OMAD, low calories and autophagy

autophagy
(Susan) #1

Background - started at 250lbs, female, 65 years old. Strict keto for 5 years, didn’t lose weight, gained a little year on year. Ozempic for a year, ended up gaining about 5 lbs over 1 year. Finally on Mounjaro/Zepbound and have finally lost 45 lbs and still going. I gained weight on keto because I’ve got major depression and when I’m hungry and also don’t care if I live it’s impossible not to eat, if only to feel better for a short while.

Finally not hungry on Mounjaro. I’m now OMAD, eating about 4 to 500 cals a day with about one day every 2 weeks when I do eat carbs. I’ve read it’s good to keep your body guessing on what’s coming, so I don’t think it’s unhealthy. I’m almost uncomfortably full after about 500 cals of eggs and bacon or salmon or steak. Of course, I could always eat more carbs! Also, I exercise at least 6 days a week - a variety of types but either 20 min of cardio to make me breathe hard or an hour of slower exercise (walk or swim.)

My question - am I messing up my metabolic rate or am I in autophagy? Am I close enough to the ‘fasting-mimicking diet’ to stay in autophagy? I’ve read a few really long threads on autophagy here, but nothing recently. Is there any new science on it? I’d like to avoid ‘ozempic face’ and flabby arms. More important than autophagy is not slowing down my metabolic rate or losing muscle mass. Any thoughts on which of the 3 I’m most likely in (low metabolic rate, losing muscle mass or autophagy)?

BTW, I’m still unable to fast for more than the 23 hours of OMAD. I simply can’t fall asleep hungry. I know it would help to fast longer, but I’m doing the best I can.

(KM) #2

Welcome back, and congratulations on finding something that works!

Honestly I only have my past experience to go on. I did not take medications, but I did a lot of fasting and probably under ate to lose close to 30% of my body weight about 4 years ago. I’ve kept the weight off and I don’t think I’m undereating to do that, I just stick with a primarily whole food keto diet with some carb cycling, but I’ll admit it, I’m not as pretty as I was. The tired face, the crepey skin, the droopy boobs, arms and rear are apparently the new me going forward, not much has changed. I also feel I’ve probably lost muscle mass. I’m 62 and female, so the permanency of these changes might be due to hormonal deficiency, not specifically my dieting days, but my age is showing. So it goes.

(Bob M) #3

Those are very good questions, and I’ll say that I’m not sure. If you’re exercising, one hopes that would maintain some muscle mass. I would hope that what’s happening is you’re accessing calories from fat, which I hope means your metabolic rate is not going down.But I don’t know, and know nothing about Mounjaro.

If you’re not hungry and feel okay, I’d keep doing what you’re doing.

(Susan) #4

That’s my plan unless things change.
Thanks to both of you for such quick responses.

@kib1 According to a number of the YouTube personalities (Jason Fung, Ken Berry), fasting is supposed to get rid of the sag, but it doesn’t work for everyone. If you were fasting, I’ m guessing you’re one of the ones it doesn’t work for. Does that mean it might work for me? (No, statistics don’t work that way, but I can always hope.)

#5

Oh, you finally could lose fat and lots of it, congratulations!!! :smiley:

I doubt you have enough extra fat to be fully okay with this quite severe starvation - but some people get success using pretty shocking methods… I still think it’s a problem, you hardly can even get the essential nutrients eating like that so hopefully you will finish your fat-loss or this very low-cal phase soon. But of course, if only this helps, do it but be careful. You eat the right kind of food at least (still little. you eat some fattier items so your protein intake must be low, I can’t possibly know how much is your need though… and maybe losing fat is more important than not losing muscle… I would do my best to avoid that personally but I never was very desperate either) and indeed, having a different (you wrote, carbier but hopefully higher-cal too?) day may be useful. When I lost fat (before keto) eating very, very little compared to my old normal, only 2000 kcal a day, I included a higher-cal day now and then too and I suppose it could be good not to have a deficit on some days… Just to tell my body that there is food when needed.
Exercise is great, just worrying to me that you practically don’t eat. I would be paranoid. I don’t even lift on fat fast days… How on earth can you do it? If I ate 2-3 of your OMAD meals at once at dinnertime when my OMAD meals usually are, I probably would be starving!

