Michael Eades' new weightloss paradigm

[Naghite]

https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7257.long Here is a paper by Meerman from 2014 for those interested.

[ctviggen]

That’s an interesting article. Does it imply that there is only so much mass (as fat) you can lose per day? I mean, you can only expel so much CO2 per day. They give the example of 0.74kg of CO2 every 8 hours, so about 2.22 kg per day, which according to their fig. 2 is about 2.6kg of triglycerides (as “fat”), so almost 6 kg/day of fat. Higher than I thought, but I assume that not all of that expelled CO2 would be able to come from burning fat. Not sure what the realistic upper limit for fat burning would be.

I wonder also if this is why exercise might appear to cause weight loss: not because you’re burning calories, but because you’re producing more CO2, which allows more fat to be burnt.

I discussed this idea with my wife, and she wanted to know how to apply it. I’m not really sure.

For instance, take butter. If you’re physically eating butter from the fridge (or at room temp if you store it out of the fridge), it would likely result in eating less mass then if you melted it, unless you were careful to go by volume (before melting) or weight. Why? Because melted butter takes almost no space. We used to make a cabbage dish that added butter and cheese, but we started halving the amount of butter. Butter will get sucked up into something like cabbage, and the volume of the result will change very little, but the mass (and calories) will be much higher with more butter.

But does this mean things like green beans or other (containing a lot of water) vegetables are beneficial to eat? They aren’t that dense, so you theoretically would be eating less mass.

It’s difficult to translate this idea into diet recommendations.

[PaulL]

Higher than I thought, but I assume that not all of that expelled CO2 would be able to come from burning fat. Not sure what the realistic upper limit for fat burning would be.

Don’t forget that the by-products of fatty-acid metabolism are water and carbon dioxide, and a lot of that water vapour gets breathed out, as well as the CO₂. In the case of water, some of it is surely urinated out, as well. Can CO₂ be dissolved in urine?

It’s difficult to translate this idea into diet recommendations.

It’s probably not any more difficult than thinking of losing fat by means of heat loss. We never talk about it, but how many BTU’s can one radiate away during a day? There are limits everywhere we look. Don’t forget, either, that Richard posted the calculations showing how much fat the body will allow to be metabolised in a day, so that’s another limit to be concerned with.

[ctviggen]

I just mean trying to transition to less mass. Eating more (animal) fat makes sense, as it is less dense.

I’ve been trying to make these chocolate macaroons that I buy sometimes but that have sugar. They use all coconut (no almond flour), but the consistency is very fine.

I started out making normal macaroons with flake coconut and adding chocolate powder to them. Those turned out OK, but they were dry. The next time, I put the coconut flakes in the food processor and ground them up a bit. Not too fine, though. I also added some coconut milk (the liquid part of the coconut from the can). This helped with moisture, but the same recipe made fewer macaroons.

Because there are fewer macaroons, if I eat one of the new macaroons, I’m eating more mass (each one is heavier). Is that bad?

[PaulL]

Bad? Are they light calories or heavy calories?

Personally, I think the whole calorie concept is overblown. We only use them because, a hundred fifty years ago, all we knew how to do was combust food and measure the heat produced. But the body doesn’t combust food, it phosphorylates ADP to get ATP, using the chemical energy released when glucose or fatty acids are taken apart. We ought to try counting the molecules of water and carbon dioxide produced per molecule of ATP and see if we get anywhere with that.

But don’t look at me; I never took orgo in college, only a unit during AP Chemistry in high school. And that was half a century (choking sounds) ago. All I remember is ethane, methane, something, something, pentane, . . .

[ctviggen]

Personally, I think the whole calorie concept is overblown.

I agree. All you have to do is spend some time researching, and you realize that CICO is a house of cards. I go over to the Keto part of Reddit, and those people are CICOphants to the n-th degree. One person making a comment about an original poster said he (or she? can’t tell in the Interwebs) couldn’t believe the original poster, because he calculated that what the original poster said happened wasn’t possible. All based on theories of how many calories one should take in based on some calculator, macros, and 3,500 calories = 1 pound of fat.

But if you do ANY research you realize:

1- there’s no way to really know what the basal metabolic rate of any person is, with testing that very few do
2- there’s no way to know how many calories above the basal rate any person is using
3- there’s no way to know how many calories you’re eating to a degree necessary
4- 3,500 calories = 1 pound is and has never been correct
5- I could be here all day

After looking at that complex paper again, I think it’s correct (or at least MUCH more correct than CICO). It all makes sense. It explains so much.

For instance, oils (including melted butter) always seemed to me to be a bad idea. This explains that they go to adding mass, and therefore to weight gain. Fat bombs are bad not because they have fat, they’re bad because they add a ton of mass as compared to, say, animal fat.

This explains why people on low carb diets lose more than people on low fat diets, even when the calories are the same.(People on low carb diets eat less mass.)

This explains why Amber O’Hearn’s idea of eating animal fat first works: you’re lowering mass intake.

I’m going to keep reading the paper, but I think it could even explain why exercise might help some people at some times. (Still looking into this, though.)

It’s like things are now remarkably clear to me.

This has only happened one other time – when I read the 50+ blog posts Malcolm Kendrick has on heart disease. His theories made sense, and it was like a fog lifted from my vision.

That’s the way this paper is to me for weight loss. (And I’m not saying this describes everything, because I’m sure it doesn’t. But it does clear up a lot.)

This week, I started eating pork fat (from a local farm) first. I have had no ill effects, so next week, I’m going to concentrate on getting more animal fat and less mass in my diet. I’ll report back, though since my rate of weight loss is always slow, it might not be for a while.

[ctviggen]

Which person is the resident CICOphant? Honestly, I avoid these discussions mainly because, well, what I say above is true in terms of there being so many holes in the theory that it’s not useful (even if it’s “correct”), and because it’s impossible to change many people’s beliefs, so I don’t try.

But one realization I had concerned my use of a TKD (targeted keto diet), which is where you eat carbs after exercising. I wanted to see if I could get “kicked out” of ketosis, so I took in 100g of carbs after lifting. I found I stayed in ketosis, if this is producing any blood ketones.

But what I found out was that 100g of carbs from rice noodles is a SMALL amount of rice noodles. Tiny, really. I could easily eat 4-5 times that. People complain that fat is “calorie dense”, but I think noodles are way more calorie dense than say fat on a ribeye. (Of course, the comparison is always between oil and carbs, but not many drink oil.)

And when I read this paper and saw the ideas behind it, it made a lot of sense.

[ctviggen]

I’ve reached the conclusion that MIMO (mass in, mass out) is much better than CICO at explaining things.

For example, the lungs are the main way organ through which you lose weight. I still need to read and analyze the references, but to me, this means you’re rate limited in the amount of weight you can lose, as you can only breathe out so much.

But what this implies is that exercise could cause a higher rate of weight loss, not because of “calories out”, but because this means more breathing = more ability to lose weight.

The main issue with the theory is that it’s similar to LDL: LDL is always in plaques, but did LDL CAUSE the plaques or respond to them? It’s the fire truck analogy: when there are fires, there are fire trucks; but do the fire trucks CAUSE the fires or respond to them?

Eating higher mass often means eating higher calories (eg, butter, oils, etc.). Eating lower mass might mean eating fewer calories.

But what I’ve been doing, because I have fat from a pig, is eating pig fat. This is fat + skin, which I’ve sliced through the skin and salted, left sitting in the fridge for a while, cooked at low temp (200-225F) until it hits 195F, drained the oil, put the pieces skin side down into a pan with the drained oil, and puffed up the skin over medium heat.

I ate about 10 ounces of that before the rest of my lunch. I ate less red meat, only about 5 ounces of lean beef.

The problem is that calculating the calories in the fat I ate is a challenge. There’s a loss of about 1 cup of oil, for instance, although some of that might go back into the skin when I puff it. Trying to find calories in pork skin with adjacent fat is tough. You have to have the calories for raw skin+fat, then modify based on the amount of oil lost.

And the way the skin + fat came is the fat ranges from about an inch under the skin to about 1/4 inch under the skin. How do you gauge how much fat you’re getting?

