Fatness Update: Phase 3 Begins

A new 12-week phase begins today and the goal is 17% body fat.

From December through early March, my goal was to lose 4 inches off my gut. I wanted to get to 34.5 inches (which is half my height). I did this and hit my goal before heading off to Spring Break. In the process, I took my body fat down to 21% (down 4%) and my weight down to 171 (down 19 pounds). Immediately prior to this program I’d been lifting heavy and eating a lot. So, all the numbers were pretty high for me to begin with. 

The plan I was running to achieve this was pretty restrictive and I did well following the program for the full 11 weeks. It worked perfectly. I was actually blown away at how well it worked. When I jumped on the scale and grabbed the tape measure I knew what numbers I wanted to see each week. I also knew when I’d slipped up along the way and figured it would slow things down. I was often surprised that consistency seemed to win the day most of the time. It was very motivating to recommit to the program each week when positive results kept showing up.

When you are a fatty like me you have to run multiple legs of the race to reach your goal. Since mid-March, I’ve been on a maintenance plan. The goal was to 1) not backtrack too much while 2) coming off the restrictive plan. I needed to let my body rest and adjust to the new normal before continuing the journey. I took 12 weeks off which included: some vacations where I ate way too much, ate foods that I normally wouldn’t eat, missed some gym time, and I missed some steps.  I also got sick, hurt my shoulder again (different injury), and nursed some injuries back to health (though not fully). In short, I was a pretty normal human being. I stayed on track and achieved my goal of not backtracking too much during this time. 

Proof you say? I have that. In typical nerd fashion of course I kept an Excel spreadsheet with some charts and graphs. You can see the phase where I ran the program (up to the green line) and then the maintenance phase that followed (up to the orange line).

It is now time for another 12-week phase and a new goal. The goal for this phase is to get to 17% body fat. I don’t know what my gut will do during this time nor care. The same goes for my weight. I expect both will go down slightly but nothing dramatic. If neither do that is fine. This phase is all about body fat (and I hope I’ll drop some visceral fat in the process too). I’ve done a lot of research into that 17% number and believe that is the correct number for me to be as a 50-year-old dude. Not high enough to create a concern of metabolic syndrome and not so low as to be unsustainable. I want to have enough meat on my bones to be able to weather a storm. This has never been a problem! HA! I believe if I get to that number all the things I track in my bloodwork should line up perfectly the way I want them to. We’ll see I guess.

I expect the next 12 weeks will be tough sledding. I don’t believe following the program will be harder than the first time (it was already decently hard). The law of diminishing returns, however, would imply that the lower things go the slower they will continue to go (if at all). So, in this phase, I do expect that the progress will be slower which will make following the program harder. It will be hard to keep cranking on a pretty restrictive/hard program if the results are slow to come. But who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised like I was before. 

Eating Plan

• Metabolic Blowtorch Diet for 12 weeks from 5/29 through 8/21.
• Lots of protein (ground beef and more ground beef then some more ground beef).
• Carbs from fruit and honey (only on weight training days).
• Almost NO seed oils, processed foods, or high fructose corn syrup.
• Extended intermittent fasting (20+ hours) on non-weight training days.

Workout Plan

• Weight training 3 days a week using a progressive overload program I’ve been following for a few weeks already (BowTiedOx Upper-Lower Split).
• 35 minutes fasted cardio (probably Assault Bike) 4 days a week at 65%-80% of max heart rate.
• 10k steps each day.

I’ve also planned the remainder of the year out as well. After this 12-week phase:

• In September and October, I’ll do another maintenance phase (10 weeks) and let things settle after I hit my 17% body fat goal. [crosses fingers] 
• Then in November and December, I’ll hit the weights hard for two months of compound lift strength training. My goal will be to build my strength back up to prior levels based on my new body composition. I’ll gain weight during that process if I do it right. This might seem like a stupid idea given all of the above but this will be fine in my opinion. If I do it correctly I might do some shorter cycles of the above. But nothing as drastic as this year as all the heavy lifting will have been done.
• At the end of the year, I’ll run some of the same bloodwork that I ran at the end of 2022. I expect many of the numbers to move in the right direction from where they were.