Karim's muscle gain carnivore adventure


(Karim Wassef) #662

I got good news today and I could literally feel the stress leave my body so I tested and…

That’s 68G, 0.6K … I haven’t been under 70 is weeks… and never since I started eating protein over 1.5g/lbs lean mass. Feeling good about it…

It’s frustrating though… I get good results, I de-stress and my results get better. When I got bad results, I over stress and my results got worse.

The strange thing is that I am actually calm either way - I “feel” in control. But my blood sugar does whatever it wants to do…

I was listening to a lecture on this and the thesis was that the body is unwilling to relinquish control over those physiological variables that are critical to survival. So it pumps me full of glucose as if there was a real lion chasing me… and will not give my conscious mind the control to chill it out.

Maybe I need to trick it with artificial good news somehow… damn sympathetic nervous system doesn’t know when to shut up.


#663

I got the feeling this was happening to my blood pressure. The more I tested it, the higher the reading would get. :slight_smile:

So, I stopped checking it everyday, and now only occasionally. Checked it just the other day. Guess what? It was really good.


(Karim Wassef) #664

Yup. Feedback loops are a mess… just need to crack it or hack the code

I think that’s why we love surprises and rollercoasters… and really good comedy tricks you into laughing even if you’re sad. it shocks and resets. Maybe even why good drama makes you cry and resets you another way.

Maybe all culture was developed to overcome our animal physiological responses… ehhh


(Karim Wassef) #665

Replace donut with spicy salty almonds:


(Karim Wassef) #666

ok… here are the detailed results of the carnivore experiment. The three bars on the right of each section represent the start, middle and end of the carnivore phase:

remember how I said I was going to focus on squats to make up for the muscle loss during my fast in my legs and glutes… well, there’s only so much time in the week… and I successfully rebuilt by legs, and lost chest and upper back in exchange.

The summary says it all:

image

Great on arms and glutes and pretty good on legs (even though I gained a bit of fat). Overall with arms and legs/glutes, I gained 2.1 lbs of muscle and lost 0.9lbs of fat… woohoo!!

I even lost fat on my chest/abs and back, but I lost a lot more muscle. Overall in the torso, I lost 2.7lbs of muscle and lost 0.9lbs of fat… :frowning_face:

So that’s how I ended up losing 1.8lbs of fat and also losing 0.6lbs of lean through substantial redistribution.

The net effect is that I’ve lost 0.7% of body fat%.

So that’s good… but as far as a muscle building experiment… dare I say it again? failure!
It was a successful body fat% loss experiment, but that wasn’t the goal this time.

I know you guys hate it when I say that, but failure is good if we can learn from it… and I’m going to keep at this thing and sharing all my failures publicly until it gets better.


A basic question about carnivore nutrient imbalance
(Karim Wassef) #667

Ok … on to RMR… it dropped so I tried to map it out against lean mass, fat mass, total mass, and even body fat%:

image

the arrows indicate the change in time… and I don’t see a pattern that makes sense…

The last data point where I’ve gained lean mass but my RMR is the second lowest it’s ever been… just baffles me. I am almost at the same weight I was at the start of the carnivore experiment but RMR is down from ~2400 to ~1800!! WTH??

That is such a massive change and my body fat has barely moved by 1% and my weight is so close to the starting position … that I can only conclude that RMR is not at all correlated to composition?

I realize that the metabolic rate is primarily a function of the difference between what the body needs and what it has access to. If the total available (intake + endogenous) is less than it needs, it will throttle it down. But I expected “some”… just some… correlation with composition.

But my data shows that it isn’t at all… maybe I missed it, but it’s just not there.


Does resistance training/weight lifting stall fat loss?
(Boston_guy) #668

Don’t know if you’re into sleep tracking, but I’m observing that brewer’s yeast is improving my deep sleep as measured by Oura. Deep sleep should help with HGH, T, muscle building/recovery. A hypothesis if you’re looking for ideas to test :slight_smile:


#669

I appreciate these little cheat emojis, so I could understand what the graphs were supposed to be telling me. :slight_smile:

happy sad


(Little Miss Scare-All) #670

Stole the words out of my head :rofl::rofl::rofl:


(Karim Wassef) #671

I actually supplement with brewers yeast daily.

I take two in the morning and then another half tablespoon with my whey shake in the evening. It’s pretty good (for me):

3 scoops of whey protein isolate
1/2 tablespoon brewers yeast powder
2 tablespoons of ground ginger juice
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon of pink salt
Stevia

I’m planning on adding 1/2 tablespoon (14g) of Leucine powder and 1/2 tablespoon (14g) of creatine today too… sort of working on the ultimate muscle shake


(Karim Wassef) #672

I actually did it for myself originally… losing fat good … losing muscle bad :smiley:

It’s a lot of data so understanding what’s going on needs some eye squinting. That’s why I decided to leave it in once I got it for myself.


(Karim Wassef) #673

Glad I can help… even if I fail but we learn, that’s a step in the right direction.


(Karim Wassef) #674

This morning, I decided to do my stomach vacuum exercises in front of the mirror and I was surprised. I think I’ve lost more belly loose skin.

I stopped tracking it after I stopped fasting because I didn’t expect there to be much change. I mean - if fasting didn’t absorb that protein, why would eating “more” protein including high collagen and whey supplementation improve loose skin? I was barely even in ketosis much less autophagy…

I’ve been drinking thick bone broth and intentionally consuming chicken skin daily to increase my collagen intake. Collagen is apparently pretty useless for building muscle but I’m older and my joints and tendons needs as much focused recovery as my muscles - maybe more.

Shoulder bursitis, bicep tendon tear, lower back strain, triceps tendon inflammation… every time I push my weights by 10%, I end up in pain and the collagen really seems to help.

So extra collagen, not fasting and 5 times a week lifting seems to have helped the loose skin. I’ll muster the courage to take a pic


(Little Miss Scare-All) #675

I know what you mean, but we wouldnt judge you. Well, at least I wouldnt. Guess I cant speak for others, but at least the people that I know stop by here, wouldnt judge. You’re among maniacs. I mean palzies.


(Mario) #676

5 times a week is quite a lot for your age. as someone already mentioned, you take care of enough AND good sleep!


(Karim Wassef) #677

Ok… here I am going from relaxed to full vacuum

Notice that I’m lean enough that you can see my ribs and fat enough to have side handles / spare tire when relaxed.

I would say this is a function of age but it’s not. I’ve had the belly since I was an older teen so that fat is 30 years old and stubborn as heck


(Karim Wassef) #678

Notice that even at full vacuum, there are only a few wrinkles and they’re less than 1/8” deep or so.

Here’s the fasting loose skin post Karim's Extended Fast Tracker - come along for the ride

So this is the “before” view:

And the similar “after” view:

Is it all in my head? It’s subjective


(Little Miss Scare-All) #679

That’s a great vacuum! I used to do those all the time. It takes a bit to get it that pronounced. I wasnt quite where you’re at.

But for visceral belly fat, that ain’t shit!


(Karim Wassef) #680

So can you see a change ?


(Little Miss Scare-All) #681

Yes the before isnt as deep, and theres more wrinkles, the after is deeper and less wrinkles, which can only mean your bone broth and chicken skin is doing it’s thang. Less wrinkles=less skin :metal: