Comment by pmg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmg | Hacker News Reader

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I did it back during Covid. I did it imperfectly (just water initially - don't do that, see below). It looked like a vaccine was two years out, getting covid was inevitable, and the outcomes of getting sick were not good for obese people. At 28 bmi I figured the best thing I could do was lose weight, wear gloves, mask up, not travel, and expose all my mail/packages to UV light. Made sense at the time with the lack of empirical evidence we had then and needed to work from first principles. This was March of 2020.

Longer thread on the subject: https://twitter.com/pmg/status/1463309372793057285

tldr; We store fat to get us through periods of lack of food. Bears do this too. We literally have a "machine" inside us that we evolved at great expense that gets us through periods of no food. Fat storage is an "extra" feature - not the default. Chimps and gorillas don't have it for instance - if you've seen one, they're basically ripped, no real fat storage - probably because we evolved on the savannas (or similar environment with seasonal food scarcity) and they evolved in the jungle where food was always present.

Simple (not easy) fat loss guide: drink water, supplement with essential vitamins and minerals that you don't store naturally in fat (i.e. sodium, potassium, magnesium, b vitamins, and vitamin c). As I understand it, most other vitamins are fat soluble and thus...stored in fat. No, you don't lose much muscle (I lost 0.1%) - I believe because the body makes an exogenous amount of HGH when fasting (but not during calorie restriction). Currently of the mindset short term fasting (less than 7 days) is better than calorie restriction for weight loss. Long term fasting (15+ days) has mild negative outcomes but is an appropriate option when the alternative is death by "X" - included co-morbidities caused by long term obesity. Sustained vitamin deficiency over months or years (anorexia) can cause worse outcomes than obesity. A "one and done" fast is not that.

Did you feel very overweight at BMI 28?

I have a BMI of 28.5 (6'0, 210 lbs) and I'm pretty lean, active, and healthy. I have denser bones and a bit more muscle than average, but my body isn't _that_ unusual.

Good for you on using covid as motivation to get healthier.

Objectively, yes. A bunch of things in a q.bio report made it hard to do that self-rationalizing thing where "it's not great but probably fine" - i.e. high LDL ratio, high liver fat, etc.

Much happier at BMI ~21 and if I knew this path was viable I would have done it 5 years ago.

Awesome, congratulations!

> No, you don't lose much muscle (I lost 0.1%)

How did you measure this number? Unless you were on some kind of drug, this seems impossible.

A q.bio report. Basically MRI + DEXA + blood work + urinalysis. It's a few thousand dollars each go but much better value than doing all the tests as one off's (if you can even get them).

I did not supplement with any drugs but your body does produce up to 1,250% more HGH in a long-term fasted state(!). You're also completely deprived of glycogens so your ability to perform anaerobic work to gain muscle is probably not going to happen without some more bio-hackery.

I heard second hand that Tim Ferris did two long term fasts. One under medical supervision where he was confined to a hospital and lost significant muscle mass; another where he went about his normal routines and (surprisingly) didn't lose any notable mass. Which matches what we know about muscle atrophy in ICU patients for instance - confine someone to a bed and they're going to waste away.

I've seen salt-water fast plans a number of times before and wouldn't mind trying one out since I do similar short experiments every now and them myself as well. Would you please mind explaining how you figured out dosage for everything you were taking, or what the doses were for you? I've tried a water fast before, but couldn't find a good spot between over-hydrated and under-hydrated.

I should just write a post.

But at a high level.

You BOTH look at recommended daily values AND listen to your body. NIH has a decent starting point. I.e. potassium is 4,700mg: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-HealthProfession...

There's also a fair amount of margin for error. A low effort is a salt supplement like this: https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Forza-Electrolytes-Flavoring-Un... + B complex + C vitamins like this: https://www.amazon.com/Natures-Bounty-B-Complex-Vitamin-Cell... - I don't particularly endorse any one supplement - just look up what are the essential vitamins and minerals on NIH (https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/vitamins-and-minerals) and supplement the recommended daily amounts for the non-fat soluble ones. You can probably do without the vitamins on a short fast but you will feel miserable without the salts.

Your body is still "eating" - you're still having bowel movements for instance - but it's just eating your own fat stores which include some fat soluable vitamins. NB I did not look to see if I was getting enough from this - but when I did my blood work a few times the only thing I was consistently low on was sodium and potassium because I was under supplementing on those because drinking salt water is gross (like I said, I did this imperfectly.)

One shouldn't eat salt in pill form. I didn't try. But supposedly it burns your intestinal lining. Rather I'd mix a scoop of that into my black coffee, 4 times a day. If I had muscle fatigue I'd have more potassium. If I couldn't sleep, more magnesium. Light headed when standing? More sodium. This is the listening to your body part and if you're short on salts after two weeks you absolutely will know it. But, mixing salt in water is gross and drinking too much salt in too short of time period will give you the runs. Getting enough salt is the only "hard" part. You're still doing what one normally does as a human, just less.

I think I got it down to 2L of water. Some casual cups of decaffeinated black coffee or tea. 4 thimble sized supplements of various salts.

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain the approach you took, it's much appreciated. Last time I tried a water fast I wrote it off as I just felt absolutely garbage a very short while in, but I now understand my approach to it was too simplistic. Your tips on when to supplement more of what are invaluable, I think you should definitely take the time to write this up as a post so it gets more visibility.

Adding a teaspoon of vinegar to the solution of regular salt and Lite Salt(for Potassium) and some ice made it easier to swallow on my 5 day water fast.

Honestly this is very impressive. You definitely have what it takes to survive an apocalypse. I also think that level of caution is warranted in an unknown pathogenic environment.

Was food delivery not an option, or were you worried about that being a vector of transmission?

I read it as fasting was intentional to reduce BMI.

If you lost less than .1% of your muscle mass that's abnormal. There are 100s of studies on people losing weight and they almost all lose some amount of muscle mass.

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