When I was away on vacation, I was rather sloppy with my eating… no IF, waffles for breakfast (almond flour-based at least, with butter and no syrup) and one day lunch was pad thai and milk tea, albeit with 30% sugar…
I feel MUCH better when I eat low carb than high carb… initially I feel good but then I feel lethargic and bloated. I was rather happy to get back to my low-carb meals!
I have been doing “keto” in name only since Aug 1. Getting great results. I took it too far or something. Had a severe craving for Wendy’s which hit while I was out making deliveries one night a couple weeks ago.
Wendy’s was drive-thru only, and I felt like sitting inside and savoring my cheat meal. Plus the line was horrendously long. So I went Jack in the Box. even had Dr Pepper, as the tea they had, the dispenser it was in was horribly dirty, so no telling when the last time was they made it (broken windows theory, anyone?)
Felt great that night. Next day I felt like a failure. Took quite a bit of reframing on that.
Took me 3-4 days to get my blood sugar back to what are considered “normal” levels.
I’ve had one more smaller blowout, today actually. Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich, fries, and tea. Their tea is actually decent.
It wasn’t so much of a cheat meal as a “I’ve had a shit day today and pumpkin seeds and pistachios just won’t make me feel better.”
Love that chicken from Popeye’s:notes:
Cheers on your Keto journey.
Never intended to do keto. Still not sure I am. I’m more doing caloric restriction than keto I guess. I’m just doing very low carb to get my glucose to be in normal non-diabetic range without feeling like shit
14.6% Bodyfat, 186lbs.
I’ve been eating much better lately but due to schedules and life stuff, I’ve barely been doing any exercise…
Energy has been lower as well, but I believe that may be a result of work-related stress; we’ve had numerous deadlines lately and at the end of the day I’m just wiped out mentally and haven’t had the drive to do anything other than sit on the patio and rest… but no time for that either lol.
My BAT supplement is apparently crawling here; DHL has had it forever… same with my cool fat burner vest. Still another WEEK until the delivery ETA. I know I didn’t order the express delivery on it, but jfc this is a bit ridiculous.
The first batch of L. Reuteri probiotic yogurt was a bit of a flop; I wasn’t able to find the specific temperature data for the different yogurt settings on my Instant Pot so I guessed… and when I did finally find them, turns out I’d guessed wrong. I’ll be starting another batch this week, done right this time.
So… a nice surprise to see the improved numbers on the scale this morning. lol.
Onward!
The last 3 weeks have been crazy; almost banging my head against the wall, throwing things across my office, crazy.
This isn’t the place for details, but it was mostly work-related. Ok, almost exclusively.
In that time, I 'd booked a week off for my daughter’s bday because my sister was coming to visit and I haven’t seen her in 5 years. So that was nice. One of the kids brought a cold (but not covid, we did multiple tests) to the party, so we were down for a few days… that wasn’t as nice lol.
I’ve been making batches of L. Reuteri yogurt for 3 weeks now, and it’s just about the best-tasting yogurt I’ve ever had. I’m not sure it’s boosting my oxytocin as promised though; we went to an open house for the private school we’re applying to and one of the other parents there was utterly exasperating in the Q&A after the school tour.
Without going into details so I don’t accidentally go political here… and because my wife said I couldn’t make a scene at the nice school… and I still need to say SOMETHING… lol…
You can use your imagination as to who or what I may be referring to.
It’s fine if other people do something different than you do.
It’s fine if you are offended by something someone else is doing.
But…
Neither of those things gives you the right to demand that everyone else change everything they do to make you more “comfortable”.
It especially doesn’t give you the right to demand special treatment while simultaneously demanding that everyone else be denied those same rights.
Yep, not overflowing with oxytocin and love yet. lol.
Stack is still EF2/EF3/Beast Within, fwiw.
Despite slacking utterly on anything even remotely resembling exercise (beyond normal walking around) and ignoring my diet many times (mmm pizza.) I’ve somehow managed to not only hold my ground, but actually lose a bit more.
186lbs and 14.6% body fat, with an increase of just shy of 2lbs of muscle for the same total mass…
Not bad… not bad.
You eat pizza and have sub-15% BF. I could do that in my 20s and 30s, but not now. Tell me your secret?
