Primary effect should be appetite suppression. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong between appetite suppression and fat loss, but if appetite suppression is not present, something must be wrong early. So ignore possibility (b) - you might need to wait for fat loss, but appetite suppression should be almost immediate.
What kind of ECA was it? How much ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin? What I used had 60mg ephedrine and 200mg caffeine (plus probably as much caffeine in drinks). Also some pills are called “ECA” but do not contain any ephedrine and instead something supposedly equivalent.
And as you said, I wouldn’t be surprised if you needed more caffeine if you normally take a lot of it.
Were you actually gaining fat? (as measured by clothing size, or body resistance meters, or other proxy)
By the way, why did you want to lose body weight if your bmi was normal?
I took ECA Extreme which is claimed to contain 25 mg “ephedra extract”, 200mg caffeine, and a few “woo” ingredients. So perhaps I just need a more ephedra-heavy mix.
I was just about stable in terms of fat, neither increasing nor decreasing.
Oops, my mistake—my bodyfat percentage is ~23% (measured by electronic resistance scale); my bmi is actually ~27(corrected in the post) . I don’t really care about BMI—I expect that to be on the high side because BMI is a silly measurement and I’m trying for an “athletic” build. But I do want to reduce fat. I’m hoping to get bodyfat below 20%. My bodyfat level is currently in an “acceptable” health range, but I’ve been working on some circus skills (aerial acrobatics) for which it would be a huge advantage if I could be on the low end of acceptable.
25mg of “ephedra extract” might as well be 5mg of actual ephedrine. Seems like the most likely point of failure. Try with stronger ephedrine—if you don’t see decent appetite suppression I’ll be surprised.
Fat:carb ratio isn’t really relevant, but most modern diets are pretty low in protein and micronutrients, barely enough. If you cut amount of your food by 1⁄3 without changing composition, you might put your protein and micronutrient consumption below healthy threshold, what will result in all sorts of badness. Micronutriens are easy (multivitamin pill). Most bodybuilders keep protein intake pretty much constant on cutting and bulking, so they’re on moderate protein on bulking, and high protein when cutting. Plus proteins don’t store well in our bodies (we have fat storage obviously, plus carb storage in liver and sort-of- in muscles (it’s can only be used for muscle work, never gets released back to blood), but no protein storage), so you pretty much have to eat multiple small protein-containing meals a day if you want to efficiently lose fat without losing muscle.
As I understand it, ECA pills that contain actual ephedrine in amounts as high as you used can no longer be sold either in the US or in the EU—even the link you gave is now invalid because they’ve reformulated your pill. (The new Forza has “30 mg of Ephedra Extract” instead of 60 mg of ephedrine HCL; they recommend you take twice as many pills as before to get a similar effect.)
The good news for Americans is that we can still legally buy 25 mg Ephedrine. It can’t be sold with weight-loss/bodybuilding claims but it’s a legal over-the-counter treatment for asthma, if you don’t buy too much of it at one time. So we can make our own ECA stack using three separate pills. I used this stack: 25mg Ephedrine (Vasopro), 200 mg Caffeine (No-Doz) and 325 mg aspirin.
And...it’s working! You were correct to claim real Ephedrine would have a significant appetite suppressant effect—this was immediately apparent the first day I took it. It’d probably be stronger if I doubled the Eph dose to approach what you were taking—I might do that in a bit. It’s too soon to tell whether I’ll reach my long-term goals but things are definitely moving in the right direction!
UPDATE (2009): it’s still working. So far (about 3 months along), my BMI has dropped from 27 to 25.7; bodyfat has dropped from 23% to 20.5%, and weight has dropped from 86kg to ~81 kg.
I’ve been reading all the medical literature I can find on ECA and editing the wikipedia entry. A few things I’ve realized along the way:
(1) the aspirin component really isn’t necessary; all that matters is the ephedrine and caffeine. (to the extent that it’s been studied, there’s no clear benefit for most users).
(2) It is possible—albeit pretty statistically unlikely—to overdose on ephedrine or ephedra or have bad health effects. When ECA was legal as a supplement there were a great many “adverse effect” reports including perhaps a dozen deaths attributed to it. The FDA banned the sale of ephedra supplements because there was what they regarded as a significant risk associated with it and they didn’t count the fact that it enables easy weight loss as an offsetting benefit.
However, my estimate is that the benefit of this drug far, far outweighs the cost. Every plausible back-of-the-envelope calculation I’ve made says I should keep taking it.
UPDATE (2015): Much like Shangri-La, that initially promising effect of ECA reached a plateau. I didn’t reach my target weight. It seemed like a bad idea to keep taking speed for the indefinite future so I stopped. After I stopped, I regained all the lost weight and then some.
(And as of today my current weight is low once again, but that was accomplished using a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT mechanism which is worth a separate post of its own. No oil or ephedrine were used in the method that ultimately proved successful for me.)
I realize this is a reply to an 8-year old update on a 14-year old post, but on the off chance that this reaches you—what was the diet you described as “ultimately proved successful”? And would you still say that?
I’m diving into the rabbit hole of obesity & diet research and found this whole old thread on the shangri-la diet to be quite interesting. Thanks for sharing your self-experimentation, and updating, even after years.
Well, at least you tried. My points would be:
Primary effect should be appetite suppression. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong between appetite suppression and fat loss, but if appetite suppression is not present, something must be wrong early. So ignore possibility (b) - you might need to wait for fat loss, but appetite suppression should be almost immediate.
What kind of ECA was it? How much ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin? What I used had 60mg ephedrine and 200mg caffeine (plus probably as much caffeine in drinks). Also some pills are called “ECA” but do not contain any ephedrine and instead something supposedly equivalent.
And as you said, I wouldn’t be surprised if you needed more caffeine if you normally take a lot of it.
Were you actually gaining fat? (as measured by clothing size, or body resistance meters, or other proxy)
By the way, why did you want to lose body weight if your bmi was normal?
I took ECA Extreme which is claimed to contain 25 mg “ephedra extract”, 200mg caffeine, and a few “woo” ingredients. So perhaps I just need a more ephedra-heavy mix.
I was just about stable in terms of fat, neither increasing nor decreasing.
Oops, my mistake—my bodyfat percentage is ~23% (measured by electronic resistance scale); my bmi is actually ~27(corrected in the post) . I don’t really care about BMI—I expect that to be on the high side because BMI is a silly measurement and I’m trying for an “athletic” build. But I do want to reduce fat. I’m hoping to get bodyfat below 20%. My bodyfat level is currently in an “acceptable” health range, but I’ve been working on some circus skills (aerial acrobatics) for which it would be a huge advantage if I could be on the low end of acceptable.
25mg of “ephedra extract” might as well be 5mg of actual ephedrine. Seems like the most likely point of failure. Try with stronger ephedrine—if you don’t see decent appetite suppression I’ll be surprised.
Fat:carb ratio isn’t really relevant, but most modern diets are pretty low in protein and micronutrients, barely enough. If you cut amount of your food by 1⁄3 without changing composition, you might put your protein and micronutrient consumption below healthy threshold, what will result in all sorts of badness. Micronutriens are easy (multivitamin pill). Most bodybuilders keep protein intake pretty much constant on cutting and bulking, so they’re on moderate protein on bulking, and high protein when cutting. Plus proteins don’t store well in our bodies (we have fat storage obviously, plus carb storage in liver and sort-of- in muscles (it’s can only be used for muscle work, never gets released back to blood), but no protein storage), so you pretty much have to eat multiple small protein-containing meals a day if you want to efficiently lose fat without losing muscle.
As I understand it, ECA pills that contain actual ephedrine in amounts as high as you used can no longer be sold either in the US or in the EU—even the link you gave is now invalid because they’ve reformulated your pill. (The new Forza has “30 mg of Ephedra Extract” instead of 60 mg of ephedrine HCL; they recommend you take twice as many pills as before to get a similar effect.)
The good news for Americans is that we can still legally buy 25 mg Ephedrine. It can’t be sold with weight-loss/bodybuilding claims but it’s a legal over-the-counter treatment for asthma, if you don’t buy too much of it at one time. So we can make our own ECA stack using three separate pills. I used this stack: 25mg Ephedrine (Vasopro), 200 mg Caffeine (No-Doz) and 325 mg aspirin.
And...it’s working! You were correct to claim real Ephedrine would have a significant appetite suppressant effect—this was immediately apparent the first day I took it. It’d probably be stronger if I doubled the Eph dose to approach what you were taking—I might do that in a bit. It’s too soon to tell whether I’ll reach my long-term goals but things are definitely moving in the right direction!
UPDATE (2009): it’s still working. So far (about 3 months along), my BMI has dropped from 27 to 25.7; bodyfat has dropped from 23% to 20.5%, and weight has dropped from 86kg to ~81 kg.
I’ve been reading all the medical literature I can find on ECA and editing the wikipedia entry. A few things I’ve realized along the way: (1) the aspirin component really isn’t necessary; all that matters is the ephedrine and caffeine. (to the extent that it’s been studied, there’s no clear benefit for most users). (2) It is possible—albeit pretty statistically unlikely—to overdose on ephedrine or ephedra or have bad health effects. When ECA was legal as a supplement there were a great many “adverse effect” reports including perhaps a dozen deaths attributed to it. The FDA banned the sale of ephedra supplements because there was what they regarded as a significant risk associated with it and they didn’t count the fact that it enables easy weight loss as an offsetting benefit.
However, my estimate is that the benefit of this drug far, far outweighs the cost. Every plausible back-of-the-envelope calculation I’ve made says I should keep taking it.
UPDATE (2015): Much like Shangri-La, that initially promising effect of ECA reached a plateau. I didn’t reach my target weight. It seemed like a bad idea to keep taking speed for the indefinite future so I stopped. After I stopped, I regained all the lost weight and then some.
(And as of today my current weight is low once again, but that was accomplished using a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT mechanism which is worth a separate post of its own. No oil or ephedrine were used in the method that ultimately proved successful for me.)
I realize this is a reply to an 8-year old update on a 14-year old post, but on the off chance that this reaches you—what was the diet you described as “ultimately proved successful”? And would you still say that?
I’m diving into the rabbit hole of obesity & diet research and found this whole old thread on the shangri-la diet to be quite interesting. Thanks for sharing your self-experimentation, and updating, even after years.