Some nice weight loss overnight!
Today I had very little hunger, not to mention that I slept till like 11:00. That means I can push all my breakfast calories into lunch!
I made myself a couple of awesome breakfast crepes with hashbrowns, eggs, and rotisserie chicken. Sooooo yummy. 488 cals there. I wasn't even hungry until late at night, when I had some pancakes! Does that break my low carb goal? absolutely, but then again, I only ate 844 cals today :)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
231.0 lbs
Awesome. I found a program at CalorieKing.com that allows me to diary my intake, as well as providing a calorie count and protien/carb/fat breakdown of like 50,000 foods, including some fast foods and restruants. Unfortunately, it won't let me copy the meals to this blog :( Punks.
However: my intake today was a such:
Total cals: 1050 cals.
131 cals in snacks
My hunger today was moderate, but my snacks are always handy and satisfying.
However: my intake today was a such:
Total cals: 1050 cals.
131 cals in snacks
My hunger today was moderate, but my snacks are always handy and satisfying.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
234.9 lbs
Wow, I'm actually really surprised at how much weight has come off over the course of 2 days. My hunger has diminished rather nicely, and I've been able to go about my daily activites without thinking about food all day. Pickles are still a mainstay, as are a handful of nuts every now and then. Nuts are high in protein and fat which help to create a sensation of satiety in conjunction with the pickles, carrots, and celery.
So far I've been successful in keeping my intake to under 1000 cals a day. I need a better way to record my intake, though, as keeping a tally in my head is not an effective method. I'll take a look around today.
So far I've been successful in keeping my intake to under 1000 cals a day. I need a better way to record my intake, though, as keeping a tally in my head is not an effective method. I'll take a look around today.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
And so it begins
239lbs
I bought a digital scale today so that I can accurately record my weight loss. I got a baseline reading of 239lbs. I'm not willing to chalk up the discrepancy from my previous estimate of 243 to the diet as it is more likely due to the differences in the scales.
I will say, though, that a digital scale is a MUST. Especially one that shows your weight into a decimal amount. Seeing 239.0 lbs one day and 238.6 lbs the next is way more encouraging than seeing 239 for 2 days and 238 on the 3rd day.
I've established two weight benchmarks to monitor my progress. The first is my morning weight after voiding, which I will consider my absolute weight, and is the one that will count toward my overall goal. The second is my night time weight after voiding. I will consider this a measure of that days diet effectiveness. If I show a large weight gain during the day, and little comes off during the night, I will know that the foods I ate that day are sticking with me more than those I ate on a day when a lot of the weight came off during the night.
Today I experienced a lot of hunger again, but was thankfully able to just snack on celery and carrots as much as I wanted between meals. Also, pickles have been a life saver. They provide a nice salty snack that I don't get sick of.
Regarding Salt/Sodium intake: Lots of diets will tell you to severely limit your salt intake. This is because they assume that salt will cause you to retain water, which is true to an extent, thus causing you to retain water weight. We need to remember, however, that these diets are commercially driven, and depend on showing excellent results to generate revenue. The fact of the matter is that unless you have congestive heart failure or kidney failure, water retention is inconsequential, especially considering the benefits experienced by losing body mass, ie: FAT. Additionally, water weight is easily shed by anyone with functioning kidneys. Therefore: If a food is salty, and low in calories, and satiates your hunger, then EAT IT. Lose your FAT first, then worry about the retained water.
I bought a digital scale today so that I can accurately record my weight loss. I got a baseline reading of 239lbs. I'm not willing to chalk up the discrepancy from my previous estimate of 243 to the diet as it is more likely due to the differences in the scales.
I will say, though, that a digital scale is a MUST. Especially one that shows your weight into a decimal amount. Seeing 239.0 lbs one day and 238.6 lbs the next is way more encouraging than seeing 239 for 2 days and 238 on the 3rd day.