I didn’t take anywhere the amount of data I’d have to take to gauge calories in what I’m eating.

Ideally, you’d like to create two diets, both isocaloric (same calories), one with lower mass and one with higher, and see weight loss on the one with lower mass. But if you can’t get a relatively accurate gauge of calories, you can’t really do a good test.

For now, I’m eating more animal fat to see what happens. Maybe if I switched fats to something that was all fat (like beef fat), I might be able to set up a better test of MIMO versus CICO.

Edit: After eating this “lunch” (first meal of the day), I’m not sure how accurate I could be in calories. I heated the fat up on a paper plate…which had a layer of fat on it after heating. I threw away the paper plate, with the fat on it. When I put the blocks of fat on top of the meat for my lunch…there was a layer of fat on the bottom of the container. I did not do anything with that fat.

[PaulL]

Eating higher mass often means eating higher calories (eg, butter, oils, etc.). Eating lower mass might mean eating fewer calories.

The part I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around is that one calorie’s worth of fat weighs 0.11 g, whereas one calorie’s worth of protein or carbohydrate weighs 0.25 g. I find it difficult to grasp the full implications of that. Of course, more mass means more calories, but looking at the reverse means that 200 cals of fat weighs only 22.22 g, whereas 200 cals of protein or carbs will weigh 50 g.

The problem is that calculating the calories in the fat I ate is a challenge.

The only way to do it accurately is with a bomb calorimeter. First of all, not all fats contain the same amount of calories per gram, and the figure of 9 kcal/g is just an average. (And of course, protein and carbohydrate actually yield slightly less than 4 kcal/g, so the rounding doesn’t help accuracy, either.)

[Shinita]

Sometimes we simply can’t track accurately. Okay, we never can totally accurately but why would we need that? I can track good enough using many items and some are problematic.

I use fatty pork skin sometimes. I just guess something but I am very much aware it’s not accurate. It’s no problem as it doesn’t happen very often and the amount if always small. The mistake can be still significant as it has fat… But I can live with that just fine.

Eating fatty pork is way worse especially when I see that the actual piece doesn’t have the usual fattiness of the cut. Very rarely I don’t have any clue and in extreme cases I could track 1000 kcal less or more than reality… But usually it’s way smaller, of course so good enough for me.

And this inaccuracy make me able to be more relaxed. Who cares if I used 2g fat more or not, it’s nothing compared to the inaccuracy I already have and can’t avoid…

By the way I read back and don’t understand what you mean “mass”. If some calories in carbs are tiny, it’s even way more tiny in fat.
Not like mass matters to me, apparently. I let the bother of it to the volume eaters who can’t get satiated by a little amount of food. I only need enough n utrients, fat, protein, certain types of food must be present… But 300g or 2000g, little or much in volume? Doesn’t seem to matter. I do need to enjoy my food but it’s not proportional to its volume or weight.

We get satieted by less fat than carb

Satiation is one thing that is highly individual. This is simply not true for everyone, some even get satiated by carbs way easier. Bigger volume may help but fat can be very bad at satiation too, to begin with.

If we aim for some specific total energy intake, we will get there consuming much less mass of fat than carb

That’s true, of course. And we ate our tiny calorie rich meal and stayed hungry and unsatisfied, possibly. It depends.
Or you mean that one eats according to a calorie plan, starving feelings be damned and for some reason, some of you think that mass (whatever it is, total grams of macros?) matters at weight changes so getting it in less is beneficial?

[OldDoug]

I eat ~2200 kcals of fat daily, or about 244 grams of mass. To consume the same total kcals of carbs I’d have to eat 550 grams of mass. That’s a difference of 306 grams of mass.

It’s not going to make any difference. Indeed fats have less mass per unit energy content than do carbs, but the body is getting less energy per mass unit of carbs. If you’re using ~2200 calories per day, then whatever mass difference is present at intake will be reversed on the ‘out’ side.

