Seven Down, Six to Go!

Seven weeks down, six to go! I’m over the hump, so let’s check in!

The Weight Loss

I’m a few ounces shy of 20 pounds net weight loss, which means a couple of things. First, I’m still losing weight. Second, the rate of weight loss has slowed: I went from losing three pounds a week, on average, to only losing one pound this last week.

That’s to be expected as I change my macros up. My body is getting used to increased calories as I concentrate on building muscle. The weight loss will slow and eventually plateau as I transition from exclusively losing fat to burning fat while primarily building muscle. My focus needs to change from net weight loss to body fat percentage (BF%).

I started at 23.6 BF% and am currently at 19.6, which is the lowest I’ve reached on my journey. I hit a brief snag at the end of the holiday week where my physical activity increases hadn’t caught up with my macro increases due to schedule changes, and I saw my BF% go up briefly. Once I got back on track, however, I lost 0.6% in five days. Not only do I want to keep that rate up, but I also want to increase it. I need to be losing 0.22% per day for the next 43 days to reach my goals by the end of the three months of GoingKeto.

What Went Well

Right now, it’s looking like I won’t achieve my goal of 10 percent body fat in 90 days. Is that a bad thing? I’m not one to make excuses for lack of performance or to eliminate goals because I didn’t reach them. With that in mind, though, let’s put a few things in perspective.

The American Council on Exercise states that the general consensus among experts is a body fat loss of 1 percent per month is “generally safe and doable.”1 I’ve lost 4 percent in 49 days and should at least double that by the end of the journey, meaning the least I can expect on ketosis is still losing two and a half times what experts who focus on glycolysis say is achievable. Anything above that is just (carb-free) icing on the (low-carb) cake.

My primary goal was (and is) extremely aggressive. In addition to realizing what I’ve already achieved, though, the other thing to keep in mind is precisely what I mentioned in my goal article:

“One final caveat: you should be emotionally bought into your goals because you should have a passion for them. They should mean something to you. Whether you achieve your objectives or not should matter. At the same time, don’t get so caught up in pursuing your goals that you’re crushed if you don’t achieve them. Give it your absolute best: if you fail, then at least you’ll have gotten much further than you would have if you never gave it a shot. Disappointment is ok; beating yourself up isn’t. Sit down, reevaluate, come up with the next set of SMART goals, then go crush it.”

If I don’t reach 10 percent body fat by February 15th, I’m still going to keep striving for that objective. One of my goals for 2019 is to get to 215 pounds at 10 percent body fat by December 31st. That’s another aggressive goal: conventional weightlifting theory says you can only build about a half a pound of muscle per week, or 26 pounds a year, and getting from here to there will require me adding about 35 pounds of muscle in that period. That’s where I find I achieve the most, though—pushing myself beyond my limits, so that even if I fail, I’ve gotten much further than I would otherwise.

The other thing to keep in mind is that decreasing BF% isn’t just a matter of losing weight. If you don’t transition into ketosis and just radically restrict your calories, you’ll never really get out of glycolysis. The body will continue to seek glucose as its means of energy, which means the first thing it is going to seek out is burning muscle cells (rather than fat) through gluconeogenesis. Your overall weight might go down, but your BF% will likely remain the same, drop relatively slowly, or in the worst case, increase.

I’ve lost around thirteen pounds of fat and just over six pounds of glycogen & water weight, meaning I’ve sacrificed less than half of a pound in muscle. This indicates that what I’m doing is healthy, sustainable, and focused on the right things.

What Was Hard

I continued to struggle with my routines over the past week. As any parent of small children can tell you, the flow of life drastically changes when the kids are out of school for long periods. Although I stayed in ketosis and generally on track, my intermittent fasting window, calorie tracking, and workouts suffered. The kids go back to school next week, and I don’t have any more major schedule changes until the end of GoingKeto, so I should be able to finish out strong.

I’m not going to lie, I miss pie. The most interesting thing about GoingKeto, to me, is that I initially thought this would be something I would have to “get through.” As time has gone on, I’ve really started to enjoy how I feel on keto, and I think this is going to be a mainstay of my life moving forward. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to have an epic cheat meal on February 16th, but I won’t even make it a cheat day—I love how I feel, I think the results are incredible, and I want to continue in this lifestyle for the long-term.

The Next Week

My schedule will settle down, and I’ll be able to adapt to my new routines, which include an increased caloric intake and a completely changed workout program. Next week I want to see an overall weight decrease of at least two pounds and a decrease of 1.5 percent BF—we’ll see how I do!