Amazing (and Not So Amazing) Low Carb Feats

Preface:  When I write posts such as this one, that I know some will take in ways in which it was not intended, I usually spend a bit of time contemplating hitting the publish button.  This post comes off rather more wet blankety (is that a term?) than even some others.   But as someone who has struggled with the after effects of yo-yoing, LC and not, I do think it is worthwhile to shine a light on the reality of what is being promoted out there.


I've been criticized for my "personal attacks" on Jimmy Moore.  If pointing out hypocrisy and the like is attacking, so be it, but discussions of Jimmy Moore's weight and diet are not personal any more than discussions about Richard Simmons' or Jillian Michaels' would be.  He is not only "a" public figure in the low carb world, he is arguably *THE* public face of low carb.   There may well be tons of other advocates and such out there, but all combined, when it comes to internet presence, name recognition, and all that jazz, Jimmy beats them all hands down and perhaps combined.    Nobody would be cutting Richard or Jillian or anyone slack, and one can't help but be reminded of the nastiness aimed at one Tara Parker Pope (at the hands of Peter Attia and Gary Taubes) for not "fixing herself" with the proper low carb diet.

I tend to think that as Jimmy's weight problems mounted, there were many on the Love LowCarb Boat who were quietly worrying about what was to become of their coattail franchises.  These people no doubt encouraged him behind the scenes to keep up the good fight and search for the solution to his metabolic mysteries.  They also defended him publicly.    So what if he's 300 lbs, he brings so much information to the people.  Nevermind that he is STILL using a 2005 picture on the official LCDU tour!  I mean really, they're going to see him as he is today, a much improved version of where he was six months ago.  Why still that picture?  That's a rhetorical question with an answer I think most of us intuitively know, but it would take endless paragraphs to put to print with no guarantee it would express the thoughts properly.

Now that he's turned it around there's talk of folks like me needing to eat crow and such.  Umm ... Look, this is really nothing new for Jimmy.  As it stands now, it is history repeating itself only with a longer cycle.  I wish for his sake this is a different chapter with a different ending a few years down the road, I am just not optimistic.

Meanwhile his friends are cheering him on down the tunnel of ever-more extreme dietary restrictions, with totally unknown long-term safety and "nightmare" lipids he not only attempts to minimize, but describes as "stellar".   But let's leave the health implications aside for a moment and focus on weight and body composition.

This was the focus of the original post.  Look at the 12 month Atkins weight loss + 20 months maintenance 240 pound Jimmy Moore of August 2006.  Then look at the 250 lb Jimmy Moore of 2012, who has now shared  detailed body composition data.  It is not a pretty picture indeed, and I'm not referring to the visual aesthetics  here.    His friends can tout his success and go along with the healthfulness of his new diet and all of that.  Nobody will hold them accountable anyway ... there are all those disclaimers, anyway.

So folks, the post that follows is for the newbie ... the person who has just now come across low carb or paleo ... so that you can go in eyes wide open, with reasonable expectations, knowing the actual results of the most famous n=1 formerly morbidly obese low carber out there.




ORIGINAL POST

Tom Naughton must have amazing biometric eye sight, and Jimmy Moore must have amazing arms.  That is all I can conclude from Jimmy's DEXA scan reveal and Tom Naughton's recent post.  
When Jimmy started losing weight again after cutting back on protein and adding more fat to his diet, I was happy he’d reversed the creeping weight gain that had baffled him, but I wondered if the lower protein intake would lead to muscle loss. That fear was put to rest when Jimmy and Christine visited us last week. His arms looked thicker than when I saw him in July, not thinner.
Now we've all been told -- and it's true --  that a pound of fat is larger than a pound of muscle.  I went looking about Google Images for examples of this, and the difference is rather astounding:

Now according to Jimmy's post, he lost 1.68 lbs of fat in his arms while gaining 2.05 lbs muscle.   Even with the most generous comparison above, his arms would have, if anything, gotten thinner, and not thicker, between DXA scans.
The test showed that during those two months, Jimmy shed just over 16 pounds of additional body fat while gaining just over six pounds of muscle. He gained two pounds of muscle in his arms alone.  If that doesn’t sound like much, try this little thought experiment: picture a one-pound lean steak. That’s how much meat Jimmy put on each arm.
Wha ... humma na humma na ... but but ... oh I didn't mean that, eh Tom?  Well, did Jimmy's torso and legs also look thicker to you?  After all among "the notable changes from September 2012 to November 2012" were 2.05 pounds of lean muscle mass gain in my arms, 3.05 pounds of lean muscle mass gain in my legs and 5.20 pounds of lean muscle mass gain in the trunk area."  There's no overlap in these regions on the DXA, so I do wonder about the numbers here -- 2.05 + 3.05 + 5.2 = 10.3 lbs which is a bit more than the 6.19 lbs of total lean mass gains.  Somewhere, in a missing slice, Jimmy must have lost about 3.9 pounds of muscle.  (Notably also, 1.68 + 3.54 + 9.65 = 14.87 lbs, so Jimmy also lost 1.39 lbs of fat in this mystery region).  

