I know why.. but why ! lol

[lipix]

Just some background info before I mention the problem... 

I am a former bodybuilder (not pro, just hobby) who stopped due to bad injury..

I gained a lot of weight during recovery of a year'ish'

I started doing only cardio via walking and jogging

Ok... I 'think' I do a lot of physical activity...

 - Roughly three times a week I go on 'adventures' where I walk between 20,000 and 60,000 steps over 5-12 hours. Its switches between rough terrain, cliffs, stairs to beach and flat.... this generally takes a lot out of me and I spend the days off recovering due to sore muscles.

When it comes to diet.. its bad but not horrid..

I generally have large meals twice a day but sometimes more.. i.e random'ish' .. this is usally because I am on one of these large walks (mentioned above) and they take a majority of the day to complete.

breakfast is usually a shake full of ALOT of kilojoules taken via kale, spinach, carrots, brocoli, proto powder and lglutamine, sometimes add flaxseed oil.... somedays 3-4 eggs instead.. IF I skip breakfast I grab a multivitamin.. but I usually like to have a big breakfast before a 30'ish' km walk

Dinner is usually a fairly lean cut of beef or chicken with or without veggies... usually stuff like home made wedges (no sauces, drips etc).. some salt.

When it comes to tasty treats I DO grab a burger or something else pretty much once a week.. if not then the second week... I try to offload this via one of those big walks either ON the day or the next day which Id assume would require a lot of the energy I ingested via evil food.

ANYWAY...

I cant loose weight..

Im stuck at around 100kgs.. which fluctuates ALOT...

it fluctuates between 107-100-97 throughout 3 weeks but hovers around 100...

Bodyfat wise I THINK Im probably around 32-33% based on past doctors appointments etc.

*side note* I drink a hell of a lot of water which can bloat my stomach which I think is also big ?? but not sure.. a doctor looked at me strangly when I once told her I drink anywhere between 4 and 12 L a day (which I measure via 3L Milk bottles I use for cold water)...

ANYWAY...

I need some help on loosing weight...

Ive tried reducing calories via food and ive tried fasting... I combined these with my usual activity (2-3 hikes a week)..

I know junk food is bad, but 1.5 times a fortnight cant be that bad ? or is it ?

*PS* I follow *not strictly* HIIT training via beachbody/shaun T 😉 

i.e I do some classes infront of the tv on random days... ~1-2 times per week

*PPS* my life is very unstructured due to circumstance... I.e I dont do the same thing everyday and somedays are spent being very active and nutricious and some are not.. I was once told this 'randomness' is good to fire up the ole metabolism ?

ANYWAY... (third time)

any reccomendations on how to lower my bf% which is my ultimate goal ? 

[divedragon]

So my first impression is that in your randomness, you're consuming more than you believe and excercising less than you believe.  You mentioned you tried fasting.  I would recommend to try it again, but in a very disiplined approach.  Start with a straight 7 day fast to get you into ketosis and rev your metabolism.  Then adopt an alternate day fasting program.  Adopt a Low Carb, High Fat diet to maintain your ketogenic state, then watch the fat disappear.

I got down to 194 and got stuck.  After careful analysis, I determined it was my lack of disipline that caused it, especially around alcohol consumption.  Not only did I get stuck, but went up a little to 197.

I just completed a 7 day fast about 2 weeks ago.  I continue to fast M-W-F and eat only dinner on Tuesday and Thursdays, then 3 meals each Saturday and Sunday.  I  measure my blood ketone levels and the lowest I've been since day one of my 7 day fast is 0.9, but mostly between 1.4 and 2.9.  At the very end of  my fast, my weight was 190.7 (down from 197).  After carefully refeeding during the week and knowing the weight of the food that would be inside me at the end of the week, I was just hoping to remain the same weight - meaning I would have lost a couple more lbls - I was 190.3 one week later.    I hope to be down this Friday when I weigh again. 

Also, when you fast, exercise in the fasted state.  In addition to burning more ketones, you also take advantage of various hormones that include growth hormones.  My recovery from weight lifting is faster when I exercise while fasting as well. 

Good luck!

[A_Lurker]

Lots of water and you mention salt, some of that variation could be water retention.  Try using daily weighing and trendweight.com (don't need a fancy scale, I log mine manually).  With wild swings it can filter out the noise and let you see if you're actually making progress.

