Vertical Diet Log | Week 1 Update

I’m now officially 1 week into The Vertical Diet by Stan Efferding.

I’ve been closely monitoring everything, and following the diet to a tee.

It’s a bit more cooking than I prefer (I prefer none because I’m a lazy cook), but it’s not too bad.

If you’re going to be doing the Vertical Diet, I highly recommend getting a rice cooker.

This thing has made it a million times easier to have rice with steamed spinach and red peppers mixed into it ready to go at a moments notice on a daily basis with minimal mess/clean up.

Just to quickly list out the goals I want to accomplish with the Vertical Diet if you haven’t read my introduction/overview post, they are as follows:

• Upregulate thyroid function as much as possible and get off of exogenous T4 and T3.
• Enhanced cognitive function
• Optimize gut health
• Hit all micronutrient needs
• Increase HDL cholesterol (while maintaining healthy LDL cholesterol)
• Optimize sodium, potassium and water balance
• Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure

Body Temperature

My body temperature is up an average of 0.5 °F upon waking, midday, and pre-bed.

This is a good sign, especially considering I have all exogenous Thyroid hormones working their way out of my system right now.

I was expecting to have more of a crash than I am, as it can take several weeks for natural Thyroid production to return to baseline, and even then, I’m not certain that my natural production is optimal to begin with.

If my body temperature goes up while also coming off of T3/T4 cold turkey, that’s a fantastic sign and very promising for what I anticipated would be a long lag-time in recovery.

Granted, we are only at the 1 week mark, and T4 has a half life of 7 days, meaning I still have plenty of exogenous hormones in my system.

But, the T3 is probably more or less all gone, and at least half of the T4 is gone, and I’m not crashing into a state of Hypothyroid yet, so I’m optimistic that the Iodine/diet in general is facilitating a more efficient recovery.

I check my temperature at least 3-4 times per day, so I will have a more conclusive update on this in the next couple weeks once all exogenous Thyroid hormone has completely exited my bloodstream.

Digestion

I dropped my Psyllium Husk fiber supplement from my diet this week.

I was a bit anxious about doing that, as it seemed to really help, but I’m going to be trying this diet to a tee, and I didn’t want to have any additional fiber sources skewing the results I will be interpreting once my body has adapted to this diet.

I had one day where my digestion went to hell, but that was more likely than not my own fault from overdoing the salt.

Other than that, it’s been decent.

Perhaps slightly improved, but it’s still too early to say for certain.

I had a couple spotless days (no pun intended), and a couple days that were pretty normal (what you would expect from a standard “clean” diet.

I will need to give this more time before I make a full assessment.

Body Weight (Fat Loss?)

I somehow managed to lose 2 pounds despite keeping my caloric intake exactly the same.

The only thing that changed in my diet was the foods I was eating.

The macronutrients and daily caloric intake are exactly the same as they were prior to the Vertical Diet, where I had been consistently maintaining my weight for weeks.

The fact that I suddenly dropped 2 pounds after starting this is a great sign.

It could just be a coincidence, but if this weight loss continues through week 2, then I will be forced to increase my daily caloric allotment to accommodate this increase in energy expenditure I’m suddenly experiencing.

I’ll have a better indication whether this was a coincidence or not in the next 7 days, as I’m pretty religious about monitoring my weight and overall body composition and can notice very minute changes very quickly.

Mental Clarity

This is unchanged so far.

Frankly, I don’t expect a significant boost in this until my Thyroid issue is worked out and I’m back to full tilt natural function.

Being hypothyroid can cause severe brain fog, so I won’t make a judgment on this yet until my body is completely free of all exogenous T4.

Resting Heart Rate and Blood Pressure

Resting heart rate is down about 4 beats per minute on average, although I attribute this mainly to dropping the T3/T4 cold turkey.

I’ll have a better idea how low I can get these in the coming weeks as well.

In Conclusion

It’s too early to make any kind of definitive assessment of what’s going on in my body, but so far the changes I’ve seen have made me optimistic for the weeks to come.

I’m going to go get my requisition forms for another set of blood work so I can get some updates on where my Thyroid levels are in a few weeks, as that is my primary concern right now.

I’m nearing the point where nearly all of the exogenous hormones have worked their way out of my blood and I may experience a fairly substantial Thyroid crash in the coming few days.

Hopefully not, but we will see what happens.

The Vertical Diet Download

If you want to try out the Vertical Diet for yourself, you can download it here: Vertical Diet & Peak Performance Detailed Program Notes 2.0