Weight Gain Experiment – Progress Update

Before getting started, let me again emphasize that I highly discourage anyone else doing this experiment. As I’ve warned both here on the blog and on YouTube, this experiment has both short and long-term risks. In order to gain weight, I’m inducing a constant state of heightened insulin (duh!) to accumulate fat.

Patrons –> I have an accompanying video to this blog post you can watch here.

The Schedule

As you can see above, I’m now in the purple phase of a Controlled Standard American Diet which consists of two foot long sandwiches and a medium pepperoni pizza (Carbs 381g, Protein 301g, Fat 177g).

On Monday morning (May 7th) I’ll get a DEXA scan and a full spectrum blood test.

Then I’ll switch a Controlled Keto Diet which consists of 10 eggs, 8 oz of cheddar cheese, 2 pork sausage patties, 60ml heavy whipping cream, 2.5 oz almonds (Carbs 24g, Protein 128g, Fat 205g).

I plan to get a standard blood panel three days later on the 10th which will include a CMP, CBC, Fasting Insulin, hsCRP, NMR and basic lipid panel. Following this will be one more full spectrum test on the 14th and one more standard panel on 17th.

Daily Metrics

In addition to the labs taken and body scans, I’ll be capturing certain markers daily until the 19th:

• Waking Glucose
• Waking BHB (Ketones)
• Waking weight
• Waking blood pressure
• Waking %SpO2 & PRbpm
• Around 10am Glucose
• Around 10am Total Cholesterol, LDL, HDL, TG (CardioChek)
• Bedtime Glucose

Progress Thus Far

I find it endlessly ironic that so many people figured this would be “fun” since I could just “pig out” on anything I wanted. To be sure, I was actually trying to limit my carbs to grains in particular. So there was very little fructose or table sugar relative to my non-keto diet before. I ate a lot of pizza, buns on burgers, meat pies, bagels, croissants, etc. This was mainly due to (1) my having mild fructose malabsorption, and (2) keeping carb variations down to limit variables.

Sure enough, I got nearly all the symptoms I had listed last year in my Adventures in Carbland Parts I, II, and III. GI Stress, dry scalp, postprandial drowsiness, broken circadian rhythm, and acne. Yay.

But wait, there’s more! I have three new things that have been quite troublesome:

• Persistent cough / heavy breathing. While I’ve had to deal with this a few times before in the carb swap experiments, it’s much worse this time around. Even walking around the block I find I’ll cough a bit and sometimes have to take deeper breaths or yawn.
• Lack of productivity. I’m definitely not as much of my workaholic self. For instance, I usually find few TV shows worth stopping and watching. I’m usually doing something else while one is on. Now I feel like I can just veg in front of the TV pretty easily. I also don’t pop out of bed as quickly in the morning. I’m glad I have to take those metrics (from above) right away or I think I’d just lie there another half hour instead.
• Less joy. Maybe it’s just these other symptoms that are bringing down my mood, but I certainly feel a bit more malaise when on this diet. I can’t wait to flip the switch back to keto soon.
• Persistent Headaches*. I put a star next to this one as this has been mainly predominant since returning from the hiatus and moving from an uncontrolled carb diet to a controlled one. In the uncontrolled I had a lot of diet soda, whereas I have only water in the controlled — so there’s a decent chance this is a withdrawal from the caffeine. That said, it seems to be getting worse (not better) and it has now been three and a half days since starting the controlled phase.