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But, did Jimmy seem thicker about the middle after building five one-pound lean steaks there?  Were his legs thicker too with 1.75 lb steaks smacked onto each of them?  Not quite the July-to-November differential, but here's his  50 lbs lost update from May-to-October.  (Whatever the weird aspect distortion of the after pic)

Look folks, there's no doubt Jimmy is losing weight, and this DXA snapshot shows that, for now, in the past two months, he's not losing LBM.  Perhaps the way to gain LBM on a ketogenic diet is to do intermittent fasting, eat large insulinogenic (dairy) meals after lifting in the fasted state, and have your weight fluctuate quite a bit so that you are in caloric surplus/gaining weight for days at a time.  You might also want to quit weight lifting for the first four months after doing it regularly for a couple of years and then take it up again with gusto between DXA scans, and have your baseline DXA done after losing like 85 percent of your total losses to date.


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I'm thinking that if Jimmy's arms showed noticeable changes, he would have posted a picture of them, instead of the one at right on his 5 month update.

But stop insulting people's intelligence by overhyping what Jimmy Moore's recent revelations show. What they really show is that if one believes he was ever anywhere near 11% body fat, they are as easily bamboozled as Jimmy Moore is himself.    That is what he believed back in October 2005, however, when he weighed 230 lbs. 

A little math, shall we?  I did this with a simple spreadsheet working from Jimmy currently weighing 250.4 lbs including 155.92 lbs lean and 85.43 lbs fat tissue, and 9.05 lbs bone minerals.   His DEXA report calculates his current fat percent (of tissue mass) at 35%.  So  I did two calculations for what his weight loss would have to entail to attain a respectable 20% bodyfat composition.
Scenario One -- He's able to maintain his current fat-free mass and loses just fat.  
  • He would have to get down to 204 lbs
  • He would have to lose 46 pounds of fat, or over half (54%) of his current body fat to reach this goal.
Scenario Two -- He's able to sustain the current "recomposition" rate of 0.38 lbs lean gains for every 1 lb fat loss:
  • He would have to get down to 224 lbs
  • This would involve losing 42 lbs of fat (49% of current stores) and gaining 16 lbs of muscle to make up the net 26 lb weight loss.
Back in August of 2006 (when his weight had crept up to around 240), Jimmy posted the following on his blog:  

Is This The Body Of An Obese Man?


Along with the picture at right.  Roughly six years ago, and only 10 or so pounds less than he weighs today, that is what the formerly 410 lb Jimmy Moore looked like, roughly 20 months post his 180 lb weight loss.  (BTW, how many sizes does he have this shirt in?)     At the time he wrote:
According to the BMI calculator I used, this puts me in the 79th percentile for my age and height group which means nearly 8 out of ten men in their 30′s who are 6’3″ tall weigh LESS than me. Really? Jimmy Moore is “obese?” LOL! Oh, that’s a good one. ROTFL! Hee hee! Sigh…what’s sad is there are people who actually BELIEVE BMI is the BEST way to determine if someone is obese or not.
Take a good look at that picture at the top of this blog post I had my wife take of me today right before I went to the gym to workout. Is this the body of an obese man to you?
If I’m obese TODAY, I wonder what they would describe me as in 2004 when I tipped the scales at 410 pounds with a BMI of 51.2 in the 99th percentile?!?!?!?! M-m-m-m-morbidly obese?!?! This is why the BMI as the measurement of determining whether someone has a weight problem is ridiculous and irresponsible. That is why the move is on to change from BMI to the waist-to-hip ratio instead since it is a better measurement of obesity than BMI.
Not only have  I transformed myself radically from that lazy fat slob I used to be into an energetic athletic man who is now in shape, my body fat was measured last October after livin’ la vida low-carb for nearly two years at 11 percent.
Now, I can certainly relate to Jimmy and to the BMI being a poor measure of individual obesity.  I'm a BMI outlier myself, but I've never kidded myself that there's not fat left to be lost if that's something I wish to dedicate my energies towards.  Jimmy is also quite tall, and like all tall people, he carries his weight better than a shorter person.  Put that same fat mass on a shorter frame, and the person is looking quite a bit fatter.  You "big guys" get away with more than your shorter counterparts can (consider yourselves lucky).  But Jimmy, like many men, puts very little weight in his limbs.  I have no doubt that the test used to measure body fat at his company was a standing impedance device -- the circuit being through his legs, and no formula that accounted for his fat distribution above the belt.  Surely he had questions about the accuracy of this test.  Tell me he surely did?!  Right???

