What does it tell you about why?
That all looks very weaksauce.
If EY really has an unusual metabolism, it seems to me he (rationally) should be willing to spend considerable time and effort to figure it out.
Ideally, he should go into some university's metabolic ward and spend a week or two there while his personal biochemistry and the way it reacts to stimuli is being carefully looked at.
While that may not be very practical, going Tim Ferriss is considerably easier: get a lot of tests done and keep on repeating them, keep a food diary, keep a log of parameters of interest (sleep, energy, mood, etc.), get a blood glucose meter, get keto strips, run controlled experiments on yourself, etc.
If one does have an unusual metabolism, statistical expectations based on normal people don't apply. That's a big issue.
I cross-checked this against the Wikipedia vitamins and B-vitamins articles, with attention to things listed there that aren't considered essential nutrients but which someone thought were important to mention anyways. Consider adding carnitine and choline.
The two multivitamin capsules should come from different manufacturers, to mitigate the risk that one of their ingredients is missing or degraded.
It is commonly said that a higher ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid is better, but this is in the context of a typical diet which is omega-6 weighted. I have no idea what happens if you go all the way to 4.5:1 omega-3:6 (what you'll be getting from flax as your sole polyunsaturated fat source). Also, while I haven't really researched this, I am suspicious of having a very high total polyunsaturated fat content, independent of the ratio of polyunsaturated subtypes, as you do, and would suggest weighting fat intake more towards palmitic acid (based on the heuristics "eat what you're made of" and "get calories from things that have fewer chemical steps between them and ATP").
Iron is tricky; the RDAs are different for men and women, both deficiency and excess matter...
Resistant starch (such as in oats) is associated with better insulin sensitivity, lower circulating blood glucose, and ultimately lower circulating triglycerides than even a ketosis based low carb diet AFAIK
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aoac/jaoac/2004/00000087/00000003/art00027
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/3/559.full
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7358712
Carbs: 12g Protein: 54g
Needs more Carbs and Protein. Prediction: this diet is not sustainable and will lead to loss of muscle.
Carbs:
Even when in Ketosis the brain will still needs around 50-75 g of Carbs daily. Either you provide the carbs or you eat more protein than can be converted to carbs(glucose) by the body(gluconeogenesis).
Protein: you need a certain amount of protein to maintain your muscle mass(I think it was 1.5g per kg of muscle but please check) so you need to add this much protein at least. Also consider that part of the protein you consum...
The shake needs more protein. This blog post cites a study that indicates 1.6g/kg being the optimal protein amount for fat loss. Two scoops of whey instead of one would probably be fine.
If Eliezer consumed this for a month and didn't lose any weight, I'd conclude that his maintenance metabolism is, on average, 1866 calories.
I don't know what he's tried to do to lose weight (just signed up here recently and only read the sequences), but any competent nutritionist or coach starts off by collecting data. Height, weight, body fat percentage, waist measure...
Cool idea! Some suggestions:
Use ground sprouted flax seed powder instead to avoid phytate bodies potentially binding with the minerals.
I assume you're using flaxseed oil for omega-3 fatty acids? Use krill oil instead.
Cocoa has the same problem, and is hard to replace in terms of taste. Coconut, avocado, hemp (seeds or oil), acai berries, and nutritional yeast might work in some combination, but can all be prohibitively expensive depending on the intended application.
Adjusting the amount of cocoa should lower the amount of fat intake. For optimal rete...
An alternative is egg yolk. It's a massive kitchen sink multivitamin, and way cheap. Alternatively, cook a whole load of fish soup for weeks at a time?
I sympathize with liquid diets because I do find it easier to stick to such diets. For some reason not chewing some things -- a blanket ban on chewing -- makes it easier to resist little cravings.
What is the experiment?
Has Eliezer tried a ketogenic diet in the past? If so, the result of that seems an important input to predicting the result of this. If not, shouldn't you (also) try giving this to someone who has used ketogenic diets in the past? Experiment with small changes and good controls.