I had pizza twice in the past 3 months, the bulk of the time I eat salmon and steamed broccoli for at least half of my meals.
That being said… here are a few things that likely contribute:
IF 18h/day every day (except one, when I was sick and really wanted some cereal, so I had a bowl) since mid-June
C8 MCT oil 2tbsp/day
Metformin 1g/day
Berberine 1g/day
Experimental BAT-activating cold mimetic compound 500mg/day
L-Carnitine L-Tartrate 4.5g/day
L. Reuteri + L. Gasseri probiotic yogurt 1 cup/day… not a clue as to CFU, but very very high.
I have also been taking DIM 200mg/day and Tongkat Ali 200mg/day, but when my knee was really bothering me one of the things I read was that dropping estrogen too much can lead to joint pain so I’ve paused those supplements for a while until my knee fully heals. It’s mostly better but still twinges when I walk without a brace.
I’m not sure exactly what I did to it, but it wrenched sideways with a loud audible pop, and searing pain to the lower right of my kneecap. I couldn’t bend it for 2-3 days, and it hurt so much I couldn’t attempt to move and speak at the same time. Luckily it happened relatively close to home, so while an excruciating and slow walk, it was at least not a long one. 10 minutes usually, 35 mins that day.
A big portion of things like pizzas, burgers and stuff like that when you eat them depends on how many calories you eat in a day and how active you are (The other percentage comes from other influencing factors like testosterone levels, thyroid levels and something I found out just know insulin resistance).
In general (This is just an example and not science) - (Also this example is assuming your a healthy person with normal biomarkers), if you eat one pizza (Assuming it’s 1200 calories) a day and nothing else and assuming your 160-180lbs you’d lose weight though it would be very unhealthy and you will probably not be able to do it very long lol.
One thing that @BLACKICE does and I do as well is IF but the Kinobody way where you fast for the first 4-6 hours after waking up which has been the most helpful for fat loss. I’ve never been able to stick to keto and weirdly my body loses more weight on a carb diet then a low carb diet even when calories are the same (I have a device that checks if I’m in ketosis so I’m 100% sure I’ve done keto properly when I did it). I don’t even know why or if that’s normal but yeah.
This has been the absolute most important part for me; if your insulin is too high you will not lose fat when eating carbs, if it’s generally in a normal calorie range*… your body just drops its energy expenditure to compensate, as the high insulin is forcing it to store fat.
*The one exception is if you are exercising so much that you’re constantly depleting your glycogen stores, but unless you’re Michael Phelps etc, you probably aren’t depleting them faster than you’re taking them in.
Jason Fung’s books are my top recommendation for this topic. 
Any more updates on this? How’s it going? Are you the Fit Emperor now?
I’m just happy to be the “most days I don’t walk with a limp emperor”… I really did a number on my knee last month. 
The last 2 months have been… crazy. Work stress, concerns about aging parents, and a knee injury that took WEEKS to heal… I’ve utterly slacked off on my diet, barely any exercise, and generally just… putting fitness on the back burner in favor of dealing with life stuff.
Yet somehow, miraculously, I’ve still managed to lose fat!
Weighed in this morning, after some gentle prodding from my wife, and was shocked to see the scale…
I’ve still got a squishy gut, as my daughter LOVES to point out… so I clearly need to lose more fat and put on some muscle, but I’ve hit the target number at least.
~5 months to go down 15lbs and barely over 1% BF… doesn’t seem like much when I look at it that way. But… I haven’t been under 180lbs since I was in my experimental vegan phase in college… we don’t talk about that… so for the moment, I’m pleased with the progress.
Now just don’t expect more updates until sufficient time after the holidays have passed…
Well, sufficient time has passed… though we’re in another holiday season here as half my family is Chinese (Happy Chinese New Year!) and we’ve been eating more holiday food.
Even so…
This morning, even after a 15oz butter coffee… 79.8kg/175.6lbs @ 13.5% body fat.
Not too shabby for after a month of utterly slacking on diet and exercise!
Quick update, not a ton to share right now except that I’ve still been slacking due to some chaos in my life (work stuff… PHB drama) but, I’ve just started a cycle of tesofensine, 0.5mg/day.
