Xavi's lab

A log of my daily experimentation

[xavilab]

Eating the worms

This video is from Apri 12th of 2016, but forgot to upload it.

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139.5h fasting final update. Insomnia, run, comfort

Yesterday I completed 5 days and 19 hours of distilled water fasting.

You may want to take a look at the following posts first to get a beter context:

Starting an undefined period of fasting.

48h fasting update. General feelings, blood sample and run.

92 hours fasting update. Hunger, rock climbing and gluconeogenesis

General feelings

After the last update I saw no improvements on my state. The sense of tiredness remained, as well as an overall sense of cold and a no wish to move much.

On Friday I had to work about 11h. Working was fine (I’m a programmer). I was able to get the stuff done, but my mind was just thinking on finding comfort (I had four layers of clothing on me) and a no wish to move much..

Yes, I felt hunger, but again, was more mental than physical. I knew that by eating my discomfort will be gone.

Insomnia

I’ve forgot to mention it, but on Wednesday I slept very bad. I woke up several times. I was very uncomfortable in bed.

Thursday was the same. I woke up at least five or six times following what it seemed a constant interval.

Friday was the worst night. I went to bed around 21:30 and watch a movie. I didn’t want to do anything else. I read a little bit and when to sleep. I was super uncomfortable my limbs felt heavy and tired and I couldn’t lay down on the side for more than few minutes before changing to another position because my shoulders were hurting. I woke up at 3:00 and I stayed a couple hours just moving inside the bed trying to find sleep.

In the morning a woke up several times and return to sleep.

Getting up was really hard. Not that I was sleepy, but tired. I end up spending in bed around 14 hours in total.

Run

When I finally got myself out of bed, with very little hope of being able to do anything, and not wish at all, I went for a “run”. This was the plan:

Try to run normally. See how I feel. If for some reason I feel energetic just keep running.

If I feel out of energy, try to sprint. The premise was to do enough anaerobic exercice to release lactate acid (read previous post for more details) This was a completely blind move, but it seems worth trying just in case.

In the above doesn’t work (which was expeceted), eat some sugar. I was pretty sure that this will fix my energy and recover my mood.

Well, I tried all the above and none of it worked. Because my previous fasting with coconut water went fantastic I was quite convinced that eating sugar will open the gates to get my energy back. It was not. I did improve my mood and my brain sharpness, but nothing crazy.

I took some video footage but it takes time to put it together and the audio its bad. Will post it it my round up of the experiment.

Here is a sugar selfie though

It end up being an 8k hike with few minutes of run on flat and downhill. Even if it was a complete failure I was happy to be done with it. I had no reason and no more willingness to keep up with the experiment.

Blood sample

Just after the “run”. I got a shower and went directly to the doctor. I had all my hopes that he would be able to get my blood drawn right away. I really didn’t one to have to fast until Sunday or Monday.

I got there and asked if I could do the blood test. The receptionist said -Maybe tomorrow morning?. I thought -“Nooo please, nooo”. I insisted. I got it and saw the doctor.

He didn’t understand anything. Why was I there just after a week of getting my blood drawn? I explained that I have been fasting since. And also working and doing moderate exercice. He was completely shocked. He just stopped talking and stared at me for few seconds: - But why? -He replied. -You are putting your health in risk! You will consume your muscles. You loose electrolytes if you sweat, you need them….

I got the blood and urine samples. Took a selfie. And went in my seek for pleasure.

Food

After a long fast. The hard part its breaking it. Your body its not prepared to handle food. It has to be an smooth entry. Starting with some juice, fruits…Doing it in the wrong way can cause severe damgaes.

I didn’t care, knew I may suffer later but at that time I didn’t give a shit. My previous fast was 4 days and I broke it going to a Mc Donalds and eating cheescake. This was just a couple more days. It couldn’t be that bad anyway. Even if the next day I have to stay in bed.

The 15g of sugar I took in the morning improved my mood and overall feeling. I didn’t have the same need for finding comfort as before but I still wanted just to go over it. The idea of eating has been deeply carved in my brain for to long.