I've established two weight benchmarks to monitor my progress. The first is my morning weight after voiding, which I will consider my absolute weight, and is the one that will count toward my overall goal. The second is my night time weight after voiding. I will consider this a measure of that days diet effectiveness. If I show a large weight gain during the day, and little comes off during the night, I will know that the foods I ate that day are sticking with me more than those I ate on a day when a lot of the weight came off during the night.
Today I experienced a lot of hunger again, but was thankfully able to just snack on celery and carrots as much as I wanted between meals. Also, pickles have been a life saver. They provide a nice salty snack that I don't get sick of.
Regarding Salt/Sodium intake: Lots of diets will tell you to severely limit your salt intake. This is because they assume that salt will cause you to retain water, which is true to an extent, thus causing you to retain water weight. We need to remember, however, that these diets are commercially driven, and depend on showing excellent results to generate revenue. The fact of the matter is that unless you have congestive heart failure or kidney failure, water retention is inconsequential, especially considering the benefits experienced by losing body mass, ie: FAT. Additionally, water weight is easily shed by anyone with functioning kidneys. Therefore: If a food is salty, and low in calories, and satiates your hunger, then EAT IT. Lose your FAT first, then worry about the retained water.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
My first day on the diet.
So today I officially started dieting. I hit the grocery store and bought plenty of celery and carrots and cabbage and frosted mini wheats. I also grabbed some mixed nuts to provide some quick protein and fat to help satiate my hunger. Hunger was intense today, as was expected for someone used to eating whole pizzas and 5 egg omlets. I ate about 4 stalks of celery and plenty of baby carrots.
My goal today wasn't so much on hitting my calorie mark, as much as keeping myself full on low calorie foods so that I could approach that goal. By the end of the day, however, I calculated my calorie intake around 800.
I need to get a new scale, though, because the one I have is a cheapo ikea one, and it's hard to get a good accurate number out of it.
My goal today wasn't so much on hitting my calorie mark, as much as keeping myself full on low calorie foods so that I could approach that goal. By the end of the day, however, I calculated my calorie intake around 800.
I need to get a new scale, though, because the one I have is a cheapo ikea one, and it's hard to get a good accurate number out of it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Score
Now that I've identified the objectives of my diet, it's time to set goals to fill those objectives.
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
In this department, a little math is called for. My BMR is estimated at 2323 Cals per day. If I maintain ketosis most of the time, I can count on an average of 950 Cals per day expended in the extra effort of utilizing fat instead of glucose for energy. In addition, since my glucose load is going to be low, I can assume that more of these resting calories are coming from my fat stores as my body is going to reserve the glucose it is receiving from digestion/ synthesis for my brain in the insulin poor environment I'm going to create. I'm also going to estimate about 700 Cals of energy expenditure from my activities of daily living. This is based off of the USDA's "MyPyramid" plan to maintain my current weight, which recommended an intake of 3000 Cals to accommodate for my activities of daily living along with BMR. So all in all, I can consider my energy expenditure to be roughly 3950 Cals per day in a ketotic state. A diet containing 1000 Cals per day leaves an energy deficit of 2950 Cals per day. A pound of fat contains 3500 Cals, so I should lose .84 lbs a day in fat.
Obviously this is more than the 1.4 lbs per week outlined in my plan, but rapid weight loss in the first segment of my diet is going to do a couple things. Firstly, it's very encouraging. How many times have you started a diet, watched the scale for 2 days, not seen progress, and quit? How would you feel if you looked at the scale after 2 days, and noticed you've lost nearly 2 lbs? You'd have a lot more faith in your diet wouldn't you! Secondly, rapid weight loss is going to put me at the 200 mark that much quicker, and that's the mark at which I'm going to begin exercising, which is essential to maintain my body weight once I'm done dieting. Because exercise induces hunger, it's going to be important to do all the weight loss I can through diet first so I will be better adapted to restricting my eating habits when that hunger hits.
2) Takes advantage of a ketotic state.
