Jenna’s N=1 and Accountability Thread

[Chantarella]

I am sorry you have lost a loved one. Thats tough. I know- happened to me before too. Gee- I don’t even want to remember the pain and suffering. Whew.
But there are a lot of us on here who are really sick. High blood pressure and diabetes and all that.
I think it is your heart which is ailing more than your body right now
Take care-

[jennasaurus]

I haven’t experienced issues with dairy yet, but I will keep that in mind if I stall. You may be right about strawberries and I’ve switched it up to eating a combo of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I think optimally I would remove all plants from my diet and just eat nose-to-tail, but I really like sweet things and having a little bit along with some fat satisfies that craving. Also, because I’m not really eating much else in the way of carbs I’ve kept them between 15 and 25 net grams a day even with the berries.

[jennasaurus]

I know I’ve just started this, but I’ve been liking the progress I’ve made so far and I wanted to do an update on the last few days.

To recap since my actual n=1 might have gotten lost in the novel I wrote for my first post, my goal is to loss about 10 lbs and then put on almost that amount of weight while eating as little omega-6 fatty acids as possible and making an effort to raise the amount of omega-3 fats in my diet. The point is to change the fatty acid profile of the fat stored on my body, and to gain muscle mass as I put on weight.

Yesterday I had lost 0.2 lbs since the day before (I’m sorry to make this so much about weight, but honestly it’s the best metric I can think of for measuring progress toward my goals). I was happy with having lost 0.2 lbs because I had been up late/early working the night before and had only gotten about 3.5 hours of sleep. This is kind of a normal occurrence for me and when I get that amount of sleep I usually end of gaining some weight the next day. I should probably work on solutions for minimizing this habit. Anyway, this is an example of what I meant by environmental stressors influencing my metabolism.

This morning I had lost a pound since the day before! This amazes me because my eating has been similar to the first day I logged my diet and I’ve been eating more than my supposed BMR.

I would like to eventually talk about how I think vegetable and seed oils may influence brain function and how I hope to influence my own brain function through this experiment. I don’t really have enough science to back this up, though, so we’ll see how it goes. It can be hard for me (and I hope others can relate) talking about any mental issues that I have because I worry that others will pathologize me. In other words, there is a fear that once you admit that “something is wrong with you” others will trust your judgement less because they think of you as sick. I really don’t think the feelings and thoughts that I experience are outside of the norm for many people, but it can be hard to talk about this stuff.

P.S. I’m really enjoying sharing and having a discourse about this. Thanks again for listening

[Momof5]

I am reading along, I always enjoy reading other forum member’s Keto adventures, even if I don’t have specific advice/ideas to offer up.

I have been doing another dairy free experiment myself since the beginning of March, and hoping that it will help me. I went off plan the other day for the dairy by adding a bit of marble cheese (that I grated myself not the pre-grated garbage full of sawdust) and 1 tablespoon of sour cream for a taco salad, but that is the only dairy I have had this month so far. I miss my HWC but losing weight is more my focus for now, haha.

[jennasaurus]

Hey guys! I’ve been staying on track with my goals and loving that this thread is keeping me accountable. It also makes it easier that I have more control than usual over what I eat because of social distancing. This won’t always be the case, but I’m taking advantage of it while I can. I’m not trying to make light of dark times, just trying to see the bright side

I had been meaning to talk about the effects of polyunsaturated fats on the brain. Here are two relevant articles:

America's most widely consumed oil causes genetic changes in the brain:...

Does Eating Salmon Lower the Murder Rate?

The first article was posted on this forum by @Tmdlkwd a while ago. It’s about a mouse study that looked at the effects of soybean oil on the brains of male mice. This is not ideal in inferring how this oil would affect the brain of a human, but I think it is still worth looking at in the context of everything else we know. Apparently “the scientists found pronounced effects of the oil on the hypothalamus, where a number of critical processes take place.”

Here’s wikipedia’s description of the hypothalamus: “The hypothalamus is responsible for the regulation of certain metabolic processes and other activities of the autonomic nervous system. It synthesizes and secretes certain neurohormones, called releasing hormones or hypothalamic hormones, and these in turn stimulate or inhibit the secretion of hormones from the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus controls body temperature, hunger, important aspects of parenting and attachment behaviours, thirst,[2] fatigue, sleep, and circadian rhythms.”

If you think about illnesses of the modern world, don’t they seem to have to do with a lot of the processes regulated by the hypothalamus?

The article also said this: “The research team discovered roughly 100 other genes also affected by the soybean oil diet. They believe this discovery could have ramifications not just for energy metabolism, but also for proper brain function and diseases such as autism or Parkinson’s disease. However, it is important to note there is no proof the oil causes these diseases.”

