I'm not sure what a trendline could tell me that I can't just see! And if it told me anything I'm not seeing I wouldn't believe it.
Intuition tells me that the simplest model for the data is probably two straight lines,
One from Christmas to roughly the beginning of June, which trend is to add 0.5kg every month.
And another one from the beginning of June to beginning of August, which looks like a steady drop at 2.5kg per month.
That means that my original 'heart attack diet' caused easily the fastest weight gain of my life. Something like 6kg a year rather than the kilo I seem to have been gaining every year since I was forty.
And then something reversed at midsummer, and the same 'heart attack diet, but no sulphites' is causing weight loss at a speed weirdly close to the NHS 'safe and sustainable' limit of 0.5-1.0 kilos per week, aimed at stopping people on starvation diets killing themselves by going too fast.
So now I'm wondering what that reverse was. Was it the roughly three weeks of ex150ish? Was it forswearing sulphites? Was it, as the anti-PUFA people claim, that six months of no-PUFAs has been enough to lift the polyunsaturated curse and now I'm just returning to normal, not feeling hungry because I'm burning excess fat reserves ?
Anecdotally, I've seen quite a few people suddenly have miraculous results "doing nothing" or doing something they didn't have results with before or that other people don't have results with, after 3-6 months of completely cutting out PUFAs.
But I think there's another mechanism at play, too. E.g. while cutting out PUFAs is great, 75% or so of people seem unable to do well on high fat + high carb, at least those already somewhat overweight. I don't know if it's the mythical Randle Cycle or what, but mixing fat + carbs to lose weight seems to work for only a small minority (curse them!).
Another thing could be that, after fixing PUFA, you STILL need to be in a deficit. Many diets implicitly create a spontaneous deficit, e.g. ex150 and probably the potato diet. If you spend a month being force-fed by mom (or, as you call her, mum?) that might still prevent fat loss, and if it includes enough carbs + protein and thus insulin, you might even gain fat.
I.e. maybe PUFA is necessary but not sufficient, it just sits one step above the carb/protein insulin model and that is still entirely true (but only works once you've unlocked PUFA). And downstream from that, calories are still true, but you need to unlock insulin.
"I am a professional computer programmer, which is why it has taken me four months to write the short python script that produced this graph"
Hahaha. I am also a professional computer programmer and I sympathize.
Have you tried calculating a trendline? It might make it easier to see the long term trend in the noisy data.
I'm not sure what a trendline could tell me that I can't just see! And if it told me anything I'm not seeing I wouldn't believe it.
Intuition tells me that the simplest model for the data is probably two straight lines,
One from Christmas to roughly the beginning of June, which trend is to add 0.5kg every month.
And another one from the beginning of June to beginning of August, which looks like a steady drop at 2.5kg per month.
That means that my original 'heart attack diet' caused easily the fastest weight gain of my life. Something like 6kg a year rather than the kilo I seem to have been gaining every year since I was forty.
And then something reversed at midsummer, and the same 'heart attack diet, but no sulphites' is causing weight loss at a speed weirdly close to the NHS 'safe and sustainable' limit of 0.5-1.0 kilos per week, aimed at stopping people on starvation diets killing themselves by going too fast.
So now I'm wondering what that reverse was. Was it the roughly three weeks of ex150ish? Was it forswearing sulphites? Was it, as the anti-PUFA people claim, that six months of no-PUFAs has been enough to lift the polyunsaturated curse and now I'm just returning to normal, not feeling hungry because I'm burning excess fat reserves ?
I am confused!
Anecdotally, I've seen quite a few people suddenly have miraculous results "doing nothing" or doing something they didn't have results with before or that other people don't have results with, after 3-6 months of completely cutting out PUFAs.
But I think there's another mechanism at play, too. E.g. while cutting out PUFAs is great, 75% or so of people seem unable to do well on high fat + high carb, at least those already somewhat overweight. I don't know if it's the mythical Randle Cycle or what, but mixing fat + carbs to lose weight seems to work for only a small minority (curse them!).
Another thing could be that, after fixing PUFA, you STILL need to be in a deficit. Many diets implicitly create a spontaneous deficit, e.g. ex150 and probably the potato diet. If you spend a month being force-fed by mom (or, as you call her, mum?) that might still prevent fat loss, and if it includes enough carbs + protein and thus insulin, you might even gain fat.
I.e. maybe PUFA is necessary but not sufficient, it just sits one step above the carb/protein insulin model and that is still entirely true (but only works once you've unlocked PUFA). And downstream from that, calories are still true, but you need to unlock insulin.
> Another thing could be that, after fixing PUFA, you STILL need to be in a deficit.
As you yourself have ably said, weight loss and calorie deficit **are the same thing**.
All we are discussing is how to get one's appetite working properly, to feel hungry when underweight, to feel satiated when overweight.
Willpower will avail us not. One cannot override one's most fundamental motivational system using the feeble powers of one's conscious mind.
The homeostat that has worked reliably forever in most animals is broken somehow in a lot of modern people.
In me, it worked reliably for forty years, and it seems nowadays to be only a bit broken, and I remember what it was like to have it working.
In you and various others, it seems to be badly broken, to the point where you had never felt it until you found ex150.
What broke it? How to fix it?
Yea if you'd draw a straight line through, you'd probably get a pretty good fit. Nice work, 5kg!
See my reply to the other comment!, (and I've added that thought to the main post)
I am confused and slightly scared.... The most important part of gift-horse ownership is the careful oral examination....