kg/year) last April to 94kg (and stable) currently.
That's also probably a good thing and I am quite pleased.
But the detailed pattern of weight measurements over the last year makes no sense to me at all.
Several months of a very fast drop, where ex150ish didn't seem to matter at all. It sure caused short-term weight-loss, but that seemed to be just decorating a general rapid downwards trend.
Followed by a month of noticeably increased appetite and rapid weight gain when I went to visit my parents.
Followed by the ex150ish-sour-cream experiment which seemed to strip all that weight back off in a couple of weeks.
Followed by a long period where I didn't do anything at all and just watched, during which my weight seemed to decay exponentially back up towards a set-point somewhere north of 97kg. And where it seemed visits to my parents made no difference at all to this underlying trend.
Followed by this last few months, when I started intervening again, where a couple of bouts of ex150ish and one of half-hearted keto took that weight back off to leave me apparently stable and roughly where I was six months ago.
It makes no sense to me. PUFA clearance and ex150ish just aren't enough to explain what's been going on.
I must be missing something important.
Any ideas?
When you traveled, where were you, and what was the altitude difference between there and where you live normally?
PUFA stays elevated for years from the moment you stop consummation. And since they impact metabolism, mitochondria efficacy, this might be a possible reason.