Diet

The 2010 kick off diet is wrapping up. Mostly because I've stalled out but also because I'd set aside six weeks during which I was going to be reasonably strict to see where I end up.

The motivation was mostly that my pants didn't fit anymore. That and I like discipline.

So, we started out at somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 lbs (fluctuated a bit, but seems like a reasonable average. Sometimes it was more like 187, sometimes more like 192). Bodyfat %, I do not know for lack of a measurement. I'm guessing it was in the 15 - 16% range based on an eyeball from my (surprisingly accurate) little brother.

LBM ~ 160 lbs
Bodyfat ~ 30 lbs

Again, ballpark but seems fairly reasonable. This was sometime around Christmas. On December 28th, I kicked off what I'll call a moderately strict diet wherein I restricted myself only to clean foods. Mostly what this amounted to was cutting out any instance of chips, candy, bread, and beer. I also cut consumption of particularly sugary fruits. I did not watch total calories. Carbohydrates were lower than they had been for the past 5 months or so. Again, I did not measure but I'd speculate less than 150grams per day and possibly less than 100 grams per day.

After week 4, things stalled at about 180lbs. For the last 2 weeks, I've gone very low carb (probably less than 75 grams per day and possibly less than 50 grams per day) to see if that made any difference.

Not really. I think my total calories are still on the high side. I seem to have lost a couple millimeters worth of skinfold in the abdominal region, but more or less I've been stable for 2 weeks.

Measurements now

Bodyweight ~ 180 lbs (Again, sometimes as high as 182, sometimes as low as 178).
Bodyfat % (presuming that I'm using the calipers correctly) comes to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 - 11%. I'll assume 11% for the calculation.

So LBM ~ 160 lbs
Bodyfat ~ 20 lbs

Are the numbers exact? Very doubtful. Did I lose 10 pounds of mostly fat? Probably something like that. Did I lose more muscle than the numbers indicate? Also likely.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the results. The diet was not too much effort (again, the keys seem to have been bread, rice, pasta, and beer). The effect of this was probably twofold--less carbs, less total calories b/c of not so much easily consumed foods. I got down into the 10 - 12% bf region, which was the goal. I think hitting single digits is possible for someone of my historically slow metabolic disposition, but it would require actively watching calories and probably restricting my avocado intake, which I'm just not feeling right now at 50 - 79 cents per avocado.

I've been leaner before after a competitive road season and a bodyweight of about 172, but, if I recall, I also lived on whey protein for a couple of weeks back then and wasn't the happiest guy in the world. I actually have a photographic side by side comparison, but no one will ever see that.

Anyway, there you have it. Going to relax the diet a bit this weekend. Looking forward to a homebrew.