This means I will avoid refined carbohydrates as much as possible, particularly in the first couple days. Basically to accomplish this, any carbs I eat need to be difficult to access by my gut, meaning they enter the bloodstream more slowly than say a hunk of milk chocolate. Whole grains that have been minimally refined have their carbs locked behind layers of tough fiber, which means the gut has to work that much harder to get at them. After the first 48 hours, I'll be looking to consume less than 30% of my calories in carbohydrates.
3) Increases overall body metabolism.
This means keeping my gut busy: an empty gut is a lazy gut, and lazy means FAT. Therefore, I want to be constantly eating to keep that gut busy. Remember that the GI tract accounts for 20-25% of your BMR. After I hit the 200lb mark, I'll be exercising, and building lean muscle which burns calories at a higher rate than non-conditioned muscle.
4) Keeps me full/ decreases hunger.
How do you stay full when you can only eat 1000 cals/day? Easy, eat foods that don't have calories. Here's my magic list:
Celery: estimated 6 cals per 8" stalk. Additionally, those cals are buried behind cellulose and fiber, which means that the gut is going to use more than 6 cals per stalk digesting it. That means a net energy loss. How much do I believe that... enough to eat lots and lots of celery. At the very least, it keeps the gut busy, which maximizes my BMR.
Pickles: Most of the dill pickles I've seen have 0 calories per serving. That is because during the pickling process, bacteria eats the glucose and leaves lactic acid behind, hence, 0 cals.
Carrots: Baby carrots to be precise. Ok, so carrots have calories, like 35 per 3 oz. The thing is, they fill you up pretty good, and they're yummy if you're going to be snacky, you might as well snack on these because they're convenient and the chances of you eating 500 calories of carrots in one sitting is dang slim. Besides, all that energy going into digesting the celery offsets the carrot cals, right?
Butter: Hah, gotchya there, obviously butter is not a good snack choice.
Basically I keep huge bags of cut up celery and baby carrots in the fridge always. BYU creamery makes an awesome light ranch dressing that has 50 cals per 2 tbsp, and tastes like it's made with butter. Nothing says love like pampering yourself with ranch dressing. Typically, half a serving is enough to get through like a pound and a half of roughage.
By eating small meals, and never gorging, one's stomach shrinks, that means that over time you will feel hungry less often, and full more quickly. Where you could once eat an entire large pizza on your own, you will be stuffed with 2 slices. That equates to fewer calories, and that means you lose weight.
5) Few restrictions on the food I can actually eat.
The great thing about a calorie plan is that you can eat anything you want to, as long as it falls within your calorie guidelines. The super nice thing about this is that it doesn't require one to abstain completely from their preferred foods, which develops the all important talent of portion control. You can still eat pizza, just not 800 cals worth of pizza. Chocolate is great! just not 800 cals worth of chocolate. In fact, Dark chocolates are shown to be rather good for you, it's the sugar and fat added into the chocolate to make it more edible that packs the pounds on. Chocolate decreases appetite and is rich in antioxidants. I prefer chocolates with at least 70% cacao. Again, calories are calories, and 800 calories in chocolate is still 800 calories. The great thing about dark chocolate is you don't need to eat as much to get the feeling you have a lot of chocolate in your mouth, because the flavor is intense.
So there it is! My road to success, my compass, and musical score to weight loss. From here on out, I'll be recording my morning and night weights, what I ate, the calorie count, and general comments. I expect this to be a fantastic ride.
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
In this department, a little math is called for. My BMR is estimated at 2323 Cals per day. If I maintain ketosis most of the time, I can count on an average of 950 Cals per day expended in the extra effort of utilizing fat instead of glucose for energy. In addition, since my glucose load is going to be low, I can assume that more of these resting calories are coming from my fat stores as my body is going to reserve the glucose it is receiving from digestion/ synthesis for my brain in the insulin poor environment I'm going to create. I'm also going to estimate about 700 Cals of energy expenditure from my activities of daily living. This is based off of the USDA's "MyPyramid" plan to maintain my current weight, which recommended an intake of 3000 Cals to accommodate for my activities of daily living along with BMR. So all in all, I can consider my energy expenditure to be roughly 3950 Cals per day in a ketotic state. A diet containing 1000 Cals per day leaves an energy deficit of 2950 Cals per day. A pound of fat contains 3500 Cals, so I should lose .84 lbs a day in fat.