The second article sites studies “that found a correlation between a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (most often obtained from fish) and lower murder rates.” I don’t think it’s that far of a jump to say that if omega-3 fats decrease violent behavior maybe omega-6 fats increase it, since they compete with each other in the body.

Anyway, even if this isn’t completely new info, it’s definitely relevant to my experiment!

[Tmdlkwd]

Same one you linked I think
Here’s the above mentioned study @jennasaurus👍

Have a great day😄

[SOYing The Seeds of Soybean Oil and Brain Change]

[jennasaurus]

I’ve been doing pretty well with my n=1. My weight has been stalled or going up slightly over the past few days, but I think that’s just normal weight fluctuation. I’ve lost 1.6 lbs since a little over a week ago so I’ll take that as a win and just keep calm and keto on

I thought I’d take a moment (or maybe 5 hours) to give a little background on myself since I haven’t really said much about why I’m so focused on diet and metabolism.

Around the time I started first grade (so age 6) I began having a lot of allergy symptoms including wheezing, itchy eyes, hives and a constantly runny nose. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had allergy testing done and found that I was allergic to wheat, eggs, peanuts, and yogurt. Around that time I also got diagnosed with dyslexia as I was having a hard time learning to read. I avoided the foods I was allergic to for a couple of year, but eventually decided that I had outgrown my allergies. In other words, I really wanted to eat a brownie one day and when I experienced no immediate symptoms, I decided I had been cured

Over the next few years I gained weight pretty rapidly and by age 12 I weighed 150 lbs. I was chubby and shy and while I’m lucky that I didn’t really experience much bullying, I remember the feeling of being invisible. Around that time I started restricting calories to 1200 a day and cut out breakfast. That worked really well and I ended up losing about 25 lbs by the time I turned 14. I continued to try to maintain this as I got older which became increasingly difficult and caused me to have what, in my opinion, was an unhealthy relationship with food. Any time I would deviate from my 1200 calorie limit I would gain weight rapidly and then blame my lack of will power. I’ve heard very similar stories from other women, and in many ways I think this kind of behavior has become the norm.

While my experiences with calorie restriction have certainly had a lasting effect on my mental health, I believe my low self-esteem has been reinforced by a much more insidious stressor - inflammation. Here is an article about the link between depression and inflammation:

The Role of Inflammation in Depression and Fatigue

It’s funny, I was about to write that I don’t think I have really struggled with depression per se, but I think that’s a bit of denial. There are definitely times when I have felt deeply unhappy for no apparent reason and life has seemed like just a long series of coping mechanisms. Sorry to be so bleak, I’m just trying to sort out my thoughts.

To get back to diet I often get into very negative thought patterns after eating something that doesn’t agree with me. With respect to my n=1, I think these feelings were in response to vegetable or seed oils, specifically. For a while I thought that I had a gluten intolerance because I would feel terrible after eating processed foods with wheat. I realized this happened after eating things like store-bought (gluten free) corn chips too. I did an experiment where I ate a bunch of seitan, which is just straight-up wheat gluten and while I found it disgusting, I felt otherwise fine after eating it, so it was pretty clear gluten was not the problem.

My theory is that I’m not only affected by these fats in my diet, but I’m also negatively affected by burning the fat on my body that contains these omega-6 fats because their oxidation is particularly inflammatory. For example, I have been into hiking since I was a kid and on longer hikes I often start to not only feel physically exhausted, but I start having these terrible uncontrollable thoughts circling in my head. I refer to these moments jokingly as my existential crises. After the hike, even if I’ve eaten a relatively small amount, I will often feel sick and achy for days and end up gaining a few pounds. I think this is because on those longer hikes I am most likely tapping into my fat stores, and I think that is causing an inflammatory response.

I also have noticed that recently, I tend to get achy, tired, and depressed in the evening around the time that my ketone levels rise.

At this point you might be rolling your eyes or raising your eyebrows, or some other facial expression of incredulity. If you think my theory is ridiculous, just remember, there are a bunch of people out there who literally think the world is flat. They are not joking and neither am I

[jennasaurus]

So I think I’ve had a breakthrough. I had originally said I was going to try to get about 8 grams of omega-3 fats a day when I start my bulk, but that I wouldn’t really focus on that during my cut. By chance I ended up eating more omega-3s than usual on Monday and then decided to do the same thing again yesterday. Each day I had three 1000 mg fish oil pills, 5 oz of salmon, and a can of sardines in olive oil (on top of my normal diet). This morning I’m down to my lowest weight since starting this thread. My guess is I’m eating between 6 and 8 grams a day and will continue doing this.

