Right now, I'm a full pound over my low water mark from this past Sunday. Yes, I ate that last remaining Wagyu ribeye that was in our freezer. Then I had a Haagen-Dazs bar for dessert. That should be it for the week.
I'll log my progress daily this week so that I stay on target.
Here's one way to eat less that I personally don't use, but which works well for some people:
stop eating at night.
The idea is that you can eat anything you want and as much as you want during the day. Once the witching hour arrives, stop eating. It's common to set the time an hour or two before bedtime.
This is a great tactic because it's simple and straightforward. It's literally the One Rule embodied. For those who don't mind missing out on nighttime gatherings, this works very well.
I know someone who uses this trick every couple of years to lose anywhere from thirty to fifty pounds. (It's not a very healthy situation to gain and lose that much weight so often, but that's another story.)
When he decides it's time to lose weight again, he stops eating at six o'clock every night. He typically wakes up at around five in the morning to go to work, so that's about eleven to twelve hours of not eating every day. Breakfast becomes the most enjoyable meal of the day in this situation.
Personally, I don't use this tactic very often because it can get awkward socially. I usually end up making exceptions for certain occasions. Afterwards, I have trouble getting caught up with the missed night. I find that working with a week long timeframe gives me the flexibility to plan ahead or cram from behind as needed.
Although I consider the last couple of weeks as successes, my pace has slowed down. It's simply hard to keep the momentum. But today, I've decided that this will be catch-up week. I'll call it a weight-loss sprint.
To help motivate me, I'll just list all the tasty food I've eaten over the past month and half. I ate all this, spent a weekend in Vegas, and still managed to lose five pounds:
As for this week itself, I'm shooting to lose two pounds so I can get back on pace. I think it's doable, but I'll need to stay on target the entire week.
To help keep me on target, I'm going to write one post each day that describes a tactic that helps someone eat less. (However, I'm not guaranteeing a posting schedule — there's a baby in the house. Things happen.)
Expect the first tactics post to be up tonight!
Well, I lost a quarter of a pound! (That's about a hundred grams, to those of you on the metric system.) That doesn't sound too impressive, until you consider that I was on vacation out of town for the second half of the week. I'll book this one as a success too.
We were on what was, essentially, a type of packaged vacation. (It was actually on a college campus.) Although everything else was great, the food was its big weakness. The food was dorm food from the college cafeteria. So we ended up going out to eat a couple of times (see chart below). But because the cafeteria was much more easily accessible, I ended up eating very little for several meals. Not great for a vacation, but awesome when you're trying to lose weight.
Now, even though I consider the past week a success, I still have work to do. This week, I need to shoot for a couple of pounds in order to make up for lost progress the last two weeks. I think the calendar is clear. And if we get any surprise dinners, then I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either skip it or eat a very small salad.
Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:
Week 6
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Current : -4.6 lbs
Weekly Rate : -0.77 lbs / wk
Projected : 11-Nov
Original : 21-Oct
After last week's difficulties, I think that I need to make more of an effort to plan each week ahead of time. This had been happening as a matter of course up until then. But last week, things got out of hand, and then I struggled to catch up.
This week is going to be a little tougher than normal. Planning it ahead is even more necessary.
We are going on a short family vaction, just until the weekend. Although this will be a great time to relax and unwind, it may also end up helping me miss my target for the week. Even worse — I may end up regressing and gaining weight. That would be no bueno. Moving backwards makes it much harder to regain positive momentum afterwards.
So, I think my plan for the next few days is this: mitigate the damage. By this, I mean just try and be mindful as much as I can about what I eat, knowing that I will probably gain weight over the time. On Saturday, I will just have to cram (again) and hope I hit my target Sunday morning.
Here's hoping for the best!
It looks like I hit that plateau I mentioned back in week three, sort of. This week, I “only” lost half a pound. Despite not technically being on pace, I still consider the week a success because I dropped any weight at all.
First of all, the problem was not the Wagyu. The problem, from a weight-loss perspective, was that we had multiple unplanned social gatherings take place this week.
Because I had front-loaded my eating and planned to do the weight-dropping in the latter part of the week, the surprises made it a little hard to execute. If I had done as I did during the Vegas week and dropped the weight early, then I probably would have been able to get the full pound in as planned. Okay, so maybe it was the Wagyu.
Regardless, balance is important. And I choose to balance my physical health with my social health. So every once in a while, I'll sacrifice my weight loss goals in order to spend some quality time with friends or family. Even so, I still managed to book a loss for the week.
Although my projected end date is now two weeks out, I still expect to hit my original target date. I expect the pace to vary as the months go by. Sometimes, I'll come out ahead as I did in week one. Other times, I'll be a little behind like today. In the long run (ten more weeks), it will even out.
Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:
Week 5
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Current : -4.4 lbs
Weekly Rate : -0.88 lbs / wk
Projected : 04-Nov
Original : 21-Oct
I'm about a pound and a half to my goal for the week, with two days left before the weigh-in. But before we get into that, let's talk about Wagyu beef.
