246 to 225, Then Up Five
March 2020 — week eight of the reboot
I went live that morning sick. Sniffling, coughing, the whole thing, which is terrible for a live video, but people had questions, so we pushed through (live NILS3514).
Here's where I was. I'd been doing keto for about three years by then, and I'd gained back a lot of the weight in 2019 because I drank too much that year. It wasn't really the carbs, and it wasn't that I didn't know what to eat (live NILS3514).
So I started over. We were running a reboot in the group, officially from January 1 (live NFHM8238), and I'd actually started my keto adaptation in the first week of December, so I didn't have many carbs through the holidays and wasn't starting cold on New Year's. At Christmas I weighed 246. The morning of this live I weighed 225. That's 21 pounds in eight weeks (live NILS3514).
Week eight sucks
Let me tell you about week eight, because nobody warns you. Weeks two and three are worse than a normal diet, because you've given up the carbs and you're not getting the benefit of ketones yet, so you're cold and crampy and miserable. Weeks four and five, the ketones show up and you feel better. Weeks six and seven, the scale moves a little. And then week eight, you're out of excuses and out of novelty, and you start doing the math (live NILS3514).
My math went like this. I kickbox, and I wanted to go into a fight camp around 195, maybe fight closer to 185 or 190. I was 225. Thirty pounds to go. Twenty-one pounds in eight weeks is not even three pounds a week, and I figured once the food got more boring I'd hold maybe two pounds a week at best. Thirty pounds at two a week is at least 15 more weeks. Roughly four more months of the same food, and I was already tired of it (live NILS3514).
And I had it easy. I said so on camera. I worked for myself, from home. I didn't cook for kids. I didn't have a spouse who liked carbs. Nobody kept cookies in a corner of my house that I had to remember not to eat. Every food in that house was there because I bought it. I was training with college kids getting ready to fight, and I'm a big guy, so a bigger deficit is possible. With all that going for me, it was 21 pounds in eight weeks, and I said that for someone set up like me, 21 pounds was not a big deal (live NILS3514).
The good news: people were saying my face looked better. "Hey, you've been looking good, did you do something different?" I showed the love handles that were left on camera. Not fight-ready, but not where I'd been either (live NILS3514).
Boring on purpose
What was I eating? Chicken breast. Asparagus or Brussels sprouts. Tons of broccoli. Some pork, sometimes a whole pork roast in the crock pot. Sliced sirloin once in a while. Snack cheese sticks, the part-skim kind where the protein beats the fat. Low-carb wraps with the chicken or shredded pork, plus sriracha, a little mayo, guac or salsa. Sometimes soy sauce and erythritol for a teriyaki thing. A lot of the same thing (live NILS3514).
That was a choice. I tried to get my enjoyment somewhere other than the plate. I watched shows I wanted to watch. I played dumb games on my phone. I'd go find a stand-up bit on YouTube, or put on two extra songs from an artist with a new album and actually listen to them, and I'd remind myself that that is a treat for the senses too, same as extra food would have been. And I had more time for it, because I was spending less time in the kitchen (live NILS3514).
I was deep enough in ketosis that I rarely felt hungry at all. The hard part was the opposite: keeping my protein up. I was supposed to be getting something like 140 to 160 grams a day to hold onto muscle while I trained, and when you don't feel like eating, that is a ton of food. Even as protein shakes it's five or six of them. So: not hungry, but I missed all the foods. I even missed the keto foods, because I wasn't eating those much either (live NILS3514).
Then up five
Near the end of the live I pulled up my weight graph. Consistent loss, over two pounds a week, with crazy swings along the way. I'd hit 223, and then two days later I was 228. And I swear my diet was on point. No beers. No side of pierogies. No ice cream sandwich. Nothing (live NILS3514).
My best guess was the training. When you work out and you're sore, that soreness is inflammation, and it's the useful kind; it's how you build muscle. Add the protein shakes, the electrolytes and all the fluid I was drinking, and it's very possible I was holding a bunch of water for a while. But look at the trend: 21 pounds down in eight weeks. There's no way that's all water, and I wasn't dehydrated (live NILS3514).
So I stayed the course.
Lose weight 350 days a year
Somewhere in the middle of all this I came up with a line I said should be my tagline: lose weight 350 days a year. Everybody's got about 15 days' worth of excuses. Christmas, New Year's, your birthday, your anniversary, your kid's birthday. Fine. Take them. If you've got more, take 25. Give me 300 of the 365 days on plan and you'd probably still lose weight. If your grandmother's whole thing is her pancakes and you're at her house, eat the pancakes, unless it's medically necessary not to. But if social situations mean you eat poorly 300 days a year, then being heavy's not the end of the world, and that may just be your road, or portion control (live NILS3514).
What I'd tell you now
That five-pound jump is exactly the kind of thing that makes people quit, and the right move was boring: look at the trend, not the day. On protein, my 140 to 160 grams was in the right neighbourhood for someone training hard while cutting; a review for athletes put the range during energy restriction at 1.8 to 2.0 g per kg of body weight per day, depending on the size of the deficit (Phillips & van Loon, 2011), and a review of 24 trials found energy-restricted high-protein diets lost a bit more fat and less lean mass (Wycherley et al., 2012). Most people aren't training like that, so their number is lower; see how much protein. If you take medication for diabetes or blood pressure, talk to your doctor before cutting carbs this hard, because doses can need to change (why). More on scale swings: stall or fluctuation? and gained weight overnight. On the drinking that started all this: alcohol on keto.
Earlier: The Oreo Never Feels Like a Win · Later: The Gym Closes