February Weights and Measures

I just got back from a two week trip to India, so this is pretty late. I might make an interim post or handle that experience in the March report. You'll notice in the dataset that the first fifteen days of March are all the same - I didn't log anything over there and thus there's a two week hole in my records. I just filled it with something that seemed to be average.

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Seventh monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls

The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity. Also added average frequency.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

February was uneventful. My second liver test came back normal in all categories. Whether this was because I stopped working out for a week prior to it or for some other reason I’ll never know.

The log is getting more and more difficult to keep, simply because I appear to be functioning normally and who the hell writes down everything they eat and every bowel movement they have? Sometimes you want to go back to whatever you were doing when you get out of the bathroom rather than hunt down a notebook and try to quantify the crap you just took.

I had to switch to a new notebook, having filled the original, and I flipped back through my old notes to see how things have progressed. I certainly have come a long way from August and September. It’s hard to remember the transition period clearly, although the log shows that it sucked. If a very low carb diet is generally effective in maintaining a Crohn’s remission, and a study organized where many people attempted to follow the diet, probably the hardest part for people will be getting through the first three months without losing hope (or too much weight; 6’3” and 151 pounds doesn’t feel healthy at all) or thinking, “This is bullshit; I’m crapping my brains out.”

That brings up the question of how I’ll ever be able to explain this approach to people. In a society that values a solution in a pill, especially one that promises a quick return to the imagined “normal” where one can eat whatever with no consequences, can an individual ever make a case for a low carb, low starch, low fiber approach without instantly turning away 95% of their audience?

Probably not. Maybe I’ll write a book titled, “The Crohn’s Cure: There isn’t one, deal.” I can see that being popular with publishers.

Anyway, I stopped overeating about halfway through the month and promptly lost five pounds, then stabilized at 180. My workouts have suffered since the week off, which seems to have interrupted my scheduling. Also, I’m going to India for two weeks on March 1, where I won’t have any access to weight training equipment, so there’s some sense that I’m just wasting time working out now. Oh well, I’ll jump back on the horse when I get back.

I suppose the only negative thing is that it’s getting harder and harder to wake up in the morning. Unfortunately, there’s a furry confounding factor in all this (my cat) who likes to make sure that I never get more than 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep on a given night. Is my diet making me tired or is it my cat? I’ll have to experiment with shutting her in the basement for a few weeks and see if that actually helps things.

I was very lax with my vitamin D supplementation this month, and I won’t be taking any in India, so I’ll have to resume that when I get back. Maybe that will help. Maybe I’m deficient in something else. Or maybe chronic lack of sleep just makes you tired?

Seven down, five to go. Over the hump!

January Weights and Measures

Sixth monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls

The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity. Also added average frequency.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

Six months down! Day 180 actually came a few days ago. Halfway there. I promised myself I’d re-evaluate at six months and see how things were going, make any tweaks that seemed necessary, and then finish out the year. Here it goes.

January was about as boring as December when it came to Crohn’s Disease. It’s becoming more and more difficult to remember to log everything because there’s just nothing interesting to note. I’m in remission without medication. My poop is normal. I’m gaining weight. Great, now what?

Well, for one, I went to my gastroenterologist and told her that I was no longer taking medication in order to test a diet. She wilted in her chair like I had just told her I killed someone dear to her. Her tone of voice and demeanor completely changed from cheerful, “you take your pills so you’re a good boy” to “oh my god you killed the family dog”. She said that I really should be on medication because people have flareups when they stop. I mentioned that I did not appear to be flaring up, that I actually felt great, and she said she couldn’t argue with that. She seemed shocked when I mentioned some of the research showing that this angle wasn’t entirely insane. I couldn’t tell if it was the affront of me trying to tell her how to do her job or just her experience with people like me doing stupid things and then begging for steroids a few months later. So with that “resolved”, they drew my blood and I left.

A few weeks later she calls and tells me that my liver enzyme panel was out of whack. Everything pertaining to Crohn’s Disease was normal, but two liver enzymes were elevated: ALT at 121 (normal is 55) and AST at 56 (normal is 40). She asked if I was drinking (I wasn’t) or if I was taking any medication like ibuprofen (I wasn’t). Since I wasn’t taking any Crohn’s medications, it couldn’t be that. So I get to go to a lab in mid-February for another test to confirm the first one, and if that’s elevated the working hypothesis will be either hepatitis or some sort of liver disease.

