Ultra low fat diet || My 10 day experience

Why I did this experiment

More motivation for exercise and faster recovery from exercise.

I have many athletic goals and the main thing that’s holding me (and many athletes) back is recovery. If I can recover faster naturally, I can do more volume and make faster progress.

My current workout routine is as follows:

• Walking and athletic training for 20-30min each morning
• Weight lifting for 45-50min x3 week
• Jumping trampoline for 30-60min daily

On top of that, I’m doing research, writing articles, working with clients, etc.

On a low-carb diet (>150g daily), my motivation and recovery are slow. When I get around 250-300g of carbs daily, my motivation goes up a lot. So I thought, perhaps more is better. I was shooting for 500-600g carbs daily and to prevent my calories from going too high, I’d have to cut fats.

I’ve done an ultra-low fat diet in the past consisting of skim milk and sugar. I can’t exactly recall how I felt then, but I didn’t feel optimal and was hungry all the time.

This time around I was going to have liver, oysters, banana, honey and starches on top of my skim milk. This diet was a lot more nutrient-dense, so I thought I’d have a lot more success.

My 10-day diet

My diet varied a bit based on the starches I had. I started with spaghetti, then transitioned to egg noodles, because I got too much gas. Then I switched to rice and black beans since I wanted a burrito-style meal. Then I removed the beans due to more gas and kept only the rice and added egg white as a protein source.

I also removed the bananas for a while since one of the batches was unripe and gave me painful gas. I replaced it with sugar.

Here are the micros (vitamins and minerals). Everything was spot on, except biotin, vitamin E and K2. However, liver is a great source of biotin, vit E and vitamin K2 (the longer chain MKs). So I felt I got everything covered for at least 30 days. Both copper and zinc were high, but they balance each other out and the body can downregulate the absorption of nutrients it has enough of.

Daily experience

Weight

I lost nearly 3kg in 10 days. My wife said that she could see that I was smaller; less full and hard. Even though I could see that I’m getting leaner each day, the weight loss was just too fast. I probably also lost water weight, but I don’t like such fast fat loss. My strength was still good, but on some lifts, I did feel slightly weaker which concerned me.

Although I lost 1 inch around my midsection, I also lost almost 1 inch off my biceps (from 17.7′ to 16.8′; not cool bro).

HRV

I have a chest strap monitor that ended up breaking right before this experiment, so I used the HRV4training app that can test my HRV via the camera. Apparently, it’s just as accurate as any other device, but I must say, an HRV of 8 doesn’t seem accurate at all.

Regardless, my HRV seems to have increased despite me feeling worse as the days went on.

Heart rate

Heart rate is a good indirect measure of thyroid function. Hypothyroid individuals tend to have low heart rate, which then improves when they supplement thyroid. Mine remained more or less the same.

Keep in mind that I’m fairly active and do a lot of walking, athletic training, trampoline work, etc., which might influence my resting heart rate.

Temperature

After recovering from my hypothyroid phase a few years ago, I’ve always run hot.

The first 4 days my temps were good despite having cold hands and feet, but then it tanked on day 5. Slowly it started to increase again despite me feeling colder and colder.

I shifted my first starch meal from 6pm to 1pm which helped a lot with cold hands and feet, but didn’t eliminate it. Maybe if I had more starch meals, it would have been even better, but I didn’t crave it.

As a side note, I took all measurements rectally because it’s the most accurate representation of core temps.

Blood sugar

Blood sugar was an interesting and surprising one. I did almost 1 full day of measuring every 30min. From there I mostly only measured first thing in the morning.

Blood sugar over the course of 1 day

As you can see in the table below, I ate a meal at 12:30 and my blood sugar (BS) was “normal” again after 60 min. I then got really hypo after doing some light tramp jumping for just 15min. BS was at 66.6 (evil I know).

At 4 I played with the dogs and felt slightly hypo 15 min later at 70. “Shake” consisted of 1 banana and 2 tbsp honey with 400ml skim milk.

Moral of the story, I struggle to control my blood sugar when doing aerobic training of various intensities.

Waking blood sugar over the week

My waking fasting blood sugar is definitely too high. I prefer it in the mid to low 80s.

Insulin sensitivity after a meal

I ate a meal consisting of 150g of uncooked white rice (about 115g carbs) with 5 cooked egg whites and some sauce at 12:30. 15min later BS is 117. 30min later it’s 120.6. 60min later it’s 100.8 (back to baseline).

Clearly, I’m very insulin sensitive.

However, back on my normal T-boosting diet, my BS also only spikes to 120 after eating a meal containing 85g protein, 170g carbs and 41g fat. It would seem that an ultra low fat diet didn’t make me even more insulin sensitive compared to how I was (and am again).

In summary, although my fasting insulin is high (close to prediabetic), my insulin sensitivity is really good.