While Jimmy is rather pleased with his recent DEXA results, I'd be rather less than pleased if I were him.  Not only does he have years of written records he all but ignores in his crazy searches for mysterious metabolic damage that somehow mandates more drastic measures to combat, but he also has years of pictures to look at for reference.  And unlike yours truly, Jimmy is not camera shy!   While we cannot know what his real body composition was back 6 years ago we have some pretty telling pictures from which to guess.  You've been forwarned, I'm about to show you some shirtless pictures from the yesteryear days of LLVLC blog, and I'm not doing this to shame or embarrass Jimmy, but to put the current situation into proper context so that anyone just tuning into this nutty ketosis experiment has proper context.


First up, about four months after the the "Am I Obese?" post, in January 2007, Jimmy shared some pictures of his loose skin. In 1/07 he weighed around 220 lbs, having lost 20 lbs since the previous August.  It wasn't until the end of that year when he untertook his first resistance training in earnest.  From this post, we have more pictures.  But first some excerpts of the text that went with them:
In my book about my weight loss experience, I wrote a chapter called "Exercise Is Not A Dirty Word" and it's true. As much as people moan and complain about not having time to exercise, lacking any energy to commit to a regular routine, and any number of other useless excuses that are bantered about by the usual suspects, the fact is there is no excuse good enough for NOT taking care of your physical body. After all, God only gives you one, so you need to do what you can with what you've got.
For me when I was losing weight, that meant cardiovascular exercise galore. As much as I HATED the treadmill when I first started and was gasping for air after 15 minutes at 3mph, today I can easily go 30-45 minutes on an elliptical machine at 8-9mph with 12 resistance and get a good workout.

I'll admit that in 2007 I have been a little slack with my regular cardio primarily because my free YMCA gym membership I used to get with my old job expired and I never renewed or joined elsewhere. I still play volleyball on Tuesday nights at my church for a good FREE two-hour workout, but that was pretty much it for exercise during the week for most of this year. I didn't think much of it, though, since I'm only maintaining my weight now and not actually losing anymore. Thoughts that I didn't really need a lot of exercise anymore made their way into my cranium 
Boy was I wrong! 
Although my weight has remained pretty steady over the past few months, I've noticed it start to slowly do the creepy crawly thing.
He mentions that he's experienced regains several times since he began maintenance in 2005, which is not a crime, and only human, and all of that.  However, talk about the king of forgetfulness and transparency here.  Would anyone reading the above have thought that Jimmy had begun 2007 at 220-ish pounds, gained up to 248 lbs before going on the crazy crash Kimkins diet, which took him down under 215 sometime circa July,  and now weighing ??  We learn from the updates that he was 235 in these shots. (screenshot from that post, you can click to enlarge). 

Folks, I certainly have loose skin as well, but I'm not kidding myself as to how much of my remaining weight is indeed just excess skin leftover.  Those "love handles" and his thick trunk are indicative of a fair amount of rear subQ fat, and quite a bit of visceral fat.  He can kid himself and try to kid his audience about this all he wants.  Now Jimmy updated his progress at one month, three months, and six months.   After three months, Jimmy wrote:
The first thing you’ll notice from this front view comparison is my neck, shoulders and arms are noticeably bigger. I’ve been working those three areas of my upper body very hard for the past three months or so and that investment is paying off.
And at 6 months he wrote:
My neck has DEFINITELY gotten bigger because my collared button-up shirts are getting tight around the top button when I put on a tie. The muscle growth in my upper body has been pretty extraordinary. The same thing about the tightness in my clothes is happening in my shoulders and upper arms as the muscle growth continues to progress well in those specific areas.   Here you can see where I’ve put on the extra weight in my stomach, but you can also see the muscles in the neck, shoulders, and arms that weren’t there before. When we figure out what’s happening with my weight and get it back down again, then I can’t wait for even more definition to start showing up in my upper body, including my chest and abs.


