Ūruz's fitness journal: losing weight and getting in shape

Thanks! Yea, I am trying to keep it as structured as possible; my mind is pretty erratic these days, I think I might have developed ADD, so journaling in a methodical manner helps to anchor it all down.

To be honest I don't really think I have to worry about preserving any muscle, because I don't really have any, it's just skin and bones with thick layer of fat in between.
I am like one of those packages that you get in the mail, when they ship you a small item, in a cardboard box that's 10 times too big for the item, filled full of packing peanuts—just a random early morning though, I just woke up.

Also doing keto on WFPBD, while definitely possible, would be more expensive and would take more planning too, way beyond just counting calories, and I don't feel like I want to commit to that much of tracking right now.

Could be anything I suppose, too many variables to be sure; I'm just gonna blame it on Neptune for now.
I am also planning to focus on eating as clean as possible at least few days before the fast; the shock from sudden withdrawal of food might have something to do with it, I don't know.

Thank you!

I have not considered cutting down carbs, to be honest I don't think it really matters much when doing extended water fasting of multiple days in a row. Because I am in such a big calorie deficit for so long that whatever metabolic benefit I would get from constantly staying, or getting faster in, keto would be negligible in the face of massive calorie deficit of regularly fasting for 4 to 6 days in a row, with 2 to 3 refeed days in between. I think that type of macronutrient manipulation would probably be beneficial for somebody who is already at very low body fat percentage and is trying to get as lean as possible, while maintain as much muscle as possible. But for an obese fatty like me, I am not convinced how useful that is.
And even if I fill my muscles with glycogen, I will still use these calories when fasting. But if I do get the same amount of calories from protein and fat instead, where do they go? It doesn't go to glycogen, so is it stored in fat probably? Calories consumed would be still the same, and I am sure they don't just go through the body without being absorbed, so you store them either way. It's just where you store them, fat or muscle cells. That's how I look at it anyway, also not a doctor by the way, haha, so my reasoning could be wrong.
The only benefit I would see of avoiding carbs during refeed would be that it's easy to overeat calories when eating carbs—protein and fat tend to satiate more—hence this might help keep more bodyfat off during refeeds. And of course less bloating too, which could be beneficial for motivation. Also from what I heard when carbs are combined with fat they tend to store as body fat more easily than just eating fat with protein and no carbs, so there probably is some difference in calorie absorption, now that I think about it. Anyhow, you keep doing what works for you, and have some experimenting! I love to experiment myself; maybe I will try low carb sometime in the future, will see.

Ah yes, the bread! It's the tool of the devil!

 

Refeed day 4/4 in progress...
Eating day 4/11 in progress... (I have decided that I will eat till the December 10th, then start fasting again)
Daily morning weight in: 261.02 lbs (118.3 kg).
Calorie counting and OMAD starts tomorrow!
10k done (had to split in two walks, but I forced my fat ass to move and made it to 10k total).

 

Dieting day 1/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 262.57 lbs (119.1 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: fail (~97% WF—had some added oil and sugar—still 100% PBD).
10k walk done.

 

Dieting day 2/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 258.16 lbs (117.1 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: check.
4k walk done.

 

"Dieting" day 3/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 253.31 lbs (114.9 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: fail.
OMAD: fail.
WFPBD: fail.
Day as a whole: complete fail.

 

Dieting day 4/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 255.95 lbs (116 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: fail (100% PBD; ~99% WF—had some added oil and salt on my salad).

 

@Lady Blåhaj I don't know too much about it either, but I have heard that keto is indeed beneficial for managing inflammation. I don't have anything to heal myself of though, at least nothing I know of, haven't done my bloodwork in years.

 

Dieting day 5/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 252.64 lbs (114.6 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: fail (100% PBD; ~99% WF—had some pink Himalayan salt and some raw, cold pressed, extra virgin linseed oil on my salad).

 

Dieting day 6/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 251.98 lbs (114.3 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: fail (100% PBD; ~40% WF—had way too much processed crap).

 

Dieting day 7/7 done!
Daily morning weight in: 251.54 lbs (114.1 kg).
Track calories: check.
Calorie deficit: check.
OMAD: check.
WFPBD: check.

 

One week of dieting and calorie counting done!
So originally I committed to 7 days of this, before planning to go back into extended water fasting, so I guess I am gonna do a little recap now...

