What a difference a normal week makes. With last weeks weight gain I was expecting this to even out this week and that is exactly what happened. The scales show a 3lb drop, so last weeks 1lb gain is no more. While I do not believe for one moment I have lost 3lbs of fat ( no way was my calorie deficit that low ) I am of course pleased that I am back on track.
So today I weigh 170lbs a little over 77 kilos, or 12 stone 2lbs. I should point out here that although the scales dropped 3lbs this week, if you look over the last 11 weeks of my six pack quest journey , I have dropped 5lbs over 11 weeks. With one week to go on my original abs target I think I may come up a little short. The problem may not be that I don’t hit the 7lbs I set to lose, but more the fact I think I have slightly underestimated how much I need to lose to get the abs showing properly. My guess today is I probably need to go lower by another 2lbs than my original target of 7lbs. So more likely I need to end up at 166lbs and not 168 as I initially thought. I am learning there is no exact science to it, but I do at least know I am going in the right direction, it just may take slightly longer than I thought to get there. More on the abs goal next week though.
I do want to be honest here, cutting down my weight from 175lbs to 170lb has been much tougher. There is no easy way to say it, to lose body fat now, I have to watch the amount of calories I eat far more than I did last year. I had managed to keep my weight controlled for over 2 months, but after about 10 weeks of maintenance , I found I was not cutting back enough on what I was eating in the first few weeks of my new abs quest. I did lose a little body fat, but the fact was, in order to lose the amount of body fat I had targeted, then I was going to have to restrict the amount I was eating, not easy when I am trying to stick to the retired dieter principles of weight loss of not giving up the foods or drink I love.
It would be easy for me to say I am not going to drink beer for 2 weeks, but that is not what my way of losing weight is about. I want to still drink beer and lose weight while I am doing it, I have to do it this way to prove what it is possible. Could I have stopped drinking beer and got the abs quicker ? … Yes absolutely, but I would be as miserable as hell, and in my world, that just isn’t worth it.
My point is, I will be able to show that you can get and keep yourself in shape, and still enjoy the food and drinks you love. The skill is fitting them into your weekly calorie allowance. For me it is beer, for others it is chocolate, for some it is ice cream, we all have our favourites, and if you are wanting to lose weight, the last thing you should do is give them up.
It Really Is About Calories In V Calories Out
So what does my weight loss which is now over 60lbs show ?
Weight loss is not so much about what you eat, it is more to do with how much you eat. We all ( me included) tend to underestimate how many calories we eat, and we also tend to overestimate how many calories we need, or how many we burn through exercise. Focus first on just eating less, the problems caused by overeating are far greater than consuming too much of one macro nutrient. The problem is consuming too much in general, not just too much sugar or fat etc. If you are overweight, then you are overeating. No matter how the fancy diet goo r00s dress it up, the solution is undereating , the trick is to find how best to undereat for you and your lifestyle.
Have a question , want some help ? send me an email retireddieter[at]gmail.com, or leave comment.
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