Anyway, log your food, be specific for a while.  Some people can get into a routine, some people can't.  I'm one of those people who needs to log as I either under or overeat.  I rarely hit a happy medium.

Exercise - 3 days of medium to high energy - with 4 days of recovery may not burn as much as you think.  I'll use myself as an example.  In the last 28 days my top day of calories burned was 4804 calories, my lowest was 2892.  My average is over 3700, but if my low days were less active my average could be pulled down.

Food - a few changes can make a difference.  Eggs (scrambled, butter/no butter), flaxseed oil (how much), etc.  Logging, even for a week will help.

Sorry, last question about body fat loss.  You need to likely work on strength training and the rest should fall into place.  Your long walks/hikes have likely built up good lower body muscles.  Can you add some upper body routines into this as well?

[GershonSurge]

Anyone who mentions ketosis is trying to kill you. That's the basis of the Atkins diet and the many variations. Ketosis helps people lose weight by making them sick -- permanently in many cases.

Here is what Dr. McDougall has to say.

If you want to fix your diet, and from the sounds of it regain lost health, I suggest watching these videos by Dr. McDougall.

[A_Lurker]

@GershonSurge - the only issue with the read is pushing a higher carb diet.  I know he means complex carbs, but it's not necessarily effortless.  I find I need to keep the protein levels up, and to some extent I live the zone diet, but not limiting the calories (but basing it on my calories burned).  The higher protein keeps the 'need to feed' in check usually.

[GershonSurge]

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@A_Lurker wrote:

@GershonSurge - the only issue with the read is pushing a higher carb diet.  I know he means complex carbs, but it's not necessarily effortless.  I find I need to keep the protein levels up, and to some extent I live the zone diet, but not limiting the calories (but basing it on my calories burned).  The higher protein keeps the 'need to feed' in check usually.

@A_Lurker

It really would be easier for you to watch all the videos than to ask one question that has an easy answer. I could give it to you off the top of my head, but I might not remember Dr. McDougall's words correctly.

It really is effortless as there isn't anything but normal hunger before meals. 

[FitBeforeFifty]

I'm not a fan of ketosis or low fat diets -- I guess I could say I'm not a fan of any "low <insert here>" diet. I really don't care what my macros are -- I eat variety of whole foods, lots of vegetables and fruits, proteins (sometimes animal, sometimes plant) and healthy fats. 

You can lose weight eating low carb, eating low fat or a balanced diet -- it doesn't really matter. All you really need to do to lose weight is eat less than you burn.

[Dominique]

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@FitBeforeFifty wrote:

You can lose weight eating low carb, eating low fat or a balanced diet -- it doesn't really matter. All you really need to do to lose weight is eat less than you burn.

---

Exactly: energy balance, everything else (macronutrient split, nutrient timing/meal frequency, micronutrients, supplements etc.) comes after that. Any diet that is sustainable, that you can stick to (adherence) and that puts you in a caloric deficit will lead to weight loss.

People are having success (losing weight) with very different diets, so why argue about which is best?

[divedragon]

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@GershonSurge wrote:

Anyone who mentions ketosis is trying to kill you. That's the basis of the Atkins diet and the many variations. Ketosis helps people lose weight by making them sick -- permanently in many cases.

Here is what Dr. McDougall has to say.

If you want to fix your diet, and from the sounds of it regain lost health, I suggest watching these videos by Dr. McDougall.

---

So I looked at the references above.  Dr McDougall's primary emphasis is on the high protein diet and I partially agree with his assertion that protein spikes insulin.  Just not to the degree he indicates but it is farily high.  The facts are that ketosis is a product caused by the oxidation of stored fat.  If you want to lose fat, you MUST oxidize stored fat so some level of ketosis is required to lose fat.  Only other way is lyposuction. Most people enter in during sleep - a fasting period.

Dr. McDougall is a vegan, so his stance makes sense.  I fully support if someone wants to be a vegan or any other form, but I'm acutely aware vegans don't typically offer the same support in return.  He obviously has an agenda which, in my opinion, makes his advice suspect from the start. 

Dr. McDougall really sets out to vilify ketones use as a fuel source, but think about it - why do we store fat?  So in lean times we have a source of energy.  Why would this source make us lethargic and not able to think when we need energy to go out and get more food.  Different parts of the body have different preferences for fuel and those organs with high mitochondria levels such as the heart actually prefer ketones to glucose.  Muscles involved in aerobic activity also prefer ketones.

