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

[Karim_Wassef]

Takes 6 months or so. I had to prune it constantly and either sell or give pieces away.

[RightNOW]

That’s really beautiful Karim. Makes my backyard garden seem so mundane!

[Karim_Wassef]

thank you. hope you enjoy the vids on my channel too.

[Karim_Wassef]

So I have to admit that I don’t have a solution for sustaining the GKI 1-3 range… over my entire history, this seems to only be a transitional stage

If I fast, I go into autophagy < 1 … if I eat for more than 3 days, I quickly get up over 3…

The sweet spot seems quite elusive…

I can literally see a switch within 24 hours between the two extremes (>3 and <1).

Over this last week, there’s only one day where I got the balance right

That was at a glucose of ~ 55 and ketones ~ 3.0 … and a glucose of 55 mg/dl happens to be ~3.0 mmol/L

So when the units are the same, the balancing point happens at around 3.0 mmol/L for both glucose and ketones… or a GKI of 1.0

My conclusion is that I should try and balance my ketones to be around 3.0 … higher and I will drop into autophagy, and lower drops me out of deep ketosis…

I don’t think I can achieve that with cyclic fasting and feasting unless I use my ketones as an indicator for when it’s time to break the fast.

A more sustainable mechanism is to do keto with sufficient protein… on and off… so, protein cycling.

This might be the foundation of phase 4 - protein fasting.

[Karim_Wassef]

So… I went up from 177 to 186 overnight…

Yup - 9 lbs - in 24hrs … can I gain weight or what?

This dropped to 183.8 post my morning water flush + food flux so that was 2.2 lbs of flow through. But that still leaves 6.8 lbs. I’d like to think it’s all water and muscle… but we’ll see

[Karim_Wassef]

So started the feeding cycle at 172… two days later, I’m at 183.8… that’s a net +11.8 lbs

I started this fasting cycle at 183.2 (Monday morning April 1st), so I’ve gained weight on this 5:2 fast with one more feeding to go before its called… maybe I’m pioneering “fasting your way to gains”.

That’s while OMAD and vegan… so you can imagine me on carnivore. Or SAD… my weight of 255 was not an accident.

Nick - still sticking to your bet??

Tonight is one more (and last) day of refeeding.

I don’t think it would be fair to measure the gain from Friday morning (fasted) to Monday morning (fed) and call that as the refeed gain…

Seems more meaningful to wait another day or two and take Tuesday or Wednesday as a more accurate measure of net refeed effect… Friday morning to Wednesday morning?

That’s disjointed so maybe it should be Wednesday to Wednesday? But that’s not refeed gain, it’s more net gain or loss…

What do you guys think?

[OldDoug]

Karim, I think the ~.5 lbs. per day of fat loss is a good bet. Other than that, the lean mass and water retention thing needs to sort itself out.

[Karim_Wassef]

A gallon of water is ~8 lbs so it’s dense enough to make a big difference. Need a correction factor.

Wondering if it’s better to do 6:1 fasting cycles vs the current 5:2… or maybe I really just need one meal a week (OMAW) 7:0?

[primal.peanut]

A gallon of water is ~8 lbs so it’s dense enough to make a big difference. Need a correction factor.

I’ve noticed recently that I get super thirsty on feasting days. Glad it’s not just me!

I was recently out of town for a week and ended up with an eating schedule of 40h feasting, then 90h fasting, then 40h feasting again. My weight went 157 lb (fasted) -> 170 lb (+13 lb from feast) -> 159 lb (-11 lb, net +2 lb after fasting) -> 167 lb (+8 lb from feast #2). Like you, my weight swings around a lot when I’m cycling between feasting and fasting!

5:2 (actually 144h fast : 24h feed) has been working well for me. I find that if I shift to 4:3 I maintain my weight, and at 3:4 or more I’ll gain weight, but at 5:2 I can consistently lose 1-3 lb/week. I haven’t tried 6:1.

[Karim_Wassef]

Thanks Neil. Yes- that mirrors my experience exactly.

The unknown is the real fat to lean mass composition.

I’m frankly not interested in losing weight. I look and feel fine. I want to lose the remaining lower belly and loose skin, but my focus is body fat % due to muscle gain.

I have been over 190lbs for decades… being 170 feels like a “lightweight” and I don’t really like it.

[Karim_Wassef]

So my morning ketones are actually much higher than I expected after yesterday’s feasting … 1.23 GKI

[OldDoug]

I’ve noticed recently that I get super thirsty on feasting days. Glad it’s not just me!

It makes a huge difference. Once ate a lot of really salty pretzels - later calculated it would take 18 lbs. of water just to get me back to normal salt concentration in the body, to say nothing of all the carbohydrates. I can always count on 10 lbs. going away quickly when starting a fast - after 24 hours or maybe 36, like from dinner one day to the morning of the second day after that.

[Don_Q]

So… I went up from 177 to 186 overnight…

Yup - 9 lbs - in 24hrs … can I gain weight or what?

Nick - still sticking to your bet??

CHEATER!!!

I don’t think I could gain 9lbs if you locked me in a Krispy Kreme overnight while on a saline drip lol. You sir have level 1000 water retention skills.

I’m not liking my odds. Did we bet money???

[Karim_Wassef]

no money, just fun.

But at this rate, I’ve already gained 11.8lbs which is ~2x your bet of 6.7 and 1.5x my bet of 8.2

No bet changes after midnight today… so place your bets.

Karim 8.2
Don 6.7

I think with another day coming… we’re both going to be very wrong. That’s why I proposed taking the “end measure” on Wednesday to allow the water retention to dissipate.

The good news is that this is the first cycle, and there are three more with more betting cycles to go…

[OldDoug]

You sir have level 1000 water retention skills.

That’s why I proposed taking the “end measure” on Wednesday to allow the water retention to dissipate.

Karim, a few times I’ve felt like there is an “overshoot” thing going on - the body swinging back toward one way and going too far or over-correcting. Just a thought and all this stuff remains fascinating.

[Karim_Wassef]

I agree. It’s adapting to the fasting by “prepping” more.

[Don_Q]

Just had an epiphany. @Karim_Wassef, how long did your rmr test take? Is there a timestamp on the printout?

[Karim_Wassef]

It took about 15-20 minutes… I think the first 5 minutes, they were just level setting and then they collected the data with each breath.

At the end, they went back and looked at the total data over time and removed the extremes (highest and lowest) datapoints, and used the remaining to determine the average.

[Karim_Wassef]

Dr Bikman on gluconeogenesis…

[Don_Q]

Thought so. It may not have been long enough for an accurate RER. My Korr device has a 2 min calibration cycle, a 3 minute wrm up and it requires 12mins for RMR and 24 minutes as a minimum setting for RER. Minimum time for an RER for me is 30 mins with self calibration.

I just changed the setting on my machine from RMR+RER to just RMR, and my RER went up to .9. Since I’m 48 hrs fasted, so this us physiologically impossible.

It wouldn’t shock me if they conducted the test below the minimum necessary for a valid RER to jam in more appts per day.

The next time you go in, get a picture of the device with brand & model, and google the manual. I bet they’re cutting corners to book more appointments. The RER # they gave you (.79) was bullshit.

If they’re intentionally cutting corners, it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to parlay that into 3 new tests done correctly gratis.