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

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 13 - PSK

Eating at a higher calorie PSK is making me much hungrier. I’m not sure if it’s because of the increase in fat or protein, but I actually wake up hungry. It fades but it’s curiously uncomfortable. It may be the increase from 10g to 12g … that would be sad if that minor of a change has this much effect.

To add to this, my morning ketones were at 0.7… so an absolute disaster given that I’m eating almost 1000 calories below my estimated RMR and 12g of carb!!!

I’m going to drop back down to 0.8g/lb lean protein and try to keep fat around 60g. If I go too low, I get headaches and digestive stress. If I go too high, I apparently drop out of “high” ketosis.

… not happy with the PSK results.

I can’t wait to be done with this experiment and go back to extended fasting in 6 more days!

[RightNOW]

I can’t remember what PSK stands for and have been searching posts trying to find it.

So if I understand this, eating more protein makes you hungrier?

[Karim_Wassef]

PSK = Protein Sparing Keto. It’s not really fasting but I’m comparing it to my fasting results.

I eat a fixed amount of protein ~ 0.7-1.0g/lb of lean mass, then as little fat and carbs as I can get away with.

It’s vegan PSK so that’s difficult… it seems that the hunger spike is dependent on the carbs, protein and fiber I’m consuming. I am more hungry than after I had been fasting for weeks.

I think it’s part of the big difference between eating something or nothing. Any food basically gets the digestive system going and part of that is the hunger and satiety signaling.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 14 - PSK (Protein Sparing Keto)

Woke up feeling less hungry. Overall feeling good.

Big purge last night so hoping the reduction in intake was good for the results.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 15 - PSK - Final

Plateau’d again… hope it’s temporary water retention again.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 16 - PSK

[Karim_Wassef]

It looks like PSK is dropping my fat mass by ~0.27lb a day compared to 0.69lb for an extended fast (excluding the upfront flush that’s offset at the end).

So it’s around 40% the effectiveness of a true extended fast… it works but it was tricky for me. There’s a zone that I need to dial in to for it to work.

Too much protein and my ketones crash and I get hungry. Too few calories overall and I get headaches.My sweet spot seems to be 10g carbs, 0.8g protein / lb lean mass, and total calories around 1000.

I’m going to intentionally try to go higher in protein tomorrow and lower in fat but keep carbs low and calories under 1000.

this is bad since the lower calories will likely cause a headache, but the high protein will likely cause a drop in ketones… so double bad. I still want to see if that’s what actually happens.

If not, it should improve my understanding of my sweet spot.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 17 - PSK

[atomicspacebunny]

Looking at your glucose, wouldn’t high endogenous glucose while fasting be a good thing? Some organs of the body are glucose dependent.

Protein Sparing may lower glucose but then you also have the catabolic thing going on?

That why I carb up + protein before lifting weights so I’m not burning up muscle tissue I worked so hard to build.

It gets tricky because you never know what your really burning when lifting (i.e. physical exertion). Fat, ketones, glucose like fuel or amino acids…one flame torching the other.

[Karim_Wassef]

interesting… it depends on the cause, source and destination of the glucose.

high glucose could only be the result of gluconeogenesis and that is either from food protein, lean muscle or the glycerol backbone of fat (food or body).

It could be the result of high cortisol from excess stress or exercise.

Even when I weightlift, I try to use slow controlled motion with the heaviest weights I can to reduce the need for explosive energy.

I know that I can function on low glucose and high ketones. If my glucose is high, then my ketones are low… and I’m sugar burning instead of fat burning… that just isn’t where I want to be.

I want to be building muscle with protein and using my body fat for fuel. Seeing glucose go up doesn’t line up with that?

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 18 - PSK

One day left to go. Tomorrow I break the PSK and go simple Keto.

and here’s the comparison of EF to PSK:

So… with one day left to go (19 days EF vs. 18 days PSK)
The fat loss on EF was 11lbs vs. 5.2lbs PSK… so it’s about 50% as effective in fat loss.
The muscle loss on EF was 1.7lbs vs. 1.1lbs PSK … so the PSK muscle loss was about 68% of EF

Another way of looking at this is the ratio of muscle to fat lost:
EF = 1.7 / 11 = 16%
PSK = 1.1 / 5.2 = 22% (…more muscle lost vs. fat lost)

So while it works, my experience on vegan PSK has been that it’s half as effective and disproportionately consumes more lean muscle (1/3 more muscle to fat ratio lost). So if the idea is to lose less muscle, I don’t think it worked for me.

