Extended Fasting in Vegan Land: TrueNorth Health Center

(Todd Allen) #23

Suzanne, measuring body composition is tricky and there is no perfect approach. Dexa and hydrostatic weighing are generally considered the most accurate but they still have limitations unable to sort out the contents of your digestive system from what is muscle and fat. Changes in hydration, muscle glycogen and bladder fullness can all impact results. Hydrostatic weighing doesn’t sort out any tissues at all so tissues other than muscle and fat, for example skeletal mass, can impact results. Bod pod is close to hydrostatic weighing in accuracy but not identical and here’s a paper suggesting it tends to report men as leaner than hydrostatic weighing and women as fatter…
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/69/5/898/4714838

And here’s a comparison between bod pod and DEXA that showed significant variation especially for lean individuals.
http://www.dishlab.org/pubs/LowryTomiyamaBodPod.pdf

My opinion is that for tracking progress consistency is key. Regardless of method you want to be using the same equipment with the same operators in the same state of hydration/fed/exercised. And it’s impossible to sort and control all the factors so some amount of guesstimation in interpreting the results will always be needed. Use of one or more highly accessible methods: such as photos, tape measure, and skin fold calipers in combination with less frequent tests by one of the premium methods is going to give the best feedback.

As far as approaches to optimizing results that is an infinitely complex subject. In this forum for the ketogenic diet we focus mainly on diet and all the variations of macros, timing, fasting, etc. but other factors from approaches to exercise, stress management, sleep, relationships, environment, etc. all play a role. My biggest problematic factor for the past 3 months has been repeated low level sicknesses from being around and overly exposed to way too many sick people. Although I’ve not gotten significantly sick this winter now that I’m tracking many things closely, I see the impacts from every cold that I barely catch. And we all have quite a load of pathogens and parasites. Have you heard of HCMV an infectious incurable disease most people have that while typically benign sometimes gets nasty? Not suggesting this is your issue, just that we are all undoubtedly coping with a wide variety of things to which we are oblivious. It’s not possible to separate fitness issues from health issues so it is worth considering if other factors are complicating your efforts to optimize diet and exercise.

(Brian) #24

I had to go do some reading about that. I hadn’t heard of it before that I remember. It sounds like a cousin of the chicken pox virus, hanging around inside of you but rarely coming out to play for most.

(Todd Allen) #25

Yes, though it’s not completely clear to what degree it goes/remains inactive. There is some speculation and studies of the degree it might contribute to chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis.

(Suzanne Leigh) #26

@brownfat as always, you’re a wealth of knowledge.

I understand the need for consistency. Unfortunately I’ve bounced around the globe these last 3 years so consistency hasn’t been an option. I realize it’s futile to draw conclusions given the varying methods… except the one obvious conclusion, proven out by both mirror and measuring tape: I have less muscle and more fat than I did 1, 2 and 3 years ago.

So true, though I’ve done things to optimize body composition that may not have been the best for my health (and therefore, ultimately, not the best for my body composition). If I had a personalized map that gave specific instructions to become the healthiest version of myself, I’d follow it to a T. I’m that kind of anal gal. But humans don’t come with instruction manuals.

One interesting bit of news today. My bloodwork (drawn April 17th) shows the best metabolic markers I’ve had since 2015. This news hit my desk just as I was re-reading the analysis of my 23&Me data, which indicates I will have better success with a diet LOW in saturated fat and high in mono and polyunsaturated fats…a switch I made just 30 days ago. It seems that switch really did make a swift and dramatic difference in my blood work. I’m happy to share the numbers if anyone is interested.

I hope spring has arrived in your neck of the woods and that the low level illnesses are well behind you. Thanks again for generously sharing your knowledge!

(Suzanne Leigh) #27

Great news!! I got a DEXA scan last week and my body fat came in at only 26.4%, not the 33-34% shown by my bodpods in February and April.

I’ll take the DEXA as accurate, because when I look in the mirror, I don’t see 34% looking back. My DEXA also showed zero visceral fat. The director of the research lab said she was skeptical about that visceral fat result, but thought it was possible. I’d say it’s close to right, since I’ve never had a huge amount of visceral fat. 1st DEXA in 2016 showed 64g. 2nd DEXA in 2016 showed 163g…odd to see that increase when I was eating LCHF, but I’ve since learned that I’m not genetically designed to fare well on a diet high in saturated fat. That may have bene the problem between DEXA 1 and 2, as I was eating a high saturated fat diet at the time.

(Todd Allen) #28

Congrats! It sounds like either the change in diet is doing you good or maybe the bod pod result was thrown off by your hair, bones or some other factor unrelated to muscle and fat.

I imagine a scan reports ingested fat inside your intestines as visceral fat. I’m not certain of that but I expect it would take rather sophisticated software to sort it out and the scan would need to produce sufficiently high resolution data to image the organs. It probably doesn’t as the radiation exposure is much less than an x-ray and if they could generate high res imaging why not put those images in the reports?

I try to be somewhat consistently 12-16 hours fasted when going for my scans to lessen the variability due to food.

(Suzanne Leigh) #29

I was fasted for both bodpods, so no food in my GI tract though certainly would have been stool in my intestines. Maybe high-fat stool is hard to sort out as well, LOL! But for second BodPod I was eating LFHC, so that would have been a big change in stool consistency from 1st test.

Regardless, I was thrilled to see my Dexa results weren’t as bad as the BodPod. Note that in addition to my recent dietary change, I’ve very recently changed thyroid meds, less T4 and more T3, which could certainly play a role in body composition.

I now have scales that give me daily body fat readings. They show .8% less fat than the DEXA, but a good home metric for watching the trend line. Still shooting for sub 20%. Fingers crossed!!