2020 Weight Loss Challenge Thread

[0ddl0t]

Your progress thus far has been absolutely amazing. I only want to say that I've run off and on since I was in college, and I usually hurt myself by trying to improve too quickly. The danger seems to be that I can increase my cardio fitness more than my musculoskeletal fitness. Running gets easier; I'm not nearly as out of breath, and I push myself to go faster. However, my joints seem to take longer to train up than my heart and then I pull something. In 2008, I earned an awful case of plantar fasciitis that took me months to years to be rid of. Before that it was iliotibial band syndrome. This past year and a half I've tried to be more patient, but my hip flexors are a problem this time around. Anyway, I wouldn't push too hard to get to 10 minutes by Halloween. There's always Veterans' Day and then Thanksgiving.

Thanks! I obviously would love to immediately jump into the ~5:30 mile I could run in high school, but coming from 450 that may not be possible and I definitely don't want an injury to set me back. I hadn't even planned on running until I weighed under 250, but I've been feeling good and thought I'd slowly start introducing it to build up my strength. The game plan is a 12-week schedule from that goes from walking to running incrementally. Last week I was walking 4 minutes and running 1 (a ~13 minute mile pace) for 30 minutes and today I increased that to alternating 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking (an ~11-minute mile pace).

Last week I was starting to feel my knees - not really pain, but I took it as a warning not to push too hard too quickly. Today when I started running for 2 minute stretches my knees felt fine but towards the end I was starting to feel my shins tighten. Like you, I can easily handle the cardio but my musculoskeletal fitness is still lagging...

[0ddl0t]

Hope I'm not hijacking this thread, but I'm pretty much obsessing over weight loss and I found this interesting. I started monitoring body composition in July and became alarmed at how rapidly I was losing lean mass along with my fat so I started reading some studies and on August 1st decided:

140, down 4 for the week, 10 for July, and 64 for the year.

This is the 2nd week in a row that I'm down a surprise/unhealthy 4 despite consuming the same # of calories and doing the same amount of exercise for basically the last 2 months (typically down 0-2 per week) so either I've suddenly turbocharged my metabolism or I'm beginning to rapidly lose lean mass. Either way it is clearly time to add more calories back, but the plan is now to make nearly all of the additional calories come from protein to help retain and maybe even build muscle.

Essentially my 1200 cal/ 100g protein goal will now increase to 1400 cal/140g protein with future adjustments likely. I'll also start replacing some of the longer cardio exercise with shorter durations of resistance training because apparently cardio lasting longer than 1 hour starts to rapidly consume muscle when running a calorie deficit.

I have been getting my protein primarily from lean meats & beans, but to help going forward I've ordered some unflavored whey protein isolate from Amazon Essentials. I was a bit surprised to learn that nearly the same protein per calorie ratio is available from skinless chicken breast (the later actually being a less expensive protein source when buying the bulk frozen bags). Protein concentrates are cheaper than isolates, but all the studies I've read have used the fat & sugar-free isolates so that's what I'll try...

Again a look at the long term trend (lean mass is green, solid is actual measurements, dots are estimations/projections):


Close-up of protein (blue, right axis) and lean mass (red, left axis) from July to today:


There's clearly a lot of measurement error, but I'd still have to say high protein, a smaller calorie deficit, and more resistance training works as advertised...

[RJ]

206.2.

10/30/20: 191.8

tl;dr: on 10/1 I made a switch to Healthy Keto (don't eat like an asshole) and focused weight training/HIIT,

Additional commentary in my training journal here.

[0ddl0t]

October 1: 284.2 lbs, 39.0% BF (goal: 284.8 lbs, 40.2% BF)
October 8: 278.8 lbs, 39.8% BF (goal: 282.0 lbs, 39.7% BF)
October 16: 276.8 lbs, 38.1% BF (goal: 278.8 lbs, 39.2% BF)
October 23: 273.8 lbs, 37.5% BF (goal: 276.0 lbs, 38.7% BF)
October 31: 273.4 lbs, 37.5% BF (goal: 272.8 lbs, 38.2% BF)

Total October Weight Loss: 10.8 lbs, 2.5% BF (goal: 12.0 lbs, 2.0% BF)


Came up a little short on weight loss, but exceeded body fat loss... I also beat my goal of 5 pushups (now at 7). Didn't run a mile in under 10min, didn't try (went for a long hike today instead)


November goals:

Nov 1: __________ (goal 273.0 lbs, 37.5% BF)
Nov 7: __________ (goal 270.7 lbs, 37.0% BF)
Nov 15: __________ (goal 267.6 lbs, 36.4% BF)
Nov 22: __________ (goal 264.9 lbs, 35.9% BF)
Nov 30: __________ (goal 261.9 lbs, 35.4% BF)

Nov total: __________ (goal 11.1 lbs, 2.1% BF)