I, of course, did my own research and discovered a paper from 2008 outlining how some healthy males had pathological levels of ALT and AST when engaging in heavy weight lifting exercises. Since I’m in the middle of a heavy weight lifting regime, this seems like a plausible explanation for elevated liver enzymes. In order to test the idea, I’ll be as sedentary as possible for the 7-10 days leading up to the blood test.

In the weight lifting realm, incidentally, I pushed my weight up to 175 on the squat, but felt that my form was pretty poor. So I reset twice now to work on it. I’d prefer to squat less weight and have a healthy back than go for broke and break something. Weight gain continues, though not at that rapid pace. I’m up to 184 now, so a gain of 10lbs over this month.

Overeating to the degree that is necessary to gain weight is extremely difficult on this diet. I haven’t felt hunger for a month and a half, and my whole body is resisting the idea of eating more. I’ll probably stop overeating soon, simply because I can’t stand it anymore. Sorry, Sean, I won’t be able to race you to 200lbs.

My only six-month gut-check tweak is that for the month of February (to start) I’m going to be taking a Vitamin D3 supplement. I’m curious to see if there’s any effect on energy levels. Getting out of bed in the morning hasn’t been easy all winter, and maybe that has something to do with a lack of sunlight. If there’s an improvement, I’ll keep it up.

Also, I’ve decided to bail out on my challenge to myself to ride a century on a bicycle this year. Further research into chronic cardio exercise like long distance biking has convinced me that it’s not particularly healthy or useful. I’ll be playing in a paintball tournament this year, which means I need to develop sprinting stamina, not be able to spin a bike pedal for seven hours. Previous experience has taught me that training one does little if anything for the other, so there’s no need to punish myself on a bike four times a week. Instead, I get to practice sprinting.

Six months down. Six to go.

December Weights and Measures

Fifth monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls

The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity. Also added average frequency.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

Month five was a relatively boring month. I played in two one day paintball games and didn’t suffer the exhaustion that I did from Fulda. My BM frequency leveled out, aside from one or two, probably holiday induced, turbulent days.

The interesting note from month five comes from the weight lifting program. After a disappointing November in terms of strength gains, I decided to step back and look at my diet more closely. I created a spreadsheet to track calories and discovered, to my great surprise, that I was only eating 2200-2500 calories a day. Subjectively it felt like I was stuffing myself – I only felt edgy hunger in the mornings, and then only for a few minutes before it went away – yet I was actually eating a fairly restrained amount of food.

Since virtually all weight programs call for increased consumption of food (a gallon of milk a day on top of what you already eat is a common prescription), I decided to increase my consumption of food and see what happened. I added in more cheese to my burgers and started drinking cups of heavy cream to add in even more fat calories. My hope was that this would allow my body to spare the maximum amount of protein for muscle repair.

In the month of December, my weight went from 159 pounds on 12/1/09 to 173 pounds on 1/1/10, a gain of 14 pounds. My squat went from 130lbs to 165lbs, with a steady gain of 5lbs per workout. So it appears that eating more really does solve that problem.

My only concern here is that I’m beginning to suspect I might have some sort of very mild reaction to the heavy cream. It’s difficult to describe, but sometime after drinking a cup of it I begin to feel thirsty and have a sensation of dry mouth. Maybe the lactose in the cream is enough to set off a minor reaction. For now I’m going to continue using cream to supplement fat calories and see what comes of it.

January promises to be an interesting month – I might end up in India for several weeks, eating almost exclusively at a Brazilian BBQ. Oh boy. I’m also going to my gastroenterologist for my six month checkup, and I can’t wait to see what she has to say about my results.

Five months down, seven to go!

November Weights and Measures

Fourth monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls

The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity. Also added average frequency.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

Month four was a much more turbulent month than month three. I started strong, lifting weights and generally feeling energetic. I went to a two day paintball game in North Carolina (Fulda Gap at Command Decisions Warfare) where I played well enough to earn MVP of the 39^th Guards for Warsaw (one of two MVP awards given for the ~500 player side). I had a ton of fun, did not feel limited by my diet at all, and were it not for having to explain myself every time I ate a meal, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it.

I drove home on a Monday, downing a lot of coffee along the way. I woke up on Tuesday completely mentally and physically exhausted. This was different from the usual exhaustion after paintball. I usually go through a several day blergh period after a two day game, which I attribute to the sudden onset and then departure of a very different kind of stress from what I normally experience. After Fulda, I went through several days where I was essentially a zombie. There wasn’t any mood involvement that I could tell – I wasn’t depressed – I was just not awake.

