Weight loss accountability/support 2024 edition

Oh, I don’t personally care too much about the salt content either. Making things taste better without sugar and fat usually requires more salt.

Might retain water and skew a daily weigh in, but nothing to worry about.

Thanks for this, def trying that!

My latest, thankfully tasted better than this picture suggests, Hainanese Chicken - basically poached chicken on some sexy stock and chicken fat enriched rice with smacked cuc, toasted broc and three traditional sauces. So good, comfortably under 900 kcal.

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Hainaese Chicken is delicious. Looks like it is well under 900kcal, though it depends on how much chicken fat you put in the rice!

I'm trialling a Korean fried chicken recipe in the air fryer today, marinade the chicken, then dip in egg, cornflour/potato flour/panko mix, air fry for 15m, 5m cooling, air fry for 5m max temp, coat in gochujang sauce, and eat with a side salad (because the sauce and crust as the carbs)

Decided to be a bit more serious this year on weight loss. Only got back to "normal" life over the weekend so started then.

Starting weight - 91kg

Todays lunch
3 egg omelette w/protein cheese
2 tins of tuna mixed w/ sriracha, Skyr and 100g of brown rice/quinoa

• a load of leaves + lemon juice
  600 calories
  

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I bought myself a Mango as a treat for tomorrow. Let me guess- 11,000 calories in a Mango?

Good start, lets see if it continues? Lots of exercise and no processed food

02/01 86kg
09/01 84.5kg

Fresh mangos are pretty good in terms of punch per calorie - they used to be my goto when I had a craving for sweet things.

Frozen mango works too, and being frozen, tricks you into thinking you're eating more.

Just don't get the dried stuff. So easy to eat a bag.

Yeah - I've changed it to fresh. The dried stuff is lethal.

3/1/23 - 84kg
8/1/23 - 83kg
13/1/23 - 82.6kg

Surprised that fits in 600 calories!
Stack load of protein.

I had a similar lunch yesterday:
500 calories
4 medium eggs
10g butter
20g mature cheddar
slice of ham chopped up
handful of cherry tomatoes
Side salad

34g fat
6g carbs
39g protein

You could be right

Just don't ask chatgpt!

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I think that shows the massive calorie overestimates that people can make.

3 medium eggs at 70 calories each, dash of milk/oil/butter brings it up to 300 calories.

100g of dry brown rice is 350 calories, 100g of cooked brown rice is 120 ish.

2 tins of tuna can vary from 200-400 calories based on whether they are packed in brine, water or sunflower oil.

600 calorie extra a day would completely write off a calorie surplus.

2kg down in 5 days. Obviously the easy part but nice to see some change. I’ve cut out the complexity of thinking on work days and just eat a salad (with a little protein) for a mid morning breakfast and a late lunch. Tastes good enough and I can get everything at the shop I pass on the way to the office. So far so good.

Avg daily calories are around 1300.

OK, a recent brain dump in the running thread got me thinking about what motivates me and how I work. Planning is key, I enjoy making up plans, and if I do make a plan then I'm way more likely to follow the plan if it just tells me "Today, go for a 6k run" and "This week you need to do two Zwift sessions so plan when you're going to do that around your work/life/family/etc".

To that end I've started my planning. Google sheets works well for me.

Right now I'm somewhere around 102kg which is pretty much the most I've ever weighed. I should be down at ~72kg (and I was 13 years ago). So I'll do the time honoured tradition of aiming for a steady 0.5kg/week loss after an initial 4 week plateau (I've done this numerous times in the past). That should get me to my target around Feb 2024 - seems a long time away but it gets more fun once the initial horror period is done. Some times I get ahead of it, which is fine as there will be some weeks (holidays, etc) where I fall back a bit. I'm looking for the general downward trend not fretting about weighing myself every day.

General plan is:

• Eat better (although consumption will actually go UP as I increase the exercise)
  
• Drink less booze (but not cut it out completely)
  
• Do a metric fuckload more exercise (I enjoy this bit once I get into it)
  
• Maintain married status
  
  

More specifically:

• 5-a-side football: Continue to play a 40m league game and a 1h mates game each week
  
• Swimming: Get back into it, have a 2 mile open water swim in September to aim for but want to be doing ~5k a week split over 2 or 3 sessions
  
• Running: (See linked thread for detail) but general gist is to build back up to doing 3 runs a week (4 if including parkrun) and ~25-35km/week. No events entered (promised myself I wouldn't enter anything until weight is under 80kg). Daughter now free on a Saturday morning so we can do parkrun together.
  
• Cycling: Ride 100 at the end of May. Get out on the bike more. Zwift "Back to fitness" plan twice a week. Local spin class 2/3 weeks due to work commitments.
  
  

Other stuff:

• 100 pushup challenge, initial test gave me 5 so starting W1 next week
  
• Leg Blasters - these are awesome for skiing (hopefully going in March)
  
• Minimum 10,000 steps a day. Actually plan to make this happen, which may mean taking 3 x 20minute breaks from work to wander off and think about things. If I don't plan I can end up doing <2,000 steps in a day on a day when I'm not doing any other exercise. Once I get into the exercise routine this generally takes care of itself but it's the not taking a break during work that I need to avoid.
  
