I'm on the verge of returning to my 3AM-something workouts—I just feel it! Feelings are the driver to successful weightloss: I eat when I feel hunger and now, I feel I have energy for burning. It's hard to describe exactly; it's a....

• pep in my step,
• optimized footing,
• a leaner spirit,
• and just a general disposition of strength.

While I'm only entering my sixth day on this 70% fat calorie diet, I'm reaching a critical stage: my body wants to work out.

We don't work out to lose calories; we work out because we are losing calories. And yes, we don't eat too many calories and become fat; we eat too many calories because we are fat. I really wish I could have figured that out, but it's something I've learned from the afore-posted books by Gary Taubes.

Our fatness is seemingly merely a function of increased blood sugar and insulin resistance, the aftermath of the unsatisfying tease of the Crackhead Carb Cabaret. The other night, I cooked 3 pre-cut hamburger patties with 10 oz of cauliflower rice with 2 tbsp of butter, putting it at 67% fat and 5% carbs—a HUGE meal with plenty of satiety. At 729 calories, it was under the 778 calories as reported by the NCCDB of my past go-to burger at McDonald's, a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese. The carb contrast was 5% to 21%. And with McD's, the show must go on so there's the large Coke and the large french fries. Still no satiety. Dance monkey dance! Generally, I followed up the McD's show with whatever snacks and ice cream I could gather throughout the night. And that's the basic dichotomy manufacturing American obesity.

This morning, I had a 3 egg omelet this morning with 1 oz of cheddar, 2 tbsps of butter, and a tbsp of coconut oil. I'll likely drop the butter down 1 tbsp because it was a little unwieldy to get the butter from the pan back into my omelet. Nothing new here, but...I did something I would have never thought I'd do:

• 12 oz of coffee
• 1 tbsp of butter
• 1 coconut oil

...all blended in a Vitamix. As Jules would say in Pulp Fiction, "Mm-hmm! This is a tasty (coffee)!"

Now, how will all of this stack with The 13^th Expedition weigh-in in context my 1150 daily calorie Expedition kickoffs? Let's cruise into that sunset!

There's an an overarching characteristic of my diet approach that I find particularly compelling in the context of future success: a freedom with a mitigation of factors that make that chihuahua drive the Carb Crackhead Express in its nightly run to the border!

Look, I totally get the carb cravings where the satiety signals skipped work that day to go to the zoo, a place where the marketing dogma of Lay's "Bet you can't eat just one" extends beyond a potato chip to tacos, doughnuts, pizza slices et al—a converyor belt of wheat and sugar Armageddon amalgamations! I'm convinced that even without winding up Cronometer to track Total Carb grams, that if I followed a diet that had no wheat or refined sugars, I'd lose weight.

Of course, I'm not doing just that, rather I've basically replaced my carb intake with fat intake with the heralded 70% / 25% / 5% of daily calories approach. For example: this morning's breakfast of an omelet with a cup of coffee at 81% / 17% / 2%:

• 4 eggs (likely will drop this down an egg tomorrow)
• 1 tbsp of butter
• 2 tbsp of coconut oil
• 1 oz of cheddar cheese

The thing about a high fat diet is where I once kept my daily calories around 1150 for 116 days straight, I now don't mind them...and we'll see in 38 days to see how the results compare to my 1st, 4th, 7th, and 11th Expeditions. It's all about the satiety and its practical application beyond the pale of my workshop. A mindset of cutting weight before a match just doesn't cut it for me...and I've got 2018 to spring 2000 to show for it.

And it's not about Total Carb exclusion; it's more of a strategic carb approach. For example, I want those lovely omega 3's from flaxseed and I'm looking to add a second tbsp of cacao powder into my diet. Ironically, adding carbs back into my diet is where the freedom is compromised.

Admittedly, it's taking me a cognitive leap to move from the old ways of a calorie-in / calorie-out hypothesis. I had always gladly accepted the dogma that my success on the scale was dependent on calorie input vs output. And yes, while foods in the lab have determined to provide X amount of calories, it's the food in a closed system—on the lab table, NOT in context of being in a person. For this, a calorie is NOT a calorie is a calorie, that a calorie from carbs and its effect on our system like insulin is wholly different from a fat calorie. And while that aspect made sense to me these past years, I just never made the next logical step how total calories would be different...clearly a 1500 total calories on a low fat diet is WHOLLY different than 1500 total calories on a low carb diet. And I'm not even talking about the need for an equivalency multiplier since carbs and fats effects on the body are more than applied/relative calories. Eat enough sugar and you'll be diabetic; eat the multiplier equivalent of fat and you still won't be diabetic, right? So, clearly, there's something a lot more going on here and is worth further study.

Total Carb Approach

I'm beginning to view weightloss in terms of Total Carbs for the day, not calorie tracking. I once saw it as a function of Net Carbs and I had a diet that was crazy high on fiber, but in a context of a diet with very few carbs, I no longer buy into the benefits of fiber as I once did. I don't need fiber to help with sugar levels if consuming at maximum 30 grams of carbs a day; with a high fat diet I don't need fiber for satiety; as far as roughage: when I add 5 tablespoons of the super fiber food flaxseed into my shake, my straw's plumbing gets all gunked up if I don't add more water. That's a reasonable analog.

The 808 Day Experiment II

But, the proof is in the pudding, right? I haven't performed a low fat diet focus since 2002, but I can say that they never worked for me, so I won't consider it. Now, I do have data on my prior dieting approach—while Net Carbs were in check at <=30, the calories from Total Carbs came in at 23% in a 1150 calorie context. While the short term results were there, it ultimately failed. Hence, I'm starting a 808 day experiment, the length of my prior attempt at reaching my goal weight, yet never breaking 200 lbs. The new schema will consist of the following macro ratios: Fat 70+%, Protein 25%, and Carb 5%, with foods eaten in a context of eating when I'm hungry—no starving is allowed 'cause nothing ignites the carbo-crazy blaze of a binge like hunger! Even at the outset of this diet, I know will take FAR less willpower to accomplish than my 2018, 2019, and spring 2020 efforts.

"Future Me, or more accurately September 4, 2022 Me: how did we do?"

Until then, we've "got to ride, ride like the wind to be free again!"