Simple Self Experimentation

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Holloway

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These are a few simple experiments I've done on myself this November. It is pretty rudimentary - in the first failed caloric deficit experiment I only tracked the scale and calories. In the second current water fasting experiment, I'm only tracking the scale. The primary goal is weight loss.

Opening stats: Male, 39yo, 180cm, 90kg

First Experiment - 2 weeks: Does a caloric deficit lead to weight loss?

Details here: https://weight-loss.fitness.com/threads/new-user-calorie-counting-experience.99499/

Summary:
Daily average calories consumed: 1300
Estimated daily average caloric deficit excluding exercise: 800
Estimated daily average caloric deficit including exercise: 1700
Starting weight: 89.8kg
Finishing weight: 90.0kg
Note on exercise: Consisted of golf pulling clubs and walking/jogging on the beach - no strength training.
Success? No!

Tentative Conclusion: What makes up the calories is far more important than the number of calories consumed, not just for health generally but weight loss specifically. At a guess, eating 1300 calories per day of junk will lead to weight gain regardless of exercise, eating 1300 calories per day of healthy food will lead to weight loss regardless of exercise.

Second Experiment: 10 day water fast

Parameters: Water/mineral water only. Nothing else. 0 calories. 10 days tentative for now - may end it earlier depending on what happens.

Starting weight: 90.3kg (had breakfast before I remembered I was going to do this, thus the 0.3kg increase).
Day 2 morning: 88.8kg
Day 3 morning: 87.6kg

Currently 57 hours in so still less than the 66 hour fast completed during the previous experiment but that breakfast robbed me of another 16 here! My longest fast to date is 96 hours - everything beyond that will be uncharted territory for me so interested to hear how others have fared. Will keep reporting periodically.
 
Woke up this morning with an increased heart rate and got dizzy as soon as I got up. 70 hours into the fast so still early on.

Trusyiver mentioned something about supplementing with electrolytes being useful during a water fast in my initial post. I've been drinking mineral water with 50mg/L of sodium but that's it. Reading around Google, sodium supplementation is supposed to fix it, so maybe I just need more salt? There's also some sites recommending Magnesium and others Potassium, which could all come from an electrolyte supplement of some sort, circling back to Trusyiver's initial suggestion.

Anyone experienced this and know what to take? Should I just add more salt? Or alternatively if I go the electrolyte supplement, do you know one with no/minimal calories that won't affect the fast?

Thanks!
 
you need sodium, magnesium and potassium, however, potassium should not be supplemented if you have any kind of heart condition, very low dosages of potassium are needed,a small amount of lite salt is a good source. most people who water fast often or for long periods mix there own.


The minimum daily intake for the three electrolytes suggested by Lyle McDonald as:

5000 mg of sodium (not just salt)
1000 mg of potassium, in the form of potassium chloride or potassium sulfate
300 mg of magnesium, preferably in the form of magnesium citrate

When on a low carb diet or water fast, a LOT of electrolyte is flushed from the body so the values needed are much higher than needed on a SAD diet or any other diet with plenty of carbs.
 
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OK I've just picked up some Hydralyte tablets and Iodised Table Salt from the convenience store across the road for now. I can pick up anything else later. The Iodised Table Salt contains potassium iodate. The Hydralyte contains (per 200mL water) Sodium Chloride (175mg), Potassium Chloride (300mg), Sodium Bicarbonate (756mg), Citric Acid Anhydrous (1344mg) and Glucose Anhydrous (3.24g).

Neither contains magnesium and I couldn't find anything suitable for it there. Will have to sort that out tomorrow.

My concern with the Hydralyte is it might affect my fast - I don't know what Citric Acid Anhydrous and Glucose Anhydrous are but they sound like sugar/sweeteners so I'm not sure about that one. And the table salt contains potassium iodate which sounds like the wrong kind of potassium.

Reckon it's worth trying them anyway? Or should I wait until I can get lite salt from the supermarket tomorrow?
 
There's no nutritional info on the Hydralyte packet but just looking it up - it contains 13 calories per 200mL. So I think that's out.
 
Glucose Anhydrous is a simple sugar this gives a quick boost of energy for someone on a standard diet after they may have been sick, Citric Acid Anhydrous is citric acid as found in citrus juice - this is the flavour for the Hydralyte tablets, Anhydrous simply means without water, which you would expect for substances in tablet form.

potassium iodide and potassium iodate are used to add iodine to salt, the form of potassium used in lite salt from the supermarket is potassium chloride.