Furthermore; ketogenci diet have been used for a long time to treat seizures as discussed in this article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201104/your-brain-ketones

This article talks about ketones being a more efficent fuel for the brain than glucose, plus a lot more:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/the-fat-fueled-brain-unnatural-or-advantageous/

What I strongly disagree with is his assertion that fat causes an high insulin response.  But who am I to challenge a doctor?  Nobody, actually.  So let me refer members of this board to the clinical trials on which I base my beliefs.  I've included the conclusions of these studies along with the link incase you don't want to read all the studies.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022207

Conclusion: There was more weight loss in the low-carb group, significant at 3 and 6 months, but not 12. The low-carb group had greater improvements in blood triglycerides and HDL, but other biomarkers were similar between groups.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022637

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost significantly more weight (about 3 times as much). There was also a statistically significant difference in several biomarkers:

• Triglycerides went down by 38 mg/dL in the LC group, compared to 7 mg/dL in the LF group.

• Insulin sensitivity improved on LC, got slightly worse on LF.

• Fasting blood glucose levels went down by 26 mg/dL in the LC group, only 5 mg/dL in the LF group.

• Insulin levels went down by 27% in the LC group, but increased slightly in the LF group.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022637

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost significantly more (2.3 times as much) weight and had significant decreases in Triglycerides and Non-HDL cholesterol. Total and LDL cholesterol decreased in the low-fat group only.

http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2002-021480

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost more weight (2.2 times as much) and had significant reductions in blood triglycerides. HDL improved slightly in both groups.

https://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=217514

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost 1.8 times as much weight. There were also several changes in biomarkers that are worth noting:

• Waist-to-hip ratio is a marker for abdominal fat. This marker improved slightly in the LC group, not in the LF group.

• Total cholesterol improved in both groups.

• Triglycerides went down by 42 mg/dL in the LC group, compared to 15.3 mg/dL in the LF group.

• LDL particle size increased by 4.8 nm and percentage of small, dense LDL decreased by 6.1% in the LC group, while there was no significant difference in the LF group.

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=717451

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost significantly more weight and had greater improvements in blood triglycerides and HDL cholesterol.

http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2003-031606

Conclusion: Both groups lost a similar amount of weight.

A few other notable differences in biomarkers:

• Blood pressure decreased in both groups, both systolic and diastolic.

• Total and LDL cholesterol decreased in the LF group only.

• Triglycerides decreased in both groups.

• HDL cholesterol went up in the LC group, but decreased in the LF group.

• Blood sugar went down in both groups, but only the LC group had decreases in insulin levels, indicating improved insulin sensitivity.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633336/

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost significantly more weight than the low-glycemic group. There were several other important differences:

• Hemoglobin A1c went down by 1.5% in the LC group, compared to 0.5% in the low-glycemic group.

• HDL cholesterol increased in the LC group only, by 5.6 mg/dL.

• Diabetes medications were either reduced or eliminated in 95.2% of the LC group, compared to 62% in the low-glycemic group.

• Many other health markers like blood pressure and triglycerides improved in both groups, but the difference between groups was not statistically significant.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11745-008-3274-2

Conclusion: The low-carb group lost almost twice the amount of weight as the low-fat group, despite eating the same amount of calories.

This study is particularly interesting because it matched calories between groups and measured so-called “advanced” lipid markers. Several things are worth noting:

• Triglycerides went down by 107 mg/dL on LC, but 36 mg/dL on the LF diet.

• HDL cholesterol increased by 4 mg/dL on LC, but went down by 1 mg/dL on LF.

• Apolipoprotein B went down by 11 points on LC, but only 2 points on LF.

• LDL size increased on LC, but stayed the same on LF.

• On the LC diet, the LDL particles partly shifted from small to large (good), while they partly shifted from large to small on LF (bad).

[Dominique]

@lipix: it looks like your main problem is you can quantify neither your energy expenditure nor your energy intake. So you think you do a lot of physical activity: why not use your new Fitbit in order to have that expressed as a number? As to your intake, why not logging everything that goes through your mouth, even if it’s only for a limited period of time? Once you get a rough idea of how much you’re actually eating, and can compare that to what you’re expending, you will be in a much better position to reach your goal. For fat loss to occur, you need to eat less than you expend, it’s as simple as that. And if you have a lot to lose (you can get whether your own estimate of 32-33% is accurate via this link, which provides visual clues of various BF% for men and women), it will take some time (at least several months).