I went to a bakery and bought a bunch of cheese tarts and bunds, then i went to get dinner to a burger place. Few hours later I ate all the stuff from the bakery, plus some cookies. I had to lay down in bed for a couple of hours. My stomach was burning. But later I was find. I even keep eating cookies…

Today (Sunday). The weather was awesome. I woke up completely energized. I did some rope jumping in the roof top under the sun and it felt fantastic!

System reset. Everything works again.

Round out.

Now its time to process the experience. It wasn’t a nice one. Almost nothing went as planned, that means learning.

I have data, pictures and insights I will share them in a round out post on my blog.

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92 hours fasting update. Hunger, rock climbing and gluconeogenesis

You may want to read the following posts first: Starting an undefined period of fasting. 48h fasting update. General feelings, blood sample and run.

General feelings

Getting some sleep it really made a difference. Yesterday and today I was able to work normally and the feeling of tiredness diminished. I wasn't at 100% performance though.

The best way to describe my state will be something like: Just got out of the bed on a cold room but without being sleepy. My body its just slow the whole day, and it wont do anything to activate if doesn't really have to.

Short run

I tried to run to work to activate my metabolism in the morning (its a 10 min obstacle run skipping people) and I stopped several times. Not that I couldn't keep up, its just it didn't seem a good enough reason.

I notice my heart rate spiked seconds after start running (I was at an slow steady peace). Not sure if the perception of it increased or it actually my heart rate increased abnormally. Probably both.

Rock climbing

Yesterday I went rock climbing (bouldering at a gym). On my way there two buses honk me for crossing and watching at the wrong direction, then I missed my stop on the train there. I'll say that was 50% fault of still being absorbed by work and 50% fault for not being at 100% of my mental capacity.

The rock climbing session was actually pretty good. Felt strong and could accomplish a couple of routes that I couldn't do before.

I climbed more mindful, focusing more on balance, doing slow movements and avoiding explosive movements.

Saving energy

My overall sensation its that my body and brain just tries to discourage any activity that requires to many energy. But its completely fine with doing stuff slowly.

Mentally wise it seems that its narrows my focus. I'm able to work fine, but unable to cross the street safely.

"Hunger"

Yesterday I was thinking about food all they long. A burrito with tons of cheese seemed the the most pleasing thing in the world. I don't remember having such a feeling last time.

Today that changed. I'm still very sensitive to the smell but the sense of wanting to eat its far less. And I say wanting to eat because Its different than hunger. Its more mental than a physical sensation.

Gluconeogenesis and lactate

Usually the brain relies heavily on glucose for running. Here there is a good overview on alternative source of energy for the brain when fasting or in a ketogenic diet.

Coconut water

I've been wondering why on my last long fasting, my brain was running at 100% or more, and this time its not. I think there is a pretty clear reason. On the previous one I was drinking water but also coconut water and other drinks. The sugar contained in the coconut water I drunk was more than enough to keep my brain running on glucose while my body was running on ketones.

Here there is a picture of the coconut water that I'm not drinking (I didn't have any better one to make this text less boring):

Gluconeogenesis

My assumption is that now I'm on gluconeogenesis, which is the process where glucose its created from fat proteins and others. For some reason this process its more costly to perform so the system slows down.

Lactic acid

The alternative idea its my brain its using lactate instead of glucose. Although for the little I know it seems that in that case the performance should be increase.

Test

The truth its that I have no clue and its an assumption hard to test. I was thinking to add some sugar into the water, and although it wont prove anything it may give me some idea on how to differentiate glucose from other sources.

But since my overall condition improved in the last days I leave this test for later on.

Next

Next update will be probably in two days. The plan its that on Saturday I'll try to run quite a long distance.

I think this will be the real deal. If I'm able run at all, and to it for a long period I should be able to see how the lack of sodium and other electrolytes effect me.

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48h fasting update. General feelings, blood sample and run.