If you were not doing a water fast, getting adequate potassium through normal food is easy to achieve. (eg. I have consumed 1115 mg of potassium through food so far today)
 
I don't doubt that, but I am doing a water fast and the rapid heart beat / dizziness this morning suggests I'm deficient in at least sodium, if not the other 2 as well.

I just rang my pharmacist, told him I was doing a water only fast and he recommended Hydralyte. He said the sugars in it are minimal and necessary to break down the electrolytes and make them palatable. But if I'm drinking calories, surely that defeats the point of the fast?
 
by doing long water fasts you are going against official guidelines for health care professionals, any advice received will be aimed at pointing you back towards the common diet recommendations. as more studies are done the best way of achieving results changes but government guideline are usually way behind current science. Carbs are not an essential nutrient.
 
Yeah surely the glucose would knock me out of ketosis in a second and cut weight loss significantly. 13 calories / 200mL seems like way too much - I considered the 1 calorie in mineral water borderline.

I'll just take the table salt for now and pick up some lite salt tomorrow. That will do for the time being I think unless you think magnesium supplementation is really essential too?
 
The magnesium helps to prevent muscle cramping.

The currently established human essential nutrients are water, energy, amino acids (histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine), essential fatty acids (linoleic and α-linolenic acids), vitamins (ascorbic acid, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B-6, pantothenic acid, folic acid, biotin, and vitamin B-12), minerals (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and iron), trace minerals (zinc, copper, manganese, iodine, selenium, molybdenum, and chromium), electrolytes (sodium, potassium, and chloride), and ultratrace minerals (4). (Note the absence of specific carbohydrates from this list.) SOURCE: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 75, Issue 5, 1 May 2002, Pages 951–953, Is dietary carbohydrate essential for human nutrition?
 
Latest update on the fast:

Starting weight: 90.3kg
Day 2 morning: 88.8kg
Day 3 morning: 87.6kg
Day 4 morning: not recorded (added sodium and potassium)
Day 5 morning: 86.1kg

Day 4 morning was the toughest and most worrying so far with the elevated heart rate and dizziness. The dizziness went away fairly quickly - probably a result of getting up too fast. The elevated heart rate lingered all day and still feels a shade fast now although nothing like yesterday morning. The electrolytes seem to have settled it down.

Already I'd change 2 things if I did this again. First I'd take sodium and potassium from the start to prevent the rapid heart beat, which is a bit scary when you live alone and experiencing it for the first time. Second, I'd clear out all the food from the house. E.g. There's a tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the freezer, half a Castello blue cheese wheel in the fridge (which is about to go off - the real tragedy of this experiment!) and a 3/4 full biscuit tin in the cupboard. Not only does that add to the temptation but when I'm not thinking about the fast, sometimes I go in there and start fishing around just out of habit. I've almost broken the fast a couple of times by accident doing that. That wouldn't be a risk if I'd planned this in advance and gotten rid of that stuff.
 
i have been on an intermittent fast for a bit over two months now. my daily eating window is 3-5 hours and i fast the rest of the 24 hour day. during fasting i do drink hot black coffee, iced tea and water (60-70% of all liquid is water). a fasting state can kick in after 12-14 hours with exercise during that time increasing your effectiveness in burning fat. i've dropped a little over 25 lbs since i started this routine (i dropped about 10-15lbs by traditional means before starting the intermittent fasting, but found myself stalled at a weight i just couldn't seem to drop past).

aside from trying to nearly eliminate sugar, my diet during eating hours is nothing special though the two meals i fit in are probably on the small side. quitting added sugar practically eliminates all processed foods, so by mere process of elimination, i imagine i'm generally eating a very healthy diet. i take no mineral or vitamin supplements.
 
That's a great result!

Intermittent fasting sounds strange to me because I've only eaten 1-2 meals per day for about 20 years now and gradually put on weight most of that time. So I'd say the vast majority of the time I was doing what today is called intermittent fasting without realising it. That wasn't an intentional thing or something I saw as fasting - it just felt normal to me.

The big difference is I eat primarily junk. A normal daily diet for me is say 2 chicken, cheese, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, more chicken on the side and a packet of tim tams (Arnotts Originals). Or various similar things - 2 chicken kievs, 1 packet of steamed veg and a large tub of Ben and Jerry's ice cream - that sort of thing. Even though I was usually only eating it in 1-2 meals within a fairly brief time window, I was still putting on weight anyway.