[Dominique]

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@lipix wrote:

Ok... I 'think' I do a lot of physical activity...

 - Roughly three times a week I go on 'adventures' where I walk between 20,000 and 60,000 steps over 5-12 hours. 

---

I had a look at your profile:

The one thing that strikes me is you are not wearing your Fitbit 24/7. The beauty of your Fitbit is that it not only tells you how active you are (like on the days when you have 30k steps), but also how inactive you may be. If you wear your Fitbit 24/7, you can see your expenditure at the weekly level (snapshot from the mobile app):

This in turn will let you know how much you can eat in average everyday, while still losing weight. So my advice to you would be: wear your Fitbit at all times, in order to get the most out of it.

[GershonSurge]

@divedragon

It never turns out well to debate diets in a forum as answers must always be truncated for the sake of brevity. The information that is omitted is often critical. Truthfully, there is no reason for you to listen to anything I say in response to your last post as I have no established credibility as a scientist.

If you watch these fourteen videos by Dr. McDougall, he will answer almost any question you might have and reference peer reviewed studies. If you feel comfortable with the way of eating after watching the videos, give it a try for a month and see what happens. 

[FitBeforeFifty]

@lipix I agree with @Dominique, you can't get consistent results if you are inconsistently wearing your fitbit and inconsistently (or not at all) tracking your food intake. Look at it this way, your one day splurge on activity is a lot more than I do on a daily basis but you might be a complete slug on the other days. When you average that out, it might not be much as much as you think. 

The bottom line is start wearing your fitbit so you get an idea of your average calorie burn and start tracking your food intake. I can easily maintain my weight without tracking but I've never had success losing weight without logging my activity and food and then ensuring I have a balance. Right now, you are just guessing at your OVERALL calories in and calories out. 

Regarding that occasional "splurge" on what some consider unhealthy foods: I don't follow a specific diet and while I eat lots of vegetables and whole foods most of the time, no food is off limits for me. I still eat pizza, hamburgers, etc... During my original weight loss, I had pizza once per week and probably a hamburger once per week. There is nothing wrong with doing that as long as it fits into your calorie budget.

[divedragon]

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@GershonSurge wrote:

@divedragon

Truthfully, there is no reason for you to listen to anything I say in response to your last post as I have no established credibility as a scientist.

If you watch these fourteen videos by Dr. McDougall, he will answer almost any question you might have and reference peer reviewed studies. If you feel comfortable with the way of eating after watching the videos, give it a try for a month and see what happens. 

 @GershonSurge

I actually remember Dr. McDougall from his participation in the documentary Forks over Knives which I did watch.  While as part of my diet I do eat quite a few vegetables (primarily those grown above ground), I do not believe humans were intended to be strict vegetarians, but rather omnivores.  The most compelling reason I believe this is that without supplementation, a person would succumb to B-12 deficiency eating strictly plant based diet.  Additionally, no single plant contains a complete protein, but rather you must combine things like beans and rice to achieve a complete protein.  But the converse of that is not true - you can survive without supplementation on a meat based diet - i.e.: the Eskimos.

There has never been a civilization that survived on strict vegan diet.  It can only be done in modern times because of our ability to use artificially created supplements.  It is for these reasons, I would never consider a vegan diet for myself.  But to anyone who does or wants to, I wish you great health.

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[Dominique]

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@FitBeforeFifty wrote:

I don't follow a specific diet and while I eat lots of vegetables and whole foods most of the time, no food is off limits for me. I still eat pizza, hamburgers, etc... During my original weight loss, I had pizza once per week and probably a hamburger once per week. There is nothing wrong with doing that as long as it fits into your calorie budget.

---

Pretty good description of flexible dieting, which is also what I (try to) practice. No individual food item (not even pizza, ice cream, donuts etc.) makes you fat; no individual macronutrient (be it "evil" carbs, or "bad" fats) makes you fat either.  Overeating does, even if all of it comes from "healthy" food like avocados or olive oil.

[GershonSurge]

Divedragon,

I deleted my reply. If you watch all fourteen of the videos, all your questions will be answered.

(I'm trying to stay out of a debate and pass information if you are interested. If not, that's fine.)