Six kilos in six weeks: halfway through

Read the first post in this series here – Six kilos in six weeks: finishing what I started.

How am I doing?

I stuck to my guns better than last week:

• I was under my calorie goal on two days…
• …on my worst day I was only over by 400kcal.

Overall, based on a basal metabolic requirement of 2400 kcal per day, I’ve averaged a daily deficit of 922kcal, leaving me just below 6500 kcal down for the week.

What is my weight?

Err… Somehow, I seem to have lost no weight at all since last week. Weighing in at 69kg was somewhat depressing this Monday morning.

That said, the red average line has still dropped by half a kilo in the last week, and I suspect my weights will catch up through the week, although it does look like I’m a little behind…

A changeable week.

Routine is the dieter’s friend. For me, I get up, weigh myself, have a negligible calorie coffee, go to work, eat around 700 calories through my work day, do some exercise at lunch, then go home, do a little more exercise, and eat about 700 calories in the evening.

Without routine? Life seems to be suddenly filled with opportunities to eat, and a high availability of difficult to assess foods. How many calories are actually in a Saag Paneer with half a Peshwari Naan. A Salad Kebab? Even just a latte from a random coffee shop?

In dieting, as in so many areas of life,
knowledge is power.

This week I visited my grandma in Birmingham. I massively upped my exercise, and did my best to keep track on calories pretty severely. But the simple failure to remember my weighing scales meant I already felt uncomfortably cut adrift.

So far, I’ve not found this moderately intense diet particularly difficult. Weight loss is pretty simple really: mostly, you need to eat less. Having a nice graph of weights, whilst tracking my daily input and outputs gives me a real sense of control. That’s why not having my scales robbed me from feeling capable and confident; in dieting, as in so many areas of life, knowledge is power.

Getting sweaty

What went better? Exercise went better:

• Week 1: I burnt off 1157 kcal doing exercise
• Week 2: I managed 945kcal of exercise.

This week? 2150 kcal burnt off. More than the previous two weeks combined. This may have contributed to the difficulty losing weight, in two ways:

1. Firstly, there is a risk of overestimating exercise calories burn, which would mean my net deficit wouldn’t be high enough.
2. Secondly, I may have built up my muscles a bit, which would disguise fat loss.

Changes, changes, changes.

I’m confident that if I carry on pushing, the weight will continue to fall off, despite the results this week. This week I’m going to:

1. Stick with a 1400 kcal target. I doubt I will see significant progress with any more, and I’d be miserable with any less!
2. Aim to stabilise my exercise. 2000 kcal of exercise in a week is a sustainable amount for me – translated to about 5 hours. Aiming to fit in the following workouts:
   – 2x a NYT workout twice a week
   – 2x cycling day
   – 2x running day (working on bleep test)
3. Keep an eye on macros. *Still* haven’t thought about macros much. May look at this this week, or just review it at the end.

Shout out thanks to Jon Smith for keeping me accountable, and texting me daily to tell me to “put down the butter dish and walk away”. Check out his ace 5K running app at RunwithKick.com…

Results

These are all updated live from a central database, so feel free to check back daily for updates…