I didn’t experience any bowel distress during the game, but in the Sunday/Monday following I had a few reminders of what it was like to have a Crohn’s flare up. The four days I spent as a zombie were not remarkable on the BM meter. I can only speculate as to why I was so blitzed, but if the sudden combined stress theory holds, then it would make a certain amount of sense. Fulda this year, while a ton of fun, was pretty stressful due to the increased logistical planning as well as spending most of the game attempting to lead a group of good paintballers without screwing up. Maybe I just had to come down.

That weekend I helped my dad and my brother put in a new split-rail fence, and I didn’t feel any particular tiredness. Whatever the problem was, it was temporary.

The next week, I had a several day burst of manic energy, almost as if my body was making up for sleeping through the previous week. I got a lot of stuff done at work, felt like I didn’t need to sleep, and generally felt like I could take on anything.

Very odd.

I continued lifting weights (not on Zombie week) and after a month have added about 20 lbs to my squat. Not much considering, but not bad either. If I didn’t have to keep missing weeks due to random injury or inexplicable exhaustion, I’d probably be making better gains.

I also got my cow from the farm! So far, the cow has exceeded expectations. The ground beef tastes good, the steaks taste good, and one roast was good enough to entice a ten-year vegan into giving it a try. That probably had more to do with the fact that it was farm-raised and humanely treated, but still. Not many roasts have accomplished such a feat.

It’s hard to rate November relative to my “overall wellbeing” baseline of August, thanks to the wild swings. I would say it averaged out to October levels (+3, +4).

So far, so good. I don’t have scurvy, I don’t have any signs of vitamin deficiency, my lifestyle hasn’t been crimped and my Crohn’s is under control. If this keeps up, I don’t think I’ll be changing things at the end of my year significantly. But that’s a very premature judgment to make.

Four months down, eight to go!

I got the cow!

On Tuesday I went to Wkyertown, New Jersey, to visit Paul at the Plaid Piper Farm and pick up ~300 lbs of beef. Doug and Diana were kind enough to come along as well with their pickup truck. Di took some pictures of the farm while Doug, Paul and I set about loading up the truck. Paul threw in a carton of eggs for good measure, and off we went.

We got back to my townhouse and were immediately faced with a problem: my 14 cu. Ft. freezer wasn’t big enough to fit everything! After some packaging engineering, however, we were able to get all but two boxes worth of beef packed in.

There’s a LOT of ground beef in there, probably upwards of 75lbs.

Di and Doug ended up taking home a box full of soup bones (thanks guys!) and I put the other box in the freezer on my fridge.

I had a T-bone steak for lunch and dinner, and it tasted great. The taste is actually difficult to describe; almost, well, grassy. It tasted much better than the beef I had ordered online, which had a strong fishy flavor.

Looking forward to another six months of beef!

October Weights and Measures

Third monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls

The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

Month three was characterized by an increase in mood and energy. I began lifting heavy (at least for me) weights and continued throughout the month. I’ll start graphing those numbers next month – unfortunately, I managed to injure my shoulder playing football, so there’s a decent gap in my log. I also decided to restart the program with more emphasis on form, which reduced my total weight in the squat. I want to get a month’s worth of data with good form before I say anything there.

My bowel movements settled down completely this month. The exception has become a Crohn’s crap, as I call it, with the rule being a normal, boring bowel movement once every one or two days. My three interesting bouts this month correlate nicely with stupid diet behavior the previous day, or strenuous exercise the previous day: I played football while chugging chai tea and cream, with obvious results, I ate heavy cream as ice cream several days in a row, with obvious results, and I went to a Chinese buffet after running around all day playing paintball. Again, with obvious results.

The blergh feeling is almost completely gone. I guess I’m finally keto-adapting. Overall, I’d rate October as a +3 or +4 relative to August.

I ordered a cow from a farm in Wykertown and pick it up November 11. That should be interesting, and hopefully end my trips to the store for several months.

Nine more months to go!

Exercise Performance on a Ketogenic Diet

UPDATE 3/17/2013:

As I go back through the blog I wanted to provide "results" of my various musings/self-experiments. This one I think was a failure. I've read accounts of people doing meat-only high-intensity endurance exercise with success, but for me at least it didn't work out that way.

I was able to go on long hikes up very large mountains (Algonquin) without any more trouble than I would have had eating my previous diet, but hiking is almost by definition low-intensity. I was able to play 24 hour paintball games, but paintball is mostly walking around with brief, short sprints or intense action. No problems there. Anything that was mostly aerobic probably isn't going to be an issue.

