So I’ve been promising that I would share my weight progress after I had done The Emergence Diet for 28 days. My argument is that weight loss isn’t about calories, it’s about burning glucose efficiently. To burn fat you need NAD+. Burning fat lowers NAD+ availability and burning carbohydrate increases it. “Fat burns in the flame of carbohydrate” is the old adage. This is true IFF you can burn carbohydrate efficiently.
To help myself burn carbs, I’ve been:
- Eating ~500g of carbs per day.
- Restricting Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA) to under 8g per day.
- Eating gelatin, bone broth, pigs feet, beef tendon, and headcheese
- Consuming 480mg of r-Alpha Lipoic Acid with meals
- Taking 600 mg of SEA in the morning to block inflammation
- Taking 1200 mg of theabrownin Pu-Erh tea extract with meals (also to block the inflammatory pathway)
This seems to be working. I dropped my fasting blood glucose by 25 points and aced my Oral Glucose Tolerance test.
Obviously no one cares about any of this. “Are you losing weight?”
I am! 14.5 pounds in 28 days. My scale keeps track for me.
My scale is so clever. It also tracks bodyfat composition. In the day to day it is full of lies, leaping around by as much as 4% bodyfat composition change from one day to the next. If you zoom out a bit, a trend emerges. My scale and the two inches I’ve lost around my waist measured at the belly button suggest that I’m losing fat.
Calories In or Calories Out?
I’ve read one billion studies about rodents and diet-induced obesity. The inescapable conclusion is that metabolic rate trumps calories every time. Everything I’m doing is designed to increase metabolic rate.
I’m eating 2800-3000 calories per day on average, some days more.
Yesterday was Halloween. I woke up and had my normal pancake breakfast plus a glass of orange juice. 1000 calories. For late lunch I had half of a leftover fioreglut flour-headcheese pizza I’d made the day before. 700 calories. Devon had some questions, so I met him downtown. I didn’t want to be tempted by food at the bar, so I had a snack of gummy bears and gluten free pretzels. 500 calories. I drank two double margaritas (1400 calories) while I watched Devon consume 3500 calories in one sitting. Devon is lean and hypermetabolic even as he approaches 40. When he gets lunch at the local supermarket (which is often), he gets TWO footlong subs. Then my bestie Kate showed up dressed as Wednesday Adams and we went to watch witches dance! It WAS Halloween.
When I got home, Rachel and I got on about something and I drank a bottle of wine (600 calories) and then fell asleep on the couch with the lights on.
I am the anti-Ben Greenfield.
In the morning I was down two and a half pounds. TADA!!!
Conclusion
I’m telling this story not to suggest that you should behave like I do. My point is that:
- It’s about calories out!
- Even a jackass such as myself can lose weight with this strategy.
