The Results

I was so busy recording the video this week, that I forgot to take any photos… Here’s the video to kick off:

So I’ve lost 6 pounds this week, which brings me down to 20 stone 9 pounds (289 pounds). That’s a total weight loss of 19 pounds in 4 weeks, which is a lot more than I expected. I know I won’t be able to keep this pace up long term, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts, and it also puts me on target to get below a BMI of 35 by August (I’m aiming for September), so I’m ahead of schedule as well which is really nice.

I was a bit worried when I saw I’d lost 6 pounds, because I’ve started reading a lot more nutrition books and magazines, and doing lots of research online, and usually if you lose more than a couple of pounds you risk losing muscle as well as fat, because your body can only lose a certain amount of fat per week. Luckily it looks like I’m still in the honeymoon period, because of my 6 pounds lost, 5 pounds of it were fat! Losing a pound of muscle isn’t ideal though, so I’m going to increase my food intake slightly next week to try and avoid losing any more muscle – the more muscle I lose, the harder the weight loss will be to maintain a few months down the line. These are my body composition results for this week:

Date	Weight (lb)	Fat %	Fat (lb)	Muscle %	Muscle (lb)	BMI
12/05/09	304	-	-	-	-	39.0
19/05/09	297	-	-	-	-	38.1
26/05/09	295	-	-	-	-	37.8
02/06/09	295	36.60%	108	59.80%	176	37.8
09/06/09	289	35.60%	103	60.70%	175	37.0

So my fat percentage has decreased from 36.6% to 35.6%, and my body muscle percentage has increased from 59.8% to 60.7% (even though my muscle mass fell, I lost enough fat to move the percentage in the right direction). My BMI has now fallen 2 full points since I started out, and is now nearer to 35 than 40 for the first time in a long time.

I’ve taken my body measurements again this week, but I’ve done it in a slightly different way, which should apparently show more meaningful results. It does mean my previous measurements are now irrelevant because they were measured in the wrong place and in the wrong way. So my new guidelines for body measurements are:

Upper Arms – measure at widest point during a maximum contraction of biceps

Chest – measure level with the nipples. Take 2 measurements, the first one after inhaling, and second one after exhaling

Waist – measure level with the belly button, with abdominals relaxed

Hip – measure at level of pubic bone

Thighs – measure at widest point

Calves – measure at widest point

So that puts this weeks measurements as follows:

Date	Arms	Chest (Inh)	Chest (Exh)	Waist	Hips	Thighs	Calves
09/06/09	16.5	46.5	45.0	49.5	49.0	31.0	18.5

I’ll carry on measuring every 2 weeks, and will hopefully see some change in those measurements in 2 weeks time.

The new measurements also give me a new number to track, my waist/hip ratio. This is apparently one of the key measures in working out if you are dangerously overweight. All you do is divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. For women, you are dangerously overweight if the result is over 0.8, for men it is if you are over 0.95. Mine is currently 1.01, so in the dangerously overweight category, and something I need to sort out ASAP. Hopefully with my weight moving in the right direction, it shouldn’t take too long to get back in the healthy range.

How Did I Achieve These Results?

The key to success this week has just been following my own rules without fail. I stuck to my 2300 calorie limit every day, and didn’t break from the diet plan once. I also got my 10,000 steps every day, which as mentioned in my weekend update is burning an extra 240 calories a day, and also improving my fitness levels.

However, I also mentioned in that post that my sums were only predicting a loss of 3.36%, so where did the rest come from? We already know that 1lb was lost muscle, which I’ll try to avoid this week by eating a bit more, but what about the other 1.64lb? Well, the only thing I’ve done differently this week is drinking more coffee and green tea, following an article I read in Mens Health magazine that said caffeine and green tea can boost fat loss by stimulating adrenaline release, which in turn mobilises fatty acid release. Basically, it makes your body burn more fat when you exercise. I’ve been drinking 2 black coffees and 2 cups of green tea every day this week, as well as increasing my exercise levels. I obviously don’t know if that is what caused the extra loss, but I’ll carry on with it next week just in case it did!

What will I do next week?

I’m now considering stopping my Tesco Diets plan, mainly because I don’t think it is providing enough calories at 2300. I’ve calculated my resting metabolic rate (RMR) as 2691. This is the amount of energy my body needs just to sleep all day and keep my organs functioning. My calorie requirement to maintain my current weight is 4007, so I’ve actually been eating barely half of what my body needs to maintain it’s weight – no wonder I’ve been losing some muscle! Having done some research, it seems that as soon as you take your calorie intake below your RMR, you’re in the realms of crash dieting. And crash dieting doesn’t work. It just reduces your metabolism and muscle mass, so that as soon as you stop crash dieting, you end up fatter than you were to begin with. And on a crash diet, you will stop at some point, because your body can’t maintain it long term. So I’m going to increase my daily calorie target to 2700 per day for next week, and see how I get on. If I still lose muscle next week, I’ll bump it up a bit further. My goal is to get to the point where I am losing about a pound of fat per week, and not losing any muscle. I have a feeling my calorie intake will end up around 3500 per day to achieve that, but I don’t want to go straight up to that next week, because I don’t want to risk gaining weight.

If none of the last paragraph made sense, don’t worry, I’ll be posting an article about calculating your RMR and calorie intake in the next few days, so hopefully it will make a bit more sense then. It’ll also mean you can check my sums…

Exercise wise, I’m still pretty much limited to walking, so I’ll carry on getting my 10,000 steps per day. I’m at the physio on the 22^nd June when hopefully I’ll be cleared to cycle and do resistance training and other more strenuous stuff again, but until then I’ve got another couple of weeks of just walking.

I’ll also carry on with the coffee and green tea. Even if they’re not doing anything to me physically, psychologically it is now my wonder weight loss remedy!

The key though is to just stick to my rules again next week. I seem to be learning self discipline, which will hopefully stand my in good stead when I get started on training for the bike ride.

Right, I think that’ll do for now, so until next time.

Kevin