The third week of my 16-week challenge to drop from ~20% to 10% body fat has been one of stalled progress.
I realized that I’m not ready to do full fasts on Monday and Wednesday. I am too emotionally dependent on food to pick up my mood, particularly at the end of the day, where I want to spend quality time with my family.
For that reason, I will stick with a modified version of the original plan: eat a balanced 600 calorie dinner on Mondays and Wednesdays, and practice maintenance the five other days through eating three balanced meals. I want this structure to become normal, even boring, which is what happens with my most successful and consistent habits.
I have also decided that on weeks 12 through 14, I will do 21 consecutive lean days (days of 600 calories). The more I read about caloric deficit and fasting, the more I see that there are decreasing feelings of hunger as you go further into that mode. I want to experiment with that, after training myself to do the 5:2 every single week. The other added benefit is that three weeks of that should get me to my goal. As for the timing, I’m running an ultramarathon on week 11, so doing this after the ultra will 1) not disturb my training; and 2) having done the ultra, I’ll have a powerful reference experience to do this other challenge.
Here’s the hard data:
- Lean days: on Monday I went from wanting to do a fast to having 1000 calories; on Wednesday I stuck to the 600 calorie dinner, which is the new and definitive standard for this challenge.
- Maintenance days: I didn’t overate or snacked on Tuesday and Sunday.
- In short: 1/2 lean days, 2/5 maintenance days.
Ongoing summary:
- Week 1: 0/2 lean days, 0/5 maintenance days. Average weight/belly compared to previous week: 76.7kg -> 76.2kg (-0.5) 93.7 -> 92.5cm (-1.2).
- Week 2: 1/2 lean days, 2/5 maintenance days. 76.2kg -> 75.6kg (-0.6) 92.5cm -> 93.1cm (+0.6cm)
- Week 3: 1/2 lean days, 2/5 maintenance days. 75.6kg -> 75.7kg (+0.1) 93.1cm -> 92.5cm (-0.6cm)
Will report again next week!