Day 3 and still flushing out water and detoxing from food…
down 1lb of muscle mass and 5.2lbs of fat (mostly water on all accounts)… overall down 8lbs in 3 days.
Ketones stubbornly still under 1.0 but at least GKI is finally under 10! LOL… my interpretation is that my body has stopped the weight gain engine and is starting to accept that it’s going to need to start cutting back. Stubborn efficient body!
Loving this chart your making. Very interesting! I wouldn’t have though a .7 ketone reading on day 3 of a fast was possible.
I’m having a chocolate break from my regularly scheduled carnivory tonight. Nothing horrendous but a full 6 pieces of 70% chocolate. I’m curious what the impact will be on tomorrow’s GKI.
I guess fasting is basically carnivore since I’m living off animal fat (my own) 
Well I am allowing myself to have coffee with ACV and Stevia so there is some plant incursion…
Today is going to be interesting. It’s day 4 and I am feeling “slow”. Not hungry but “slow”. I’m interpreting this as a reduction in metabolic rate and pushing through.
Also, my weight went UP from 193 to 193.2 with identical composition to yesterday. I take that as a good sign since this is usually the water filling effect… as fat cells are depleted of lipids and refill with heavier water.
It would have been better if it had gone up by a couple of pounds since that would indicate real lipid consumption but I’ll take it… 
I’ll publish all the results after I get back from the gym tonight.
It’s so weird. I had a half a Lindor 70% chocolate bar last night (6 pieces). Today I had a solid breakfast of fatty beef soup and two cups of coffee with a lot of cream around noon and at 5 pm my glucose was 61 and ketones 4.3 giving me a GKI of 0.79. I don’t understand these results at all.
Any ideas?
There’s little to no protein and a lot of fat in your diet. Can you calculate the macros? That would help.
But working with that assumption, you’re running on predominately fat = ketones and that’s what the results show. If the caloric intake is the same as your metabolic rate, then you won’t gain or lose weight. The ketones are all exogenous.
I say that I’m on a “cannibal diet” when I’m fasting, but sadly nobody else thinks its funny…
Why do you think this? I have plenty of protein. Probably more than at any time in my life. I’d guess around 65 grams a day on average which is about 1.3 g/kg of my total body weight.
Maybe it’s in the other foods you eat? The soup has some but I was basing it on your description.
Yes, I only mentioned the food that I’d already eaten that day, as of my testing time, since I was trying to explain that I was in no way fasted.
My typical food consumption daily is a cup of beef soup in the morning. But it’s really much more a beef stew it’s so thick with meat, fat, and marrow. Then later in the morning two big coffees with about 5 tablespoons of 18% cream. Then for dinner typically steak or roast beef or beef ribs and a fair bit of fat trim.
My macros are definitely high fat. Other than the cream and liver once a week I have no carbohydrates. So my fat is about 80% of my calories.
Day 5
finally broke through to autophagy… took 5 days.
still flushing but it’s a net 9lbs of loss and 6lbs of fat.
I’m still not comfortable and food is still lingering in my mind - shame that I haven’t broken the addiction yet. lol
Last night I got the fasting chills. I don’t think there’s a way to avoid it and apparently it’s a sign that the body is moving to heavy fat usage with white adipose fat turning into brown visceral fat.
The idea is that 1. The body is conserving energy by generating less heat … and 2. The fat that was being used to generate heat is being repurposed to generate energy for the body.
He says it’s consumed at 6x the normal rate… so the chills are good. Maybe I’ll see some corresponding data.
And coffee helps so that supports my exception for drinking coffee, tea and water… with salt of course.
Is there actually evidence that autophagy starts at some specific GKI value? I’m actually suspicious of this. I’m nearly always having a GKI at around 1 while in the fed state and consuming plenty of protein. It wouldn’t be reasonable that I’m always in a state of deep autophagy however. Wouldn’t that imply that I’m in a permanent state of destroying cellular components but without a rebuilding period?
Further, these sorts of numbers are pretty typical of people following the PKD diet which is designed to be followed permanently.
There’s no data confirmation yet but the combination of low glucose + high ketones would indicate that the body is running in catabolic mode.
With catabolism, the body is breaking tissue down and using up fat stores.
However, I doubt that there is no rebuilding if you’re consistently in that mode. It’s just that recycling is very high and there are enough opportunities for short anabolic events to keep you stable.
We tend to think of the body’s states as continuous, but they’re far from it. Even with catabolic states, it’s a wave that goes deep into catabolism but must switch into anabolism long enough to keep vital processes going.
Blood cells are a good example of this. While fasting, I will continue to lose massive quantities of blood cells. They just have a short shelf life. So, the body must make new blood cells - the difference is that it scavenges and recycles like mad. The efficiency of reuse/recycling under autophagy is most likely orders of magnitude higher than under a normal state.
You’re also right to question GKI if the ketone source is unknown. If it’s low GKI driven by exogenous fat, it’s probably not autophagic. If it’s low GKI driven by endogenous fat , it probably is autophagic. As usual, the underlying states do matter.
Day 6 start… good but confusing
The muscle mass went UP (?) probably indicating more water content in the muscles unless the “other” category is giving up some amino acids. My scale captures fat and muscle, but the remainder is unclassified.
I had always assumed that this was water and waste.
Glad to be in the 180s again with 11lbs lost in 6 days and still feeling solid.
I hadn’t realized that household scales had reached the accuracy point of taking .1 differences seriously. Do they group water with muscle or fat? What kind do you have?
GKI has very limited application, there, especially for people who aren’t eating a substantial amount of carbs. Protein is the most potent inhibitor of autophagy there is, and somebody on a keto diet may be running fairly high ketones and fairly low glucose, with no reason to think autophagy is increased at all.
Coming from a carb-heavy diet, fasting results in the stomach emptying, the small intestine gradually emptying, the ‘post-absorptive’ phase occurring where insulin and blood sugar begin declining, and eventually glycogen depletion occurs. It’s reasonable for most people to assume that autophagy is ramping up during the second day of fasting, here, or the third day at the latest.
If eating keto, then glycogen storage should be much less, i.e. ~100 grams or so, versus 400 or 500 if eating carbs. I think it’s a “maybe/maybe not” thing if autophagy could begin to be up-regulated toward the end of the first day of fasting, there. Things are more favorable for autophagy starting out, since insulin should be lower and glucagon higher, but the main thing is for mTOR to be suppressed and AMPK to be activated, both these things essentially happening in the absence of nutrients.
It’s not totally either/or for tearing down protein structures and rebuilding - even if certainly in autophagy and scavenging protein, some amount of necessary cellular processes are still going on where protein is used.
