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

[Karim_Wassef]

what’s your cue?

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 7 - weight results

So with all the gurgling was a substantial flushing effect that resulted in 3lbs of loss in one day. Clearly, this isn’t really how it works. The fat and muscle loss has been slowly accruing and filled with water over the week and my body has finally decided that it’s not going to get resources to refill - hence the purge.

So far, it’s going well but I expect it to level off.

I don’t have food cravings, but I have mental desire for some foods… not sure if that makes sense, but I’m sure someone has felt the same.

My wife is starting the “good cooking” campaign to seduce me back to the dark side but I’m holding firm

[Ilana_Rose]

I feel like I have to pee all the time but when I go there’s almost nothing there. I’ll wake up several times in the night to pee for only a tiny amount each time. On carnivore I don’t ever wake to urinate. Also, my urine flow is slow and jerky with imflamation. I was like this for years and thought it was just normal aging.

[OldDoug]

I was actually being a little facetious in my reference to the Boz ratio. She claims that you get certain specific results at certain ratios and she really lacks any good scientific evidence for her claims. Here is a chart: …According to her, high level autophagy is “almost guaranteed” at a GKI of one and is useful for controlling cancer spread and immunological issues.

Yeah - it just struck me as wrong the first time I heard the claims. I do think GKI can be an influence or indicator - the stage for increased autophagy is often set by higher ketones and lower blood sugar, the same as it is with higher glucagon and decreased insulin. But the real question is “Are you eating or not?”

She, and other people suggesting that GKI is useful in cancer treatment, believe that the metabolic state of the GKI itself represents is what’s operative not the change from a high to a low GKI. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be helpful for cancer treatment, I actually think that there is preliminary reasons to think that it might, but I don’t think that we have any good reason to think that benefit is a result of autophagy. It seems much more likely to be a direct result of a low glucose metabolic environment.

Agreed - and no argument there. Higher glucose and insulin can be pointed to as the cause of a whole host of maladies. Specific to cancers that feed on sugar - it certainly makes sense that lower sugar would slow them down.

Dr. Fung makes a point that I think is relevant to this. People who are actively losing fat need much less exogenous protein because they are daily losing some protein need to support all the extra fat. But what happens during fasting for lean people like myself? Every day without protein must result in lean loss just to feed my bodies glucose needs. In other words how much extra autophagy a body can handle might be dependent on how much protein there is to lose endogenously.

Yeah, for sure - as people get leaner, the ratio of fat consumed to protein consumed during fasting declines. But I have yet to see a good accounting of lean tissue loss while fasting. DEXA scans aren’t perfect and one’s hydration level can overwhelm true loss or gain of muscle, for example. Dr. Fung also says that are bodies are ‘smart’ about all this - that they don’t really use up muscle since evolutionarily we need to get out there and hunt or gather food. Yet, I do think he’s still largely talking about those with substantial amounts of fat to lose.

I’ve read that in relatively lean people, fasting does bring about protein consumption, and it can be observed by measuring the nitrogen excretion. I think the source of that protein is still at least somewhat vague - there is autophagy to consider, and our skin (among other things, for example) that is ~1/6 of our weight.

I’ve had enormous healing from a deeply ketogenic diet. My virtually permanent migraines are gone, and two separate autoimmune attacks on my nervous system have gone into remission. But I never fast as it’s just been far too hard at my weight. I get so hungry that sleep is actually impossible.

Further, Paleo-Medicina treats all sorts of serious autoimmune, cancer, and gut related problems with an ultra low GKI diet but actively discourage their patients from fasting and have patient outcomes that are similar to my own. So really, how do we know where the “healing” is coming from?

Well, if I couldn’t sleep due to fasting, I wouldn’t do it either. That’s a heck of a thing. As we change our behavior and diet, evidence builds up about what healed or is healing us - but things are still somewhat ‘fuzzy,’ eh? Some stuff is simple and some is complicated - we all make our own way, even if groping ahead in dim light, so to speak.

But do a third of us on a deeply ketogenic diet who are constantly in a low glucose state get Alzheimer’s? It seems unlikely if the disease is actually a disfunction of glucose metabolism as is thought. And this raises the question again that perhaps the need for extra autophagy is greatly reduced in a very low glucose metabolism.

Very good question.

[OldDoug]

My understanding is that deep autophagy eats 150g (5oz) of lean mass protein per day for a man with a sub 25 BMI. A shit-ton (non metric unit) of that is skeletal muscle. It sure as hell isn’t all loose skin. Assuming that were all muscle (it’s not obviously), it might over a week of lifting and feasting to replace each days worth of deep fasting muscle loss. Deep autophagy and muscle gain seem like poor bedfellows.

Hey Nick - that ~150 gram figure “feels” pretty good to me, i.e. about 1/3 of a pound (it just makes sense, given normal protein consumption, usage, etc.). Why do you think a lot of it is skeletal muscle, though? If a person is lean enough, it may well be - I really don’t know and it seems that ‘before and after’ DEXA scans are rarely done with the same hydration levels, etc. - it’s hard to get a real grip on what is happening.

[Karim_Wassef]

My muscle mass loss is averaging 1/6 lb per day but I was starting around 25% body fat.

Alternatively, my fat loss is 1 and 1/3 lb per day so the ratio is very healthy.

There’s also a remainder of 1/2 lb per day that is likely waste and water … though I can’t really tell.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 7 - final

A GKI of 0.5 is pretty good. Tomorrow, I will be on three flights (3 hours long each) with business meetings all day, so my stress level may jump and with it my glucose… we’ll see if I can sustain this low level of GKI.

[Karim_Wassef]

And to see the trends…

[Karim_Wassef]

So I would consider the first four days to be unfasted. It’s ketosis but without the real effects of fasting.

Part of this is that it takes days to complete digestion of the meals I had prior to initiating the fast. Today is really the third day, not the seventh. That’s my interpretation of the data anyway.

[RightNOW]

Years ago before my heart surgery, one of my many problems was that Whooping Cough had damaged my lungs. Seemingly permanently as it had been nearly two years, at least 1.5, since I’d had it, and no change. Totally unrelated to this, a discussion about lipedema with an online friend, and the results she’d had with a supplement I’d skim-read and copied a zillion reviews about – serrapeptase – inspired me to start taking it. Her sister for example had used a cane for six years and could not climb the stairs to her apartment. Serrapeptase as an experiment for scar tissue… and now, no cane, no problem with stairs. The stories like this are endless. So my friend had taken it hoping to reduce the fibrous mass, which supports fat and edema, in her hips/thighs (part of the lipedemic condition). I thought I’d try it and see if it helped.

It healed my lungs. Just mind boggling to me. It also improved my vision some. Baffled about this – totally not what I was planning – I finally went to pubmed and searched on those terms, to discover that curative effects on the lungs and the eyes are two of the things the stuff is most researched for. Most the reviews I had read, were mostly about healing old injuries, fatty liver, and things like that.

As my heart valve got worse off, I had to stop taking it. Because I was so sensitive to things affecting my poor heart – even the slightest stress from voices arguing nearby, or the saving-grace of enough CoQ10 taken in the morning – I could feel that taking it made my blood thicker with all the dead protein in my body it was breaking down. I not only was lipedemic (and had other issues the lungs and eyes changes example), but the massiv edema from the heart valve had the most bizarre effects. Edema is protein-water. Put protein and water and inflammation in one place and it tries to form itself into fibrous tissue (probably why fibrosis leads in symptoms for things like breast cancer). It would try to ‘attach’ to the inside of my skin, and if I moved suddenly, would tear lose. I could certainly feel that, ouch! All this to say, it had a LOT to work on in me…

And I stopped taking it because all the protein it was breaking down and dumping into the blood stream for recycling, was adding to the work my heart was having to do.