  

It's all based around sports periodisation and 4 week mesocycles:

• Medium week
  
• Medium-hard week
  
• Hard week
  
• Easy/recovery week
  
  

So for running it might be something like:

• Medium week: Mon: 5k (7/10 effort), Wed: Intervals (6x800m at 5k pace), Sat: Parkrun (8/10 effort)
  
• Medium-hard week: Mon: 5k (8/10 effort), Wed: Intervals (5x1000m at 5k pace), Sat: Parkrun (9/10)
  
• Hard week: Mon: 5k (9/10 effort), Wed: Intervals (4x1600m at 5k pace minus a bit), Sat: Parkrun (10/10)
  
• Easy/recovery week: Mon: 5k (6/10 effort), Wed: 5k (6/10 effort), Sat: Parkrun (6/10 effort)
  
  

I don't really think about macrocycles as things like running are all year round activities for me. At the moment I'm not building up to a specific event. Same for swimming or cycling, even though I do have events in mind (2 mile open water swim, Ride 100) but I'll be able to do them whatever state I'm in as long as I've just got the miles in. For swimming I find I need less periodisation and just more focus on bashing out the distance, until I can regularly do 4k in a single session (ideally in an hour) there's no point me worrying about drills but I will get to that point eventually.

I'll think about bigger goals and target events once I get my weight down but my general outline is:

• 2023:
  
  • Just get the weight off and get into better habits/routines
    
  • Ride 100
    
  • Swim Serpentine 2 mile
    
• 2024:
  
  • Half-IM distance event
    
  • Sub 4h Marathon
    
  • 10k swim
    
• 2025:
  
  • IM distance event
    
    

Not running another HM until under 90kg and not running another full marathon until way under 80kg (ideally until 75kg).

(I have had the same rough plan every year for the same 8 years or so and have had varying degrees of success. Best year was getting down to 83kg but then the marathon sapped all motivation from me and I slumped back to ~100kg. Hence the "no big running events until under 80kg" rule I've enforced.)

Very detailed plan! Quite a lot of exercise volume, will you build into it?

What do you think caused the times when you were more or less successful in previous years?

I’ve had good years, then been derailed by injury, and then either eating at the same level as when active or comfort eating.

Bit of a different breakfast this morning.

Kimchi and beef omelette

340 calories, 24g fat, 4g carbs, 28.5g protein

3 medium eggs
1 slice of corned beef chopped up(I know, wtf)
50g of chopped squeezed kimchi (reduce moisture a bit)
8g butter
Chopped spring onion
Drizzle of sriracha

A meaty, spicy, tangy, umami punch to the face in the morning (or for lunch or dinner)

If corned beef is scary, fry chopped bacon and kimchi together and use as a filling instead. Fried kimchi, bacon with a touch of sugar is one of my favourite tastes.

That sounds hella good

Would be tempted by…Spam even

Spam and kimchi is definitely a thing.
Spam probably doesn’t have the best macros, but spam and kimchi in pancakes/fritters and egg fried rice are banging.

Very detailed plan! Quite a lot of exercise volume, will you build into it?

Yep, most things slowly ramp up, plus I know I just need to push past the first few weeks of tiredness that will be coming.

I still play 1h40-2h20 of 5-a-side football a week so I'm not completely inactive at the moment.

What do you think caused the times when you were more or less successful in previous years?

A couple of years were due to injury (ankle fracture, and the other time was a hip flexor problem). Other than that it's due to apathy - I miss a couple of sessions and then everything starts to fall apart. Just need to keep an eye on it and push through. Bad weeks will happen.

I’ve had good years, then been derailed by injury, and then either eating at the same level as when active or comfort eating.

That bit "eating at the same level when active" is my problem when it does fall apart. There's always been an element of comfort eating, and I'm not going to try and completely eradicate that, but I'll try and keep an eye on it.

When I was doing silly amounts of cycling (300km+ a week) I was just a human dustbin. I could eat anything/everything and I'd still lose weight. Unfortunately some of the intake memories have stayed with me and I can no longer do that much exercise each week.

Also need to see the physio once an initial chunk of weight has come off, luckily I get this via private healthcare from work.

Apologies if covered before but wondering what is a reasonable rule of thumb for working out a suitable weight range for a given height (ie not BMI or, for men, 50kg + 1.9kg per inch over 5 feet)?

Actually BMI isn't bad for a 'range'.
More muscley types (myself included) might be a couple of kilos over the top end of healthy range for the height.

As an example for men:
5 foot 4 - 49.2kg - 66.4kg
5 foot 6 - 52.2kg - 70.6kg
5 foot 9 - 56.7kg-76.6kg
6 foot - 62kg - 83.7kg
6 foot 3 - 67.5kg - 91.2kg

The lower weight seems super low to me but I've never been a thin build.
You can be super lean and hench at the top end of the weights, or very chubby, depending on how much muscle you have.