You may want to read the following post first if you don't know what I'm talking about: Starting an undefined period of fasting.

General feelings.

Well, I've been feeling like shit for the first 48h. Monday was pretty though and today was horrible. During all day I've been in a zombie mode, finding extremely hard to focus at work. I also been feeling quite tired.

If it wasn't because its just the beginning and I've done that before I'll probably have give up already. It wasn't like this on my previous experiments. My assumption is that its due to sleep deprivation. I've been missing hours of sleep for the last couple of weeks and I haven't fully recover on the weekend. And the problem is that now I can't patch it with a coffee.

Sitting in a desk for 9h, not eating, and not drinking anything with some sort of stimulant, I guess makes my metabolism runs very slow. The weather doesn't help either.

I always treated food as a reward. After a good effort I eat good stuff. And interesting thing is that now there is nothing waiting for me. Not even a hot cup of pepper mint tea. And so far there is no specific date for the conclusion of the experiment, so its just harder to go over things (like the day of work or a run) since there is no prize. I'm not sure how much this may influence me.

I already start smelling food everywhere.

Blood and urine analysis results

I got the blood and urine test already. I'll copy them over to the spreadsheet soon. The summary is that **it looks fantastic! **The doctor got quite interested on what kind of diet I was on. The only thing that was out of the charts was the Urea, which was to high. But its well explain due dehydration. Which I was, at the time of doing the test since just few hours ago I ran 24k and I wasn't fully rehydrated. The pee sample was very yellow which its a very good indicator of dehydration.

Here there is a urine selfie to prove it:

Just to make it clear. I did the blood test at the very beginning of the expermient. Just to stablish a base line. It was done 12 hours after my last meal which is a requisit.

I didn't get the result for the ketone bodies. They did the urinalisis test and not the serum one. So I just got a paper saying that the excedent of ketones is negative. The current lab doesn't seem to provide blood test for it, so I may go ahead and buy a Blood Ketone meter like this one

Run

I went for a run this evening (the track its only of the way back). The usual route I do. Climb up Mt Parker and back. I've done this run dozens of times. This was the worst one. I had energy but I felt tired, it was like I didn't have will. My mind was a kind of in a zombie mode. My legs responded great though. Was an strange combination of fatigue and unwilligness.

The temperature was 13ºC and 90% humidity, with very very light rain. So my feet were kind of cold (I run barefoot). I guess all these didn't help either.

Next

Seems clear to me that the frist thing I have to do is to propper sleep. Right now, after the run and the shower I feel great. So hopefully this shitty feeling will be gone by tomorrow. If not I may have to shut down the experiment way sooner than expected.

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Starting an undefined period of fasting.

Yesterday Sunday 21th I had my last meal. For the following days I'll live only on distilled water.

The overall idea its to keep doing a normal life and see how its effected. Other than working +8h a day in front of a computer I'll be doing my normal runs and workouts and try to keep track of everything I can.

Why?

When I ran the 50k after few days of fasting, the experiment was pretty much to see if it was duable or not from an energetic stand point. This time its about everything else. But there are few things I'm specially interested in finding out:

General feelings, body reactions and what feedback it provides.

Effects on running when there is a lack of electrolytes.

Effects in general when no micronutrients are ingested.

What's my fat burning rate on my daily basis and in consequence what its my daily energy expenditure.

Body measurements

Every morning I'm checking my weight and body fat after going to the bathroom. The second one its quite tricky.

I'm measuring the body fat using the Jackson & Pollock 3 site skinfold formula. The reasons is because all of the checking points are in the front of the body I can test it without needing anyone else. I'm doing the mesurments on the left and right side and averging them. So far the results seem to low. I'm getting about 5% of body fat. If I had to judge visually I'll probably say that I'm about at 10%. I've made sure that I'm mesuring the right way and that the formula its correct. The results seem consistent so I'll be keeping the same method for now.

I'm also logging the body fat percentage using a bioelectrical impedance scale although in the past its results seemed completly unreliable.

