Karim's Extended Fast Tracker - come along for the ride

[Karim_Wassef]

She’s resigned to the fact that I’m going through with this…
Also - I’m feeling much better with Leucine so she’s not commenting much on it

Working late today, but I’ll have the update soon

Here’s an interesting digest on Leucine…

[Karim_Wassef]

So definitely going the wrong way… on paper…
But I’m not discouraged. I’m going to give this more time to see where it levels off.

It IS deviating pretty fast from the plan

Glucose has hit as low as 38 (with Leucine) and Ketones as high as 6.7 with GKI ranging between 0.35 and 0.63 - so all the metabolic indicators and in line… that’s why I’m still confident that I’m really still burning fat and the weight gain is all water. Where else would all the ketones be coming from?

It is totally bizarre to gain weight while fasting … very very strange, but feels very good.

[Don_Q]

Weird. Maybe the breatharians weren’t just blowing smoke this whole time?

Definitely just water retention, but the million dollar question is why? It doesn’t seem like the small doses of leucine could manage an effect that large. Or could it? Has anything else changed? Maybe muscle soreness/inflammation might do it? Definitely weird and surprising to see weight going up 15 days into a fast!

[Karim_Wassef]

Hormones… the reason we lose so much water when first keto or fasting is because Insulin drops.

Leucine seems to be reversing that BUT without the lockup of fat cells. I can have normal water levels AND burn fat.

Also very strange in the effect on my lifting… I find my intensity comparable to when I was eating again! But my heart rate increases dramatically - not sure why… but I can lift more, longer and with more intensity when it does. Recovery is also much faster.

I really think that the water weight that I’m gaining is the same as what I’d normally get back once the fast would have ended, so this is actually more representative of where my real weight is likely to be. If that’s right, then the first 10.4 lbs of water lost due to insulin decline will all come back over this week. I’ve only gained back 1.6 lbs, so there’s another 8.8 lbs of water gain left!

I have to admit that I am very very thirsty and I’m taking in a lot more salt. If I drink without enough salt, I get electrolyte headaches. That’s happened a couple of times now - I’m just not used to this during a fast.

[Karim_Wassef]

Ok. Here’s a relevant review…

So the idea is that Leucine drives anabolism but when taken during fasting, it drives increased protein catabolism to sufficiently extract the other necessary amino acids so protein synthesis elsewhere can occur.

I cannot disagree with the logic, but it doesn’t sound that far off from the basis of autophagy… go catabolic on old, weak of unnecessary protein (loose skin) to extract the necessary amino acids to drive protein synthesis where it is needed (demand due to lifting) in the muscles promoted by Leucine…

That’s my conclusion so far… thoughts?

[Karim_Wassef]

and here’s another n=1 showing Leucine increasing his IF ketone levels

[Alpha]

water is very heavy.

dehydrate versus retain is obvious and logical reason for weight increase/loss.

but why and what is the cause of this dehydrate/retain alternation.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 16

Anabolic hormone signaling (mToR) seems to promote retaining more water. Insulin and Leucine both seem to have this effect.

Both have inflammatory effects that require more fluid. The difference, I think, is that insulin is systemic and effects the whole body. It also locks up all fat release. Leucine is more skeletal muscle specific and should actually accelerate fat consumption.

Apparently, the Leucine hormonal reaction seems to be threshold dependent and needs to be 2.5-3g every 6hrs in order to be effective. I’ve been doing 0.8g every 3hrs (or 2hrs on day 13) to be conservative. This may be having a mild effect, but not really very anabolic.

I’m learning more about this as I go.

Day 16 and my weight, fat, lean and bf% are identical to yesterday’s! Given that I’ve consumed at least 2700 cal during that window of time, I’m still loading up water. It’s just unusual for the effects to be exactly rebalancing to end up at the exact same state.

My theory was that the Leucine hydration would be comparable to the Insulin and that I had 10 lbs of fill up. But since Leucine mainly effects skeletal muscle compared to Insulin, and there may be less overall fat to fill up, that may have been too much water to expect.

Anyway, it “looks” like a plateau. We’ll see what the next few days bring.

[Karim_Wassef]

Less hungry than yesterday but not the usual satiated fasting state. Much more stomach growling than usual. Not as much energy but I haven’t taken any salts or supplements yet. Hate to think I’m getting dependent on Leucine for my ebergy pick up.

I also have to decide if I’m sticking to my 0.8g or push it to 3.2g twice a day. My instinct is to go a full week with the conservative dose to get a true measure of its effect.

This morning’s blood readings are 58G, 6.6K, 0.49GKI so in the deep ketosis autophagic zone.

I’ve been measuring after each Leucibe dose (lots of pin pricks) and sometimes that’s confiunded by other activities like lifting, UV, sauna, ice… not seeing any measurable difference due to the dosing so far so I’ll probably back off the intense measurement frequency.

For example, yesterday I went from 6.4K to 4.6K with 45 min of intense lifting. That was my lowest ketones and coincided with a 0.8g Leucine dose but I always see a ketone drop with lifting.

[Don_Q]

For example, yesterday I went from 6.4K to 4.6K with 45 min of intense lifting. That was my lowest ketones and coincided with a 0.8g Leucine dose but I always see a ketone drop with lifting.

This gave me a thought. It makes sense that lifting during an extended fast would influence autophagy, since there is muscle damage that must be repaired. If the Glucose Ketone Index (GKI) accurately reflects autophagy, it should be able to measure it in the days following lifting as muscle repair is undertaken.

