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

[damgal]

Your data/experiment/experience is interesting, Karim, even if some of it is above my head. I’m still silently following along.

[Karim_Wassef]

thanks. It’s good to know that someone is reading my journal of experiments…

maybe it’s good for comic relief …

[Karim_Wassef]

Here’s my new protein soup plan … 70g of protein so 0.5g / lb lean mass

ended up being 50/50 protein and fat calories and <600 calories with 2g of carb so I’ll call it keto-adjacent fasting-mimicking.

[Karim_Wassef]

So… day 12 phase 3 adaptive protein fast

Lost 7.5lbs overnight as if I were fasting and 2.2 GKI this morning… down from 3.7 GKI last night.

So this combo is powerful but not magic. At 120g of protein, I blunted it’s ability to keep me in autophagy. I’ll try 70g today, reduce my stress and see.

[primal.peanut]

Karim, just wanted to mention that I’m very much still interested in your progress and read all of your updates! I’ve subscribed to this thread so that I get an email right away every time you post. I just haven’t been saying much because I don’t really have anything to add.

One question for you: how did you decide when to test your blood glucose and ketones? I see you’ve been testing multiple times per day and I’m just wondering what led you to the schedule that you’ve settled on. I ordered a Keto-Mojo that should arrive today and I’m going to try to get over my fear of sharp pointy things to collect some extra data (for science!), and I’m trying to figure out how often I want to test.

I’ve read that blood glucose reacts much faster to (e.g.) eating than blood ketones do, but you seem to test both together always. Do you think that’s been useful? And are you testing with two meters or swapping strips in a single meter?

[Karim_Wassef]

Thanks Neil!

I do think it’s important to capture both at once. It’s a measure of the current state- if one is leading or lagging, I actually want to see it for myself and evaluate the GKI trend over time including time effects.

I started out measuring in the morning and night. Then as I discovered the drivers for metabolic change, I started doing before+after event testing:

Food
Supplements
Cardio
HITT
Weightlifting
Sauna
UV
Cold packs
Ice baths
Cold showers
Sleep
Work
Stress
Illness

Basically - I decided to ignore what is supposed to happen and measure it for myself. I do believe we’re in the age of self health.

Interestingly, not only did I discover my body’s own peculiarities, but I found out that they change over time! So the “me” from 6 months ago and the “me” today are not the same biological entity metabolically…

It was kind of like spying on my body… figuring out what he’s really up to… or in a less sinister and more harmony-loving view: I started listening to my body.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a great sense of hearing when it comes to my health and the brain chemistry is totally pleasure and satisfaction driven. I needed to really listen to what was going on.

So testing before and after allowed me to interrogate my body…

Me : “Dude… here’s a tomato… like it?”
My body : “no… too much sugar!”
Me : “come on!!!”

Me : “fine! How about 1 cup of coffee?”
My body : “that rocks! I dig it”
Me : “how about 2?”
My body : “not bad but not too excited about it”
Me : “let’s go for 3?”
My body : “no way… now you got me all stressed out”
Me : “$&@&@@&$”

I did this with everything I put in my mouth. It’s how I found out my mother in law was still cooking with seed oils when she said she wasn’t!!!

Also found out some of my weightlifting pills were just caffeine and sugar…

Found out limes are too sugary… they don’t drop my glucose as much as they bomb my ketones…

Found out that stressful work calls can literally blow my glucose from 75 to 115 fasted!!

Found out that too much cardio also raises my glucose…

Found out that my body used to start with high glucose and low ketones before I was fat adapted… then ketones would climb as I fast during the day… now it’s the other way around… start with high ketones and they drop as I use them.

I’m finally having a real honest conversation with my body and he’s got a lie detector that allows me to find the truth.

So 8 pricks a day at $1.50 each … totally worth it to have that dialogue.

[primal.peanut]

So 8 pricks a day at $1.50 each … totally worth it to have that dialogue.

Thanks for the details! What’s your protocol for testing the effect of food/drinks on your body? How long after eating do you check your glucose and ketones?

[Karim_Wassef]

I usually wait one hour.

However, since I’m usually doing something else … exercise, etc… I also get secondary indications by looking at the “before” state of the next event… that could give me another “after” reading for the previous event.

[Karim_Wassef]

another proposed glucose reducer to consider: ginger

[Karim_Wassef]

So today’s ketone response was the opposite of yesterday’s…

Ending at 80G, 2.4K = 1.85GKI

Compared to yesterday ending 94G, 1.4K = 3.7GKI

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 13, phase 3, adaptive protein fasting

This is technically the 55th & last day of this three phase fasting experiment. The first phase was 19 fasting and 8 eating (with 1 more fasting day midweek). The second phase was two weeks of 5 days fasting. The third is mostly 4 fasting days per week that morphed into protein fasting.

I had my last vegan meal last night. I will OMAD until tonight when I break my fast. This will be both a break from vegan fasting and any extended fasting.

So ~1.0 GKI despite getting 70g of protein yesterday. I would say this is very sustainable and nowhere near the intensity of extended fasting. After my carnivore, I’m considering protein fasting + 3 days real fasting + glucose lowering supplements.

Didn’t experience the intense hunger I was expecting.

I have a long day of manual labor ahead of me, so I’ll stay hydrated and see.

Looking end to end… I started at 195 and ended at 172 so 23lbs technically gone. I can say with some DEXA confidence that probably ~10lbs is probably real fat loss.

