Karim's muscle gain carnivore adventure

[Karim_Wassef]

Day 4

And my ketone daily average view

Last two days were a real ketone crash!

Strangely enough, ketones are up to 1.2 this morning after ending last night at 0.2. This is exactly what happened earlier this year when I was eating carnivore and fasting (& gaining weight). It’s like the “ketone dawn effect” where I get a boost of energy and it declines throughout the day even if I don’t eat anything. So I will OMAD & I expect ketones to drop while fasting…

Fasted glucose looks good at 80. It hit 99 after the meal last night. That’s extremely high for me given that I’m usually in the 50-70s.

3.4 lbs of weight gain but I’ve been drinking a lot of water and still haven’t completed my digestive flux. So I expect most of the weight is “not me” - it’s just passing through me.

I learned a few tricks during my fasting experiment so I’m going to implement those:

1. Stressors beyond weightlifting (sauna, ice)
2. Weightlifting slow TUT + low intensity cardio
3. Glucose reducing / ketone increasing supplements

We’ll see if we can train this carnivore beast to stay lean… if not, either I stick to 0.7g protein per lb lean mass (100g) again… or I have to do multi-day fasts again. Only new concept to satisfy me is to protein cycle - eat 100g for 5 weekdays, then allow myself 200g on the weekend. This is all while keto and OMAD.

[Karim_Wassef]

Updated / corrected by 1lb due to water and digestive flux.

I will say that I enjoy the radiative heat I feel when I’m eating a lot of protein… it’s amazing.

[lfod14]

I’m 140g of lean mass now and my target is 160g so I’m using the target (even though I shouldn’t).

That’s EXACTLY what you should do! Don’t fear protein man, my protein intake was was of the biggest changes in my results, all my time being affraid of higher protein, affraid of whey, just held me back. I’ve got a little under 180lbs lbm and hitting AT LEAST that in protein grams is a must daily for me now, if the meals don’t do it the shakes will.

[Karim_Wassef]

I need to put in enough gym time to get that protein to muscle hypertrophy instead of fat lipogenesis!!!

See my weight gain from the last experiment…

Dec 26th - Mar 3rd… 30lbs in 9 weeks… wish I had a DEXA back in Dec.

[pamplemousse]

I gained 30lbs in 9 weeks

Can you hypothesize if it was muscle, fat, or a mix that comprised the mass you gainned?

[Diygurl19]

I do eccentric leg presses and IMO it’s much harder to do it this way.

[Karim_Wassef]

I can.

When I compared my impedance smart scale to DEXA, it actually correlated well when I was fully fed and hydrated.

The results diverged massively when I fasted.

I’ll take that to mean that my starting measure on Mar 3rd was accurate. Likewise, I had fasted for 12 days from Dec 12th to Dec 24th. Family pressure forced me to break my fast for Christmas… so I would discount all that data and assume that a few days later would be a reasonable refeed state… so the Dec 27th data is probably ok to use.

For context:

Dec 24th = 162.6 lb at 18.4% bf = 132.7 lb lean and 29.9 lb fat
This is the datapoint I will ignore since I was fasted and dehydrated.

Dec 27th = 171.8 lb at 20.3% bf = 136.9 lb lean and 34.9 lb fat

So… in three days, the smart scale says I gained 9.2 lb composed of 4.2 lb lean and 5.0 lb fat… I’m ignoring that delta as erroneous due to fasting.

But now trusting Dec 27 and comparing it to Mar 4 (morning of the following day as a buffer to reduce error again)

Dec 27th = 171.8 lb at 20.3% bf = 136.9 lb lean and 34.9 lb fat

Mar 4 = 193.2 lb at 25.0% bf = 144.9 lb lean and 48.3 lb fat

That’s a gain of 21.4 lb with 8.0 lb lean mass and 13.4 lb fat! So 63% of the weight gained was fat and 37% was muscle.