OK you’re probably thinking, what does this have to do with anything? Well… it’s “exogenous autophagy,” serrapeptase is. But it breaks down dead protein. (I mean otherwise it would be deadly dangerous!) All the stuff that needs to be recycled back into the liver’s pool of inventory for building.

Last time I was fasting I was taking this stuff. It’s the perfect time, since one’s body is otherwise in that state – at least a little – and you’re not eating food. (Food is dead protein. Eat it too close to taking serra and it will just digest the protein in your food, instead. It’s too expensive to give it that job.) I wasn’t measuring my blood all the time, but my GKI was much higher than I expected a couple of the times I did.

Now I’m wondering if a high dose of serra, because it is dumping so much protein into the bloodstream – from recycling, not eating — might be triggering mTOR etc. and sticking a fork in that process.

On the other hand, maybe it’s a way to get the positive results of that process, without fasting at all. Just a thought.

[RightNOW]

image.png845×705 65.4 KB

Nice! That’s just how mine look when I drop from moderate carb to fasting.

[Karim_Wassef]

serrapeptase

I’ve never heard of the stuff. It sounds very potent and even violent for someone who’s fasting because it can cause a breakdown of the inner lining of the gut?

Still… my curiosity is piqued as I’m still struggling with my shoulder bursitis and torn bicep tendon. So I got it and I’ll experiment with it starting the middle of next week. By then, I expect that my fast will have reached steady state and I should be able to see any substantial transition in the data.

[RightNOW]

Hmmn, I have not seen any reference to gut damage from it. I actually have improved my gut integrity a great deal during the time taking it (which I attribute to regular ~2 oz servings of homemade flavored kefir throughout the day. I can now eat wheat and merely bloat, rather than wake up thinking I’m gonna die from the reaction). If I thought it hurt the gut I wouldn’t be taking it lol.

I once looked for negative info on it and what I mostly found was pages with people opining that it could not possibly work. There’s thousands of raving testimonials (no, not all bought, as at least several are from people I know) about its work with fibrous growths and scar tissue inside and outside.

The major unknown is that the body chooses what it’s going to work on. Maybe it will choose to work on the liver, or the brain (it dissolves amyloid plaque which is a dead protein too), or the lungs, or the scar on your knee from when you were 12, who knows. I took it for lipedemic fibrous structures (which it turned out was not my problem anyway – the problem was edema from the failing heart valve making me grow) and it changed my lungs and eyes. And I’m a singer so breath control made it super obvious, totally aside from other factors including poor health at the time affecting oxygen level… I’m certain it helped. Here’s hoping it helps my liver too, but I can’t dictate the body’s own priorities.

Another unknown relates to the capsule coating. Every brand has their own. I took Doctor’s Best and had obviously good results. My friend was taking some she got (I use these now too) at goodhealthusa.com (SerraEnzyme) (all Serra is pricey. At that site it’s 4 bottles for price of 3. It’s still pricier than DB brand). She (and her sister and later other familiy members) had great though expensive results, measurable. She switched to DB when I pointed out it was cheaper. She got zero results from it, and the symptoms began to increase. She switched back to the other and the fibrous growth started reducing again.

Yet the first worked for me. And if you read reviews – I read probably 5000 of the suckers one time, took me many days of hours at a time, for every brand on amazon and a few other sites – once in a rare while, there is someone who says they immediately reacted to it, or that brand X didn’t help but brand Y did. I think it might be that different people do or don’t have the proper digestive enzymes to break down the proprietary brand capsule (not in the stomach, but in the intestines) in time for it to hit the blood stream rather than the bowel.