I'm also taking a front and side pictures to see how my body changes. I'm taking them in the evening (so I have control of the lighting) and before any kind of workout, to not inflate the muscles.

Analysis

12h after the last meal I got my blood drawn and provided an urine sample. (Will put a link on all the biomarkers I'm checking soon). Will put the results into the log when I get them. Another analysis will be done at the end of the experiment.

Logging

I'm using google forms to input the data but I'm also editing them directly to provide aditional data such as links. Check out the spreadseet:

I'm logging pretty much everything that I believe can give context and provide information on how the whole thing evolves. Probably I'll add some graphs as well.

Drink: I'm moving around with 650ml bottle of water. I'm logging everytime I finish it. Same if I use some other container.

Feeling: How do I feel?: Hungry, tired, sleepy...

Picture: As said before I'll try to take daily pictures and see how my body changes.

Run: I'll put the Strava link.

Workout: I usually do a 20 min high intensity workout at home. I also go to the rock climbing gym a couple times a week. Will specify.

Food: I've logged my intake for the days before starting the fasting. That shouldn't be in use anymore.

Pee: Every time I go to pee. And if there is anything anormal in it. This one its hard to remember to do every time and I believe I missed a couple of times already.

Poo: Self explanatory.

Analysis: Just as for the timestamp reference.

Day summary: General feelings of the day.

Mesurement: Body weight, and fat percentage.

End

There is no specific date for concluding the experiment. It will end when something goes wrong, when I get tired (its quite a pain to not eat and also track all this...) or some other major force interfiere on it. It its not the goal to see how long I can last.

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Bug framing update #1

Its been about two months since I started growing mealworms and crickets. They didn’t do very well and its all my fault. I haven’t been able to spend enough time taking care of them. And I haven’t kept reading on the subject.

Crickets I got few dozens of small crickets, but they didn’t grow up and every day they were less. The big ones kept growing but also dying. Seems they didn’t have  proper environment. Specially temperature and moisture.

Crickets take quite more work than the meal worms. Their poop smells and containers need to be cleaned at least once a week. Right now I don’t have the time to take care of them and even if the plan was to eat them I believe I should provide them with “good” living. Since I have to many things in my head already on Saturday I set them free.

Mealworms Mealworms are way easier to take care so far. They don’t smell. The bedding serves as food source and all I had to do its to make sure the vegetables (carrots) don’t get mold. I know pretty much only have beetles. They seem healthy and active After cleaning I realised that I have the first born mealworms in my place. In the following 2-4 weeks most of the eggs should hatch. After that I’ll still have to wait few weeks for them to grow before eating them.

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Asymmetric footprints on worn out huaraches

I’ve wore this huaraches for the last 7 months. Almost everywhere for almost everything.

Last week I wore them for running and they finally worn out (pretty much at the same time).

The asymmetry on the footstep its very hard to see in a regular running shoe. Here its quite obvious

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Running barefoot on cold surface

Last week I was in Las Vegas for a company event. With Parky, a fellow marathoner we went for a 20k run a long the Strip at 6:30am.

I’ve only been running completely barefoot for the last 6 months. It was summer in Catalunya and I haven’t got cold weather in Hong Kong yet. Temperature outside was somewhere between 5-10°C.

For the first meters I felt it very cold and somehow painful. After maybe 1k my feet were numb. I still felt them cold but it was not a problem anymore.

At some point we went over a really aggressive surface made of really tiny sharp grains. Like a very abrasive sandpaper.

The awesome thing is that the front part of my feet, the one that its in contact with the surface most of the time (the most dirty one), didn’t feel absolutely anything, completely numb, while middle/back part of my feet (the most red area and the hill) felt quite a bit of the pain on the skin.

On the way back. The sun was up already and my feet and the surface was warmer. When we went over the previous mentioned terrain I almost had to walk due to the pain.

I wasn’t expecting this level of numbness. Was a great finding realising that cold can play in my own advantage.

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Farming bugs for protein

I've struggled to find organic meat when I was back home in Catalonia. Here in Hong Kong its even harder and way more expensive.