http://i1.wp.com/farm4.static.flickr.com/3136/2580955850_7fb73f6471_m.jpg


In case anyone's wondering, the first two pics are more "before", the second three are at 3 months, and all the rest are at 6 months where  Jimmy was weighing 264.  Sometime after this, he gave up the weight lifting.  He does appear to have put on some shoulder muscles here.  OK ... so let's fast forward.  He didn't post pics of his progress after the eggfest in 2010, but he had to have weighed somewhere in the 250's or low 160's then, and in 2011, after the beef/egg/CO/chocolate challenge he was 267.
I dunno, you tell me, what's going on here?  To me, at least while LC, he gains and loses mostly in his trunk, and I look at the "after" 50 lb weight loss picture above, and he appears to have that slightly emaciated about the shoulder region look, but otherwise his cycling and/or persistant low carb diet have increased his trunk adiposity over the years.   Oh, one more picture.  Despite repeating this lie that he hasn't weighed this little in 5 years (a few times now, so not inadvertent), Jimmy Moore did get down below the 250 mark, however briefly, with his 6 day fast at the end of April 2011.  I don't know how much weight he put on in a couple of weeks before the cruise that year, but here's his arms for those still reading.  
And so here we are around 18 months later and Jimmy gained up to 306 lbs over the first year of that time period, and he's now down flirting with the 250 lb mark after 6 months of an extreme diet.  One can certainly not argue with the weight loss, but I do believe there's room to argue about the healthfulness of his approach (and the results on the lipid front).   Unless he's lying on that front as well, Jimmy has never strayed far from LC, being LC all but a day or so here and there for going on 9 years now, and truly VLC for most of and extended periods throughout the years.  I certainly hadn't seen Jimmy report anything over 50 g/day on his now-wiped-clean menus blog other than a pizza binge or two.  Also, near as I can tell, the one thing he kept doing by all accounts since he took it back up a couple of years ago, is lifting weights.
   
He is currently only around 15 lbs heavier than he was in the Dec 2007 "before any weight lifting for real".  If he lost that 15 lbs of only fat, he'd be at 31% body fat, and if he lost 20 lbs of all fat, he'd dip just below 30%.  If he recomposes at the rate of the past two months, he'd be at 27% body fat at 235, and 24% body fat at 230.  I've already shown the rather more daunting task to get to 20% body fat, and for the upper limit of "fit" for a man -- let's push it to 18% -- he'd need to get lighter still.  For Scenario One (maintaining current LBM), he'd have to dip into One-derland at 199, losing 51 lbs or a whopping 60% of his remaining fat mass.  For Scenario Two (recomposing per past two months), he'd only need to lose 29 net pounds, losing 47 lbs fat and gaining 18 lbs muscle and weighing 221.  

Them's sobering numbers folks, I almost hesitate to post them they are so depressingly so.  But post them I shall, because if we learn anything, it's that if you don't want to go through life kidding yourself about your body composition and the effectiveness of your diet, you need to get it measured accurately.  And then you need to be realistic with yourself and, ultimately, your audience.  In this regard, though I don't think it was his intent, I'm glad that Jimmy posted the real deal of his DXA.  Jimmy did look rather less obese in the arms-up am-I-obese shot than he does today, and he's only about 10 lbs lighter there.  So it is both a humbling lesson and a cautionary tale in terms of what one can do to themselves by cycling, and perhaps doing compounding that cycling with carb restriction and unrestrained fat consumption.

We're told Jimmy was eating too much protein that got him up over 300 lbs.  We also know from the Bray overfeeding study that when one overeats protein, they put on about the same amount of fat, but also add lean tissue.  If this occurred under the "low insulin" conditions of low carb, then one would expect Jimmy had added a lot of lean mass when he packed on 55 pounds in around 8 months after his fasting experiment.  And if his weight losses of the first 4 months of nutty ketosis (with no exercise) in any way spared lean mass, one would expect him to look more like the 2007 Jimmy than he appears.   I can only speculate that perhaps my "Insulin paradox" is at play here.  Despite eating a lot of protein, Jimmy was partitioning more fuel to fat in the face of carbohydrate starvation while the surplus protein was used to maintain glucose levels.  I dunno.  That is purely speculating.

One last comment on the body composition per se.  Jimmy himself believes W:H ratio is better than BMI as a risk predictive measure.  This DXA should be all the more disconcerting.  He is clearly pre-disposed towards abdominal obesity, and only Jimmy knows how he looked after the 1999 160 lb weight loss on low fat, or other times in his life when he weighed 300 pounds etc.  But it seems that whatever he's been doing for the past 9 years of low carbing is, if anything, further concentrating his adiposity in his abdomen (and back).  Thus his percent body fat is even misleading at that, because with his build in order to have normal abdominal adiposity he'd probably need to be closer to 15% body fat, perhaps below that.  In his case, weight may be more important than "health", because it will be the major factor in improving health.  Just something for him to consider, but Jimmy was never one to listen to advice he doesn't want to hear.

So I guess the best I can hope for with posts like this is that some of these low carbers who are cheering Jimmy on and perhaps climbing on this bandwagon along with him, think critically about it.  Can you sustain it?  More importantly, should you sustain it?  Will it get you to goal?  Jimmy's lipids say otherwise for him, even if he can envision himself eating like this for a lifetime.   And more importantly still, if you're reading this and just beginning on your quest to solve the mystery of your so-called damaged metabolism, please jump in, if you must, with your eyes wide open after having taken an honest self-appraisal.  There's no need to blog about it or share it with the world, just learn from this one prominent example of what happens when you rationalize yourself into delusion. 

Lastly, I'm sure Tom Naughton thinks he's being a good and supportive friend to Jimmy, but he's not doing him or anyone else any favors with the gross exaggerations.  I've already spent too much time on this so I won't bother with one last montage.  Watch the two videos of Fat Head Open 1 in July, and Two around Jimmy's 6 month mark.   Compare the pictures here with Jimmy wearing the same shorts and a similar tee as in the Two video.  Yes, he's notably thinner, but not quite as much as Naughton's descriptions would lead one to believe.  More importantly, however, there's no change in his arms near as anyone can tell in a loose t-shirt.

I hope for Jimmy's sake that he finds a livable and more moderate way to maintain his weight loss this time around.  That he keeps going with the lifting and perhaps realizes, especially with his sedentary job, that it may be time to kick up that cardio again.  The frisbee golf walking around is great, but it probably only compensates for the movement time back when Jimmy worked outside the home and traveled to the gym near daily.  To me, the pictures really are worth more than anything I could say anyway.  What he did in latter 2004 to drop from 300 to 230, and whatever it was he was doing in 2005-6 for maintenance, seemed to be working better for Jimmy's body composition (even if the 11% was never realistic) than whatever he's done since.  Listening to Gary exercise-is-useless-for-weight-loss Taubes and every "up your fat" suggestion that's come down the pike and "exercising the right way" has not impacted him positively.   Following his lead is likely to do the same for you ....

It may never be realistic for us formerly really obese to return to a normal weight, size, etc.etc.    Or perhaps we can.  Or perhaps what it would take to do that is simply not worth the quality-of-life trade-offs.   I've been there done that every which way.   But let's just not kid ourselves, and others in the process. 

Comments

Jason Sandeman said…
You know what? Jimmy should try "real" ketosis for weight loss; that of undiagnosed diabetes. Let me tell you, the weight melts right off. It's a little pesky drinking 9-10 liters of water, and urinating all the time, but we have our health to think of, right?
I lived through ketosis, and lost 65 lbs in 6 months - and didnt know or realize what was going on until an accidental diagnosis via an insurance blood test. I truly can't understand why these idiots aspire to recreate that. A LC person will point out that ketosis is different than DKA, and we are supposed to nod sagely and agree. I think that's like pointing out that a stormy sky is grey, therefore different than the clear sky which is blue. LOL
I do know a fair bit about Photoshop too. I can recognize a distorted picture when I see one. I can even see that a newer version of PS is being used, which isolates the subject for the distortion leaving the surrounding the same. My question is why bother? Do they really think we are that stupid?
I have been reading a bit on ancient cultures of late, since the Primal And Paleo crew keep harping on that. Eat like our ancestors did, right?
Here's the thing I'm coming up with: calorie restriction is the way to go. It really is ELMM. Up until modern times, our ancient ancestors ate once daily, maybe 1 1/2. A "breakfast" which is a more modern industrial trend, used to be very small to tide someone over until supper - which was around 6ish. Interesting.
A roman soldier at the height of the empire was 5'4" or thereabouts. I understand they weighed around 135 lbs or some such. They had bodies that would make our athletes cry today. They also ate once per day, when the day was done and they could digest their meal. Isn't that interesting?
I also read that in the decline of the Roman Empire, when they became powerful and rich, they started gluttony - eating at all times. Then you saw them starting to get fat.
Evelyn, I'm starting to think there may be something to this, what are your thoughts on that?
It seems the nutritional camps are into the 5-10 meals a day. If we apply logic to that, in the sense of a warrior diet (which a lot of these primal and Paleo people hang their hats on these days,) it doesn't jive. How the heck are you going to feed an army of people 5 times a day? You'd be too busy eating to fight! LOL
Jason Sandeman said…
Oh yah, almost forgot. If you ever get tired of this blogger thing, and want to switch to Wordpress, let me know - I'd love to help you out. You'll wonder why you ever pulled your hair out in the first place. LOL
an3drew said…
How many years has Jimmy been living this low carb way? Should he not be in better condition if low carb eating was truly THE ANSWER? Also, that Ricky Martin song is long gone and forgotten... it's from the 90's. Isn't it time he transitioned to some other gimmicky phrase?
Unknown said…
I think the reason low carb worked for me and I have kept the weight off is that I am a physical person, to me MM is not punishment, it is the reward.

So it was pretty easy for me to respond to significant weight loss with lifestyle changes that prevented me from regaining the weight. Jimmy seems to me to be an affable person with good social skills who has never been a physical creature, so to him the MM part is still probably punishment.

I think if you are that person you have to go with EL, there really isn't a Door Number Two.

