Methods

Disclaimer: This is medical advice, but I’m an idiot. Don’t do it. It’s just for looking at.

The Rules

I No PUFAs

Don’t eat polyunsaturated fats.

II No Sulphites

This one’s just for me. Sulphites do me in. They didn’t use to, but now they’re kryptonite. If you get bad hangovers from beer, terrible hangovers from wine, and no hangover at all from spirits, this one might be for you too.

III No Willpower

No calorie counting, no doing any exercise you don’t enjoy. No sticking to rules if you don’t want to.

IV Don’t Be A Psycho

If this stuff works, it works without too much trouble. If it doesn’t, being strict about it won’t help it to. If you’re at a friend’s for dinner and she produces a polyunsaturated curry with white wine she’s spent hours on and really hopes you like it, wolf it down and go on about how good it is.

This is not a purity test. Polyunsaturated fats are not a poison in low doses. It works or it doesn’t.

V No Goodharting

Don’t fiddle your own measurements. If you think of e.g. a way to get your scale weight lower that doesn’t actually change the thing you’re trying to change, e.g. body fat percentage, and you’re tempted to do it, do the opposite to spite yourself.

Don’t Eat Modern Food

My Victorian ancestors seem to have been fine eating whatever they liked, and they lived in an environment of impossible superabundance compared to almost any animals in the history of the world.

They had plenty of horrible diseases, but they were mostly communicable diseases, most of which we’ve finished off. The ‘diseases of modernity’ seem to have been curiously absent. The clue is in the name.

I’m about ten times better off than they were, but they were about ten times better off than anyone before them had ever been. They weren’t going hungry.

I deduce that obesity is not caused by superabundance of food, or by anything that was widely consumed in quantity in Victorian times. That includes gin.

My Irish ancestors lived on a diet of potatoes with occasional bits of meat and milk. They had plenty to eat, and their population exploded until it all went wrong in 1845.

They were famous for their height and strength and good looks. I deduce that eating a monotonous diet of carbohydrates can’t be bad for you.

I am approximating the ideal of ‘don’t eat modern food’ by avoiding sulphites and polyunsaturated fats.

Polyunsaturated fats are the obvious change in the modern way of eating that I judge most likely to be responsible for the trouble.

Sulphites are obvious terrible poisonous kryptonite to me, and forswearing them has made me feel much better, but that’s probably just me. I used to be fine with them.

ex150ish

My current version of the ex150 diet is:

A pot of everlasting stew, containing:

1kg 80/20 ground beef per week

with as much in the way of chopped tomatoes, passata, tomato puree, and not-terribly-carby vegetables either fresh or tinned as desired/convenient. Adding e.g. beans is fine.

plus all types of spices and sauces and salt and butter and coconut oil, added to stew as desired to make it taste good.

(but not anything containing PUFAs, sulphites or significant carbs, so for this purpose potatoes and yams don't count as vegetables, and certain sauces such as HP are out.)

And apart from that, since there's not going to be much in the way of calories in that:

double cream

Eat completely ad lib, either stew or cream, as desired.

This is highly ketogenic. As I enter ketosis I get ‘keto flu’. This is usually one or two very mild headaches, which go away if I drink salt water.

Take some sort of keto electrolyte supplement for the first few days at least, and whenever you fancy it after that.

Once the adjustment period is over, I get terrific mental clarity and boundless, although strangely thin energy. I think my carbohydrate metabolism must be broken somehow, but the back-up ketosis system is still working fine.

Keep it up for a couple of weeks.

When you stop, beware of recarbing too fast.

If I eat a stack of carbs all at once after two weeks of ex150ish it will knock me flat. Not sure why, but keto electrolytes may moderate this effect, and slow recarbing certainly does.

Once you stop, don’t start again until you’ve given everything a while to settle down.

If I go back on ex150ish too fast I get terrible ‘keto flu’. Not sure why. Can’t be good.

The weight loss should continue for a few weeks anyway!