It’s been two months since my first post explaining my fitness goals, and things have changed a bit. And, yesterday, I made the decision to update things “drastically” from what they were.
Reasoning: I’ve been talking for a month now about the road trip I took to Ohio and Michigan, from home in Colorado, to see parents. I’ve talked since the very first post on this blog about how travel screws me up with, well, everything with respect to keeping food and exercise and other habits. I’ve also occasionally talked about when it is or is not reasonable to reassess goals I set on April 19: Is it reasonable to still stick with a plan if it’s way off from where I am, six months later?
Update: In answer to those questions, I decided that, at least for now, I’m going to retroactively update my goals. I’ll explain that after I explain what they are, for context.
Weight Loss Cycling with Breaks: My goal is to be on an 8-week-on, 1-week-off cut cycle, where for eight weeks I lose weight, one week I maintain my weight to let hormones and my brain settle and recharge. Based on everything I’ve read, having those breaks is important. So, I was in a cut phase for eight weeks, maintenance for a week, and right now, in Week 14, I’m back in a cut phase. With that in mind …
Goal Modification: The modification is that for the first week of a new cut phase, I am re-setting my weight and bodyfat percent goals to what the actual numbers are that week. That means if I’m ahead of where my goal was, like I’ve been consistently ahead 1–2 weeks on bodyfat percentage for the last two months, things are reset to that and we move on. That also means if I’m behind, like my trip basically put me two weeks behind on my weight goal and I’ve been unable to catch up, then that’s erased. While this might not seem fair, it’s been stressing me out that I haven’t been able to “catch up” now for the last few weeks on my weight. In the past, that has severely hurt my motivation. It hasn’t gotten there, this time, yet, but I am concerned it will, so this allows me to adjust things for real-world issues and actualities. Having now done that reset, retroactively starting for Week 10, I’m actually on track for weight and still on track for bodyfat percentage. Otherwise, things have remained the same, which are …
Weight Loss Rate: Based on things I had read, a weight loss of 0.7% of weight per week was a reasonable and sustainable amount, while much more than that was unsustainable and folks lost more lean mass than they wanted. Based on my actual progress, I subsequently modified that goal to 0.75% of weight per week, loss, and that is still my plan. It had the effect of moving my final goal weight sooner by 2 weeks, though now with the reset mentioned above, we’re back to the end of February 2021 for my goal, which is …
Weight Loss Amount: About 57 lbs / 25 kg / 4 st. At my peak weigh-in, I was 227 lbs. My goal weight for this first cut phase is 170 lbs.
Bodyfat Percentage: Based on a survey I did on a fitness website many years ago, people seemed to generally have 75% of their lost weight be fat and 25% be lean mass. That was my original goal. Based now on 13 weeks of doing this, my running average is 87% of weight loss has been fat and 13% has been lean. Therefore, my current goal is to have 85% of my weight lost be fat. That means that by the time I’m down to my goal weight, I should be around 11–12% body fat.
Calories: I set my calories goal based on my weight, to within 5 lbs. Meaning that right now, at 209.8 lbs, I’m in my 210±5 lb -based calorie goal. To get my goal calories, I use the typical BMR formula for my height, gender, and weight, which gets me to 2220 calories at 210 lbs. Based on losing 1 lb of fat per week from diet, that is a 536 calorie deficit, or rounding, my target calories are 1680 per day.
Macros: Many advocate something like 0.8–1.0 gm protein per lb weight. That is an expletive amount of protein at my weight, so for now, I have modified that. I started out with a simple goal of a 30 / 35 / 35 split, meaning that 30% of my calories come from fat, 25% from carbohydrates, and 35% protein. At 220±5 lbs, that is 0.692 gms protein per 1 lb weight. What I’ve done in my plan is to slowly bring that number up as I lose weight. Right now at 210±5 lbs, I still have a 30 / 35 / 35 split, but that means it’s 0.7 gms protein per 1 lb weight. For each 10 lbs I go down, the value goes up by 0.025 gms. So, when I hit 170±5 lbs, I’ll be at 0.8 gms protein per 1 lb weight, which will be a 30 / 32.7 / 37.3 split. I realize this might need to change if I start to lose too much lean mass, but we’ll see how it goes.
Exercise, Calories: This has stayed the same as before: “My goal for exercise right now is to lose a little more than ½ lb per week through exercise. It’s not larger because it doesn’t need to be, and it’s much easier to not eat a doughnut than to walk for a half hour.”
Exercise, Cardiovascular Fitness: This has also generally remained the same, in that my cardiovascular fitness is pretty low, and I want to improve it. So, I don’t just do cardio to get calories out through exercise, but I’m also doing cardio in order to improve cardiovascular fitness. I discussed this at some length in my VO2max post from last month. My specific goal is to do at least 40 minutes of cardio at least 5 times each week.
Exercise, Strength Training: The goal for the next several months is fat loss, meaning that it’s not to gain muscle mass (unless you go really slowly, it’s extremely difficult to both cut and bulk at the same time, if not impossible). So, the purpose of strength training is to maintain what I have. The specific goal is to, therefore, lift weights for at least 30 minutes, 3 times each week.
Exercise, Core Strength: My core sucks. To be blunt, part of the issue is simply my stomach being in the way of doing something like a sit up. So, my goal here (I still haven’t gotten to it) is to do at least 15 minutes of core strength (no weights) training every day in the morning. In part to simply get my metabolism going for the day.
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