And if you are that person then trying to fit "Paleo" into your methods is a waste of time, if you look at the history of Paleo it has been promoted mostly by physical people who are very good at MM. Sure they may talk about chronic cardio and emphasize diet but that doesn't change the fact that they excel at MM.

Hiit Mama said…
Maybe I watch too much Mystery Diagnosis, but the image of the man above really looks to me like someone with Klinefelter's Syndrome. I think it's the XXY chromosome doo-hickey. (<---- not very sciency).
blogblog said…
If his diet really worked he would have reached his ideal weight within three years. He would now be in maintenance mode.
blogblog said…
Most HGs eat one large meal a day in the late afternoon or evening. The Kitivans apparently gulp down their entire food intake for the day in a few minutes.
CarbSane said…
If it weren't for the browbeating about how LC is the best and only way to effortlessly reverse obesity without hunger and etc.etc.etc. Fact of the matter is it doesn't seem to work that well after all. It's a good starting point, but for most that's it. Point that out, experience it yourself, watch countless others struggle with the same thing.

I see from a slide, that he's calling nutty ketosis "beyond LLVLC". So for him, after 8.5 years, his moving beyond meant trying something even more extreme. I wonder what he'll do when this stops working. Dana Carpender is also on this kick, only she's writing a fat fast book as she's now had to resort to regular fat fasts -- every other day 1000 cal at last report.

Blogblog, you're right, of course. But in one interview (Ruper I think) he actually argued that it would have been boring if that had happened!

an3drew, yeah, LLVLC is quite dated, but it's his brand and he can never change it. He could no more change that name than change his diet to one with more carbs any more.
CarbSane said…
This is interesting. LC enabled me to lose weight so I could MM. Looking at that as reward not punishment is PERFECT!
CarbSane said…
The look is quite similar, I have to admit.
CarbSane said…
I got caught up in the IF craze in 2009 and must admit it worked very well for me. I was wary b/c of my history of ED and using fasting to offset binging, but had no such problems. I tried 6WC that fall and could never quite get back in the IF swing ever since.

If you ask me, there's at least part of the problem that's rooted in this notion that we're all going to starve if we miss a single meal! That hunger is to be avoided at all costs. And whatever you do, don't skip breakfast!! When I eat breakfast is is almost always socially. I'm just not hungry in the morning 49 days out of 50.

CarbSane said…
Careful what you offer ... I just might take you up on it! Actually I've found blogger to be quite user friendly for the 2.5 years I've used it. There are some annoying drawbacks, but I've been lucky those haven't hindered me too much. But the new blogger dashboard is HORRIBLE. I don't know why they switched it :(

I think I have a WP template to work off of thanks to a tip from another reader. So now it's a matter of time. I love playing with that sort of thing, and if I'm going to make a move, I want to make a few changes to go with it. After Christmas it is!
Jane said…
Do we know whether Jimmy has fatty liver disease? It certainly looks like it to me. This might be expected on LC because of the link with iron overload. Ron Krauss is saying if you eat a lot of red meat OR a lot of saturated fat, it's OK, but the two together give you metabolic syndrome because the saturated fat increases iron absorption.

Iron overload is getting to be a very hot topic. Chris Kresser says a paleo diet can cause it, and Mercola told us a few months ago about the link with Alzheimer's which is a bit scary.
CarbSane said…
I believe he does. With his egg fast, he bragged on his menus blog about pooping out a lot of fat. When commenters (including me) expressed concern as that is indicative of hepatic steatosis, he tried to walk it back a bit but the cat was out.

Jimmy has cut back on the red meat apparently as he had high iron.
Unknown said…
My latest blood work

NMR test results - blood drawn on 10/18/12

LDL-P 1200 nmol/L down from 1500 nmol/L on 5/10/12
Small LDL-P 115 mg/dL down from 127 mg/dL on 5/10
LDL-C 172 mg/dL down from 188 mg/dL on 5/10
HDL-C 69 mg/dL up from 59 mg/dL on 5/10
Triglycerides 21 mg/dL down from 36 mg/dL on 5/10
HDL-P 25.0 umol/L down from 28.5 umol/L on 5/10 with a reference range of <=30.5 umol/L
TC 245 mg/dL down from 254 mg/dL on 5/10


Berkeley Heart Lab test results - blood drawn on 10/18/12

TC 242 mg/dL
LDL-C 158 mg/dL
HDL-C 76 mg/dL
Triglycerides 41 mg/dL
Ap- B 104 mg/dL Reference Range <115 mg/dL
LP(a) <2 mg/dL Reference Range 0-30 mg/dL

Lipid SubClass Detail
Berkeley Lab analyzes LDL for 7 sub classes from large buoyant to small dense