[ctviggen]

@OldDoug Not if you believe in the highly mathematical theory of MIMO. They show a difference in isocaloric change from a high fat diet to a low fat diet:

Based on their mathematical theory. (EBT = energy balance theory, CICO.) I’ve started a review of that, but you’re immediately drowning in math. It’s not hard math, but it would take me at least a day or maybe multiple days to decipher. I’ll get there, but I’m currently mired in programming Word visual basic and have tons of family things going on. Spent the entire weekend on visual basic, then making meals for this week (which HAVE to be made in advance), as my wife has a project to do for my daughter’s play she’s in.

To everyone else: it’s such a fundamental change in the way of thinking about this, that it’s really difficult to mentally grasp.

What I’m basically doing is similar to what Siobhan Huggins did, where she ate very high animal fat, yet lost weight:

#KetoAF Experiment Results – Trialing High Fat Carnivore

Amber O’Hearn thought that by eating fat first, you put your body into some type of beneficial metabolism. I could never grasp that, but this MIMO concept would go a long way to explaining WHY Siobhan lost weight when she ate very high fat.

Ideally, I’d love to have a few weeks of isocaloric diets, one high fat, one low, both low carb, but it’s nearly impossible to do. If “calories” matter, I can’t tell how many calories I’m getting, I don’t want to hold (if I COULD) calories “out” the same, and therefore I can’t really do this. I can, however, eat higher animal fat. So, I’ll test that.

Edit: And let’s not forget that scale weight is basically useless. I’d need DEXA scans, at $150 a pop and loss of 2 hours or so to get, and I’d need at least 3 of those. I’m at the strongest I’ve been in years, since my 20s, and have actually GAINED scale weight.

[ctviggen]

One reason I wanted to be able to determine how many calories were in this fat was to compare that with rice noodles. As I think I put above, I was testing a TKD and tried eating rice noodles, at about 100 grams of carbs on the first meal after doing a body weight training session of 90 minutes. I was shocked at how little there is to eat in 100 grams of carbs (which weighs more than 100 grams; 120?; yet has 400 calories). Left to my druthers, I’d easily eat 4-5 times that amount.

It would provide a visual comparison, which I think can help these discussions.

I have 1 or 2 more “chunks” of fat, then I’m out. If I have a more mellow weekend, I’ll see how close I can get to a visual comparison.

[Shinita]

I definitely never lose fat as long as I eat much animal fat…
But I need very low-carb so I can’t test higher-carb and anyway, why I would do that?

I can, however, eat higher animal fat. So, I’ll test that.

I always like when other people test things I can’t. Though eating much fat is something I very much could… To some extent, at least but I was there, done it, stalled the same… It’s better when people do it who can make a difference. I always eat too much so never lose fat though I am pretty determined to change this in 2023 ;). But I probably will change multiple factors at once… Life is like that.
If I eat more animal fat, I may eat more or less mass so it wouldn’t be a good test anyway…

I’m at the strongest I’ve been in years, since my 20s, and have actually GAINED scale weight.

Well of course, unless we lose fat at the same time, getting stronger normally should involve weight gain, that’s perfectly fine… Maybe not a big one but still.

By the way I told these mass theory thing to my SO and he definitely disagrees Good to see it’s not only me. On the other hand, CICO always works, inevitably. It’s just super complicated unlike what some people think. We even must use a more complicated “calorie” definition to be perfectly correct but the simple is close enough, actually.

People with interestingly working bodies are well, interesting but they won’t help my fat-loss goals at all.

Thus, carbs tend to get stored rather than oxidized as readily.

But why is this a problem? Surely my body enthusiastically store away fat too when it’s too much at the moment… Or it just keeps it somewhere? But I don’t see why it would matter if the stored fat (whatever it was originally, fat or carbs) will get taken out some time later. And if I ate the right amount, it will.
It’s just regarding weight changes (or lack of it), not health.

[ctviggen]

In my opinion, this is exactly what Sam Feltham demonstrated: 3 isocaloric diets, yet he gained 5+ times more on the low fat diet than on the low carb diet.

Good point…

I remember seeing his results a long time ago. At that time it was “a calorie = a calorie” he was trying to attack. At that time, I was thinking it was insulin and fat storage (high carb = fat storage; high fat = you burn it off).