This was a 9 week bulk. I followed it with an 8 week fasting cut… following the same rules of being well fed before measuring:

Mar 4 = 193.2 lb at 25.0% bf = 144.9 lb lean and 48.3 lb fat

Apr 29 = 178.4 lb at 21.8% bf = 139.5 lb lean and 38.9 lb fat

So that’s a drop of -14.8 lb composed of -5.4 lb lean mass loss and -9.4 lb fat.

So net net… I didn’t do it right.
On the bulk: + 8.0 lean + 13.4 fat
On the cut: -5.4 lean - 9.4 fat
Net = + 2.6 lean + 4 fat

So my carnivore bulking, even with training and 3 day a week fasting, was substantially more fat accumulating that my deep fasting with intermittent eating…

That’s why this next carnivore bulk is so important. I need to find my balance now. I feel like I’ve learned a lot but I’ve also wasted 17 weeks going Net backwards

[x-Dena-x]

And Dena was just wrong.

Story of my life.

[Karim_Wassef]

You were erroneous but you were right in choosing to play… and for that, I applaud you

[x-Dena-x]

It’s a running joke amongst people I know, that I’m notoriously bad at guessing. I’m usually way off and ends up ruining their story, as in “guess how cheap I got this for???”, “2.99???”, “No, 4.99…thanks for making it seem like a worse deal”.

[NinMD]

Did your theory prove out about RMR not lowering significantly after 5 consecutive days of EF? I’m still nervous about that.

[Karim_Wassef]

RMR recovered nicely upon refeed, so it seems to be a temporary effect.

Started with a “super fast” RMR while carnivore overeating.

Fasted heavily for three weeks and RMR dropped to “normal”

Refed recovery to “fast” RMR - not as high as the starting point but still fast.

Cycled and went back to “fast” RMR…

I’m now more in a carnivore overeat state and remeasuring on Saturday. Ribeyes seems to push my metabolism pedal hard. I feel constantly warm when I consume so much protein.

My conclusion is that fasting and feasting actually makes my body’s metabolism more flexible … dynamic.

I wish I had an RMR so I could look at macro vs RMR…

[NinMD]

This is great to hear. When you say “cycled and went back to ‘fast’ RMR,” do you mean cycled back into keto eating (vs. carnivore), or cycled through the previous steps?

[Karim_Wassef]

I did cyclic fasting after my extended fast. I fasted for 5 days and ate for 2 each week.

[NinMD]

Thank you!

[Karim_Wassef]

So today’s meal was better, but not as planned:

still keto, but still over 1g protein / lb lean mass… unless I reset to my target weight to 160lb like lfod14 recommended.

[primal.peanut]

Did your theory prove out about RMR not lowering significantly after 5 consecutive days of EF? I’m still nervous about that.

I’ve got a bunch of data on this as well from my own experiments, and I can say that my RMR does not lower significantly after 3 days of EF. In fact, what seems to happen is that it drops during the first couple days of the EF and then rises again. By the end of the 5 days it’s still lower than it was during the feasting period, but not significantly so, and it goes right back up again when I’m eating.

Here’s a picture. The blue line is RMR as measured first thing in the morning, and the grey bar is how many hours I’d been fasting when that measurement was taken. You can see the weekly cycles in here that match the 5 feed : 2 feast schedule that I’ve been on. (The gap in the data is from a vacation I took where I didn’t have my RMR machine.)

[Karim_Wassef]

Updated… had a little extra cream and MCT for a fat snack

and it was ribeye not sirloin… so up to 171g of protein

[Freischuetz]

your bulk and cut should look like that: watch June/July/August:

lean mass loss is less than 1kg:

bodyfat dropped from 13.5% to 10%

weight loss overall less than 2kg:

and right away back to lean bulk

you can also see, i added from January until June almost 6kg of lean mass and just 1% of bodyfat!

[Karim_Wassef]

that’s great! that’s how it’s supposed to work, but not for me - not yet anyway.

that’s why I said that mine was a failure. I gained more fat and didn’t gain enough muscle…all on keto and fasting.

When I bulk, I gain a ton of fat with it… can’t shake it yet.