Here’s the podcast where I got the idea to eat 8 grams of omega-3s a day:

Why The Omega-6 To Omega-3 Ratio Is Important • Dr Artemis Simopoulos

I highly recommend listening to it!

I’ve got a busy day today, but really wanted to share this. I will be very interested to see if this continues to be helpful going forward!

[jennasaurus]

Since it’s been 2 weeks since I officially started my n=1, I thought I would compare my data from then with today’s. I’ve lost a total of 3 lbs, which to some probably doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s pretty good for me. My lowest weight a few days ago was 128, but the next day it went up over a lb and then started going down again. Comparing today’s weight with my start weight I’ve seen a loss of 1.5 lbs a week. I’d like to make that 2 lbs per week going forward, but I’d be happy with 1.5.

Here are my numbers from my smart scale thingy:

weight: was 131.6 lbs (now 128.6)
BMI: was 21.4 (now 20.9)
Body Fat: was 22.2% (now 21.5%)
Fat-free Body Weight: was 102.4 lbs (now 101.0lbs)
Subcutaneous Fat: was 20.6% (now 20.0%)
Visceral Fat: was 4 (now 3)
Body Water: was 53.4% (now 53.9%)
Skeletal Muscle: was 45.3% (now 45.8)
Muscle Mass: was 96.2 lbs (now 94.8)
Bone Mass: was 6.2 lbs (now 6.0)
Protein: was 18.6% (now 18.8%)
BMR: was 1372 (now 1358)
Metabolic Age: was 27 (now 27)

One thing that is a little annoying, but doesn’t surprise me based on my previous experience (I’ve been losing weight since October and down almost 20 lbs) is the loss of muscle mass. It could be that my scale is wrong, but it’s probably not completely off. I really should be doing more exercise, but I’ve been working so much lately that it’s hard to fit in the workouts (excuses, excuses ). I also think that my problem is that even though I’ve been eating a ketogenic diet for a long time, my body, especially in times of stress, wants to prioritize glucose as a fuel rather than fat, so my lean muscle ends up being used to create that glucose.

Something positive that continues to fascinate me is that supposedly by BMR is around 1360, but I calculated that the average amount of calories I’ve eaten per day has averaged 1434. At the beginning of this I was better about getting out and walking and I’ve tried to do some at-home body-weight exercises, but I haven’t really burned that many calories with exercise. Let’s say that on average I use an extra 150 calories on top of my BMI doing exercise. That would mean I would have a calorie deficit of only about 76 calories a day (based on a supposed BMI of 1360). This would mean my total deficit over 2 weeks would be 1064 calories or about 0.3 lbs of weight loss. So I’ve lost 10 times what my BMI says I should have. I think this is because keto and/or eating to reduce inflammation actually speeds up your metabolism. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that overexposure to glucose and inflammation leads to a slower metabolism. It will be interesting to see if I continue having this same experience.

While I didn’t really intend to talk so much about mental health here, I think one of my last posts about the topic left out some big issues because I don’t find it easy to talk about them. Mainly, I think I ignored that idea of an eating disorder contributing to my mental health status. This isn’t because I don’t think about it, I’ve actually thought about it a lot. I think I have struggled with eating disorder tendencies and I think it would be therapeutic for me to find a way to talk about that. Imma save that for another day though

[David_Stilley]

Remember the high tech scales that create all that data just give you an estimate that may not be as accurate as you want to believe it is. Just take the data with a grain of salt Jenna. It sounds like you’re doing great. With as little as I imagine you have to drop 1.5lbs per week is great progress. Two pounds per week is more likely with a larger person with more to loose. Keep you head up and be proud of your progress. You’re putting in the work and it shows. It’s always slower loosing the last few pounds, especially for a woman. Don’t forget to make allowance for weight shifts due to your menstrual cycles. It won’t stay linear with weight loss because of that factor.

[jennasaurus]

I definitely agree that the scale measurements should be taken with a grain of salt. I remember looking into it when I got the thing and I think how it works is it sends an electrical current up one leg across your pelvis and down the other leg. Because electricity passes through fat differently than muscle, the scale is supposed to be able to estimate how much of each you have. That seems like you’d be missing data for your whole upper body, but maybe I’m misunderstanding. I think a lot of what the app is doing is guessing based on my weight change, but again I’m not really sure. It would be cool to get a DEXA scan someday. #Goals

[CFLBob]

Here’s a data point I can’t forget. I have one of those smart scales (Renpho) and some time last month, I hurt my back. It caused swelling - water weight. I say I’m sure it was water because I gained four pounds in the first 24 hours, then another pound, and when I stopped the pills I was taking (plain old Ibuprofen) in a few days, lost the five pounds in another 24 hours. I couldn’t have eaten enough to gain 4 pounds in one day if I wanted to and I’m not sure anyone could.

The scale showed it as pure body fat.

[jennasaurus]

That is really interesting! My weight will often go up by 2 or 3 lbs in a day in response to something I eat and my scale will say that I gained that in body fat, but I now suspect it’s actually inflammation. Thanks for sharing and I hope your back is doing better!

[jennasaurus]

Happy Easter everybody! I thought I’d give an update on my progress. My weight loss has stalled a bit so I’m going to start avoiding dairy (except butter) to see if that makes a difference. I just started listening to Dr. Saladino’s book “The Carnivore Code” on Audible thinking that it might help me decide what direction to go in as far as following a more strict carnivore diet until I reach my goal weight. I’m not too worried about the stall because I usually have a hard time getting below 128 lbs, which is where I’m stuck now.

Since I’ve discussed mental health as a factor in my experiment I thought I would talk about how I’ve been trying to address certain of my negative thought patterns separately from my dietary n=1. As I mentioned previously, for years I ate about 1200 calories a day to maintain my weight and that had a major effect on my relationship with food. I was always hungry, tired, and food-focused. About two years ago I was at a point where I would have done anything to just not want to eat. I basically wished I had the will power to be anorexic. When you spend so much of your time, as I did, thinking about avoiding food, you start to think, “well if I can’t do this one thing that I am focusing so hard on, I must just be a weak person.”

At that point I decided what I wanted was a medication that would make me not want food. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist with the intention of asking for a drug called Contrave which was a combination of naltrexone (which I believe is given to alcoholics to block the receptors in their brain that cause them to feel good when drinking) and bupropion/wellbutrin (which is an antidepressant that can suppress appetite). I knew that I would need to do some explaining because most candidates for this drug are overweight or obese and I was neither. I explained to the psychiatrist that I thought I had a messed-up relationship with food and that avoiding or punishing myself for not avoiding it, took up a lot of my mental time and energy. I think what he got out of my story was that I was generally a rational person, but that what I was asking for was maybe not the most rational solution. He asked if we could try other strategies first and then try the medication if needed down the road.

There were a lot of things that we worked on that helped me a lot. One major thing that I got better at was replacing the negative behaviors with positive ones. Instead of spending time obsessing over what I had or hadn’t eaten I decided to focus on the science of nutrition and metabolism, and biology in general. If I had a negative thought about myself I would redirect it to say, well what can I do to make things better. I tried taking Wellbutrin briefly, but it made me feel really numb. I wasn’t suicidal per se, but I felt as if it didn’t matter if I were alive or dead and, suffice it to say, that wasn’t the way I wanted to feel.

My biggest realization was that my inability to avoid eating was not due to a lack of motivation, but due to real hunger, which is an incredibly strong biological force. I’ve realized that with the right diet I’m not actually hungry all the time and can still maintain my weight. This has allowed me to start to gain confidence in all aspects of my life and has profoundly changed the way that I look at the world.

To extend this thought, I think that a lot of eating disorders are at least partly a product of the fact that the world we live in is one that seems bent on making us fat and sick. That is part of why I am trying so hard to find the root cause of why I gain weight so easily and why I have unexplained shifts in my mood. I spent a lot of time blaming myself for those things, and so do a lot of other people. A Ketogenic lifestyle can be part of the answer, but I think there are more answers out there

[Momof5]

I wish you the best in figuring it all out Jenna --let me say though that I would be really thrilled to weight 128 hehe =).

I am 55, 5 foot, 2 inches and weigh 226 – and my goal is 130 --I have lost 67 pounds since I started Keto in February 2019. I have done years of yo-yo dieting and anorexia/bulimic/diet pill and laxative abuse over the years -and Keto has really helped me be more stable.

I am losing very slowly but my body will only lose fast when I do big Fasts or restrict calories to like 300 a day and I am sick of doing that too… so I hope that you find your answers and can share them with us =). Good luck, I will be following along and reading all your posts, even if I don’t always reply to all.

[David_Stilley]

I had to go back through the whole thread to check first Jenna and you have a lot of personal data except one thing, how tall are you? You’re hovering at about 20% body fat and I think your body doesn’t want to lose more fat or weight at your age. These are prime childbearing years for you. 128 lbs is a pretty healthy weight even if you’re only 5’0” tall or a little more. You might be pushing for a scale number your biology doesn’t want.