But in the context of this mass concept, it has (and I have) a completely different view.

And Ted Naiman has a picture where he compares squares of sugar with a meal with salmon and broccoli (or something “green”). Both the same calories. But I would assume the salmon + broccoli will be less mass too (though Ted is a high protein person, and doesn’t know or I think care about mass).

[ctviggen]

Well of course, unless we lose fat at the same time, getting stronger normally should involve weight gain, that’s perfectly fine… Maybe not a big one but still.

The issue comes in when trying to validate or disprove this mass theory. If CICO actually works, you have to keep calorie input AND output constant for both diets. In the “real world”, this is virtually impossible.

For example, I could do no exercise for two weeks, one week eating higher mass, one week lower mass. But I have a standup desk at work. If I don’t exactly track my use of the standup desk every day so it’s the same over the 2 week period, calories out will be different.

What if I take the dog for a longer walk one week? Calories out go up.

What happens to protein, since I’m eating mainly fat on the lower mass diet? I’ve seen studies where the low carb folk gain muscle or lose less muscle, even when eating a very low calorie diet. Could it be that I’d lose muscle if I eat lower protein? Maybe.

And it’s even worse, because if I stop exercising, I WILL lose muscle. It’s just a matter of when. (And this is easy to see. Go on vacation for a week, and don’t exercise. Unless you were very overtrained, when you get back, you won’t be as strong. You’ve lost strength and mass.)

Thus, the scale will be useless, and I’d have to have something much more accurate, like a DEXA scan.

You could extend the diets, say to 2 or 3 weeks each, but the same problems arise.

[OldDoug]

Not if you believe in the highly mathematical theory of MIMO. They show a difference in isocaloric change from a high fat diet to a low fat diet

Bob, that may be - because of practical differences in the way the body works with the different macronutrients. The math - if it’s “mass in/mass out,” then I’m not going to have a problem with it. We live in a deterministic universe, and the math is going to work out. () I’ll be interested to see what you find and think.

I was talking about mass not making any difference from energy if 2200 calories are being used per day. If we accept Michael’s figures of 244 grams of fat or 550 grams of carbs, then the in/outs are the same, i.e. 244/244 and 550/550, so no net change.

In practice there are always going to be differences, but then it’s not that 2200 calories are being used in both cases. To begin with, all other things being equal, and 2200 calories being metabolized, the carb-eater would actually lose more weight or gain less because of the higher energy cost of digesting carbs versus that of fat, which is barely above zero.

And in practice, all other things are usually not equal, i.e. as with insulin resistance and the greater tendency for the body to store fat when eating carbs. I take this as a given for nearly everybody on this forum. Any net increase in energy/mass sent to storage means more weight gain or less weight loss, and I certainly accept that it’s the case with carbs versus fats or protein. But this is not anything to do with mass, per se, it’s to do with the effect of carbs --> higher insulin --> higher fat storage.

The links that Michael has posted about this show that there is no significant difference between mass and energy here. Even theoretically, the difference was a good bit less than the margin of error for DEXA scans, etc.

[OldDoug]

If I were to consume 550 grams of carbs per day to maintain the same energy in/out I fail to see how my exhalations/excretions would automagically increase by 306 grams per day.

If you were still using 2200 calories per day, they would.

But, like Feltham I suspect instead that I would start gaining fat weight as my body stored the additional grams.

It’s not like you’re going to store 306 grams per day.

But yes, probably some more would go to storage, whether we put it in terms of mass or energy. This is nothing to do with mass versus energy as a way of conceptualizing things, this is just because of how the body reacts to carbohydrates.

Saying in effect that, “The lower mass of fat for a given amount of energy means that less weight will be gained” is the same logic as saying, “The higher mass of carbohydrates for a given amount of energy used by the body means that more weight will be lost.” Neither one are true, as stated.

The MBM says that some/most of that additional mass will end up in your fat cells, not utilize for immediate energy.

