Karim's muscle gain carnivore adventure

(Karim Wassef) #202

ok… detailed DEXA and RMR results:

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So I gained 0.8lbs of fat and 0.5lbs of lean … it’s good and bad, but less good than bad.

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As usual, my body hyper-responds to my focus. I’ve been pushing my bench-press and I gained 0.6lbs of lean there (with 0.3lbs of fat…).

I’ve also focused on arms and gained 0.6lbs lean lass there too (with 0.1lbs of fat).

So upper body got the most gains because I’ve been pushing.

Haven’t done core much and lost 0.4lbs lean mass there.

Squats have been more maintenance than pushing… so gained 0.5lbs of fat and lost 0.5lbs of lean mass on my legs, but glutes got a little better losing 0.3lbs of fat and gaining 0.1lbs of lean.

So apparently “maintenance” lifting doesn’t maintain. I need to push myself or I’ll go backwards while eating like this. That’s where my biggest losses were - legs and glues.

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Overall body fat went backwards… mostly because of legs

If I take a step back to the start (Mar 1st to May 4th) including the fasting and feasting:

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I haven’t quite recovered all the lean mass yet.

Metabolism recovery is outstanding.

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and I finally got the reading with 99% fat metabolism.

(Neil) #203

Awesome to see that your RMR is basically unchanged from the 3/1 test!

(Karim Wassef) #204

So I think gaining 0.6 lbs lean mass in my arms is not an insignificant feat in two weeks… especially since I’ve only been eating carnivore for one week. It’s noticeable too.

I’ve recovered all the lean mass there and kept most of the fat off. The fat gain of 0.1lbs actually balances my arms (left vs right) fat.

I find it hard to push all body parts consistently… so I push one and maintain the others. But my body is unforgiving- I need to mentally find my way to pushing across all major groups - even core. Otherwise, my hyper-efficient body just cheats and downsizes the maintenance regions.

I have to say - that’s rough…

I need to find more ways to relax - for the visceral fat. One way I do that is cardio - cardio is useless for weight loss in my view - and a terrible waste of time… but it does reduce my stress somehow.

My next DEXA/RMR is in 3 weeks…

Anyone see anything else in the data that I may have missed?

(Karim Wassef) #205

Also - I’ll be traveling in China (Taiwan and Shanghai) week after next. So that’ll be a very interesting week of carnivore eating.

At least it’s easier to explain cross culturally than keto: Is it animal? Yes / No

My team there is very supportive so I’m sure they’ll be creative. I’ll take pictures of anything interestingly exotic. I’ve eaten live seafood there before.

(Windmill Tilter) #206

That RMR is unbelievable! Congrats on recovering back to an Olympic level RMR. You’ve got to be out 3 standard deviations given your height and weight. You and @primal.peanut are the only folks I’ve ever seen with metabolisms that strong. You guys are off the charts!

I’m curious when you ate, what you ate, and when the test was. It probably didn’t influence the RMR, but I’d be curious to try whatever you did! I’ve never gotten above 2300, and I’ve got 50lbs on you guys.

(Karim Wassef) #207

Thanks. My vegan refeed was clearly inferior to my carnivore way of eating… something in red meat, bacon fat, egg yolk cholesterol, and cod liver omega 3 just hits all my buttons… :smiley:

(Karim Wassef) #208

Dinner today was … complicated.

We went to a sushi buffet and I had to take pictures to track…

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yes - I went back for three plates … and close to 90 pieces of sushi … it’s a good place and fresh

(Karim Wassef) #209

it was hard to estimate, but I got most of it…

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If you want to play a “where’s waldo” type game - see if you can count the same number of pieces as I did… LOL! :joy_cat:

I suspected that I would have a little more protein than I should…so I had a little snack of cheese, pork rinds and liverwurst when we got home to try and balance things out… still couldn’t.

By numbers before were 65G, 0.6K … and I think this is the most protein I’ve eaten since I started keto. Not sure, but I think it is unless my math is very wrong. I’m estimating one of those pieces of sashimi were ~14g.

So… 330g of protein… 2.4g/lb of lean mass… This should be fun…

(Karim Wassef) #210

This was my meal prior to the RMR.

It was around 7pm the night before

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that was 290g of protein

today, I did 330g of protein

(Mario) #211

when you are on keto, why cardio should be useless? what else your body could burn than fat?

(Karim Wassef) #212

cardio is a very weak burner of energy.

while it does help strengthen the cardiovascular system, it consumes so little energy that it’s a massive waste of time… some cardio also impacts joints negatively.

my metabolic rate (just moving around) is 2900 cal… the brain consumes 1/3 of all energy… heart, lungs, etc…

if I weightlift, I get an afterburner effect that can increase metabolism by 500-1000 cal depending on how hard I lift and the amount of muscle damage I cause. Even 30 minutes can do it.

If I do cardio, I’ll maybe get 200 cal ?? Assuming the same 30 minutes.

That’s my experience anyway. The only value I see in cardio is doing it after weightlifting to accelerate the afterburner effect created by the lifting.

(Little Miss Scare-All) #213

Management was probably cursing you out. “Get this f’ing guy out of here!”

(Karim Wassef) #214

the chef did come out and stood next to our table… intimidation much?

that’s when I went back for thirds… I was already kinda full, but I just felt that I needed to show my appreciation for the freshness of the food…

It was $30 and really good. 88 pieces of fresh sushi for $30 is also really good…

but then my wife and daughter don’t do as good a job - so it evens out. :smiley:

(Karim Wassef) #215

my glucose and ketones

Before: 65G, 0.6K
After: 88G, 0.3K

Bad given that I never broke 20g carbs… but not bad given that I consumed 330g of protein.

(Little Miss Scare-All) #216

Yakuza Sushi!

(Karim Wassef) #217

YOU GO NOW!!

I know this is racially insensitive, but I still think it’s funny.

(Mario) #218

here you have a massive afterburner effect with cardio, and i burned only ~1800. your argument seems not valid, i guess you just dont like it?

you can even see in my green avatar, there i burned on some other device (Garmin) around 1300 kcal in 85 minutes!

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(Karim Wassef) #219

I don’t see an afterburner effect from cardio and it’s not time effective… You were doing cardio for 2 hrs?

you can skip forward to about 19 minutes

(Mario) #220

yes, 2 hours. this one is every 5 minutes you go up to your personal threshold before you turn sour for 60 seconds. than rest for another 5 min and again.

you need quite a lot of power to achieve and hold that, and it builds maximum strength over time.

in my case i go up to a puls of 184, a few times i went over as you can see. its practically like 10 to 12 sets of 5 to 6 maximal strenght repetitions, just cardio.

(Karim Wassef) #221

wow. that’s impressive HIIT and also very time consuming. HIIT isn’t the same as cardio though

Most people do HIIT to get more benefit in less time. You seem to do doing HIIT and for extended periods. That’s great if it works for you, but it’s not for me. Not enough gain for the pain.

the afterburn I’m talking about is raising my metabolic rate even while asleep due to the weightlifting many hours earlier.