As far as I know, autophagy is… Uncertain. It may start early enough that you get some of it on OMAD but it’s much stronger on EF. I can’t do that either :frowning:

You have lost a lot, can’t you see from your weight-loss rate if your metabolism is affected? Of course, it’s normal if it slows down a little as a smaller body needs less energy unless some other factor changes against it.

I can relate. Once I was desperate and tried. Never again. I consider OMAD pretty good, well if it works for the one in question and the mealsize is right. It’s not for everyone.

I heard that about EF. Maybe OMAD helps for the right persons too…? No idea.

#6

You’re heading for complete metabolic disaster. Chemically suppressing your appetite doesn’t mean your body doesn’t need the cals you’re not eating. You need to back the dose off, you’re overdosed. This is why “Ozempic face” happened. People undereat themselves into a corpse, demoslish thyroid function, lose muscle and bone mass and you don’t fix it ever if you keep[ pushing. This is literally what biggest loser syndrome was.

Those are two totally different things. Autophagy happens all the time, not just when we starve ourselves. When you fast it’s up regulated, but that’s a different thing.

On the not eating because you’re not hungry…WRONG! You’re chemical altering the system, you’re manipulating the rules, yet trying to follow a set of rules that no longer apply to you. Aside from that not applying to people that have a lowered metabolic rate anyway, thats literally why the calorie trap happens.

Don’t eat enough for a long time -> Thyroid function downregualtes to keep you alive -> because of that you’re not hungry -> because you’re not hungry you don’t eat -> the negative feedback loop continues.

Fasting demolished an already terrible metabolic rate in me, took over a year to fix it. I’m all for GLP-1’s, I take Semaglutide myself, but doctors overdose people on it, when you’re only eating 4-500cals a day, that’s begging for an un-fixable problem.

Tirzepatide is the worst for over-supressing people’s appetites, on top of doc’s pushing it too high on people. Eating that little and working out daily is telling your body that it’s not getting any fuel, and that you’re burning a lot anyways. So away goes the muscle, then bone mass, without muscle you become more insulin resistant, thyroid function lowers to keep you alive on starvation calories, and good luck fixing that.

If you’re a raging diabetic, who’s blood sugar is in the mid 200’s all day long goes to a doctor and takes a Glucose tolerance test, 30mins in before they pull their 1hr test you pin 30 units of Insuli, at the 1hr mark your glucose levels are awesome! Doc says, you look great! We don’t need the 2hr test. Do you then go on eating the crap what that made you a raging diabetic because you “passed” a test that you chemically cheated?

That’s what people do with GLP-1’s. Doesn’t matter if your not hungry, if you’re only at 500cals, force it. Drink it, do what you need to do, but realistically, back the dose down. Get some appetite back.

Have you ever had a full thyroid panel done?

(KM) #7

I think my situation is a combination of the significant weight loss and a steadily decreasing estrogen level. Most of what I see on my own body is similar to the aging I see on other older women, whether they have had extreme weight loss or not. And I have admittedly not tried to boost my muscle mass very much, I have also not explored HRT. At least not yet, maybe that’s the next phase.

(Susan) #8

That makes sense. I’ve eaten more today and was 2MAD with a higher calorie count. One day at a time these days. Thanks for letting me know what you thought. I’m still hoping there’s new research on autophagy that someone is aware of. How do you even measure autophagy?

BTW, I’ve put my type II DM in remission for the last 5 years with keto and am off both diabetic meds and antihypertensives - the latter more recently because of the weight loss. My HbA1c pre keto was high 7s and now is mid 5s.

#9

You can’t to a point that matters, and only specialized labs can do it all all, and that’s by proxy, there’s no direct measurement of it. But Autophagy has been turned into a buzzword IMO, it sells books, diet plans, and now supplements. Autophagy is always happening, yes, it happens more in a fast, but if you’re working out eating right, and your body is on track, it really shouldn’t be a goal either. What I am a big fan of is senolytics, killing the zombie cells is crazy important to longevity, it’s also a lot of what happens during autophagy. Also given that’s whats pretty much been shown to be the majority of the comprised cells that can turn cancerous on us, that’s worth going after.

Then safe to say you’re clearly moving in the right direction!

(KM) #10

Ok. I’ll bite. How do we reduce senescent cells? Is there a natural, simple way to do this other than fasting / autophagy? Far be it from me to avoid biohacking, if it actually works and doesn’t involve stabbing or poisoning myself.