Obviously this is more than the 1.4 lbs per week outlined in my plan, but rapid weight loss in the first segment of my diet is going to do a couple things. Firstly, it's very encouraging. How many times have you started a diet, watched the scale for 2 days, not seen progress, and quit? How would you feel if you looked at the scale after 2 days, and noticed you've lost nearly 2 lbs? You'd have a lot more faith in your diet wouldn't you! Secondly, rapid weight loss is going to put me at the 200 mark that much quicker, and that's the mark at which I'm going to begin exercising, which is essential to maintain my body weight once I'm done dieting. Because exercise induces hunger, it's going to be important to do all the weight loss I can through diet first so I will be better adapted to restricting my eating habits when that hunger hits.
2) Takes advantage of a ketotic state.
This means I will avoid refined carbohydrates as much as possible, particularly in the first couple days. Basically to accomplish this, any carbs I eat need to be difficult to access by my gut, meaning they enter the bloodstream more slowly than say a hunk of milk chocolate. Whole grains that have been minimally refined have their carbs locked behind layers of tough fiber, which means the gut has to work that much harder to get at them. After the first 48 hours, I'll be looking to consume less than 30% of my calories in carbohydrates.
3) Increases overall body metabolism.
This means keeping my gut busy: an empty gut is a lazy gut, and lazy means FAT. Therefore, I want to be constantly eating to keep that gut busy. Remember that the GI tract accounts for 20-25% of your BMR. After I hit the 200lb mark, I'll be exercising, and building lean muscle which burns calories at a higher rate than non-conditioned muscle.
4) Keeps me full/ decreases hunger.
How do you stay full when you can only eat 1000 cals/day? Easy, eat foods that don't have calories. Here's my magic list:
Celery: estimated 6 cals per 8" stalk. Additionally, those cals are buried behind cellulose and fiber, which means that the gut is going to use more than 6 cals per stalk digesting it. That means a net energy loss. How much do I believe that... enough to eat lots and lots of celery. At the very least, it keeps the gut busy, which maximizes my BMR.
Pickles: Most of the dill pickles I've seen have 0 calories per serving. That is because during the pickling process, bacteria eats the glucose and leaves lactic acid behind, hence, 0 cals.
Carrots: Baby carrots to be precise. Ok, so carrots have calories, like 35 per 3 oz. The thing is, they fill you up pretty good, and they're yummy if you're going to be snacky, you might as well snack on these because they're convenient and the chances of you eating 500 calories of carrots in one sitting is dang slim. Besides, all that energy going into digesting the celery offsets the carrot cals, right?
Butter: Hah, gotchya there, obviously butter is not a good snack choice.
Basically I keep huge bags of cut up celery and baby carrots in the fridge always. BYU creamery makes an awesome light ranch dressing that has 50 cals per 2 tbsp, and tastes like it's made with butter. Nothing says love like pampering yourself with ranch dressing. Typically, half a serving is enough to get through like a pound and a half of roughage.
By eating small meals, and never gorging, one's stomach shrinks, that means that over time you will feel hungry less often, and full more quickly. Where you could once eat an entire large pizza on your own, you will be stuffed with 2 slices. That equates to fewer calories, and that means you lose weight.
5) Few restrictions on the food I can actually eat.
The great thing about a calorie plan is that you can eat anything you want to, as long as it falls within your calorie guidelines. The super nice thing about this is that it doesn't require one to abstain completely from their preferred foods, which develops the all important talent of portion control. You can still eat pizza, just not 800 cals worth of pizza. Chocolate is great! just not 800 cals worth of chocolate. In fact, Dark chocolates are shown to be rather good for you, it's the sugar and fat added into the chocolate to make it more edible that packs the pounds on. Chocolate decreases appetite and is rich in antioxidants. I prefer chocolates with at least 70% cacao. Again, calories are calories, and 800 calories in chocolate is still 800 calories. The great thing about dark chocolate is you don't need to eat as much to get the feeling you have a lot of chocolate in your mouth, because the flavor is intense.