In my initial calorie counting experiment here - even though the calorie count was very low, the actual content of it was pretty bad. I justified it by arguing that a calorie is a calorie regardless of the source - I can get away with junk because I'm eating it in small enough doses to keep my overall calorie count low. And in the end that backfired - I actually gained weight running consistent 1700 calorie deficits.

The one diet that worked for me earlier in the year was just eating battered fish and vegetables - nothing else - 6 days per week - with no thought of how much I was eating - just eat more if I'm hungry - then going crazy on the other day with all the junk I'd missed. I lost 16kg (35lbs) with that one and then abandoned it when I started reading about calories. At this stage I'm planning to go back to that post fast and see if I can keep the weight off.

I have to thank you for this water fasting recommendation - I likely wouldn't have thought of it if you didn't mention it in the other thread. I've ending up going for 10 days instead of 5 to really make the most of it and so far (not quite half way through) it has worked astonishingly well. Although I get some weight will inevitably come back post fast, I think I should be able to manage it so most of it doesn't, then hopefully the post fast fish and veggies regime over the following month will bring me back to the low weight at the end of the fast (before Christmas and New Years with the family inevitably bumps me up a bit again!) I might even make sure to keep it within a 6 hour daily window for added effect (although I usually do that naturally anyway).
 
i think cutting my total daily sugar to under 6-8 gm/ day has had the greatest effect on my diet. and as i mentioned, the side effect was that it eliminated about 70% of the supermarket shelves, so it basically forces you to choose healthy food. i steam or broil a bunch of vegetables at least every other day, but i do eat burgers and pizza (i make), too. bacon & eggs once in awhile and i still eat a reasonable amount of carbs. oatmeal is just too good for me to eliminate. i probably have cut back the amount of bread i eat in general, though. rice and beans is another carb loaded favorite i figure in once in a while, too. there is a mex place down the street from me that makes great burritos which i can see them making with an almost total lack of anything processed. those + some Chinese maybe once or twice a month are the only things i get out anymore.

look up Dr Robert Lustig on sugar... there are some great lectures of his online. for fasting, my favorite lecturer is Dr Jason Fung, especially his view on "solving the two compartment problem" i'm actually following nobody's exact plan, but the adaptions i've made to my daily cycle are now based on doing things with good science backing them presented by these two and others i've found.

cheers...gary
 
Cheers. I watched that talk from Fung you posted the other day and it was interesting, but generally I can't be bothered trying to educate myself on the subject. I did it when I was younger and it seemed like for every reputable theory that came out, another one debunked it, and no matter what I looked for, half the people were saying it was good and the other half bad. I think everyone knows basically what is healthy or not.

My method now is just to test ideas, make it as simple as possible and see what works for me, but keep an open mind. My tentative conclusions from this year have been that the calories in calories out method is nonsense and doesn't achieve anything. That took a lot longer than it should have to sink in but my most recent experiment made a strong case for finally putting the nail in that coffin.

What seems much more important in my experience is eating reasonably healthy foods most of the time. And making the ice cream, donuts, chocolate, biscuits, chips, cheese wheels, pizzas, etc., a much more occasional thing. Confining those things to one day per week or even per fortnight, and eating healthy the rest of the time, led to drastically better weight loss results for me than eating less calories, exercising more, but having that stuff take up a large chunk of the daily calorie count. When I start eating again, there certainly won't be any counting of calories anymore - just healthy eating at least 6 days per week and at most 1 day for binging on the cravings.

This fasting idea is a nice quick fix to knock off maybe 7-8kg (we'll see!), gain probably 2-3kg of it back on refeeding and settle at ~5kg lost in 2 weeks, and then restart my system the healthier way where any weight loss will be much more gradual. It's a handy tool to have in the kit box if my weight gets too high again. But I better make sure I can finish it first - still not even half way!
 
Water fast:

Starting weight: 90.3kg
Day 2 morning: 88.8kg
Day 3 morning: 87.6kg
Day 4 morning: not recorded
Day 5 morning: 86.1kg
Day 6 morning: 86.2kg!

Didn't see that coming! Surely my metabolism hasn't adjusted to 0 calories already. What's going on here?
 
Even during a fast, weight loss is not constant, however, things like how full your bladder is or how much water your muscles are retaining after some heavy exercise all have an effect, As much as it would be nice for weight loss to be simple, the human body is complex which also make weight loss complex.
 
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