Difference between fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity

Fasting glucose is increased due to excess glucagon and/or cortisol, which stimulates the liver to create glucose from amino acids and glycerol. The higher someone’s cortisol is, the higher their fasting glucose will likely be.

Glucose is taken up by cells in the body by GLUT transporters. Only GLUT4 is insulin dependent. Other GLUT transporters can take up glucose without insulin. In fact, diabetics can take up glucose from the blood just as effectively as non-diabetics in an insulin-independent manner. It’s only their GLUT4 that doesn’t work well (as well as their glucose and fat oxidation).

For some reason, my body finds it necessary to upregulate glucose production on a very low-fat diet. This could mean that either an ultra-low fat diet increases my cortisol or that I’m not (yet) metabolically flexible to switch to fat oxidation when the time arises (which I am on a higher fat diet).

Daily overview of how I felt

Day 1: fluctuating cold hands at night. Hungry more often. Joints feel good. Stress tolerance is good. No lifting, just tricking. Still felt good despite DOMS. Hands 7/10 cold.

Day 2: woke up a little tired. Energy still good. Feeling explosive on tramp. Vision is clearer. Hands less cold at 3/10.

Day 3: Woke up with good energy. Peed out my ass. Vision 10/10. 37.2 rectal, 35.4 underarm. Didn’t consume my last shake as I was too full. This is when I started to notice the satiety benefit of this diet.

Day 4: A bit tired but better than expected after landing on my neck yesterday trying to do a trick. Motivation to get out of bed is 10/10. Feel surprisingly satiated.

Day 5: Waking temp is 36.7 which increased to 37.7 after breakfast and walking. Motivated to get out of bed 10/10. Nose clogged up each morning. Bowels back to normal. Cold hands to touch. Cold hands and feet all day until beans and rice meal at 6pm. Had to pee every 30-60min. Clearly overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system.

Day 6: Had my starch meal at 1:30 instead of 6. No cold hands and feet or frequent urination today. Worked like a machine. Vision got worse after starch meal.

Day 7: Training felt solid and got stronger than last time (felt slightly weaker on heavy military press). Took 1.5g aspirin with rice and beans to see if it would reduce fasting glucose (it didn’t).

Day 8: Sleep was restless. Had painful gas all day due to having unripe bananas in my smoothies. Felt very cold the first half of the night (I wore 2 jackets, 2 pairs of thermal socks and wrapped myself in a blanket). Vision was great without aspirin. It’s likely the probiotic (I started a spore probiotic).

Day 9: Sleep was ok, no morning wood (no morning wood this whole week). Training went well, maybe slightly weaker on bench press. Feeling tired and achy. No beans or bananas. Experiencing diarrhea. Heavy fatigue.

Day 10. Tired AF. 16.8 bicep. Brain has safety mode on. I struggle to do easy tricks and it feels likely brain wouldn’t allow me.

Symptoms

Negatives

• Cold hands and feet
• Brain had safety on
• Severe fatigue the last 2 days
• Very low motivation and drive to do anything
• Feeling overwhelmed by the tasks I had to do. In the past, I always felt motivated to knock down one task after another. Not anymore. 1 day after stopped, my old motivation and drive were back and I no longer felt overwhelmed.
• Lost size (almost 1 inch off my arms)

Positives

Really full. I thought that I was going to be starving and had to eat every 30 min. I was wrong. Overtimes I even struggled to finish my food for the day.

Lost weight. I’ve never lost weight this fast. However, I’m sure in the long term it would have been equal muscle and fat and I’m NOT going to become a puny human being again! As a natty guy it’s already a battle to build muscle, and then just to lose it all in 30 days? No thank you!

Why I stopped this experiment

My main goal was to have more motivation and recover faster, which I did not experience.

Also, the deliberating fatigue was the final strike. I need energy and focus to do research, create content, work with clients, etc, etc, and I didn’t have it. Plus, I started to feel overwhelmed.

Things were just getting worse so I decided to stop.

What happened after stopping

My temps were back to normal. Although I can feel it’s cold, I’m no longer cold-intolerant. I got my motivation and drive back. The overwhelm disappeared and I looked forward to knocking goals out of the park. My brain’s safety was turned off and I felt daring and explosive on the trampoline again. Diarrhea went away. Morning wood came back.

In conclusion

What I learned

Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

I got used to feeling amazing on my original testosterone optimization diet (which I’m back on now and feeling amazing again). I will not stop looking for ways to speed up my recovery, but I will not go low-fat again. Fat is important!

Even though sucking wine gums in the evening was nice, the diet was pretty bland without fat. Even just a little bit of coconut oil with my rice dramatically improved the flavor.

Ultra low fat diets seem to give me gut issues.

Ultra-low-fat diets can increase fasting glucose.