squeezing off a few pounds: 205 to 200

Well, 2 weeks ago, on July 9th, I set out to ‘squeeze off a few pounds’
https://irondaughterirondad.com/squeezing-off-a-few-pounds/

…specifically to move out of my 205’ish range to the 195’ish range…or less…by Ironman Florida in 4 months.

…my goal was a weigh-in once a month…first ‘official’ target weigh-in 4 weeks from the start, 2 weeks from now:  August 5: 202′ish or less

This translates into a rather modest goal by weight loss standards:

My goal will be to lose .75 pounds a week / 3 pounds every 4 weeks, so run a deficit of about 375 calories a day

The chart on the right is my first 2 weeks…my weigh-in this morning at 200 pounds…Friday morning is probably as close a day of the week for a ‘normal’ weigh-in, after a week of typically behaving myself mid-week, before dinners out on the weekend, and before carbo/hydration loading/recovery for the weekend workouts.

how much weight have I actually lost in 2 weeks?…who knows…’some’ I’d say

As you can see, weighing in every day, and trying to chase numbers, can drive you a little nuts…I think that my initial weigh-in probably caught me on a ‘fat day’, and then normalized the next few days, maybe a bit dehydrated in the first week, as I started to workout in hot weather again, after a couple of weeks in cool Canadian weather…so most likely my ‘normalized’ starting weight may have been closer to 202-203’ish than 205, so maybe a bit of a running start…but I do know that I haven’t seen 205 again…so I’ll take it…better than the other direction…  🙂

…and then some leveling out this week, with the 2nd high peak of 203 the morning after an excellent steak dinner downtown, with all the associated eating and drinking debauchery…well maybe tamed down a bit from usual, in consideration of the ‘weight goal’ thing now in play.

Creating a trendline through the data shows that mathematically I’ve gone from 202.5 to 200 pounds, so I’m probably on target, if not a bit ahead

…my target losing 1.5 pounds the first 2 weeks…I’d say I’m probably down around 2 pounds anyway…so good!

The largest adjustment that I’ve made is to manage my calories during the day, so that I have a target of 1,500 calories left in my diet budget when I sit down for dinner.

I know that as I get near to, or over 1,000 calories at one meal, I start feeling stuffed, so this leaves me with a 500’ish calorie cushion.

I haven’t been willing to kill off an excellent dinner every night, to cut calories for the next 4 months, so have worked to control calories during the day…and it hasn’t been easy shifting away from eating when/what I ‘normally’ do, to only ‘eating when hungry’…weird feeling I have to tell you.

…and it’s not like I’m starving…with 10-12 hours of exercise a week, even mid-week, I’m still burning 1,000 exercise calories per day, so typically working with a calorie budget of at least 3,000 calories a day…more on BIG workout days…so eating about 1,500 during the day, and trying to keep it under 1,000 at dinner…bit out of balance, bit too much at the end of the day…but there is that living thing 🙂

…I don’t bother meticulously counting those dinner calories…a few spot checks after dinners at home have been between 750-1,100 calories, so where I thought it would be…so that’s also good…and I have been cooking this week with my wife recovering from surgery, so that ends up being lots of great food to encourage her to keep up her strength 🙂

Aside from the calorie management during the day, the largest adjustments that I’ve made:

• no french fries / in fact no fried foods of any type
• no desserts except for a couple of dinners out
• no butter or olive oil with bread
• no once-a-week martini just on principle
• and cutting back alcohol…didn’t say ‘no’ alcohol…just watching it more carefully

Certainly way too early to declare victory, but off to a promising start…at least heading in the right direction…for the moment…I ‘should’ see a 198 in there somewhere in the next couple of weeks if all is going well…

…so I’ll continue to monitor my eating constantly during the day, weigh in daily just to keep it in front of me, and report again in a couple of weeks

…I do ‘feel’ slimmer, but could just be in my head…now to see if I can keep it going…will be interesting to see where I’m at in 2 weeks, with a full month of weigh-in data 🙂