In your present fast, it sounds as though you lift nearly every day. Are there days that you have not lifted where you could compare the GKI readings to days where you do lift? Is there a pattern? Since it takes at least several days to fully repair after lifting, there probably isn’t a stretch of non-lifting long enough, but you’ve been tracking GKI for a little while. Do you have data from prior fasts where perhaps you lifted less often?

It would be very cool to be able to measure the extent to which heavy resistance training influences autophagy!

[Karim_Wassef]

On days I don’t lift (or at reduced intensity), my ketones do rise higher.

GKI is an instantaneous measure but it’s not very meaningful immediately after an event (lifting, supplementation, etc…). You’re right that it’s the overall trend while in a consistent state that is meaningful. It’s why I ran a histogram on GKI in an earlier post to see my mean and deviation.

I usually bounce back within a couple of hours. My last reading today was 60G and 7.4K, 0.45GKI. I’m lifting and sauna now, so it’ll be interesting…

So - my intensity fasted with Leucine is comparable as it was with carbs… that is pretty intense given it’s 16days and I’m only at a conservative 0.8mg every 3 hours still. I am incredibly thirsty and need much more salt. I’m the sauna, it takes me twice as long to build up a sweat… the heat doesn’t bother me as much either.

Maybe the 2.5+g is for non-fasting, so 0.8g while fasting is a sufficient hormonal trigger?

[Karim_Wassef]

Post lift and sauna, 59G and 5.3K, 0.62GKI… so around 2 ketones drop in about 1.5hrs. I did my usual 45min lift + 35min sauna.

Post sauna was rough- Maybe hyperthermia with blurred vision, dizziness, exhaustion, sensitivity to light. I had no headache though and it went away in a couple of minutes.

I do feel tired, but I can manage through for another couple of hours until the next Leucine dose. Sounds a bit like a carboholic, ey?

Actually no- when I was a carboholic and building, I’d immediately leave the gym to eat as much rice and chicken as I could get… but there are some similarities since I’m both cases, I’m trying to be anabolic.

I don’t expect to build any lean muscle while fasting, but I want to retain and conserve as much of it as I can rather than convert it to glucose… my focus now is to redirect gluconeogenesis to using only lipids (as much as I can).

Now that my weight has leveled off, tomorrow will be the big reveal (I think). Either I start back down the rollercoaster or I go back to retaining more water.

[Don_Q]

Is tomorrow the DEXA day? Exciting! Hopefully you are getting another RMR? The RMR will tell you a lot about how your metabolism is holding up. If it’s still running at an olympic 2300kcal per day (or even close), then all is well metabolically so full speed ahead. If it’s dropped to 1600, maybe add a few days to the refeed to recover.

Just a thought.

[Karim_Wassef]

Friday is DEXA. Tomorrow is just the first day post-stall.

[Karim_Wassef]

Three hours later 59G and 7.3K, 0.45GKI

I do think that Leucine is ketogenic. I’m surprised in hasn’t come across this before.

[NinMD]

I’m also very interested to see how this has affected your RMR. I have done fasts up to 5 days, and had fully intended to try longer fasts. However, I got gun-shy when someone here posted a video in a different fasting thread where Dr. Phinney shared evidence that fasts lasting longer than a few days permanently damaged people’s metabolism.

[Karim_Wassef]

metabolism is a function of lean mass. I have lost some, but ignoring the BM content (~4lbs), that’s only 4lbs of total lean mass lost out of 140lbs, so less than 3%.

If you starve yourself with reduced calories, the lean mass decline is harsh and that will hurt metabolism, but ketosis & fasting are not the same. They protect lean mass.

[Don_Q]

However, I got gun-shy when someone here posted a video in a different fasting thread where Dr. Phinney shared evidence that fasts lasting longer than a few days permanently damaged people’s metabolism.

I have a lot of respect for Dr. Phinney, but I don’t think he has any real evidence of that. I have run into folks who are on their 20th or 30th extended fast, and their metabolism are simply astonishing.

File it under strange but true, but folks who do serial fasting or cyclic fasting have the most impressive metabolisms I have ever seen. My friend primal.peanut over at the IDM clinic has been doing cyles of 2 days feasting : 5 days fasting for about 6 months. He’s lost about 75lbs during that time. The predicted RMR for him using the standard predictive equations (Mifflin St Jeor, Harris-Benedict, etc) is around 1700Kcal/day. His actual measured RMR runs up to 2400kcal/day when he’s eating (which isn’t often). His metabolism is 3 standard deviations from the mean. He’s basically a metabolic Olympian. When you cycle hypercaloric feasting with 0kcal fasting, it raises your metabolism into the stratosphere through a process I call metabolic ratcheting.

A few months in, he became sufficiently concerned about his metabolism because of all the fasting that he bought an indirect calorimeter to test his own every day. This is his chart for the past couple weeks, with the RMR in Kcal/day in the left Y axis and blue dots/line as measured RMR. His metabolism moves in a pretty tight range between significantly above average to olympian. I don’t think Dr. Phinney has ever measured the metabolism of someone who cycles Feast:Fast, because the half dozen that I know have metabolisms that are amazing.

Karim is another good example. He started this fast with a tested RMR of 2360 when a normal person his age/height/weight should be closer to 1700. If his metabolism dropped 25% he’d basically be in the normal range!

[NinMD]

I really hope this is true. Do you have any examples where the person’s metabolism was measured before and after fasts lasting more than a few days (let’s say 5 or more)? I did many days of fasting over the course of a year, but only up to 5 days at a time.

[Karim_Wassef]

I had also done a 12 day fast and had been cycling 3-fasting days/4-feasting days per week since.