If Eliezer eats less calories than needed for maintenance, he'll lose weight just like anyone else. It'd be physically impossible not to, unless he can absorb nutrition from the air somehow. Normally, eating a ketogenic diet should make it easier to eat less, so he'd need less willpower. Having to lose weight sucks for anyone (I'm trying to lose weight again myself), because there's no way around it: you have to eat less than you burn. And I gather that Eliezer has worse problems than usual, trying to do that. I remember reading about that, and IIRC is not...
If Eliezer eats less calories than needed for maintenance, he'll lose weight just like anyone else. It'd be physically impossible not to, unless he can absorb nutrition from the air somehow.
Or his body will just stop the maintenance and make him sick and eventually dead. Depends on how messed up it is.
This may be a silly thing to ask, but for low-hanging fruit, has Eliazer ever tried just the vitamin stack from this? Or just taking a whole lot of vitamin B? My own soylent experiment failed because I couldn't make anything that tasted decent, but I also have mysterious low blood sugar (haven't talked to a dietician, but the basic advice like eating protien and avoiding simple sugar isn't enough to make me not get hungry every two hours), and the emergen-c vitamin from my soylent seems to help. (I have not blind tested this yet, so my confidence that it's not a placebo effect isn't too high.)
That's a moderately fair question. One answer is in vitro-- start with blood tests, and possibly with examining fat cells.
Another possibility is a different sort of poking. Dietary changes should be designed to be experiments for finding out what's going on rather than aimed directly at fat loss.
I'd really like to see some work on why Eliezer gets so knocked out from missing a meal or two. Frequent blood tests? I have a notion there's something in the situation about his liver, which I believe is in charge of maintaining blood sugar in the short run.
Glucagon causes the liver to convert stored glycogen into glucose, which is released into the bloodstream, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's got something wrong with that pathway.
(Yay for the well-stocked subconscious supplemented by google. I thought the liver produced glucagon, and I was wrong, but wikipedia turned up the information.)
We simply don't know enough about human physiology or the physical structure of food at this time in history for an engineering project like this to be a non-ridiculous venture.
You should tell that to the medical meal-replacement people; they seem to be guilty of terrible malpractice in feeding patients foodstuffs which are impossibly to design safely.
Eliezer and I have put together this first pass at a recipe for DIY ketogenic soylent--or, as he prefers to call it,The Mildly Surprising Super Ketonic Dietary Replacement Weight-Loss Fluid - It's Not Food, It's Dietary Replacement Fluid!(R) (I am not in full support of this particular preference...)
So let's play Make a Prediction. It seems more likely to be useful than "free associate with why soylent/ketosis is awesome/stupid". Imagine that Eliezer has around a week's worth of infinite willpower (that can only be spent on resisting food cravings etc.). Further, imagine your crystal ball shows you that a month from now, he hasn't lost any weight. What does it tell you about why?
Ketogenic Soylent v1
1 scoop Gold Standard whey protein
1½ tsp calcium citrate powder
1 tsp creatine
½ cup+1 tbsp ground flax
4 tbsp Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder
2 tbsp lecithin
⅗ tsp potassium citrate on day 1, increase gradually to 1tsp by day 5, don’t exceed 2tsp
½ tsp iodized salt
⅛ packet Emergen-C
⅕ cup olive oil
1¼ tbsp flaxseed oil
⅗ cup MCT oil
Sucralose to taste
We might need to add water to get the consistency right.
Pills
1 capsule vitamin D supplement/day
2 Opti-Women vitamins per day
1 capsule MSM
Totals Per Day
Calories: 1866
Fats: 193.5g
Carbs: 12g
Protein: 54g
Fiber: 25g
Biotin 250mcg
Calcium 150mg
Chromium 120mcg
Copper 2mg
Folic Acid 600mcg
Iodine 200mcg
Iron 18mg
Magnesium 75mg
Manganese 5mg
Methyl-Sulfonyl-Methane 1000mg
Molybdenum 70mcg
Niacin 20mg
Pantothenic Acid 20mg
Potassium: 5g
Riboflavin 20mg
Selenium 70mcg
Sodium 3g
Thiamin 20mg
Vitamin A 5,000IU
Vitamin B6 20mg
Vitamin B12 100mcg
Vitamin C 250mg
Vitamin D 1600IU
Vitamin E 100IU
Vitamin K 80mcg
Zinc 15mg