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

[OldDoug]

Still soliciting opinions on my three options going forward… noone from the peanut gallery wanting a say?

Karim, I’d vote for the ‘Protein Sparing Keto’ - this is certainly interesting and a current topic. It’s not been long - I can’t see suggesting another extended fast again so soon. There does seem to be a good bit of individuality in how we respond to certain amounts of protein - I’d be interested to see what your experience is.

[RightNOW]

Well, I tend to think some periods of eating enough of everything (#3 keto) between the other periods is healthy. You are doing a lot of stuff based not on what your body might like or some ideal max nutrition, but based on numbers on paper so you can force the body this way or that. I can only speak for myself but usually when I do something like that for an extended period, over time it gradually gets harder and I get more miserable with it. Which I think is because my body has needs I am denying because hey, number on paper. I also think it’s psychologically easier to have a cyclical rest period between the intense periods. It doesn’t have to be very long. So that is my vote for now. Followed by the protein-sparing keto. Because you know, better you suffer than me, but I’m going to have to do that before long as well here sadly. I’ve been watching too much Ted Naiman lately.

[Karim_Wassef]

Thank you both for your input

I’m not trying to force my body though. I’m trying to convince it to agree with me by making it prefer or enjoy the things that are good for it long term. It’s a negotiation.

It’s not different from negotiating with my wife. She has her ideas on what’s right and I have mine. We need to find a cooperative middle ground (not using the word concessions).

I trained my body to like bad things as a youth… so I can’t go along with what it wants. I need to retrain it to like good things. My good epigenetics are in there.

So we have one vote for fasting (me), one vote for PSK (Doug) and one vote for keto (PJ)… nice!

[Karim_Wassef]

Oh! After a couple of hours of my morning measurement, I had a big flush and remeasured. The result was identical to yesterday’s with a very small fat mass drop…

All that fiber slowed everything down.

[Karim_Wassef]

I’m going to try to keep to my PSK plan today

At 50% protein and 6g carbs, it’s right at 1000 calories. As a 2000 calorie consumer, that deficit + lower carb driven insulin “should” work for PSK. If I can regain the lower GKI, then it should confirm that it’s working.

[RightNOW]

Well, 50% protein and 6g carbs, if that does not lose fat off you nothing will!

[Karim_Wassef]

Thanks. I’m already over 2.0 GKI… I hit a fasted glucose of 80 and ketones of 2.1 because of my indulgence last night. Damn you, almonds and onions!!!

With enough data, I should be able to see if Keto (20g carbs) is different from PSK (<10g carbs, 0.9g/lb lean mass) in terms of keeping my GKI low… and specifically, if it can keep my fasted Glucose under 80.

The complication here comes from trying to use data with “memory”. Basically, the G,K, and GKI result on Wednesday isn’t just the result of what I ate Tuesday night. It’s the result of all the times I ate previously. This is why I like fasting data, it’s so much cleaner and easier to use. For now, each new G, K, and GKI are a function of the previous day’s G, K, and GKI + Fat, Protein, and Carb grams + an assumption of RMR. I’m pretty good at regression, but this needs a lot of data

I’ll measure again before I eat later tonight.

[RightNOW]

Sometimes I forget how complicated it is, and then I visit Karim’s thread

No but seriously, it’s interesting.

I shoved off my existing plans and have been considering (naiman-brain effect) doing at least a few weeks of a 50% protein just to see if it’s possible. It’s going to have to be low calorie I figure because how the hell could anybody possibly eat that much otherwise.

I once wrote a blog post, shortly after I first found low carb, called “Don’t Eat A Cow, Man” – about how it was impossible for me to eat enough calories without adding cheese, mayo or bacon, and how intermittant fasting (way back then, I was following Martin Berkhan’s LeanGains blog, it wasn’t popular elsewhere yet) was completely impossible, I couldn’t eat as much as I needed at one meal a day. Two was ok.

What are you doing for meal scheduling?

[Karim_Wassef]

I eat once. OMAD around 6pm each day

[Ehamil42]

In light of the Covid-19 outbreak currently underway, coupled with your travel necessities, I think long-term fasting should be off the table. One thing we do know about long-term fasting 72+ hours is that cortisol levels rise, and there is a fairly strong correlation between rising cortisol levels and a weakened immune system. Which at present doesn’t appear to be a wise choice. That doesn’t rule out other fasting techniques like eating windows or OMAD, it’s just that breaking down your immune system while traveling through airports could expose you to the sars-CoV2 virus which could obviously lead to full blown covid-19 and all that goes with it.

Dr. Peter Attia–fasting and covid-19

As I understand it social distancing isn’t an option for you.

[Karim_Wassef]

Unfortunately, I travel to visit customers and clients who won’t meet anyone right now. So unfortunately, I’m forced into social distancing.

So fasting is an option again.

But it sounds like you’re saying that if I could, I should fast again? At least that’s what I heard you say

[Karim_Wassef]

I don’t consider OMAD fasting. It’s full on refeed.

