Category: Fat Loss

  • CAC Zero, CIMT Normal After 16 Years on a High Saturated Animal Fat Diet

    Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC) score = zero.

    Carotid Intima-Media Thickness (CIMT) test = five years younger than my current age in healthy test subjects.

    [Edit 2/18/20: a second CIMT taken six months after the first one shows no visible inflammation in the carotid arteries. That is an improvement.]

    I decided to pay out of pocket for a CAC scan last month since I could not get my doctor to order one. They are not yet standard-of-practice, or even well understood, in the orthodox world of conventional medicine. I had one done ten years ago, also zero, and also paid for out of pocket because my doctor would not order it. I did that one six years after going to the dark side and starting to make saturated plant and animal fat the predominant source of energy in my diet.

    It was hellish scary, making that switch. I’d lost 90 pounds by following Barry Sears’ Zone Diet from January 1, 2002 through October of that same year. Then 10 pounds more later.

    Ron Blouch Zone Diet Fat Loss 2002-2012

    Sears believes saturated fat will kill you. He articulates the why of it very well. He was a bleeding edge lipidologist (specialist in fat science) at MIT with 9 patents in lipid delivery systems before he bailed from academia and wrote Enter the Zone. Choosing to believe he, along with most of the rest of the brightest scientific minds in the academic, scientific, and medical communities, were wrong about saturated fat was a terrifying decision but it made sense and I chose to bet my life on it.

    The CAC scan I had done in 2010, after six years of heavy saturated animal and plant fat consumption – about 60% of my daily calories – was zero.

    It remains zero ten years later.

    That includes a two year long period of sugar and starch re-addiction that began when I did Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet in 2014. I was working to see if I could reach bodybuilder levels of leanness, just for fun.

    Ron Blouch from Fat to bodybuilder lean via the Slow Carb Diet

    Foundational to the SCD is a one day high starch, high sugar binge done each week for the duration of the fat cutting cycle. The high calorie intake re-starts a metabolism that has gotten sluggish from caloric restriction over the prior six days. I never recovered from binge day after the diet was over and I’d reached 5% bodyfat. It re-triggered the addictions I had not realized I had kicked in 2002. I did not regain the 100 pounds of fat I had lost 12 years before but I did put on 50 fresh pounds of it while watching my vitality and health disappear.

    After several years of failed attempts to kick sugar I decided to do a high fat, hard ketogenic diet in January of 2018. I had never tried one before. I was hoping it would help with a severe concussion I had taken six months earlier. I also used it to do a whole-life re-set and finally kick the sugar addiction.

    In July of 2018 I modified the keto program by eliminating all plants except a single daily cup of coffee and shifted to a high fat, all meat, fully carnivore diet.
    Ron Blouch from fit to fat to fit again via carbohydrate consumption then restriction


    Despite any damage done from the two years of sugar binging, and despite the idiotic amounts of saturated fat I have eaten for 16 years, I have no calcified atherosclerotic plaque in my arteries around the heart.

    A legitimate problem with the CAC test is it can only locate arterial plaque that is old enough and large enough to have begun to calcify. In the early stages of plaque formation the masses are soft. It can take years for calcification to begin, which means you can have a zero CAC score and still be loaded with active atherosclerotic lesions. A CAC provides no information beyond an implication that past conditions remain true today. It is a powerful test but it provides an incomplete view.

    The CIMT test – an ultrasound of the carotid arteries at the neck – provides a visual look at both calcified plaque and soft, inflamed, active plaques that have not yet begun to attract calcium. It is the soft, active plaques that most often break apart and lead to arterial blockages that cause heart attacks, not the older, hard plaques that show up in a CAC scan. Last June I paid out of pocket for one (again, no support from conventional medicine because it’s not yet in their diagnostic paradigm) and discovered, corroborating the blood test numbers I’ve consistently seen since three months after I began a ketogenic diet in 2018, that my neck arteries show minimal signs of active inflammation and have minimal hard plaque in line with healthy test subjects in my age range.

    I’ve been eating a diet that should have killed me long ago according to consensus science.

    The 100% meat, no plant, carnivore diet even more so.

    Ron Blouch lifetime fit and fat via carbohydrate elimination

    If nothing else I should be dead from scurvy if the current orthodox models of how the body functions are correct. They are clearly wrong. More investigation is required from curious, open minded investigators who want to understand how our prior views have been incorrect. In the meanwhile the pioneers who are willing to fly without the safety net of established science to back up their choices will continue on.

    After sixteen years of eating extraordinary amounts of saturated animal fat – while reducing sugar and starch intakes to minimal levels before eliminating them entirely during eighteen months of an entirely meat, zero plant diet – my arteries are perfectly clean.

    That is amazing.

    It is also a relief.

    It is not stress-less going against the beliefs of others, particularly smart people who make their living studying the very things I chose, and continue to choose, to disagree with. Especially when you are betting your life on it.

    Gratitude to those who came before me and paved the way, often against far more opposition and with much less support than I have had.