Biking up a huge steep mountain? Probably wasn't going to happen. Now, when I did Wintergreen on my previous normal diet, I was probably going ~3MPH for the final 7 miles. It was incredibly painful and difficult, and come to think of it I was probably thoroughly bonked at that point and operating mostly in the aerobic zone. But I doubt I could have gotten through the previous 100+ miles on meat alone, at least not at the pace my carb-loaded father was setting.

So, experimenters, don't get fooled by the hype. Everything comes with a tradeoff.

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One of the most difficult transitions I’ve had to make has been mental. I’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated in the carb-loading exercise dogma and it is not an easy thing to escape. There is a huge body of studies showing that dietary carbohydrate is necessary for physical performance, which would give anyone looking to perform athletically pause.

As I’m finding very common in health science, however, there have not been very many studies done on competing hypotheses. Now, that’s mostly because no one can even conceive of there being a competing hypothesis; nothing has been swept under the rug, so to speak. But there is a body of evidence that suggest that carb-loading is not the whole story.

I’ve only been able to find one well constructed study on ketogenic diets and exercise. You can find the full text here. Phinney attempted to gather data explaining the apparent paradox presented by primitive hunting societies which ate close to zero carbohydrates. If carb-loading is necessary for physical performance, the survival of the Inuit and Plains Indians is difficult to explain. Historical accounts of white explorers living on an all-meat diet also become difficult to explain, especially their reported endurance.

Two studies are reviewed. In the first, overweight individuals are placed on a very low calories ketogenic diet for several weeks. They did no physical training during the study except for two treadmill tests. Over the course of the study they lost a lot of weight, and of course performed much better on their second treadmill test, even wearing a backpack weighted according to the amount of weight they had lost.

The second study was of competitive bicycle racers. They spent four weeks on a ketogenic diet while continuing their normal training rides. They reported a decline in energy levels during their first week, which they subsequently recovered. Their sprint ability declined and did not recover over the course of the study while their aerobic performance remained essentially unchanged over the course of the study.

Phinney concludes that aerobic performance up to 65% of VO2 max is not impaired and might be improved by a ketogenic diet, but any significantly anaerobic activity will be impaired. Thus, the diet is not optimal for high activity athletes.

His conclusion does not appear to resolve the paradoxes he sets out to address. How is it that Plains Indians, living on a diet consisting predominately of buffalo meat, created a culture of running and physical endurance if they would be unable to perform on a diet lacking carbohydrates? I’ve tracked a few stories down on the internet (they all come from a book called “Indian Running”, which I’ll have to buy to see where the stories are really sourced from) such as the following:

“In 1876 Big Hawk Chief ran from the Pawnee Agency to the Wichitas, a distance of 120 miles, inside 24 hours. His claim to have run such a distance was not believed. The Wichita chief arranged to ride back with him, sending a relay horse to the 60-mile point so that he could change horses there. Before the 60-mile point, the Wichita chief’s horse was forced to stop and rest, but Big Hawk went on. The Wichita chief eventually reached the Pawnee village before sunrise, less than 24 hours after their start, and found Big Hawk asleep. He had come in around midnight, covering the 120 miles across mountains, hills, and streams in about 20 hours.”

It seems similarly unbelievable that the Inuit exist at all if carbohydrates are required for maximal performance. Subsistence hunting requires punishing physical exertion. Did the Inuit paddle their kayaks at 65% VO2Max? They hunted whales. Whale + 65% VO2Max does not add up.

I think the major confounding factor here is adaptation time and training time. The longest modern study lasted a mere six weeks. Most were only run for a week, which as any Atkins dieter can tell you, is quite clearly insufficient time to adapt to the new diet. Perhaps, with a longer adaptation time and more time spent training under the new dietary regimen, some of the reported ultra-endurance reported by various historical sources could be achieved.

Thus I propose a thoroughly unscientific, n=1, study of exercise performance in very low carb, high fat diet conditions. I will spend the winter lifting weights, with a secondary emphasis on running and hiking when possible. When the weather gets warm, I will begin bicycle training. In August 2010, one year after beginning a ketogenic diet, I will attempt to ride a full century without ingesting any carbohydrates. Given how much pain I was in riding centuries while downing carbohydrate gel and Clif bars, I expect this to be quite a challenge. But it will also be a test of the hypothesis that with sufficient adaptation time, endurance performance should not be hugely inhibited on this diet. Or, it will test my ability to kill myself. We’ll see!