Original plan was to stop with extended fasting because I relapsed and felt I needed to build a decent streak before I keep going, cos when my energy is drained the discipline is low. Well, that idea failed, cos I relapsed again recently. And it can be clearly seen on which day, cos I pretty much failed all my checkboxes and binged on food pretty hard due to feeling like shit mentally; lots of my old, addictive comfort foods, mainly various types of meat.
I also got some bad cold, peculiarly enough on the day of my relapse/binge (if I would be more superstitious about semen retention I might just thing it had something to do with it), with fever, headache, chest congestion and everything else. As far as I looked into it, water fasting can apparently help with healing cold faster, but I don't know whether I will be able to water fast while feeling like shit, especially while not having a good sexual retention streak, cos when stuff hurts and I feel sick it does drain my discipline a lot, so I have decided to push back my return to extended water fasts for about another week or so at least, until I get better. That should also let me accumulate more retention days for that energy too.
I did stick to OMAD for the last week, cos I made commitment to, but I will probably take a brake from that now, at least for couple days, cos I take a lot of medications for this cold now and some of them needs to be taken multiple times a day with food, and others straight up have a lot of sugar in them, so would brake the fast anyways. So far I have been just taking them either on empty stomach or during my one hour eating window once a day and that's all, but I don't think it's the most optimal way to do it. When I get better and can slow down on drugs then I will go back to OMAD, and then back to fasting. Also probably gonna stop calorie counting too for now, until I start to feel better, cos when I feel sick I am struggling to give a fuck about weight loss to be honest.

And by the way, a little quick recap of all the acronyms I am using here:

OMAD: Obviously this stands for One Meal A Day, which is a type of intermittent fasting protocol. There seems to be four popular ones: 16/8 (fast for 16 hours, 8 hour eating window), 18/6 (fast for 18 hours, 6 hour eating window), 20/4 (fast for 20 hours, 4 hour eating window) and OMAD (which is usually 23/1—fast for 23 hours, 1 hour eating window). Obviously one could also make up their own variation of anything in between, like 22/2, 19/5, etc.
The way I do OMAD though is that as long as I consume my calories during that one hour I still consider it one meal, even if I would have two meals during that 1 hour eating window, with like 20 minutes brake between them; I think that's how most people define OMAD, but I have heard some say it is literary one meal, no snacking allowed even if eating window is not yet closed, so figured I would make a note on this.
WFPBD: This is an acronym which stands for Whole Foods Plant Based Diet. Basically what this means is that this diet is all plant foods—no animal foods whatsoever, not even in small amounts—as well as only whole (unprocessed) foods; no oils, added salt, processed sugar, artificial preservatives, etc. Processing food yourself through home cooking, such as boiling, steaming, baking, etc, is allowed (up to a reasonable extent of course; if you are making homemade sugar from fresh sugar beets it would still not be ok), but no factory processed stuff for sure.
PBD/PB: Just stands for Plant Based Diet, or simply Plant Based. This one still has no animal foods in it allowed, but no limit on how many processed junk you can eat. Because of this PBD could be just as healthy as WFPBD, if processed foods are kept to absolute minimum, or as unhealthy as it can possibly get, if tons of processed PB (plant based) junk is consumed, or anything in–between.
WF: Just stands for Whole Foods. The foods that are closest to it's natural form and are not processed. Apart from plants, this might also include animal foods too, such as meat, since it is technically a whole food. But not all whole pieces of meat are whole foods—meats that have been preserved by smoking, salting, curing or adding chemical preservatives are not whole foods, even if they are whole cuts of meat; ham, bacon, deli meat for example are all processed foods.
WFD: Have not used this acronym for now, at least I don't think so, but I might in the future. It simply means Whole Foods Diet. I might use this when I am referring to a WF diet which is not plant based. Such as when maybe I have managed to avoid processed crap that day but had some meat or something.

I love my acronyms!

Anyways, this dieting week was an interesting experience. I was not sure whether it will actually be easier than straight up fasting for days, but it does seem like it is, albeit not by as much as I expected. The goal was to stick to WFPBD, but that was often a fail, because I did have some processed foods (I also had some animal foods too on the relapse binge day); I did have a realization this week how much processed foods are out there and how big part they actually are of our diet, certainly my diet anyhow! Even something like raw, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil and some pink Himalayan salt are still considered processed foods! Are they unhealthy though? Some WFPBD advocates say they are, but it's hard for me to imagine that all processed foods are unhealthy, simply cos they are processed—it seems like some variation of appeal to nature fallacy.
I do like the clear boundaries and idealistic goals that this type of diet sets though. Because if I aim to follow the WFPBD and fail, chances are I will still end up on mostly whole foods that day. But if my only goal is to follow plant based diet, then I might overeat on processed junk way too much—you can not hit a target for which you do not aim!
This was the first time I attempted to follow a WFPBD, but I have been actually following a normal plant based diet (for the most part—had some slipups here and there) for years, and that is the diet on which I gained all the weight on, cos I would just eat so much processed stuff full of oils, sugar, etc!
I could try to aim for plant based diet which is mostly made out of whole foods, and processed foods it has in it are the healthy type, like extra virgin olive oil for example, rather than fucking Nutella or some shit. And in fact that was exactly how I originally planned it. But there is some part of my brain that will rationalize that since I am only doing PBD, not WFPBD, then junk food is fair game! And soon enough I find myself eating deep fried stuff and other crap. So I have realized that normal plant based diet does not work for me. But with following WFPBD for the past week I notice that because I set myself a clear boundary of whole foods, that even if I give in to my cravings of processed foods, the end result is not as bad. Obviously it's just one week, so I need to experiment more with this, but so far it seems like it could be a promising diet to stick to long term, after I lose all this weight and am done with extended water fasting.