My wife knitted me a sweater for xmas (she finally finished it a couple of weeks ago lol) and it’s a size SMALL, and it fits perfectly… I used to wear XL… so why am I taking an expensive fat-loss pill?
Because I still have some belly fat. I’m not done until I’ve got visible abs and some decent muscles. I don’t need to be Captain America, but I still have a ways to go before I’ve hit my goal. I also don’t want to miss out on my favorite summer foods this year. I love BBQ and fresh fruit, and last summer I skipped both of those things because I was so set on dropping fat. This year I’m going hard at it in the spring, so I can coast a bit during the summer and enjoy the fresh plums from the tree in our yard, have burgers and ribs with friends at summer barbecues, etc…
Anyway, that’s all for now.
First of all, big shout out to @Plutus for all of the awesome insights and support re: Tesofensine and other supps that helped me pull the trigger on this one!
Tesofensine update #1.
Thursday was my first dose, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got high hopes for effectiveness. It’s a triple-reuptake inhibitor (SNDRI - serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine) so yes, I technically have put myself on a fairly hefty med. I did my homework though, and I am working with a psychologist who is making sure it doesn’t have any adverse effects on me. No psychiatrists were available… but I digress.
Thursday my mood was AMAZING. I was almost bouncing off the walls. My productivity was through the roof, everything felt awesome, and I was hyper awake. This continued right up until bedtime, and then for at least 90 mins after… as I found it impossible to fall asleep. lol. It was similar to the first time I had a cold-brew nitro at Starbucks one afternoon… don’t do that, I don’t recommend it.
My appetite wasn’t too visibly blunted, and food-wise it felt like a normal day overall.
Friday was pretty good mentally as well, though definitely not feeling the appetite suppression yet… I’m on a caloric-restricted clean keto diet again, and I’ve got a rather dialed-in meal plan.
Unfortunately while I was out with my daughter, my wife decided to “fix” how “boring” the plan was, and swapped my whole bag of frozen organic broccoli with a big handful of “nice fresh greens”, which cooked down to f*** all and had no fiber to speak of. I was so ravenous that night that I broke down and ate a bowl of cereal at 9pm.
Ok, I lied.
2 bowls. 
Saturday we went on an adventure hike… not really a real hike, we just walked halfway across the city for fun/exercise. No places we were near had anything keto-friendly, so I subsisted on coffee until we got home at 4:30pm, at which point I ate a lunch of 4 fried eggs, 2 cheese strings, and then a protein shake immediately afterward… then I started making dinner lol.
Between the night before and the 4 hours of walking, I was super hungry… c’mon Tesofensine, do your thing.
I also fell asleep on the couch at 9:30, got up at 11 to go to bed, and slept through until 8:30 this morning.
Meals were finally on-point and on time today… which sort of worked.
Full BP coffee (butter + 1.5tbsp C8 MCT + 1/4 cup table cream) for breakfast, decaf latte (again, with real cream, none of this half & half nonsense…) at noon… and dammit, I was so hungry by lunch that I once again had both 4 fried eggs, 2 cheese strings AND a 500mL protein shake…
After which, and probably unrelated to it, I was so tired (yes, even after sleeping 11 hours last night…) that I napped on the couch today for close to 2 hours. 
I thought this stuff was supposed to give me more energy?? I feel like I slept half the weekend…
Dinner was a baked chicken breast dripping in butter (so juicy!) seasoned with a keto-friendly dijon mustard, served over a big pile of sauteed broccoli and sliced mushrooms.
I’m still not getting the results I want though… I’ve read it can take up to 7 days for the Tesofensine to kick in to fully blunt appetite, so that’ll be this coming Thursday… we’ll see!
Interesting!
Years ago I was reading a pamphlet from a weight loss clinic and one of their interventions was a supplement that increased serotonin.
I’d heard the opposite about SSRIs, but ones that increased dopamine were known to have this as a side effect… afaik it’s an off-label use of bupropion. Tesofensine handles 3 different neurochems…
I’m just hoping I see the intended results before my initial supply runs out; the company has proven to be a bit scummy, unfortunately, and they shorted me on my order (they literally only sent half of what I paid for) and so far have been unwilling to fix the issue.
I don’t think it was an SSRI.