Whether carnivore bulking or PSK or keto, I just OMAD.

[Karim_Wassef]

So it’s been a few hours after my ~1000 calorie, 5g carb meal, my G and K changed dramatically

G went from 72 to 109
K went from 2.5 to 0.6 !!!

I can’t sleep and I have a headache. That seems to me to be a severe stress reaction. My macros were 50g fat, 120g protein, 5g of carb.

The only thing I changed from my usual is that I used large seaweed sheets (nori) to curb my hunger. They’re basically just protein and fiber from a macro perspective and very low calories…

Ok ok… so I ate 12 large sheets but it’s still just bulk filler.

It worked to curb my hunger but my body may be reacting negatively to the type of food and/or the quantity.

We’ll see how things shake out tomorrow…

[Karim_Wassef]

This morning I was back at 70G and 1.5K so getting better.

I think the excess Nori seaweed caused some massive digestive distress. I usually consume the salted oiled & roasted small notes of seaweed with no reaction but the large sheets are lower in fat and I took it too far.

This is one of my concerns about protein without sufficient fat… it’s a little unnatural. But then again, accelerated fat loss isn’t totally natural either.

It may have also been excess compounds in the large seaweed sheets. They’re dried so their mass is low, but that may also concentrate minerals.

[Karim_Wassef]

As a consequence on being home bound, I’m now on virtual meetings for hours … and I’m getting a little hoarse

It scared me as I thought I was getting sick with a scratchy throat adding to my symptoms from last night… but I think I’m ok.

Still, it made me wonder if a glucose spike and ketone crash may be an indicator of distress due to a viral infection and inflammation?

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 27 - 19 EF, 5 KETO, 3 PSK

For three days now (Wed, Thur, Fri), my weight didn’t change at all and neither did my composition (within the margin of error of the scale).

I hovered at 183 lbs and 36.1% muscle, 22.8% bf. Given that I’ve been eating keto or psk during this refeed, I’m going to call that the stability point and the true end of the extended fast. So the fast was days 1 - 19. The refeed was 6 days from 19 - 24 (including the break fast on day 19).

I’m started PSK on day 25, so I’ll use day 24 composition as the comparison point. The plan is to try and do this for 19 days also and then 6 days of refeed keto so I can compare the total benefits of the extended fast to the “fast-mimicking” PSK. The plan is to OMAD on PSK and stay around this 5g carb, 120g protein, 1000 calorie window.

For the last couple of days (day 25 and 26), I’ve been eating around 1000 calories a day with ~5 g carbs and ~120g protein. That’s about 0.86g protein / lb of lean mass.

It’s now Day 3 of the PSK (Day 27 of the total experiment) and I’ve finally seen the needle move:

I am hungrier on PSK than I am on the extended fast. It’s also not localized to the usual OMAD time. I feel hungry when I first wake up and I’ve been using MCT and ACV to curb it.

I also think I’m experiencing “hunger headaches” at night after my meal. It’s not a sharp headache, or a dull one. It’s more like a squeezing “stress” headache that includes my neck and shoulders. Sometimes, this persists throughout the day too. If I were to make a guess, it’s the result of low glucose without a high enough ketone level to compensate? I’ll have to start making more frequent G, K measurements to know for sure - it is uncomfortable though.

I’m hoping that there’s an adaptation period where I’ll be better able to cope with it over time.

I won’t measure my G, K until just before my OMAD, but the trend has been much higher GKI than fasting. Fasting was around GKI~0.5 and it looks like PSK is GKI ~2. So while it may be effective for fat loss, it is not fasting autophagy. Glucose has gone from ~50 to ~80 and Ketones have dropper from ~6.5 to ~2 … It’s not terrible but given how much hungrier I am, it doesn’t seem quite right.

I hope this is still useful for everyone else.

**edit - I updated the charts since I had a big flush before eating or drinking anything today.

[Countdown2020]

Hi Kareem,
As always, your personal observations are fascinating. To be honest, though, I’m not interested in exploring the “nitty gritty” myself - I just want to live my life

I’m still doing Mon-Fri fasts and eating on weekends, though I’m feeling so good at the moment (11am Sat), I have no interest in eating. I think I’m finally fat adapted (after 2 years )

[Karim_Wassef]

If you’re getting the results you want, then keep on doing what you like to do

I’m a tinkerer. I like to learn new things all the time and I’m not easily satisfied with my results.
I’m also a sharer. If something I do helps someone else, even a little bit… that makes me feel good.

If I’m suffering through something, I share that too - little selfish redistribution of pain never hurt … well, maybe it does

Thanks for following along and commenting. It’s good to see people are reading it. Sometimes it feels like my own private journal of experiments.

[Ehamil42]

@Countdown2020 Mary

Do I to understand you correctly, you’ve been only eating on the weekend for two years?

[Countdown2020]

Ha ha! No, I’ve been strictly keto for 2 years - the fasting only started this month