I think I just defined my personal boundary here, haha. :smirk:

(Emily Maia) #11

Dr Anthony Chaffee talks about satiety signals and the importance of not undereating on keto in this helpful video: https://youtu.be/QLenO7DM7Cw?si=rqwkvDliQ-VhiKZB

(Emily Maia) #12

Quercetin!

(Bob M) #13

I believe you can guess whether you’re in autophagy via some tests, but there’s no direct measure. I also think, like many things, that autophagy is not an on/off thing, like “breaking a fast”. If you have certain foods, you’re not going to break a fast (or autophagy), but you might slow/change it.

You can enable autophagy through exercise, for instance:

Gary Taubes makes what I think is an excellent argument that weight loss (or gain) is hormonal. But he goes through many studies where people who go on low calorie (but high carb) diets have metabolic slowdown. When many go keto, they eat less but are fine, because now their fat cells can give up their stored energy.

The problem is with these drugs, we don’t really know how they work. Could you be getting into a situation with metabolic slowdown? It’s basically impossible to say.

(Susan) #14

Thanks to both of you for the information. I’m off to exercise!

#15

Lots of good senolytics out there, Right now I’m using Life Extentions Senoylytic Activator, 2 pills once a week. Qualia Senolytic is a good one, you take that one monthly, Fisetin and Quercetin are the two big ones most of them are using.

Dasatinib is a pharmaceutical senolytic, right now they give it to cancer patients to stop cancer cells from growing, but big in the longevity space. Rapamycin is as well. Many will run a course of Rapamycin once a year which almost totally wipes them out. Downsides is it almost totally kills mTOR, so for people that are into fitness, muscle gain etc, it’s used like an off week thing as it can chemically erase a workout (or a few).

(Doug) #16

The ‘FMD’ really isn’t about autophagy. It does not take much at all to significantly slow or stop autophagy.

It’s not all one way, either. In skeletal muscles, for example, exercise induces some autophagy, regardless of one’s diet.

But for the main deal, the macroautophagy where the body is really scouring up the bad stuff, the old, damaged, faulty stuff, etc, and in some people, loose skin, it really comes down to nutrient deprivation. Proteins, and carbohydrates. Fats - there’s a pretty good argument to be made that fat won’t stop/slow/interrupt autophagy. After all, we’re running on fat after a while when we’re fasting.

#17

Extra motivation for me to go back to do fat fasts then… They are useful in many ways anyway and way easier to do (for me and now, at least) than extended fasts. While fat fasts don’t only have fats, the protein and carb intake is really tiny, it doesn’t help out the body :wink:

(Susan) #18

@Shinita. What do you eat on a fat fast? I get that it’s only fat, but do you eat coconut oil, straight up olive oil, cream cheese etc?

(Susan) #19

Wow. I finally had the time to sit down and read (parts of) this article. More than I could possibly understand about the mechanisms of autophagy! Clearly lots is known about it on the molecular level. One thing that stood out is that when they ran mice on a treadmill for NINE HOURS autophagy in the muscles continued for up to a week. That’s a tad more than I’m able to do! (heavy sarcasm). Thanks for linking to it. The parts I could understand were very interesting.

#20

I usually eat pork on a fat fast. I prefer my fav processed stuff, slow-cooked smoked pork yowl. 86g fat per 100g :smiley: 98% fat in calories? That’s a good base. I tend to have a yolk, some cream or sour cream, maybe a tiny bit of butter, half or a whole little sausage… About 1000 kcal and 90% fat. Inevitably OMAD, virtually always dinner.

I had fat fast on vegetarian keto too, I remember peanuts and vegs but what the fatty base was…? Beats me. Maybe flax wafers with a nice fatty spread… I had my yolk back then too and only had 88% fat, I just couldn’t go higher but it’s a little difference, it still worked well.

I never eat olive oil as I hate the flavor under most circumstances. I had a bigger amount of butter and lard once, well, eating straight fat isn’t my idea of a nice meal. But my pork jowl? Pure bliss, too bad it only lasts for a minute if I go slow.

Cream cheese may be a good idea, I probably had a little on some days… But it feels quite fatty (as it is) and I want to eat it with something like bread and my current fav bread is quite low-fat (below 50% in percentages. even my old high-carb days were fattier I am moderately sure), it’s one of my leaner protein sources.
I eat my super fatty pork jowl all alone in bigger amounts (in calories. I try to stop at 100g as that’s already 810 kcal according to its label), no problem.