Other goals: 1 pull-up and 10 minute mile

[0ddl0t]

Nov 1: 271.8 lbs, 37.5% BF (goal 273.0 lbs, 37.5% BF)
Nov 7: 266.4 lbs, 37.8% BF (goal 270.7 lbs, 37.0% BF)
Nov 15: __________ (goal 267.6 lbs, 36.4% BF)
Nov 22: __________ (goal 264.9 lbs, 35.9% BF)
Nov 30: __________ (goal 261.9 lbs, 35.4% BF)

Nov total: __________ (goal 11.1 lbs, 2.1% BF)


Other goals:

I'm not close to doing my 1 pull-up, although I can slow my descent from the top of the bar a little more than before. I still drop pretty fast for the first 1/2, but I can almost slow to a stop on the 2nd half. And my fitbit wasn't accurate in measuring my running distance/pace so the 10 minute mile by December goal looks a bit further away (measured with a stopwatch against mile markers I am currently running a glacial 13 minute mile)

[Duke]

Seasonal weight gain - eludes me...


Strong wind a danger currently

[0ddl0t]

Nov 1: 271.8 lbs, 37.5% BF (goal 273.0 lbs, 37.5% BF)
Nov 7: 266.4 lbs, 37.8% BF (goal 270.7 lbs, 37.0% BF)
Nov 15: 264.6 lbs, 36.3% BF (goal 267.6 lbs, 36.4% BF)
Nov 22: __________ (goal 264.9 lbs, 35.9% BF)
Nov 30: __________ (goal 261.9 lbs, 35.4% BF)

Nov total: __________ (goal 11.1 lbs, 2.1% BF)

I'm still not close to doing a pull-up, although now I can at least slow my descent the whole way down. I don't think it'll happen by December 1... I did run a mile in 11:20 this morning so 10 minutes seems doable in 2 more weeks...

[Guerrero]

173.8 today. Down a little more.

I let myself go for a few weeks and got as high as 178. No excuses, totally my own doing. Back down to 176 today.

[TheNewbie]

You guys are doing some impressive work!

[0ddl0t]

Nov 1: 271.8 lbs, 37.5% BF (goal 273.0 lbs, 37.5% BF)
Nov 7: 266.4 lbs, 37.8% BF (goal 270.7 lbs, 37.0% BF)
Nov 15: 264.6 lbs, 36.3% BF (goal 267.6 lbs, 36.4% BF)
Nov 22: 261.2 lbs, 34.7% BF (goal 264.9 lbs, 35.9% BF)
Nov 30: __________ (goal 261.9 lbs, 35.4% BF)

Nov total: __________ (goal 11.1 lbs, 2.1% BF)

I am sooo close to dropping under the "morbid obesity" BMI threshold and the class II "severe obesity" body fat threshold:

Category _________ Lbs ______ BF%
Super Obesity ___ >325.0 ____ 52.7%
Morbid Obesity ___ >260.0 ____ 40.0%
Severe Obesity ___ >227.0 ____ 34.6%
Obesity _________ >195.0 ____ 28.6%
Overweight ______ >162.0 ____ 22.5%
Normal _________ >120.0 ____ 14.8%

Other goals: I'm still not close to doing a pull-up yet, although I can slow my descent the whole way down and nearly stop myself mid-way. I don't think a pull up will happen by December 1 though - maybe by New Year's... I'm currently running the mile around 11 minutes so getting that under 10.0 in a little over 1 week also seems like a stretch, but one I'm still shooting for. On the plus side, I think I should be able to run/jog an entire 5K without walking by next week (I can nearly do so now).


I updated the weight loss/body composition model in my spreadsheet after reading some research on the limits of fat loss by the late Dr Seymour Alpert ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15615615/ - you can find bootlegged versions for free on a bodybuilding forum or a decent summary here: http://fastfoodmacros.com/maximum-rate-of-fat-loss.asp ). So instead of targeting a steady 1% body weight loss & 0.5% body fat loss per week, I'll now taper the body weight loss (while maintaining the 0.5% weekly body fat percentage loss) with the goal of maintaining all of my current ~169 lbs of lean mass. If possible, I'd be aiming for 185-190 lbs @~10% body fat before turning 40 in February 2022:

The new schedule:
November 2020-January 2021: 1% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
February 2021: ____________ 0.75% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
March 2021: ______________ 0.7% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
April 2021-May 2021: _______ 0.6% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
June 2021: _______________ 0.5% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
July 2021-September 2021: __ 0.4% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
October 2021-November 2021: 0.3% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss
December 2021-January 2022: 0.25% weekly weight loss, 0.5% weekly body fat loss

I let myself go for a few weeks and got as high as 178. No excuses, totally my own doing. Back down to 176 today.

Hey, congrats for getting back on the horse! My biggest fear is getting out of the habit and letting things snowball again...