High Protein Modified "Keto + Fasting" muscle building with low fat

x-Dena-x · 2019-07-02 05:57:26 UTC

Party @Karims!!! I know it says family, but we’re like your dysfunctional keto forum fam. And I wont be grumpy bout high protein.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-02 06:00:33 UTC

If I end up in New Jersey, we can try for a NJ, NY, PA cookout…

Yes - extended families always have some weird members… this one is mostly weird with a few normies that we let stick around to create cover…

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-02 23:00:11 UTC

Day 15 - July 2nd 2019

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-03 17:41:52 UTC

Yesterday, I changed something and my body reacted very aggressively.

I’ve always wondered how post-lift feeding time would effect me, but I live 45 minutes from my gym (for many reasons), and I usually sauna for 35 minutes after anyway. I used to take Leucine right after, but without other amino acids, I don’t think it was truly anabolic.

So… yesterday, I decided to make my super high protein, low carb, low fat shake and take it with me to the gym. After lifting (actually during sauna), I drank it… and it was good.

However… my appetite literally exploded… I couldn’t stop eating for hours afterwards… I had a plan for 1500 calories and ended up at 2800… with self control even. This wasn’t craving. It was hunger.

My metabolic rate on a heavy lifting day (like yesterday) is probably 2800… so I had no deficit…

As you can see… I tried many tactics to diffuse the situation. Including eating whole heads of lettuce and celery, pickles, pickled ginger, then went on to fatty foods like pumpkin seed, almonds and avocado… I even had a choczero to try to break the strike…

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much protein… 323g but I stayed technically keto ~20g of carbs and still just short of my metabolic rate of 2800.

I have many theories, but one datapoint (no matter how intense) doesn’t make a trend.

So I’m going to try again today… but I’m ready for the onslaught today. It caught me by surprise yesterday but I’m ready to fight back today:

If I run into trouble, I’m planning on going with roughage (lettuce and celery salad). Wish me luck.

Freischuetz · 2019-07-03 19:24:18 UTC

finally you start to eat, to gain mass

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-03 21:45:37 UTC

320g of protein is more like gorging than eating!

And 150g of fat to boot… I felt like a bear eating salmon and nuts all day…

My eldest asked why I was eating so much shrimp and I told her that the biggest animals on earth gain mass eating krill… I was working on the same goal… she gave me a pre-teen scowl and walked away…

I did push my weights today though.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-03 21:49:19 UTC

Day 16 - July 3rd 2019

I don’t know if these progress pictures show any change. Maybe in a few months, I’ll make them into a progress video and then it’ll make more sense.

Today was a push day.

Bench
Incline dumbbell press + fly superset
Assisted dips (reduced the assist to 40lbs!)
Cable tricep press
Barbell skull crushers (triceps)
Barbell curls (for fun)

In the sauna now - drinking my iced protein shake…

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-03 21:55:31 UTC

Not looking forward to dinner tonight… the hunger yesterday was stupid.

I’m thinking that I need to stagger my eating- get the long chain fats in early to trigger CCK satiety early on (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholecystokinin)… then move into the fiber (lettuce and celery), and end with the protein.

Another option is to make a “nutrient & salts shake” with potassium, magnesium, turmeric, cruciferous extract, nutritional yeast, ACV and ginger juice.

Basically little to no protein but very nutrient dense to provide satiety from a different angle.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-04 21:09:05 UTC

Happy 4th of July!

Day 17 - July 4th 2019

yesterday was less of a spectacular failure… I was fine until midnight and should have gone to sleep but I decided to stay up a bit and weakened… had an additional can of tuna, a can of anchovies, a handful of almonds and handful of pumpkin seeds. Messed up my daily plan from 1900 cal to 2300 cal and pushed protein from 240g to 280g and fat from 100g to 130g…

Still… it’s better than Tuesday where I spiked up to 2800 cal…

Today is legs and core day and I’m intentionally planning for more fat to avoid the extreme hunger:

Going to work out at home with my ez-curl bar, so no sauna.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-05 20:18:10 UTC

Day 18 - July 5th 2019

Last night I was doing great at 120g fat and 240g protein… and <20g carbs… until the fireworks… and then I got “the hunger”…

It seems to hit me hardest when I stay up late. Maybe it’s a memory of my old days when I used to eat bags of Cheetos watching late night movies… but as I adapt to protein based hunger, I seem to lapse.