    Finally, I offer some love to anyone who is willing to make the change to improve their health and return their body to its primal best by working to give a diet shift a try. I tell my story because when things got hard – and they were often very hard – it was the stories of those who had difficult times but got through them and succeeded that kept me on track when my entire system was exploding in resistance to the changes I had made with immediate and overwhelming desire to go back to the old ways, not stay tracked in on the new. Good luck to you as you make your way.

  • Fasting Results on a Fully Carnivore, Zero Plant Diet

    I haven’t posted pictures for nine months because my body has not visually changed. After six months of a hard ketogenic diet beginning January 1, 2018 I switched to a fully carnivore, zero plant diet on July 1st. By January 2019 my body had found its fat/lean set point.

    I maintain about 12% bodyfat when eating an unrestricted all-meat diet. By following my hunger signals – I eat when hungry and stop when full – I consume 3000-4000 calories a day, usually taken over three meals – with supper being the largest.

    In January of 2019 I began to incorporate water fasts into the program to drive detoxification and renewal of my body’s metabolic mechanisms after decades of abuse. In January, February, and March I did a three day water-only fast each month. In April and June I did a five day fast. I just completed the first seven day fast and am posting the visual results below.

    The jury remains out on what the fasts are doing. Each one has been different.

    On January first I weighed 175 pounds. The day before the seven day fast I weighed 175 pounds. The body dumps weight during the fast then restores itself through careful re-feeds in the weeks after.

    I have two more fasts remaining this year – a seven day in October then either a seven or ten day in December. After that I will re-evaluate and decide how to proceed next year.

    If you click on the image it will enlarge. The differences are subtle but noticeable. All four images are from the same seven day period, one clothed and one unclothed. I often speak of the roll of extra skin I maintain from the years I was overfat. It’s visible in the clothed pictures but re-distributes itself in the unclothed images.

  • Four Months of Ketogenic Eating Complete

    Phase one has ended. I’ve successfully gone four months fully ketogenic.

    I have lost 17 pounds on the scale but my body looks completely different. I suspect I’ve lost 25 pounds of fat and put on 5 pounds of muscle from doing nothing but jumpsquats, eating properly, and providing daily adequate protein to allow growth.

    I’ve never suffered as much on a diet program as I did on this regimen with the exception of the 100 pound weight loss experience in 2002. I don’t think there was a day from January 1 through mid-October of that year that I was not in real and often intense discomfort. This program was similar although the sources and nature of the suffering changed in phases from start to finish.

    I still believe the protocol is healing my body, not harming it, but I do not yet know that is true. I’m proceeding through uncertainty while watching carefully.

    Today I begin to return carbohydrate to my body for two months before going fully ketogenic again for four months on July 1st.

  • Jumpsquats Upgrade to 40 Per Set

    After a setback in February due to a slip on some ice I’ve finally moved from 35 to 40 jumpsquats per set. The additional five repetitions take my body deeply into its reserves, driving my pulse and breathing to the max in the 30 seconds after the set ends while creating significant post workout fatigue and soreness.

  • Jumpsquats Upgrade to 35 Per Set

    After four weeks of two sets of 30 jump squats per day I increase the number of repetitions per set to 35 on my way to 50.

  • New Year’s Resolution 2018

    Welcome to the blog.

    Starting today, January 1, 2018, I resolve the following:

    To spend the year alcohol, sugar, and dairy free.

    To eat on a 20/4 hour Intermittent Fasting/Feasting cycle.

    To do my 9th four month long experimental diet: a high fat, moderate protein, very low carb ketotic program. I will eat for ketosis from January 1 through April 30, then again from July 1 through October 31.

    To do between two and five single sets of high repetition explosive jump squats per day every day for the entire year.

  • Fat loss

    I have struggled with fat and body composition all my life.

    In 2002 I lost 100 pounds and kept most of it off for 12 years.

    I thought the struggles were over. I was fit, strong, and healthy.

    In 2014 I did an experimental bodybuilding diet (Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet) to see how lean I could make myself without losing muscle mass. The diet required one day of binge eating in every seven days. I binged on foods I had not eaten for 12 years. I got very lean and very strong. You can see the result of the diet on the far right in the image below:


    I also re-addicted myself to sugar and starches.

    While never re-gaining as much fat as I was wearing in 2002 I did balloon up to almost 230 pounds:

    Interestingly, knowing I was unable to stop eating sugar in the fall and winter of 2014/15, I used my overamped caloric intake to fuel muscle growth by doing sequential sets of high repetition heavy squats and deadlifts in the gym. I am carrying at least 25 pounds more muscle in that picture than in any of the previous images and I put it all on one very unpleasant squat, deadlift, and pullup at a time day after day after day.

    I have since removed 30 pounds of fat and currently look like this:


    It’s time to finish the fat cutting and return my body to proper leanness while preserving the muscular gains I made by lifting heavy in the gym.

    Fat loss is simple once you understand the process.

    It is not easy.

    I have never known anyone who lost substantial amounts of fat and kept it off permanently without real effort, often excruciating. I’ve been at this for 14 years and I’ve heard many claims that fat loss should be effortless if done properly. I have yet to meet a single person who took it off and kept it off for whom that was true.

    I will post my progress here on the blog.