So there it is! My road to success, my compass, and musical score to weight loss. From here on out, I'll be recording my morning and night weights, what I ate, the calorie count, and general comments. I expect this to be a fantastic ride.
A Plan of Action
If I'm going to lose weight, then I'd better have a plan in place that is gonna get me there; not having a plan is what bought me my man boobs in the first place, after all.
Considering the dieting fundamentals outlined previously, a good diet will have these characteristics:
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
2) Takes advantage of a ketotic state
3) Increases overall body metabolism
4) Keeps me full/ decreases hunger
5) Few restrictions on the actual foods I can eat.
Let's review these items one by one.
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
Because I want to lose weight, not just maintain my weight, my diet will need to provide significantly fewer calories than I will expend. There are three things to consider when determining exactly how many calories I want to consume: A) Basal Metabolic Rate. B) Exercise. C) Desired rate of weight loss.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) refers to the number of calories your body needs to sustain life if you lay in bed all day. It accounts for things like protein synthesis for replacing dying cells, energy required for the muscle action of breathing/ digestion/ circulation, as well as the energy consumed by the brain in the form of glucose during rest. There are many calculators that can help you determine your BMR on the web.
At 6' 1", 243lbs, and a tender 27 years of age, my BMR is 2323.39 Cals per day. PLEASE NOTE: an estimated BMR does not exactly reflect ones actual calorie consumption during a day of rest. There are many factors like muscle tone, genetics, state of health, etc that will affect ones BMR. The numbers generated are derived from averages. A more accurate test to determine the caloric expenditure of your body at rest is called a Resting Metabolic Rate and can be performed by some physicians. This number is tailored to your own body specifically and is more reliable.
Exercise obviously adds to the number of calories used by your body. In addition, frequent and regular exercise can increase your resting metabolic rate as your muscles become more toned and burn more calories on a continuous basis (muscle tone is essentially the degree to which your muscles are tensioned/flexed at rest and correlates to the amount of innervation present, which increases with frequent use). Since I'm rather FAT at the moment, vigorous exercise mostly just pisses me off because I feel so winded and fatigued compared to my Adonis years. For this reason, I will be abstaining from an exercise routine until I hit the 200 lb mark. Another reason for this is that exercise induces hunger, which is something I do not want to worry about while I'm settling into my new eating routine.
Believe it or not, as a nurse teaching heart attack patients about exercise, I recommend a minimum of 30 mins TOTAL activity for the day to meet one's exercise requirements for the day. That means if you are up and walking for 5 mins, 6 times a day, you have done 30 minutes of walking exercise. I preach it, but I don't necessarily buy it. 5 minutes of walking is hardly enough to elevate one's heart rate or metabolic demand. But hey! Whatever medicine tells us on any given day must be right! Right?
My weight loss goal for this year is 73lbs, that will land me at 170lbs, which is the weight I felt the best at. A formidable feat, since I've only been 170lbs twice since high school. The first instance was immediately following an LDS mission to Hong Kong where I was out meeting people on the streets for 12-14 hours everyday in the heat and cold. Because LDS missionaries are volunteers and money was tightly budgeted, I skipped public transit whenever I could and would walk whenever possible to meetings. Good missionaries don't saunter from one place to another either, time is precious, and a brisk power walk is the standard, and I like to think I was a good missionary. The second instance, following healthy weight gain after my mission, was as a pest control sales person in Florida during summer break from BYU. I went to Florida with $250 in my pocket, and so limited myself to 2 junior bacon cheese burgers a day until my first paycheck, 3 weeks later. I lost 20lbs my first week of door to door hotfooting in the heat of the Florida summer.