[jennasaurus]

I’m 5’5" so you’re right that if I get down to my goal of 120 lbs with about 19% body fat I will probably be pushing to the edge of where my body wants me to go. I’ve looked at BMI charts and the lowest healthy weight for me is usually listed as between 110 and 115. I’m removing berries and dairy from my diet for a while to try to get down to 120 as quickly as possible without restricting calories too much. I have a feeling my weight loss will pick up now that I’ve done those things as I already feel less hungry and like I’m in deeper ketosis. My plan is to keep losing weight for about the next month and after that I will probably start putting on weight whether or not I’ve gotten to my goal of 120 lbs.

I’m actually pretty excited to put weight on after this, which is definitely a first

[Momof5]

That is great, Jenna =).

[jennasaurus]

I had planned on posting about my progress more regularly, but I realized that what I’ve been doing is only posting if I can report some weight loss. I was doing that because I was basing my success with this n=1 on my ability to lose weight, which I don’t think is the right way to look at it. It is getting harder to continue losing weight so I don’t want to let that stand in the way of talking about my experience.

I had a bit of a honey mishap the other day which set me back a bit. So I get a jar of this raw and unfiltered honey thinking I’m just going to have maybe a teaspoon of it. I start eating it and it’s like the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I had a tablespoon, then later in the day another tablespoon, then before I knew it I’d eaten half the f-ing jar. I gained about 2 lbs the next day and have been slowly working that off to get down to 128.6 lbs this morning. In addition to filling up my glycogen stores I probably had some huge insulin spikes because I’m not used to eating something that sweet. I felt really tired and mentally foggy by the end of the day too. I guess honey is a no-go for right now. In moderation maybe, but apparently honey is basically crack for me so better safe than sorry!

I’ve also been considering switching up my diet. I originally thought being as close to carnivore as possible was the way to go in terms of an elimination diet that might help me avoid inflammatory foods. It’s also generally (unless you add honey) very low carb, therefore low insulin, which is obviously good for losing weight. Plus, if you focus on eating grass fed ruminants it should be a diet very low in omega-6 fats, which is my biggest concern.

The reason that I’m thinking of switching things up is that I really don’t feel any better on a carnivore-ish diet than when I’m just eating Keto, and I could just as easily avoid omega-6 fats and incorporate omega-3 fats without doing a carnivore diet. One thing that I’ve been hoping to fix is my gut health. I think the topic is extremely important, but really complex and mysterious to me. Some of my insecurities about my body come from the fact that I’ve always had lower abdominal bloating. This is pretty much constant unless I’m at a really low weight and have been fasting for like 36 hours. This bloating has not gotten better since eliminating dairy, and aside from eating a bunch of cruciferous veggies it doesn’t seem to be made much worse by eating plants.

It’s my basic understanding that carnivore can be beneficial because meat is very nutrient rich, and plants have certain toxins that can be harmful to your system. I think there is evidence to back this up (about plants I mean), but my question is, shouldn’t our bodies be more resilient when dealing with plants? Plants have been a part of many diets around the world for a very long time and I think we should have mechanisms for dealing with them and even benefiting from them under the right circumstances. However, my theory is that because of our processed, omega-6 heavy diets, our immune systems are in overdrive and our guts are compromised, meaning our bodies overreact to otherwise benign inputs.

I think it’s all about balance. For example, there is the whole debate about whether fiber is good or bad. One thing that I don’t think we need to argue about is that ketones can be very helpful at healing the gut. Short chain fats are good for creating ketones in your gut, but also, if you have the right gut bacteria, fiber can be converted into butyric acid (I think?), which produces ketones. So under the right circumstances the fiber or other nutrients in a plant food can be beneficial enough to outweigh the toxicity of that food.

I’m going to see what happens as I continue what I’m doing, but I may come up with a plan for broadening my food choices while still meeting the goals of my n=1.

[David_Stilley]

If you’re going to eat KETO instead of carnivore I highly recommend fermented vegetables like sauerkraut or kimchi. I make my own and it’s easy and a good way to reduce the carb content of vegetables as well as the best source for probiotic bacteria. It might help your lower gut bloat. Introduce fermented foods a little bit at a time daily and increase as you feel comfortable. I think raw fermented vegetables are the best way to improve gut health while including plants. Also cooked vegetables are easier to digest than raw vegetables and salad greens.

I did pretty well on Carnivore and leaned out considerably. But I slept really poorly. My Carnivore trial ended when I was in the hospital. That’s when I realized how much it was having an effect on my sleep. I’m sleeping several hours more per night now. Overall I gained some weight but I’m feeling better with more sleep. I have some experimenting to do myself still to find a good balance. I’m trying to lower the carbs more again to see if I can maintain my sleep pattern.