It humbles me after having been able to fast for weeks… and I know that it’s not the same. Insulin is one hell of a drug!

But to build muscle, I need some insulin. And even the small amount of protein triggered insulin is terrible for satiety.

Anyway… I had 75 almonds more than I had planned… a whole 75g of the stuff and that was 40g more fat and 17g more protein than planned. It’s literally a couple of handfuls and that was a LOT.

Today is my last day before DEXA tomorrow at 1pm. And while I know it won’t really change any composition, I’m still going to try to abstain from my almond joy today. In fact, I want my reading tomorrow to be as clean as possible, so I’m avoiding all plants except those liquified in my shake. No almonds, no pumpkin seeds, no lettuce, no celery, no avocado, no tahini, no kimchi, no sauerkraut, pickled ginger or pickles…

I’ll make an exception for stone ground mustard since I need something to go with my chunk light tuna + salmon and shrimp. The idea is to accelerate food and water so I can avoid false DEXA readings.

Wish me luck tomorrow. My scale is confused as heck so I need something moreover reliable to assess my body composition.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-05 20:21:02 UTC

Speaking of body composition. My scale has two settings - normal and athletic. The two readings can be off by 5%! From 22% on normal to 17% on athletic…

Given that the purpose of this experiment is to transition between states, I think the scale is likely a terrible measure. Just saying…

Freischuetz · 2019-07-06 01:39:09 UTC

why you dont grab a simple and cheap caliper? over time, you will even be able to „measure“ water, thickend your skin after a high-protein day.

you might get a better feeling of your body, beside that numbers of a device, that already offers two different guessings…?

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-06 01:53:13 UTC

I have calipers but I can’t quite get the hang of it.

Freischuetz · 2019-07-06 01:58:30 UTC

search for Jackson/Pollock. there is no big difference between 3 or 7. you are not a pro, so 0.8% difference wont mean anything.

i measure myself with 3. and honestly i dont care if that number is correct or not! i just have to feel good

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-06 17:49:47 UTC

Day 19 - July 6th 2019

DEXA day…

Yesterday, I remained faithful to the “carnivore” high protein low fat no carb approach but I was hungry and ate a lot of protein…

Yes… I ate 1.3kg of shrimp (nearly 3 lbs of shrimp, 0.5 lbs of salmon … and was still hungry)…

I even broke down later in the evening and had a can of anchovies… needed the salty and the brine I drink wasn’t enough

So… here’s what happened:

I started the day with heavy legs - pushed my weights and did a short sauna (with protein shake) before heading to the pool… couple of hours later (and after already having had my shake), I was at 76G and 1.1K

That’s the highest ketone level I’ve seen during this experiment. It was interesting because it was after heavy legs + sauna + protein shake + pool … I usually don’t see such a high ketone level after eating so the shake is not hurting my ketone levels

Around 7pm, I had the salmon and mountain of shrimp … zero carbs and very low fat… It was also the highest protein intake of any day… later that evening, my numbers dropped to 98G and 0.2K … so over eating protein will definitely increase blood glucose and depress ketones. That’s my n=1

Ok… so this morning, I woke up to 63G and 0.5K. That’s actually the highest morning ketone reading too and near-lowest glucose reading… interesting transition.

Getting ready to head out for my DEXA/RMR… we’ll see what other new learnings today brings.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-06 18:27:05 UTC

Sitting here relaxing in my RMR mask and thought I’d share the preliminary results of my DEXA:

The good news is that I went from 22% bf to 21.7%…

I lost 3.4lbs total with 1.1lbs fat and 2.3lbs lean. So this confirms that most of the weight lost has been lean mass…

Still, losing 1.1lbs I’d fat is not bad. My visceral fat went from 1.46lbs to 0.92lbs (personal best)… that’s 0.54lbs or half of the total fat lost. So that’s interesting.