My GKI has been steadily increasing and it now around 4… so PSK does not support autophagy for me. In fact above 3, I don’t think I’m seeing much ketosis… my ketones varied from 1.0 to 0.5 (after weightlifting). That’s after consuming only 850 calories and 4g carbs last night!!!

There’s one more day to go, but I doubt it’ll change the results much.

On an experiential level … PSK got easier over time. I got over the headaches and I didn’t experience the emotional downturn I had with EF. It’s just not as effective though and has little benefit in retaining muscle mass vs. a true EF.

I do think that PSK is likely more effective than traditional Keto but that’s a separate experiment.
I also think that carnivore PSK is probably more effective than vegan Keto but that’s also a separate experiment.

Hope this is useful

[KetoRocks]

It’s useful, thank you very much!

[Karim_Wassef]

Keto - Day 2

interestingly, my ketones went up once I stopped PSK and went to keto. I think this is mostly dietary fat converted to ketones, not body fat ketones. My GKI dropped under 2 also but I’m not sure if GKI is meaningful after only 24 hrs of fasting (since I OMAD whether PSK or Keto).

I did lose weight on PSK.

I used 19 days for the average of the EF but still corrected for the first three days that came back after the fast… here are the results:

so PSK was half the fat loss of EF (54%) and almost three quarters the lean mass loss of EF (72%).

Based on my results, EF is still a superior lean mass preserving and fat mass losing approach. The very high ketones achieves are excellent at preserving lean mass. The PSK’s protein abundance is actually less effective than just the very high ketones.

It does beg the question… what if exogenous ketones were used while on PSK? Combine the abundance of protein with the protection of very high ketones?

I would expect that consuming exogenous ketones would reduce fat mass loss… it’s an immediately available energy source.

I will say that going from PSK to Keto is hard on the digestion. Going from 800 calories to 2000 OMAD was not easy but I wanted to break my fast and hopefully kick up my metabolism in the process.

Tomorrow I’m going to Keto to satiety… if that happens at 1000 calories, so be it.

[Karim_Wassef]

To be fair, both were successful. I lost a total of 18lbs of fat mass and 3lbs of lean mass in 44 days.

That’s down from 26.8% bf to 20.6% bf. That’s -6.2% bf.

That included 19 days EF and 19 days PSK with the rest 6 days as Keto.

I will continue Keto this week and into Saturday. I will then fast until the following Sunday evening.

[Karim_Wassef]

comparing last year’s fast to this year:

After my 19 day EF last year, I attempted a cyclic fasting approach. This year I tried PSK:

Cyclic fasting didn’t really deliver persistent results. I would fast for 4 days and then eat for 3… And the feasting days completely undid the fasting days… so it was a revolving door of fat.

PSK looks to have been more consistent.

**note that the starting points are different, so the scales are reset to line up the start but the scale per division is the same.

Here’s the muscle change:

This shows that PSK and cyclic EF are about the same for lean muscle mass… we’ll see over the next couple of weeks.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 3 Keto cycle

I gained 8.5lbs overnight… the 2000 calorie meal was more than my usual but it made me very thirsty. I probably drank more than a gallon of water over the next few hours.

With all the puts and takes, I expected some increase but not 8.5lbs. That is comparable to my gain after an extended fast.

Depending on how this levels out, I may have to add a correction window for PSK just as I did on EF.

I’ll take another capture after my sauna and before I eat today…

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 3 Keto Refeed results

The net effect today was about 1lb of fat mass regained and 0.5lb of lean muscle mass.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 4 Keto Refeed

Second day of weight gain.

After my EF, I had three days of consecutive weight recovery. I wonder if PSK will have the same effect.

Three more days of eating and then a week of EF… looking forward to it.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 2 of the last extended fast for this spring…

After PSK, it took my body 3 days again to reset waste and water weight under Keto, so I had to reset the math to calibrate again:

So PSK is not half as effective, it’s more like 1/3 as effective for fat loss… the muscle mass loss was 22% of fat mass vs. 15% on the EF.

Also… I realize that I’m now so well adapted that Keto over 10g carb won’t maintain my ketones any more. I crash under 1.0K and GKI quickly goes over 5… that’s kind of sad… but unless I severely punish it, my body is now adapted to working with less ketones.

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 3 EF

Almost in autophagy again…

always takes me about 3 days to move my body around.