LDL I, IIa and IIb are considered large buoyant - As a % these 3 totalled 82.5% - LDL I=51.1%, LDL IIa=16.2% and LDL IIb=15.2%

LDL IIIa+b, LDL IVa and LDL IVb are considered small dense with IVb being the samlest. As a % these totalled 17.5% - LDL IIIa=11.2%, LDL IIIb=3.8%, LDL IVa=1.8% and LDL IVb=0.7%

LDL IIIa+b=15% Reference Range=13.6-43%
LDL IVb=0.7% Reference Range=1.7-9.8%

LDL IIIa=B = 17.9 mg/dL Reference Range=12.0-32.1 mg/dL
LDL IVb=1.0 mg/dL Reference Range=1.5-11.2 mg/dL

HDL is analyzed for 5 subclasses

HDL2b=34%, HDH2a=24%, HDL3a=20%, HDL3b=14% and HDL3c=8%

HDL2b Reference Ranhe 7-30%

As far as JM is concerned his DEXA scan showed BF% in the trunk region of 40% - that's all dangerous visceral fat which is indicative of NAFLD.
Unknown said…
My bad - reference range for HDL-P should be >=30.5
Unknown said…
Per the Iranian formula the Berkeley Heat Lab results yield LDL of 118 mg/dL and the NMR results yield LDL of 116 mg/dL. BTW - Dr Ronald Krauss doesn't believe in the validity of the Iranian LDL formula
Unknown said…
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Unknown said…
I'm surprised no-one has commented about the completely unrealistic muscle mass gains.

Almost 3kg in 2 months? No chance... maybe if he were on steroids. Even someone who has never lifted a weight in their life would have trouble gaining half of that in that time frame let alone someone restricting calories and losing large amounts of weight.

If anything, I would say the initial DEXA was taken when he was partially into his ketogenic diet, so was glycogen depleted, then when the final one was done, he had probably returned to a semi normal diet and had a lot more water weight (glycogen), which shows up on DEXA as lean mass.
CarbSane said…
Hi Thomas! The reason why on my part is that I didn't want to come off as moving goal posts. But my first thought was "no way", and I doubt any serious person who knows anything about actually trying to gain lean mass believes there is actual muscle building going on.

I would note that he supposedly added 5 lbs of lean mass in his trunk. Where would that go? It sure doesn't look like he's bulked up in the shoulders, heck, when I was doing Nautilis back in the 80's I didn't gain much lean mass but my shoulders looked considerably bigger from posture alone. So where did he gain 5 lbs of lean? People get 6-packs from leaning out so you can see the muscles, there's not a whole lot of ab bulking up going on.

IAC, he didn't lift for 4 months so DXA-1 was atrophied, and then he's been hitting it hard for two months, and he says he eats more protein on lift days. DXA-2 was probably his muscles "reinflating".

Frankly, I see no evidence of lifting weights in Jimmy, and he's been doing it for a couple of years now. Slow burn fitness?

IAC, the good news for him is that he did lose a bit more fat than the scale indicated. The bad news is that he's definitely obese by the standard that matters most -- body composition. And as Charles points out, his abdominal obesity is the big issue. This is clearly where he carries the bulk of his fat tissue. Aesthetics aside, he likely needs to lose most of that for his lipids to improve.

Jane said…
So Jimmy poops out fat and has high iron as well as massive abdominal obesity? Then he has NAFLD as Charles says.

Charles, have you seen the recent work linking iron overload in NAFLD to copper deficiency?

'..Iron perturbations are frequently observed in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We aimed to investigate a potential association of copper status with disturbances of iron homeostasis in NAFLD. ...NAFLD patients had lower hepatic copper concentrations than control subjects. ...NAFLD patients with low serum and liver copper concentrations presented with higher serum ferritin levels [and] increased prevalence of siderosis in liver biopsy specimens...and with elevated hepatic iron concentrations. ...
CONCLUSIONS: A significant proportion of NAFLD patients should be considered copper deficient. Our results indicate that copper status is linked to iron homeostasis in NAFLD, suggesting that low copper bioavailability causes increased hepatic iron stores...'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18505688

I suspect Jimmy has chronic copper deficiency. I wonder if Ron Krauss knows that red meat and dairy are very low in copper and that saturated fat inhibits copper absorption, at least in rats.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8618945
Jane said…
Evelyn, you said pooping out fat indicates hepatic steatosis, and I should have looked it up ... can't find anything on it. Do you have a reference please?
Unknown said…
JM should get a CT scan of his liver - I'll wager it shows NAFLD
Sanjeev said…
If he's getting detailed medical checkups including these more-than-usually-detailed cholesterol assays, isn't it likely that if he has it, he'll know about it?

but ... it would be nice to have a pool/poll on how he'll handle it (if he has it and reports the fact)

1 change his diet
2 cite the flimsiest micro-mechanistic or observational studies to justify why it's good
3 claim NAFLD's bad effects won't apply to him because all previous results with NAFLD have been with SAD (high carb) eaters

If he does report it IMHO that will be suicide for his current business[1].

