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I’m going to post a picture that makes me pretty uncomfortable below so you can kind of grasp where I’ve come from.  This past weekend, I hit 211.  Not as much weight lost as I want to, and I’ll explain a little on that and where I’m adjusting.  Every month, this is an n=1 experiment for me.  As Mark Sisson says, you try and get away with as much as you can and learn what you can and cannot get away with.

This is pretty much at my peak weight of 372.  People told me that I should have a lot of “before” pictures, but I’m not sure that people grasp that when you’re at the highest weight of your life, you don’t want pictures taken of you.  You start to withdraw yourself from social situations, and people stop inviting you, coincidentally.  You become a social outcast, and you’re trapped in your own little bubble of existence, and the only relationship you tend to have is food, and what it does to your moods.

Below, you will see what 162 pounds of weight loss looks like…

I’m a harsh critic on myself, and at 211, I feel I have maybe 25-30 pounds to go until I’m where I want to be.  It could be 22.  It could be 35.  I feel my end “goal” weight of 186 is more or less where I will feel very healthy, but with all of the running, biking, hiking, and things I want to do with my life…it’s very humanly possible I get into the mid 170s.  My upper body is kind of massive, and my legs are like concrete.  I have some weight around my mid section yet and I feel that’s just a function of time and effort.

I’m happy with the progress, albeit only a few pounds this month.  This month, in particular, I had a little too much of the enlightened ice creams.  I also only did fasting Friday once instead of 4 times.  Each fasting Friday is about 2500 calories I’m avoiding, so maybe 2 pounds were not lost.  I did have one cheat day, but I think I might have hit 3500 calories for that day and had maybe 200g of carbs.  Maybe.

This next month, I’m planning to cut back on the enlightened ice cream to maybe once a week.  What happens is this – I normally have my giant salads for dinner, and then I’ll have my chocolate with almond butter or the like afterwards.  This helps keep my calories up to about 2000-2200 per day with OMAD.  Not only did I eat the enlightened ice cream after dinner, but I was also eating a whole pink grapefruit before dinner.  That’s probably 20-25g of carbs.  So, most of the entire month I was hovering around 100g of carbs per day.  I felt a little bloated with that.  It’s not hard to dip back into ketosis, but I’m looking at my life after keto.

With reading Sisson’s book “The Primal Blueprint”, I’m really interested in the 100-150g of carbs per day he has.  He might do keto once a year for a month, but he lives on the outskirts of it.  While he’s “fat adapted”, he also has the ability to have these carbs for athletic performance benefits with explosive movements.  This is where a LOT of the endurance training is going these days.  It’s backing off of the 400-500g of carbs and getting people fat adapted.  You use carbs for explosive performance, but you build up your fat oxidation numbers so you don’t have to have nearly as many carbs to finish races.

So – I feel towards the winter months, I may be heading towards the 100g per day threshold while being 186.  We’ll see where that goes!

My upcoming goals….I’m 211 as of this past Saturday.

204 for end of June.  That could be tough, but I’m going to be more strict with my carbs this month and there’s a LOT of training and hiking coming up this month!!  Additionally, I’m adding a second day of weight training in like I used to do.

198 for end of July.  I have a triathlon at the beginning of August, and I’d love to crack 200 for this.

193 for end of August.

189 for end of September

186 for end of October.

All of the above should be do-able.  I’m laser focused and have 5 more months until the end of this 3 year project!! I started September 2016, and declared it a 3 year project.  Looks like I’m sliding to the right by one month.  I’ll take it!!

Self image

It’s interesting how this changes over time.  It’s not instantaneous.  I know I’m not the person in the top picture anymore, but mentally I’m feeling like the guy maybe another 40-50 pounds heavier from last summer.  I’m getting looked at a lot now by people.  Eye contact is everywhere.  I am thinking it’s a stain on my shirt or they are looking at the person behind me or something.  To suddenly be this “visible” to others, it’s sort of frightening.  Like people now see me and I’m not invisible.  This has then led me to wanting to dress better and try and be more on point with my appearance.

However, I’m still stuck a year in the past or so.  I still only see the spare tire that I have, and not how I’ve leaned out in other places.  I think we are our own best critics, and perhaps this is a mechanism built into us for self improvement to try and attract mates or some shit.

As much as I like the compliments I get, I also am not really good with how to respond – especially in person.  I’m very proud of my accomplishment, but I’m also not really good with getting any sort of compliment on my appearance.  43 years of no compliments, from anyone, ever….to….a lot more…and I just don’t really have a good grasp on how to deal with it.  The last month or two more than the last 30 months combined.  It’s a little overwhelming, but still nice to hear.  I just want to proactively apologize if I’m 7 levels of awkward….

Some of my friends are like “you need to lift more!”.  At 211, I have a rather decent frame and I probably could have some potential to be rather jacked at 200.  You also have to understand, when you’ve been massive your whole life, it’s not important, at all, to you to be that hulking figure.  I have zero interest in having 8% bodyfat and being 200 pounds with a 415 bench.  Zero.  My whole life has been about being the athlete trapped in a fat suit, and I want to run.  I want to play tennis.  Maybe play adult baseball next year at 177 and see where that goes.  Maybe at 180 I’m biking lights out with tons of power in my legs.

You see….the massive fat guy just wants to eventually blend in.  To NOT be large.  Weight is the enemy.  Large clothing sizes are the enemy.  Some muscle for functional purposes and aesthetics is welcomed, but the name of the game is lower body fat percent while being extremely fit.

Get this….yesterday I was at the JCC pool with my son.  He likes to play the game where he holds his breath and wants to see how long he could do it.  He eventually asked me.  I did one minute and nine seconds.  Ummmmmm…..what?  With all of the fitness I’ve been doing with keto, I can hold my breath a really long time underwater!

Fueling with keto/targeted keto

All of the rage online with the youtubes these days is carnivore and fasted workouts.  I have zero interest in carnivore, and all of the fasted workout things I see seem to have some benefits.  That being said, these fasted workouts are usually 30-45 minutes of weight training.

With fasted weight training, you appear to be draining as much as possible from your glycogen stores and activating a lot of testosterone and HGH.  I think this could be beneficial with weight training, and I think I will incorporate this into a Wednesday morning session.  However, my run/bike/hike things, I like to have better performance and not feel sluggish.  I have done some fasted runs before and I just don’t really enjoy the experience.  I had a friend from high school that took off a ton of weight in junior high by getting up early and running on an empty stomach every morning.  So – there is anecdotal evidence of it for me to reference.  I think maybe doing that once in awhile might prove to have the HGH/testosterone spike guys want.

My overall issues with fasted exercise are a few things – first, I don’t like the concept of losing muscle mass.  I think with fasted weight training, this is less of a risk because you are really draining glycogen and attacking the phosphate creatine systems.  When you are doing low intensity steady state cardio (LISS) with biking or running, I think there is a massive ability to lose muscle mass if doing it fasted.

Quick…find me any competitive marathon runner over 175 pounds.  All of these guys are ultra lean.  I don’t want that either.  I want to preserve my muscle.  How to do that?

Targeted keto.

As I’ve written about before I do have usually 50-75g of carbs per day, usually more on really high end workout days.  Yesterday, I ate a cup of strawberries about an hour before my bike ride and had about a half a cup of black berries halfway through my ride.

Yesterday, I biked 32 miles.

So before biked, I put maybe 100 calories of carbs into my quickly available stores.  It helped with getting my off to a good start, and my body is so fat adapted, I’m probably burning 1.2-1.5g of fat per minute.  When you are not fat adapted, and may have a tendency to crush through your glycogen stores and perhaps attack your muscles.  During my ride, I replenished maybe another 50 calories of sugars to make available.

When I completed my trip, I had a double protein shake with almond milk, 6 jumbo eggs, two pieces of low carb toast, and a two good yogurt with 12g of protein.

So right before the workout, I had some fructose…had some during…crushed 32 miles, then had about 114g of protein right after with some fats.  The carbs in the bread were probably dealt with swiftly.

Later that evening, with my son, I had 2/3 of a keto pizza made with cheese/eggs/sauce/cheese and a piece of low carb keto cheesecake.  My total carbs for the day may have been 75 (the breads have a lot of subtraction with fibers and my strawberries had erythritol added).   However, because of WHEN I had my carbs, I felt VERY confident I was burning it immediately.

This morning, I just had strawberries again, and will be taking blackberries and peanuts with me for a very long hike.  Hoping for about 6 miles, and that should register maybe 1,000-1,200 calorie loss.

With hiking, it’s so serene.  It centers me.  I have the music going, but all of the nature around me, my elevated heart rate from the inclines, the care I need to take with each step, and breathing all of the fresh air in nature.  The only issue I’m having now with these long bikes, runs, etc is hydration.  My 32oz  bottle isn’t cutting it, and even on my bike I now have 2 bottles that aren’t cutting it.  Do any of you use those backpack bladders?  Wondering how it might feel to be carrying 6-8 pounds of water on your back like that – it can’t be comfortable on hot, sweaty days?