I like to think that losing 20lbs a week is probably not a good thing. In the absence of calories, the body resorts to using not only fat stores, but also protein catabolism for energy, and that protein comes from your muscles. Too much protein break down in a short period of time floods your circulatory system with pigments and by products that can be hard on the kidneys. Rapid increases in ketone bodies from fat metabolism can also result in metabolic acidosis which can be a dangerous situation as well. Therefore, I'm aiming for a weight loss rate of 1.4 per week, which is well within the 1% of total body weight per week commonly recommended. Of course, that is an average rate of weight loss, individuals sometimes see a faster rate in the first couple weeks as water weight is shed.
2) Ketosis accelerates the body's use of fat stores in the absence/ deficiency of glucose and insulin. This will theoretically magnify the effects of my calorie deficient diet as the body adjusts to prefer fat to glucose for energy needs. Dr. Atkins predicts an advantage of about 950 cals/day while in ketosis. To maintain ketosis, I will need to take as few carbohydrate calories as possible, and prefer protein and fat sources to fill my caloric allowance. Water intake will be very important if I am to safely maintain a state of ketosis, as ketone bodies produced during fat metabolism are acidic and can cause metabolic acidosis if there is inadequate hydration to allow the kidneys to dispose of them.
3) If I can increase/ maximize my bodies BMR, so much the better, the increased differential between intake and output will quicken my weight loss. It is estimated that the GI tract accounts for 20-25% of the BMR. Fasting would obviously cut that 20-25% out, so my diet should include frequent eating times to keep the GI tract active.
4) Staring at the fridge knowing that you can't eat anything out of it when you're starving is a sad sad place to be. Therefore, I'm going to incorperate foods that I can eat in unlimited quantities. What!? you exclaim, How are you going to lose weight if you gorge yourself on anything at all, after all, everything you put in your mouth has calories. WRONG! I retort. SO wrong. There are many foods that have no calories at all! Some foods theoretically even provide fewer calories than are necessary to digest them, resulting in a net deficit of calories!
5) I'm a social fellow, and that means food. Social=food. For those of you with no social life, learn this lesson, if you know how to make food, you will have friends. Because my diet is calorie restricted, I mainly need to focus on avoiding foods that increase my blood sugar quickly. But really, it's about the calories, if I scar 400cals of spaghetti, it just means it will take a couple days for my body to get back into ketosis. As long as my calorie intake is less than expenditure, I'll still lose weight, just not as quickly as if I had that 950cal ketosis advantage
Considering the dieting fundamentals outlined previously, a good diet will have these characteristics:
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
2) Takes advantage of a ketotic state
3) Increases overall body metabolism
4) Keeps me full/ decreases hunger
5) Few restrictions on the actual foods I can eat.
Let's review these items one by one.
1) Contains significantly fewer calories than I plan on expending.
Because I want to lose weight, not just maintain my weight, my diet will need to provide significantly fewer calories than I will expend. There are three things to consider when determining exactly how many calories I want to consume: A) Basal Metabolic Rate. B) Exercise. C) Desired rate of weight loss.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) refers to the number of calories your body needs to sustain life if you lay in bed all day. It accounts for things like protein synthesis for replacing dying cells, energy required for the muscle action of breathing/ digestion/ circulation, as well as the energy consumed by the brain in the form of glucose during rest. There are many calculators that can help you determine your BMR on the web.
At 6' 1", 243lbs, and a tender 27 years of age, my BMR is 2323.39 Cals per day. PLEASE NOTE: an estimated BMR does not exactly reflect ones actual calorie consumption during a day of rest. There are many factors like muscle tone, genetics, state of health, etc that will affect ones BMR. The numbers generated are derived from averages. A more accurate test to determine the caloric expenditure of your body at rest is called a Resting Metabolic Rate and can be performed by some physicians. This number is tailored to your own body specifically and is more reliable.
Exercise obviously adds to the number of calories used by your body. In addition, frequent and regular exercise can increase your resting metabolic rate as your muscles become more toned and burn more calories on a continuous basis (muscle tone is essentially the degree to which your muscles are tensioned/flexed at rest and correlates to the amount of innervation present, which increases with frequent use). Since I'm rather FAT at the moment, vigorous exercise mostly just pisses me off because I feel so winded and fatigued compared to my Adonis years. For this reason, I will be abstaining from an exercise routine until I hit the 200 lb mark. Another reason for this is that exercise induces hunger, which is something I do not want to worry about while I'm settling into my new eating routine.
