This post is going to closely mirror my original one from more than 25 months ago. My overriding goal right now is weight loss (“cutting”), with the primary component being fat. My stats, as of today, are approximately 228 lbs and 29.0% bodyfat (extremely similar to 25 months ago).
Weight Loss: From what I’ve read, and from what I’ve been able to do in the last few years, a high but sustainable weight loss rate of –0.725% is my goal. At the moment, that’s about 1.6 lbs per week, but it will decrease slowly as weight is lost. This is a teensy bit more than last time.
Fat Loss: Assuming my bodyfat measurement is accurate, I have about 66 lbs of fat on me now. I would like that to be closer to 15–20 lbs (with less overall weight), for a target of about 10–12% bodyfat. -ish. Based on past work, I have managed to have about ¾ of my weight lost be fat, so I have designed my goals with that in mind.
Breaks: Yeah … not really. This is another change from last time and that’s due to the realities of what happened when I scheduled in breaks before and also that I’m traveling again. So, in brief, I switched to a “maintenance” calorie level in June 2020 when I drove from Colorado to Ohio and Michigan, and within two days I had gained two pounds. It was simply too many calories, and that was regardless of the exercise I was doing (which I hadn’t lowered, other than the day of driving). Also, it’s almost impossible for me to stick to a meal plan when I have less control over things when traveling, and I’m traveling at least once every-other-month now (August, September, November) so there’s a built-in “break” there where I am sure I’ll over-eat. And my original plan back then was a “break” week after every eight weeks on-plan.
Goal Weight for “First” Cut: As before, the goal is to lose roughly 55–60 lbs – basically, get down to about 170 from where I am now. Pretty straightforward.
Calories: My goal is to lose about 1 lb/wk via calorie restriction. For my weight of 220±5 lbs (close enough), the calorie goal is 1740 cal/day. I allow myself to go above that by up to 5% without considering it actually going over simply due to inaccuracies in measurements, and, really, 5% isn’t that bad, but >5% and that’s the start of a trend. I go down in calories for each drop of 10 lbs, so 210±5 lbs is 1680 cal/day. Down to 170±5 lbs at 1460 cal/day.
Macros: Macros at the moment are 30% fat, 35% carbs, 35% protein. I stick with that until I start to get down to 200±5 lbs. Fat remains the same at 30% throughout, but I increase the protein percentage to try to keep it at 0.7–0.8 gms/lb bodyweight, which is still slightly lower than I’ve seen recommended, but it’s close enough for me at this point.
Exercise, Calories: My goal is to lose the other ≈0.5 lb/wk via exercise. I went through the details of the math 25 months ago, so suffice to say, my goal is to expend at least 1875 cal/week in exercise.
Exercise, Cardiovascular/Cardiopulmonary Fitness: Pretty much everyone I’ve read says that the most important part of exercise is strength training, unless you’re just trying to expend calories (see above). However, another issue for me is cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary fitness. Mine is, shall we say, “low.” Quite low. So, cardio for that. Climbing a flight or two of stairs should not make me breathe heavily.
Exercise, Strength Training: And then there’s the muscle. Yeah. Well, strength. Which comes with muscle. Or vice-versa. Something like that.
What Does “Restarting” Mean?: For me, “restarting” means that I’m well behind on where I had expected to be at this point, and I need to update my goals. That there’s just no way to catch up. Like, at this point I’m “supposed” to be around 190 lbs, but there’s no way I am catching up to that within a week or two unless I get liposuction (is that still a thing?). It means also that I “Hide” the previous weeks in my Excel tracking spreadsheets so that my graphs don’t show that behind-ed-ness. The data are still there, and I can simply unhide them if I want to, but this way I don’t have the constant visual reminder that I failed, which hurts motivation.
Tracking: I have to track. If I don’t, time after time has shown that I will over-eat, even if I vaguely try to count in my head during the day. That goes hand-in-hand with …
Pre-Planning Food: This is another thing that I have to do. Again, time after time has shown that if I actually figure out what I’m going to eat ahead of time, I can plan in those little sweets, and I can check things off as I go during the day and don’t have to think, “Can I fit this in?” because I’ve already filled out all the things I can eat ahead of time. The goal is to plan out at least a week ahead of time (that means on Saturday, I should be planning the following seven days … that sort of thing). But with pre-planning means I need to also be flexible. If I make four servings of a meal and plan on me eating two and the boyfriend eating two, and he only eats one, then I need to not go into a panic trying to re-arrange things. It also means I must be realistic about certain things. For example, my workplace has “Doughnut Science ¾ Hour” every Friday where we discuss science stories of the week relevant to what we do, and the office supplies doughnuts (and bagels and coffee … but who cares about those?). If I’m in – and I have arranged my schedule such that I go in on Fridays for weekly meetings with people – I will eat doughnuts. Even if I say I won’t, I will. And not one, but two. I just have no self-control. So, I have to factor that in when I do my pre-planning. Plain and simple.
Meal Prepping: This is something both the boyfriend and I have discussed several times and want to do, but have not actually implemented yet. The idea is that on ≈Sunday, we’ll spend a few hours making food that we’ll use/eat during the week. From chicken for wraps to rice to parboiling vegetables, that is a goal, though not really a part of fitness other than going in with the pre-planning thing.
Work-Life Balance: So far, I have used the “work-life balance” 82 times on posts on this blog. That’s because, as someone who actually likes what they do, and who bites off way more than they can chew, I work significantly more than 40 hours per week. That leads to problems with interpersonal relationships, having time for fitness, and other things. I am working hard (oy vey) on doing better, but it’s something that really needs to be done. Somehow.
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