It would open up a big opportunity for him as an Atkins/Taubes/Phinney victim, with all the publicity that would buy ... but the last time he showed himself capable & willing to change[0] was when changing to low carb

[0] kind of ... restricting one's diet to only the foods one likes - does that take a willingness to change?

[1] I may be giving his audience too much credit. They may not abandon the diet or Jimmy no matter what, having shown some of the usual behaviours, tendencies, biases and prejudices of the "true believer"
Sanjeev said…
4 he'll swear to go on another variant that promises to cure the NAFLD and the cholesterol and lets him keep eating the way he wants
CarbSane said…
I'm not finding it either. I may be misremembering discussions of steatorrhea. As I understand it, this is not a regular thing for him, but occurs during rapid weight loss. Liver dumping fat?
CarbSane said…
I can't get in this man's head to know what's actually going on in there, but I think he's in a state of perpetual denial. He certainly does seem to go for the a la carte medical treatment. Doing so with doctors who are world-renowned specialists in "alternative medicine" that operate within the mainstream seems to be his forte. So regarding the lipids, he goes to a doctor who will say they are fine, or the changes aren't cause for concern b/c he's losing weight and needs to stabilize out, etc. .... or he moves on. He justifies this to himself, I think, by the fact he doesn't have health insurance so prioritizes his "treatments". He is awfully silent when some of his experts discuss medical concerns that he seems to have the symptoms of.
Jane said…
You don't think he might have been taking orlistat or something? I mean, how can eating eggs make you poop out fat?
CarbSane said…
No way Jimmy would take orlistat! He mentioned this occurred at times when he initially lost weight on Atkins, and it happened again when he did his eggfest. I don't know if it had anything to do with the eggs per se in 2010 -- but some days during that phase he was eating as few as 1200 cal/day. But it was rather high fat diet. Perhaps his compromised liver doesn't make enough bile to absorb all of the fat? I doubt if this is the case now he'd tell his audience. On the bright side, for now anyway, if he has fat malabsorption it could get him some "free" calories.
CarbSane said…
It would be interesting to know if this occurred with his 160 lb weight loss back in 1999 on a very low fat diet.
Jane said…
I wondered about the bile too. I also wondered whether he'd been diagnosed with NAFLD and prescribed orlistat for it.

I'd be pretty horrified if I found myself pooping fat. How does he know anyway? From the um, aroma?
CarbSane said…
To be honest Jane, there's some things I try not to think about ;-) His menus blog was actually a great resource for the discerning consumer of Jimmy's situation. He shared a lot of personal (TMI at times) information there that was not mentioned on the main blog. I guess fatty stools float, are a different color, and such. To the best of my knowledge he's not taking any prescription meds - except for testosterone (still?, script?). Since 2009 when I followed that blog and looked back at 2008 entries, he only took metformin and Armour thyroid -- both briefly, couple-three months at most.
. said…
I'd bet dollars to donuts he has Klinefelter's Syndrome! His abdominal body fat, facial features, tall stature and lab reports he's posted about his high FSH, yup Klinefelter's Syndrome!
CarbSane said…
I am curious if a man could get to his stage in life and not be diagnosed somewhere along the way. I mean I'm surprised I hadn't noticed this, but his doctors?? Still, the one thing that's puzzling is he has mentioned fertility issues before including low sperm count and motility. From what I understand KS do not produce sperm, but I guess some produce some. Still they tried IVF a few years back, and I would think that if anyone, that doctor might have recognized the possibility?

There's no need for him to divulge such, but for his own health, it would be helpful to be tested and know. There are apparently many health risks increasing mortality for the KS's and working with a real endocrinologist to address them sounds like a good idea. http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/90/12/6516.long
. said…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19616796
CarbSane said…
I saw that too. All the more reason I would think this would/should have been picked up on during their IVF attempts if it is indeed the case. I gotta say, the pictures sure are convincing!
. said…
Truth be told, I don't think he can afford the karyotyping test for the disorder and without a doctor with the equipment to test him gratis, he doesn't have the money to do it. I think his physical appearance and lab work supports that he's a strong suspect of the disorder though and his fertility doctors likely did tell him.
. said…
Also, he reports doing better on some hormone replacements he's now taking, like testosterone. With him adding hormone replacements, I would not be surprised if he has gotten a diagnosis, or his doctors strongly suspect it without the karyotype results in hand.
. said…
The addition of testosterone to his hormone replacement therapy also helps explain his increase in muscle on the scans he had done.