Believe it or not, as a nurse teaching heart attack patients about exercise, I recommend a minimum of 30 mins TOTAL activity for the day to meet one's exercise requirements for the day. That means if you are up and walking for 5 mins, 6 times a day, you have done 30 minutes of walking exercise. I preach it, but I don't necessarily buy it. 5 minutes of walking is hardly enough to elevate one's heart rate or metabolic demand. But hey! Whatever medicine tells us on any given day must be right! Right?
My weight loss goal for this year is 73lbs, that will land me at 170lbs, which is the weight I felt the best at. A formidable feat, since I've only been 170lbs twice since high school. The first instance was immediately following an LDS mission to Hong Kong where I was out meeting people on the streets for 12-14 hours everyday in the heat and cold. Because LDS missionaries are volunteers and money was tightly budgeted, I skipped public transit whenever I could and would walk whenever possible to meetings. Good missionaries don't saunter from one place to another either, time is precious, and a brisk power walk is the standard, and I like to think I was a good missionary. The second instance, following healthy weight gain after my mission, was as a pest control sales person in Florida during summer break from BYU. I went to Florida with $250 in my pocket, and so limited myself to 2 junior bacon cheese burgers a day until my first paycheck, 3 weeks later. I lost 20lbs my first week of door to door hotfooting in the heat of the Florida summer.
I like to think that losing 20lbs a week is probably not a good thing. In the absence of calories, the body resorts to using not only fat stores, but also protein catabolism for energy, and that protein comes from your muscles. Too much protein break down in a short period of time floods your circulatory system with pigments and by products that can be hard on the kidneys. Rapid increases in ketone bodies from fat metabolism can also result in metabolic acidosis which can be a dangerous situation as well. Therefore, I'm aiming for a weight loss rate of 1.4 per week, which is well within the 1% of total body weight per week commonly recommended. Of course, that is an average rate of weight loss, individuals sometimes see a faster rate in the first couple weeks as water weight is shed.
2) Ketosis accelerates the body's use of fat stores in the absence/ deficiency of glucose and insulin. This will theoretically magnify the effects of my calorie deficient diet as the body adjusts to prefer fat to glucose for energy needs. Dr. Atkins predicts an advantage of about 950 cals/day while in ketosis. To maintain ketosis, I will need to take as few carbohydrate calories as possible, and prefer protein and fat sources to fill my caloric allowance. Water intake will be very important if I am to safely maintain a state of ketosis, as ketone bodies produced during fat metabolism are acidic and can cause metabolic acidosis if there is inadequate hydration to allow the kidneys to dispose of them.
3) If I can increase/ maximize my bodies BMR, so much the better, the increased differential between intake and output will quicken my weight loss. It is estimated that the GI tract accounts for 20-25% of the BMR. Fasting would obviously cut that 20-25% out, so my diet should include frequent eating times to keep the GI tract active.
4) Staring at the fridge knowing that you can't eat anything out of it when you're starving is a sad sad place to be. Therefore, I'm going to incorperate foods that I can eat in unlimited quantities. What!? you exclaim, How are you going to lose weight if you gorge yourself on anything at all, after all, everything you put in your mouth has calories. WRONG! I retort. SO wrong. There are many foods that have no calories at all! Some foods theoretically even provide fewer calories than are necessary to digest them, resulting in a net deficit of calories!
5) I'm a social fellow, and that means food. Social=food. For those of you with no social life, learn this lesson, if you know how to make food, you will have friends. Because my diet is calorie restricted, I mainly need to focus on avoiding foods that increase my blood sugar quickly. But really, it's about the calories, if I scar 400cals of spaghetti, it just means it will take a couple days for my body to get back into ketosis. As long as my calorie intake is less than expenditure, I'll still lose weight, just not as quickly as if I had that 950cal ketosis advantage
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