I recently re-began taking it after a long while off. It almost immediately softens some major fibroids I have in my uterus. (The kind docs say to ignore because I’m going into menopause and the drop in hormones will flatten them.) At one point, one area especially was super hard and almost getting pointed. I mean really sticks out of my stomach, it’s crazy. I started taking serra again, and within 3 days it was much softer and less pointed. It was going down fairly consistently and then I ran out of both pills and funds for pills instead of more important life bills, so I didn’t take it for a couple months. By the time I got more, that part of me had increased and firmed again though not as much as prior. I rebegan the supp and it is now softening and shrinking a little all the time. I am hoping it doesn’t forget my liver and brain – big priorities for me! – but I guess it’s nice it’s dealing with the fibroids as well.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 8

Looks like I gained about 0.4lbs which is a good sign that I’m consuming lipids again. I’ll post results when I can since I’ll be on airplanes all day.

So here’s an interesting math problem. If I want to figure out how much fat is lost when I gain water weight, there would be two formulae with two unknowns assuming the density of water is 1 and the density of fat is 0.9… the units won’t matter since I’ll be taking ratios.

M water - M fat = 0.4 lbs
V water = V fat

So starting with the volume formula:
Volume = Mass / Density
so…
M water / D water = M fat / D fat
M fat / M water = D fat / D water = 0.9 / 1 = 0.9
M fat = 0.9 M water

From the mass formula:
M fat = M water - 0.4
M fat = M fat / 0.9 - 0.4
M fat x ( 1 - 1/0.9 ) = -0.4

M fat = - 0.4 / (1-1.111) = 3.6 lbs

Or basically the mass of fat lost = 9 x the mass of water gained.

Testing this …
volume fat = 3.6 / 0.9 = 4
volume water = (3.6 + 0.4) / 1 = 4

Which was the original assumption… that the volume is unchanged.

That seems extreme for the mass of fat lost to be 9 x the volume of water gained but I think the math is right, even if the assumptions are not 100% accurate.

[Karim_Wassef]

Last night I wasn’t feeling very motivated but this morning I feel great… lots of energy, very alert and sharp. This is finally the state I was waiting for… woohoo.

[Karim_Wassef]

It’s good that I’m motivated and energetic. I’m the back of an Uber in heavy traffic and late for my flight… let the stress drivers begin!!

[primal.peanut]

Looks like I gained about 0.4lbs which is a good sign that I’m consuming lipids again. I’ll post results when I can since I’ll be on airplanes all day.

Dumb question: how did you reach the conclusion that weight gain = fat loss? Is this part of your theory about fat cells filling up with water as they shed fat? It seems to me like a change of ~1/2 lb could just as well be noise due to fluctuations in hydration level.

[Karim_Wassef]

True. It could be noise but looking back at my last weight gain event and the fat loss that followed, it’s not an unreasonable assumption.

I gained 0.2lbs of weight and then lost 4lbs of fat. There’s plenty of errors to go around and of course there’s actual incremental loss in the four days that followed.

When fasting completely, the math should be simpler. Any hydration that is so substantial that it causes weight to go up while fasting for a week should have a component of offsetting fat loss. I made the assumption that it was 100% due to fat loss, but I did say the assumption may not be accurate.

Even if I’m off by a factor of 10, every water pound I “gain” while fasting is a pound of fat I’ve probably lost and refilled. For example, the math above says 0.4 lbs Water gained = 3.6 lbs fat lost. If I’m off by 10, that’s 0.36 lbs fat lost or ~ 0.4 lbs fat lost.

Simply put, every time the scale moves UP while fasting, it’s an awesome sign of progress. It’s part of why I love long fasting.

Expanding on that. If the mass change is zero, then the same process has occurred but I have lost volume instead. If the mass change is negative, then I’ve lost mass and a lot of volume.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 8 final

you knew it was going to happen. I can’t help myself

[Karim_Wassef]

I have to confess that tracking my data helps keep me motivated. I’m competitive by nature and seeing results really keeps me on point. Every time I feel tempted, the anticipation of how much further I can go brings me back.

My longest fasts historically were 19 days, 12 days and 7 days… so this (at 8 days so far) has inched it’s way into third place. In 5 more days, it’ll be at number two!

Just sharing my internal battles