80 Pounds Lost In 21 Weeks

CDN_Jay wrote: »

Congratulations, this is one of those posts that is both very impressive and inspiring! It seems like you are enjoying every aspect of your new found lifestyle, which is an important reward and motivator. One question I have about OMAD (I don't know much about this type of fasting), is how many calories were you consuming in that half hour window? Apologies if I missed this info somewhere in your post.

Hi @CDN_Jay. Great question. So as you probably have noticed about this My Fitness Pal forum, it is very set up and pro active regarding CICO (calorie in calorie out) WOE (way of eating). Well my fat loss journey was not about CICO whatsoever. Not once did I count calories during the majority of my fat loss. I was focused primarily on getting into and staying in ketosis while also doing intermittent fasting in order to gain the metabolic fat burning advantage it supplies. Which it did incredibly. I was always averaging between 3 to 4 lbs of fat loss per week even after the initial big water weight was gone at the beginning. Those numbers continued all the way. Under doctor's supervision the whole time. When people starting questioning the fact that I was losing so much fat without caring about calories I decided to start looking at and tracking my calories to see if what I have researched was in fact true..that I was losing so much fat and not being in a caloric deficit. Cause I was eating a lot of calories as I was losing fat. I knew that but I wanted to start tracking and documenting it. That is where my doctor started to get very interested in it all too. What we found is that I consistently lost fat week by week while being in caloric surpluses of up to 400 calories a day. Days varied of course but what we wanted to find out and prove is that by the end of the weeks I was always in caloric surpluses. And I was. My doctor started researching it a lot at that point and got a registered Dietician involved with it all. We wanted to make sure any exercise was very carefully monitored and accounted for any energy(calorie) burn. So we did some very careful tests along the way where no exercise was involved to get very solid numbers of CICO during the fat loss. Keep in mind there is a tipping point I am sure where you can of course consume too much calories a day where it will interrupt your fat loss while even in ketosis. Scientists have found that out as well. Seems to be the metabolic advantage starts to be lost above 400 calorie surpluses but again that probably also depends a lot on the persons genetic make up, organ function, if they are insulin resistant, over all health etc.. So many things play apart with that respect.

As time went on I wanted to ensure I did not lose muscle mass along the way with fat loss and I wanted to try to build lean mass while losing the fat. So I made sure I was getting my macro's right while losing fat to do this and was working out. I did have an injury along the way too so that slowed down all exercise for a while. As my fat was leaving my body very rapidly (most things you read on the internet say don't lose more than 2 lbs per week for safety/health reasons-talk to a doctor/dietician, get blood/urine tests along the way to ensure rapid fat loss is safe for you more than 2 lbs a week. It is absolutely if done right) and I was getting down to lower and lower BMI I wanted to really focus on building lean mass (muscle). I have a large frame for my height. I was carrying a lot of muscle under my fat. So I began really focusing on more protein, working out and staying in ketosis in this later part of my journey. Which required taking in more nutrients daily but still very little carbs. So It became harder for me to do the OMAD (one meal a day) so that's when I changed to two meals in a 6-7 hr window) and it's working very well for me. Intermittent fasting combined with Ketosis is a very powerful metabolic advantage where you can burn a lot of stored fat rapidly. You won't find many forum member here supporting that sort of thing because like I mentioned earlier this forum is all about CICO. If you research these things yourself you will probably find a lot more information about what I talk about and what I practice than what you will find on this forum unfortunately. But there are some sub groups in the forum that are focused more on LC, Keto and Intermittent Fasting.

When I made the change to focus more on building lean mass (while still having some fat on my body) is the only point I started getting concerned about caloric intake because I needed to "grow" muscle. And my protein intake increased. This part is all still very resent as I am still on this journey.

If you watch from about 37 min, 40 seconds of this video to about 40 minutes, 5 seconds of this video the doctor talks about thermodynamics (CICO) and how it doesn't come into play while being in the metabolic advantaged ketogenic state. This is a fact proven by thousands of people all over the world and by myself along with the group of folks I am involved with in our control group. Tons of new studies going on regarding this as it's a very powerful tool. This whole video is chock full of very valuable information. And from my findings personally very accurate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4143&v=3zX3tfuKIlo

To note I have never "drank or eatin" man made (exogenous) ketones you see advertised all over the place now. And I only used MCT oil earlier on in my fat loss. Once I researched that stuff more I discontinued the MCT oil. I create my one ketones/ketosis by diet alone. Drinking or eating man made ketones in a bottle may have it's place with some athletes but not with regards to fat loss IMHO. Lot's of info out there on that too.

Sorry for the long answer but I get lot's of questions regarding these points of interest so thought it would be best to detail it the best I could.