Wagyu beef is “arguably the best and most expensive beef money can buy”. I'm not going to argue either point. I started buying beef from a (relatively) new food startup a couple of months ago, CrowdCow. It's basically a crowd-sourced beef service — ranches sell off portions of specific cows to people who pre-order them online. I ordered a share of Wagyu through them a couple of weeks ago. It was really expensive, but I happened to have a bunch of credit with the them due to a couple of innocuous incidents (missed shipping date on another order, etc.), so I used that credit to help pay for a share.
Well now I don't know if I should be thankful or remorseful because after eating one of the ribeyes, I can't stop thinking about the steak. I tasted just a little bit of the fat that came off the steak while it was resting. (I usually use the fat from the steak to cook some veggies as a side dish.) One bite and I could already tell that the steak was going to be really good.
Even then, I still wasn't prepared for the steak itself. Oh my goodness, that was so good. I'm salivating right now, just thinking about it. I won't even try to describe it. If you've ever enjoyed a steak, just imagine that, times a hundred.
I didn't even get what could be considered top of the line Wagyu. My share was from an American ranch doing their first attempt at it. And yet it was by far the best piece of steak I've ever had in my entire life. I'm seriously considering going full starvation mode for two weeks at a time so I can afford a ribeye twice a month. Really — I have no idea what I'm going to do. I still have two denver steaks and one ribeye in the freezer. I'm going to portion those out over the next couple of weeks, then figure out (and convince my wife) to spring for another share next time it comes up.
Anyway, about my weight. Yes, I'm a pound and a half over my target with two days to go. One reason for being a little behind this week is that after the Wagyu Sunday night, we had some company over for dinner on Wednesday. I decided to cook up some of the Wagyu ground beef that came with my share. We put that over some brown rice and served it with a little corn. It was a pretty good meal. It wasn't the experience the ribeye was, however.
I'll be eating a lot of cheerios, granola, and plain bread today and tomorrow to get me to my target. You can guess what will be defrosting in the refrigerator Saturday night.
This past week went better than I expected. I booked my weight loss on Thursday, the day of my annual physical. After that, I relaxed a little. I watched my intake slightly in preparation for the big party on Saturday, but nothing too extreme. At the party, I had some beer and tacos — really tasty stuff. I even had a donut just to round things out.
But even after all that partying, I only regressed a little bit by this morning. So here I am, at exactly found pounds down, four weeks into the program.
This next week will prove to be a bit of a test. I will see if this regimen actually works with very little exercise for over a month. (The conventional theory is that my metabolism will catch up to my reduced caloric intake and fatten me up again. More on that in a future post.)
But since I am on pace today, I can afford to hold off on the weight drop for a couple of days. I have a prime Wagyu ribeye waiting for me in the refrigerator for tonight. Tomorrow, I am planning to have a belated birthday dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant.
We'll see what the damage is on Wednesday morning, then I'll have to buckle down until the weekend is over.
Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:
Week 4
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Current : -4.0 lbs
Weekly Rate : -1.00 lbs / wk
Projected by : 21-Oct
Original : 21-Oct
The end-of-week numbers didn't look good (see below), but the week was still a success.
Knowing I had a big weekend coming up, I front-loaded my weight loss for the week. Hence, by day nineteen, I had already made pace on my weekly goal. Since I had booked the requisite weight loss for the week, I could feel okay about temporarily going over after the trip to Las Vegas. And go over was exactly what I did. I returned from the trip with a three-pound gain, putting me right back at the starting point of my schedule.
There was just a little bit of work required to make sure that the setback was indeed temporary, but by this morning, I was back on track. My annual physical examination is scheduled for tomorrow, so that has been a helpful, additional motivating factor. (I'm also trying to book some weight loss there, as compared to my last visit to the doctor last December.)
These past couple of days haven't really been too difficult — I just paid a little more attention to my food intake in the afternoons and evenings. I'm planning on one more day of watching what I eat, then I can relax a little bit. I'll be having some beer and delicious street tacos at a friend's party this coming weekend.
These types of fluctuations are inevitable, especially if I want to maintain a reasonable social schedule. This is one reason why I target an average weight loss by the week. It allows me to maintain some flexibility, as long as I am able to plan ahead.
The next week will be interesting as I will be close to hitting the five-pound mark soon. That can typically be a point where weight-loss plateaus for a while. I will have to prove out that my technique works through this.
Targeting a fifteen pound loss at one pound per week:
Week 3
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Current : -3.2 lbs
Weekly Rate : -1.06 lbs / wk
Projected by : 21-Oct
Original : 21-Oct
By Friday of last week, I was ahead of pace at three and a quarter pounds down. I needed that legroom because the weekend would not be kind to my goal.
Some last minute finagling and schedule adjustments allowed me to take a quick, overnight trip to Las Vegas to help celebrate a friend’s pending marriage. Needless to say, I left my self control at home. By the time I got back on Sunday morning, I was back over my starting weight — four pounds heavier then my Friday weigh-in.
This kind of thing is expected, really. And planning for them is necessary for success. As I mentioned in last week’s recap, I was front-loading my weight loss in order to make room for the weekend.
Now, the weekend has come and gone. I’ve been taking the past couple of days easy to recover from the trip. But now, I’m ready to push through for another pound this week. I’ve got five days left, I should be able to make it unless something unexpected comes up.