I also counted calories for the past week. It appears to be easier that expected! I simply weight what I eat on a kitchen scale and then enter the amount into my online diary in Cronometer, and it calculates everything for me automatically—boom!
I also counted calories burned through exercise, well, at least for couple days that I did exercise, cos since I got cold I felt too weak and was not able to do my daily walks.
I googled for calorie burn calculators and tried a few, all of which gave slightly different results that were sometimes off by up to couple hundreds! I ended up picking the ones that approximated my calorie burn to be the lowest; I think it's better to underestimate how much you are burning than to delude yourself into thinking you are burning more than you are and overeat! I ended up using calculator from the Mayo Clinic website to calculate my maintenance calories and Calories Burned Calculator from Calculator.net to calculate my exercise burned calories.
The idea for the past week was to still stay at large calorie deficit, to keep losing weight even when not doing extended fasting. I calculated my maintenance calories to be 2450 and during my OMAD I aimed to eat minimum of 1200, but to not go over 1500. That might seem like a drastic calorie deficit, but when comparing it to fasting on only water for almost a week it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. And it was not hard to maintain at all on WFPBD, because whole plant foods are super filling due to high amounts of fiber, and not very calorically dense—there were even a couple days lest week where I was struggling to reach 1200 calories, cos I was just so full!
I was super tempted to just go the easy way and add some oil, just to get calories up, but obviously that is not a whole food. I did end up finding a way around it: fatty nuts and seeds, cos they are still high in oil while also being whole food.
Then other times, when I gave in to some processed junk, I had hard time keeping it under 1500; all that processed stuff was just so calorically dense and not satiating at all! So I ended my OMAD of eating while still feeling partially hungry—annoying feeling!
What helped me was that I ate my OMAD at the evening, so by the time I feel hungry again it's night time and I am asleep. While I tend to not be as hungry in the mornings; hunger starts to come up at around 2 to 4 PM, and then I can easily hold back until about 6 o'clock before eating. But if I would have my OMAD in the morning I would probably be hungry at the end of a day again and that would make me to struggle more with sticking to the eating regimen. Obviously some other people might be the most hungry in the morning, so it might be good idea to eat earlier for them.

Overall I feel that during this week I realized the importance of eating whole foods, if I want to lose weight and keep it down—it's the processed junk that keeps most of us fat, cos it is extremely calorically dense and at the same time not satiating and filling enough!

Daily morning weight in: 251.54 lbs (113.7 kg)—I did end up losing weight slowly every day during this week (at the days when I have kept my calories consistent anyways), so I guess calorie deficit does work for weight loss, if you stick to the diet.
Lets do some calculations! So there is 9 calories per gram of pure fat, such as oil for example. So that would be around 4100 calories per pound of fat. But obviously human fat cells are not pure fat, but also water and protein, so human pound of body fat apparently contains about 3500 calories. So from my intended 1000 calorie deficit a day I should lose about 2 pounds of fat a week! Not sure how accurate that calculation is, since human body is a system with many variables and it's not as simple as calories in vs calories out though, but looking at my limited weight in data it might be close. Either way, I am still gonna stick to extended water fasting though, cos normal weight loss is way too slow; why settle for 8 pounds a month when you could lose 18 pounds a month?! AHAHA!

Not sure whether I am gonna post an update every day now, seems pointless, cos I am not on any commitment for now. Just gonna go get rid of cold and then make a post when I am ready to jump into the next fast.

 

Ok, been a while, but I am back and ready to jump into extended water fasting again!
What I thought was a cold ended up being Covid, so the recovery took longer than expected; I feel that I'm still not completely recovered (have some lingering cough, which is almost gone now, but not fully—maybe a fast can help to finish healing it out), but I am good enough to resume my weight loss journey.
I will start another water fast tomorrow, the goal is to go for 2 days and then brake it on the 1st. So nothing major, just a short one to end this year on a positive note.
I have been eating 100% perfect WFPBD for the past 3 days, as well as OMAD and calorie counting with a decent deficit, so I am happy to jump into this fast with a good momentum of eating super clean for the few days prior.
I want to start the new year of 2023 with a positive momentum behind my back!

 

Day 1 of 2 day water fast in progress...
Daily morning weight in: 251.54 lbs (114.1 kg).
4k walk done.

 

Day 2 of 2 day water fast in progress...
Daily morning weight in: 248.90 lbs (112.9 kg).
7k walk done.