For a while I’ve been curious about insects as a main source of protein for our diets. Supposedly they are more efficient and more sustainable.

The other day I saw this Kickstarter project for farming mealworms. I got inspired and started to google around.

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been farming crickets and mealworms. I haven’t eat any yet. I’m waiting for the next generation since I have no idea how the ones I got on the Bird market were fed.

My interest its just to get an overall understanding since its a world completely unknown to me. See if its possible to grow them at home in a sustain manner and without major problems (¨the “crick crick” of the crickets its pretty annoying, but you get use to) as well as to explore how hard is it to cross the cultural barrier and eat bugs for food.

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On my main blog I just wrote some conclusions: Running 50km after 82h of fasting. My conclusions.

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Made it! 50k in complete starvation.

You may want to read these posts first

Why a marathon with no food?

The plan for the keto-marathon

No food

Last Saturday I ran 50km with 2.115m of elevation gain in 7h 45 min.

At the begining of the run I had been without eating for 82h and I did not eat until after the run.

Course

Surprisingly everything when pretty much as expected. The first 15k where a piece of cake. I was able to refill the bottle on a stream km 13th and it lasted me until Repulse Bay (getting water for the first 25k was the main problem here).

At Repulse Bay (km 27th) I bought couple of bottles of coconut water and added a little bit of salt I was wearing with me. At this time I also decided to start using huraches. I wanted to do the whole run 100% barefoot but the weird pavement on Hong Kong trails its super agressive. It was slowing me down and making the run painful. So, for the  second half I wore huarches.

From that point it was just about keep going. It was into urbanized area. Easy surface and no elevation changes. I stopped once more to a Circle K to buy water and coconut water.

At km 43th I arrive at Kennedy Town. For the last 10K I stopped very often to stretch as I was afraid of start getting cramps and the muscular fatigue was pretty noticible.

I wasn’t feeling completly wasted yet, so I decided to try to make it until 50k.

And after super slow and painful 6k I made it!

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Hydration

In the 3 days prior the run I drank 4 cans of coconut water, one Coke Zero, one caffe latte (with soy milk), two glasses of wine and water.

At the begining of the run I was slightly overhydrated.

During the run I drank 2.5 liters (1.7 liters of Coconut water and 0.8 liters of water).

I only had to pee a single time (very little) . I don’t remember exacly when but it was on the first half. It was very yellow. I incresed slightly my water intake from there.

Probably I should’ve drank a little more, but I think I did pretty well.

Weight After my last meal on Tuesday my weight was 74.6 kg. Prior the run my weight was 70.2 Kg. After the run I was 68.0 Kg (ater running I did not drink until I weighed myself at home). Next morning (after eating) I was at 70.9 Kg.

The scale I got last week mesures body fat as well but the readings are super inconsistent.

Problems

The only pain I had was the soreness on the sole of the feet and around the knees. And later, little cramps, and muscular fatigue.

My head was sharp all the time, never got dizzy in any sense. No side stitch, no stomach ache. Never got the feeling of being heavy or out of energy. Never got the most minimal sense of hunger. Even once at home I didn’t eat much.

The only thing that kept me for going further was my physical shape.

Follow up

I’ve been wanting to do this experiment for very long time. Now I’m super super happy on how it turned out ^^. It was personally very important to prove a lot of things.

I will follow up soon with deeper insights.

I’ve write some deeper conclusions here: Running 50km after 82h of fasting. My conclusions.

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Why a marathon with no food?

For the last two years I’ve been facinated with ketosis. This thing that makes you feel like a super human, everyone can trigger just by not eating the crap they sell us, or just by not eating at all, and for some reason not may people care about. I’ve experimented with it all this time, the last months specially focused in reducing food intake and starvation. During all this time  I haven’t found many reports on people doing long distance running while in ketosis. Even athletes known for its paleo style nutrion like Timothy Olson makes use of carbs on pre-race and race intake. And I don’t understand. If ketosis uses your fat as fuel and you have enough fat, why do you need to eat at all during a long distance run? The brain needs glucose to run. That could be a reason. But how many? Is that why no one runs in starvation? I haven’t found any relevant data in the subject. Recently I ran 22k without eating for two days, and even a 24k race without eating in the previous 30h. And of course no gels or anything during the course. I felt great! Were my previous test not tough enough? Am I missing something? Or its actually possible to run in complete starvation for really long distance.  That’s why I’m planning to run 40k without eating for 3 and a half days prior the run.