Michael, it’s going to be pretty hard for it to be ‘most.’ As with your example of 244 grams per day of fat or 550 of carbs. 306 grams would be .675 lbs - and there is no way you’d be gaining anywhere near that. “Some of that additional mass is going into fat cells” - yes, agreed, but we can as well say that “some of the energy from the carbs” is going into fat cells." The higher mass of carbs per unit of energy is not the operative thing here, rather that the effect of carbs on our insulin level is.

[OldDoug]

More specifically, energy balance can occur at body mass stability only if the following three conditions are simultaneously satisfied:

(i) Average absorbed fat mass = Average oxidized fat mass;
(ii) Average absorbed carbohydrate mass = Average oxidized carbohydrate mass;
(iii) Average absorbed protein mass = Average oxidized protein mass.

Clearly, this can never happen. If, for example, all the absorbed protein mass (amino acids) is oxidized, where would the body get building blocks? Therefore, energy balance is unattainable at body mass stability. This fact refutes the core idea of the EBT, that is, body mass remains constant in energy balance.

This is false. Those three conditions don’t have to be there for mass and energy balance. One or two of the three could be higher than average and one or two could be lower, thus balancing things out. In practice this is constantly occurring - our glycogen and fat levels change, day to day, and there are changes even within a single day - the normal pattern being slight fat storage after eating and then slight withdrawls from fat storage when it’s been some time since we ate, as with the hours toward the end of the sleep period.

“Conservation of mass” - certainly, and of course conservation of energy as well. But that doesn’t mean that energy balance (or mass balance, for that matter) doesn’t apply.

[ctviggen]

I think it’s incredibly complex. What happened to me is that I realized:

1- You can’t really expend all the calories you want; your body will lower the amount to protect itself
2- You can’t really go on low calorie for very long without the body lowering your basal metabolic rate
2A- Fasting does affect this, though, by increasing your metabolic rate for long fasts, but how many long term fasts can you do?

Based on this, I gave up trying to figure out how we lose weight.

Then this mass idea came along and provided some answers to these. It only depends on mass, and if you’re eating high carb, it’s easy to eat high mass; it’s easier to eat lower mass on high fat (though of course, one can also eat high mass, say with fat bombs and tons of liquid fats). And it doesn’t depend on anything but mass.

What does insulin resistance and the like have to do with this and does it affect the calculations? Certainly not in their mathematics, but – maybe? But if you are at all familiar with the CIM or the other model (I can’t remember what it’s called, since it never made sense to me), they argue against each other all the time. For instance the CIM (carb-insulin model) is the one that gets the most traction here: you eat carbs, causing insulin to go up, which funnels carbs to fat, particularly in insulin resistant folks. I’ve seen arguments against the CIM that were pretty good arguments, though.

I believe that science is just theories. You need to test those theories (preferably by trying to prove them wrong). I don’t have a fancy, completely contained place to live along with doubly-labeled water so I can do a cross-over study, where every calorie into the place and out of it is accounted for, that would be necessary to test this theory (though I hope someone with those does this).

The best I can do is assume it works and try it to the best of my ability. See what happens.

I was 100% convinced that high protein = high blood sugar, so I bought a CGM to prove that. Not only did I not prove it (I never saw a blood sugar rise no matter how much protein I ate), I decided I LIKED higher protein better than higher fat (where “fat” was a lot of fatty deli meats, cheeses, butters, mayo, etc.) (This mass idea could work here, as I was eating leaner meats and less mass.)

I was 100% convinced that saturated fat would cause me to have satiety and lose weight, so I tried The Croissant Diet, as mainly a TKD. Gained a ton of weight. (The mass idea can work here too, as if you take a starch and heat it up with ghee, it sucks up ghee to an amazing degree; it’s a high mass diet.)

I can test this lower mass diet idea by eating higher fat, since I just happen to have the fat. (If it works at all, though, I’ll have to find a source of good fat, as I don’t have that much left.)

Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back in a month and say that I gained fat and it doesn’t work. Or maybe I won’t lose or gain, just stay the same. We’ll see.

What I would like to do is get more fat so that I can increase my fat intake for my second meal. I’m not sure I can do that, though. I can’t eat suet, causes me issues, and pork fat for corn-fed pork is disgusting. (I’m eating pork from a local farm; the pigs graze on grass mainly.)