I am looking forward to the carnivore feast tonight but I can’t think about it much or I’ll get weak and drained. The anticipation of breaking is fast is really harsh mentally for me.

[Karim_Wassef]

Interesting how linear the ketone ramp is. I saw it climb last night and extrapolating points right to this morning’s result.

[Karim_Wassef]

I’ll start the betting on my reverse-fasting weight gain in the carnivore thread.

Karim's muscle gain carnivore adventure

Anyone want to bet on how much my weight change will be between this morning fasted vegan at 172.2 and tomorrow’s morning fed carnivore weigh in? Tonight is the first carni feast and tomorrow is the second at a family event. I’m betting 7lbs days for sat-sun and another 5lbs sun-mon…

I’ll post all my final results here tomorrow (most likely).

[Karim_Wassef]

Midday after manual labor while fasted: 59G, 4.7K so 0.7GKI… that’s impressive given that I had 70g of protein & 30g fat last night!

I think the distressing effect of manual labor (vs. normal workday) and the constant but not intense exertion is excellent for slowly using ketones and thereby consistently generating ketones.

Two days of this is like a week of cardio in my opinion.

I can definitely see the change in ketone ramp from this morning.

[Karim_Wassef]

3.5 hrs until the end of the experiment… steaks in the fridge and wife is cooking up a storm… the house smells like a restaurant and temptation is running rampant

The manual labor does work up an echo of hunger too so the combination is interesting.

[Karim_Wassef]

Ending the night after the feast at 95G, 1.4K
Before was 57G, 4.2K

… big meal.

[Karim_Wassef]

Two final results coming up tomorrow -

1. Overall data review… and conclusions
2. Loose skin results

The carnivore thread will pick it up after that-

https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/karims-muscle-gain-carnivore-adventure/84959/100000

[Karim_Wassef]

First, the overall results:

My conclusion is that using the GKI adaptively to determine when to fast and when to eat is probably the best way to stay in the green target zone of 1-3.

The extended fast probably had great longevity benefits, but I’m going to take a break from it and focus on building up next.

I hit my extreme limits on blood glucose minimum (33) and ketones maximum (9.3).

Overall weight loss was 23lbs with probably half being real fat.

Definitely identified supplements that seem to help maintain lower GKI - to be tested in the building up phase next.

[Karim_Wassef]

ok. now for the most embarrassing part but I’m sharing in the hope that it could help someone else.

I started in March a little heavy at 195. Around 10 days into my continuous extended fast, I took this picture - it shows a little loose skin, but not too bad: 3/14/2019

If this is too much, I’ll remove the pics and try to describe it… I tried to be as specific to this area and as presentable as possible, like a medical setting.

but here’s what I look for as measures of loose skin change:

1. Bellybutton - you can see the depth of the sag
2. Rib to Hip - those stripes on the side
3. Lower belly - stripes on the bottom

I also tried to take the pictures while in a vacuum since this was reasonably consistent and showed the most loose skin effect.

I went through the rest of the extended fast and then refeed and a week later in the cyclic phase, I took this pic: 4/13/2019

I had lost more weight and I think this actually shows that the loose skin was getting worse. Basically, I was losing fat faster than skin again.

This is when I tried something different (I’ll share at the end) and 5 days later 4/18/2019

and I think I’m seeing some definite improvement. It might just be my eyes but I think it got better.

Around 3 days later 4/21/2019:

I think it’s better still…

Then 4 days later 4/25/2019:

Here it looks like it’s getting a little worse, but that’s when I started the berberine/bitter mellon and I think the higher GKI was having a short term effect of losing more fat than skin - that’s even though I actually saw a weight gain from eating while using the supplements.

And finally the last day before breaking the fast: 4/27/2019:

The side skin is loose but looking like it’s tightening. The bellybutton looks less deep and the lower belly wrinkles looks smaller (to me).

I’ll let you be the judges of whether this is real progress or not, but here’s what I think:

1. Without collagen (since I was vegan), I think I had a hard time rebuilding skin. I think autophagy worked and adding more external food protein was useful, but I suspect that having more direct collagen in the diet may have been more effective.

2. It’s hard to measure loose skin when fat and water is fluctuating - cyclic fasting made this harder.

3. I think the skin is more than just the outer layer. My experience is that the muscle underneath is just as important.

Ok - so what did I do?

1. I started vacuum training. You can find plenty of videos on this and the primary intent is to reduce the waist overall. But I found that tightening the muscle underneath actually helped tighten the skin too.

2. I started using a waist trainer. It’s basically a belt that I wrap around my waist tightly after performing a vacuum. This basically forces the skin into a smaller volume.

That’s what I did. I don’t think the extended fasting helped me lose loose skin. I think the training and waist volume reduction worked better.

I am uncomfortable sharing these pictures, but I promised I would - so there they are… for now.

[primal.peanut]

Looking good, Karim! Thanks for sharing! I haven’t been as careful at documenting my progress as you have, but to my untrained eye I think I see a gradual improvement in my own “stripes” from fasting as well.

Quick question for you. I know you’ve been tracking GKI like a madman, testing yourself as many as 8 times per day. I did 8 tests yesterday and the sides of my fingers on my left (non-dominant) hand, where I did all the testing, feel like a pin cushion now! Any tips for how to make repeated tests less uncomfortable?