I don’t remember the reference but subcutaneous fat seems to convert to visceral fat during weight loss before being consumed. I’ll need to find it, but that explains the strange fluctuations in visceral fat mass.

Also - as usual - my lean mass loss is almost exclusively in my legs again. Not glutes, since I’ve been focusing on those, but quads and hams…

It’s like a lie detector test… I haven’t not been doing squats (double negatives are fun) but I haven’t been pushing like the other muscle groups… and the results show it… the bad news is that the normal recommendation with upper body lean mass gains didn’t happen so it was just a net loss.

More to come.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-07 02:49:36 UTC

DEXA results:

So while this high protein low fat keto approach seems very expensive on lean mass loss, the fat loss was focused on my midsection and visceral fat. The worst results were glutes and legs with the majority of the lean loss in my legs. I will need to double down on legs.

RMR results:

Metabolic rate has increased slightly while the predicted RMR dropped. That means I’m running 10% faster than predicted.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-07 16:51:08 UTC

Yesterday, I decided to try the carnivore pescatarian approach again… so when I got really hungry, I would eat more protein and a little fat from fish only… basically avoiding the nuts and plants.

This means that my calories are higher but my body temperature runs a lot higher.

Ended the night at 102G and 0.2K… woke up this morning at 88G and 0.3K.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-08 06:45:00 UTC

Decided to compare the DEXA readings to my SCALE readings - same scale of 2lb/division but on opposite sides of the chart for lean and fat:

Given that I have some clothes on during DEXA and none on the SCALE, I expect a little difference and that the difference would be less in the summer than the winter.

Also, the time of day is a little different… also, hydration, food flux, etc…

It looks like the majority of the error is in the lean mass but as I’ve been trying to time the scan closer to my weigh in (weekends), the error has been reduced.

Why does this matter for this high protein experiment? well…
The large change in DEXA lean mass between the carnivore and high protein data points is the biggest concern right now.

The SCALE projects almost the same slope for lean mass loss (pink) between “the start of carnivore (cyc. fast datapoint) to end of carnivore” and “carnivore to high protein”, but DEXA doesn’t. In fact, that slope (dark red) goes from being slight to being much steeper. The fat results are pretty similar.

So - DEXA says that I’m losing lean mass faster on this high protein experiment. But that’s a function of one datapoint in mid-june… If that lean mass measurement was off (artificially high) for any reason, it would drive the wrong conclusions.

Here’s the scale data at higher resolution.

Basically, I start off well for either… but then I falter and the almonds corrupt me (and my data). I really need to push through this wall.

We go on vacation in 5 days… so I’m going to try to simplify. I can’t measure every meal constantly and weight myself on a smart scale or DEXA. This will be for a couple of weeks too, so it’s going to take a bite out of my ability to track anything.

So - I’m going with high protein carnivore and I’ll estimate the portions as best as I can. I’ll keep a log with images and hopefully that’ll help reconstruct afterwards.

Karim_Wassef · 2019-07-08 07:59:28 UTC

I think this chart really shows my struggle…

Here it is plotted with lean vs. fat mass

Whatever I’m trying to do, I lose or gain lean and fat together. Re-composition is still not working. I can change the rate of lean decline vs. fat decline…

That is a very linear fit… wow.

If I can’t get off that linear curve, then I’d need to be down to 144 lbs to achieve ~12% bf.

I ran a similar analysis months ago and it’s pretty consistent, even going back a year…

Looking over the longer timespan, the linear fit actually looks hopeful. A second order fit is actually better aligned to the data - which means that as I lose fat, I am losing lean mass at a faster rate.

I still want to find a way to avoid riding either line and try to stay above 150 lbs, preferably more like 170 lbs…

These last 15 lbs are going to be very rough… To get to my target of 170 lbs total and 12% bf (20 lbs fat), I think I need a hormonal reset.