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The plan for the keto-marathon

This is the planned route: https://www.strava.com/routes/3670703 I know the terrain pretty well on the first half. I don’t know the second half but its the easy one.

The furthest I ‘ve ran in the last two months its 29k. But I believe I added enough volume to face the 40k. Last October I ran about 200k, 90% of it barefoot. This November its been more quite as I rested for the race and for the current experiment.

My biggest fear are cramps.  I’ve been having a lot recently. And I haven’t recovered from a race I did a couple of weeks ago. I got very strong ones on the last few km. My calf muscles still very sore (its never been that bad before). Today I got a foot and leg massage. My feet are amazing! No pain at all. My legs though... they are pretty fucked up. When massagin the deep tissue on my calf it was a torture...

I’ll be running after almost 4 days of not eating. That means I have to get all the electrolytes from drinks. And of course, I’m not going to drink any energy drink or artificial salts.

I’ll do my best to stay well hydrated. Will use some of the streams on the mountain for the first half (there is no other reliable source of water) and coconut water with table salt that I’ll bring on my hydratation belt. At the km 25th I’ll be back to urbanized area and I’ll be able to get water from 7eleven. Probably will be a good time to rest a little bit. Maybe even get a swim if the weather its nice. After that should be easy.From that point I can also get a cab or a bus in case something goes wrong. I will attempt it to do it barefoot, but I’ll put back the huaraches if I’m suffering to much or I’m going to slow. The whole thing its to extreme already, but I know the terrain and it should be doable... The pace will very slow. I’m expecting the whole run to last between 6-7hours. This is the plan. It looks beautiful on the screen. Let’s see how much I get right... I have to say I’m a little scared.

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Getting fat

For the last 10 days I’ve been over eating with no filter (including all sorts of carbs and sugars). Just for building up some fat. I don’t know my metrics of a couple weeks ago as I didn’t have how to mesure my weight and body fat. Yesterday I got a new scale. An Omron HBF-212 that mesures body fat. The accuracy of  bioelectrical impedance scales its not high but if mesurements are taken in the same conditions the difference between contiguos results should be pretty reliable. I’ve been looking for a body fat calipper as well, but haven’t been lucky so far. I’ll order online sometime soon. My current weight this morning was  74.6 Kg with 13.7% of body fat. From now one I’ll be taking mesurements on the regular basis.

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Running without food

25h ago I stopped my food intake. If it goes as planned I will hold on that until next Saturday after running 40k.

I’m trying to see how much its possible within an state of Ketosis. It will be my second attempt. I tried already few weeks ago. But I did it in an unknown terrain and my feet got to beat up. That time I end up running 22k after 40h of no food intake. https://www.strava.com/activities/419032065 90% of my runs in the last months have been while in Ketosis, and in the last weeks I’ve experimenting on running without food intake in the previous hours. A couple of weeks ago I ran a 24k race after 30h of no food intake. https://www.strava.com/activities/428479187

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Init()

Hello world! For the last few years I’ve been digging into several concepts and ideas that got me facinated. I’ve been exploring them mostly in the form of reading and self experimentation. I’ve tried to share some of these experiences writing post for my blog http://xavivives.com/blog/ but I had a hard time as I constantly get block trying to condensate to many information. With this site I will try to share my expriences “on the go”. Probably in the form of short/non edited videos, pictures, and thoughts with almost no curation. I’m thinking about it as a log. I’m all open for any questions or feedback. Meeting people with common interest its actually one of the reasons I’m doing it. Aloha!