Yesterday was a more standard day (same meat both days since I meal prepped a batch of moo nam tok). I usually also have a side of veggies with each meal, which I don't bother tracking.
@krisso The one I'm using here and which I like best of the ones I've tried is https://cronometer.com. Its free plan has what I need, it has both macronutrient and micronutrient tracking, and its food/nutrition database is sourced either from reliable sources like the USDA or if sourced from users then it's curated/validated (e.g. user submissions need to come with photos of nutrition labels of the food to add to the shared database) and in either case each entry's source is clearly labeled.
Reality vs model: I'm down from 120 kg to 86 kg as of this week since last July. I had a planned 2-month maintenance phase starting around Christmas where I ate at or barely below maintenance. Other months were spent in ~1000 kcal/day deficit which translates into 2 lb/week = 0.9 kg/week in equivalent fat mass. If you average 120 kg - 86 kg over the 8 months spent in a deficit, it's about 1.0 kg/week of weight loss (total fat/lean mass) or about 1%/week, which is a pretty typical target.
@pervognsen congratulations, super impressive! I am happy for your achievements and journey :)
you surely know that such an extreme deficit is not very sustainable, but I tend to do the same (I am impatient) - though limit it to 6 weeks max (this is when I start to feel terrible on crash diets and also ~1500 kcal), then break, and then come back.
@BartWronski Pretty universally, 0.5% to 1% per week is the recommended range. I agree that 1% per week is at the high end but it's also a lot easier starting out when you were as fat as I was. But yeah, I would have reduced the deficit gradually if it had been an issue. The 2-month maintenance phase in the middle pretty much reset all my diet fatigue, so it wasn't a big problem but YMMV. In any case, I'm basically done--my goal weight is 83-85 kg, and I was predicting middle of May.
@pervognsen yeah, this part looks good and reasonable, I was referring to the deficit itself, most recommend starting with -200 or -300 and adjusting to the new maintenance over time. But if it worked for you - great! :) And as I mentioned, I tend to do the same.
Did you use ozempic or something similar to help suppress the appetite? I started (only for dieting periods) 2y ago based on advice from my brother, a doctor, before all this hype, and it definitely helped making it less miserable.
@BartWronski Nope, I'm drug-phobic to an extreme. Two of my family members worked on the drug at Novo (and one of them uses it now) and I've looked a lot at the studies on GLP-1 analogs and it seems like a great solution for people who want/need it. There's a lot of other drugs in that category slated to come out the next few years, so I expect it to get cheap and much more widely available.
@BartWronski And it sounds like you're in the same boat because 2 years at a 0.5% deficit sounds infinitely worse to me than 1 year at 1% deficit. The most disruptive thing about being in a consistent deficit at all is the change in behavior, so there's "fixed overhead" regardless of whether the deficit is 0.5% or 1% and for me that's most of the subjective cost.
@pervognsen yeah, it has a lot to do with personality, our bodies, and preferences - any blanket advice might work for many, but it's guaranteed it won't wor for everyone.
I also approach it from fitness / bodybuilding perspective and getting under 10%bf from time to time, and it always sucks, makes you hungry, and your body resists it (probably doubly so for me, as I was obese in most of my teens, messing up my metabolism forever). So I want to be done as quickly as possible. :)
@BartWronski I also have experience dieting down to slightly under 10% BF back when I was doing CrossFit and weightlifting in the early 2010s. Getting from 12% to 9% in my early 30s was way harder than going from 120 kg to 86 kg in my early 40s. People misuse "starvation mode" to refer to any calorie deficit but it really applies when you're already lean. :)
@pervognsen 100% the same for me, when I first started working out, going from 25% to 15% just "automatically" happened to me from activity, more muscle, and a cleaner diet plus more protein. I did not even try going into any specific caloric deficit. Then going to 12% took me 5y and trial-and-error, and I got sub 10% only in the last year's, focusing on it, adding cardio, and periodic crazy diets...
@BartWronski The absolute worst thing I remember was that sleep quality and workout quality went to zero when I got to 10%. I couldn't fall asleep unless I shifted 2/3rd of calories to my evening meal and immediately went to bed. And then I'd still wake up starving at midnight. Anyway, getting lower than 12-15% was a one-time experiment, I learned my lesson.
@pervognsen@BartWronski For me small deficit if your baseline is notably higher vs goal ends up fairly demoralizing: your sustained progress is less visible amidst natural variation, and it’s easy to mess up the counting to be off by a large margin of target deficit. I’ve been trying to do small increments over last 6 months and just doesn’t seem to work long term for me, so trying a larger deficit and more control now.
(I’m also slowly increasing strength simultaneously so a narrow balance…)
@zeux@BartWronski Yeah, even at a higher deficit you can easily have 1-2 week stretches where weight seems flat and then whooshes despite you not changing anything. (I weigh every morning but only bother logging if it's different than last checkpoint, hence why the weight data points look sparser.) Tracking things quantitatively and keeping your choice of foods and activity consistent does take away most of the second-guessing when progress seems to slow down or stall.
@pervognsen That’s remarkable consistency, congratulations! Seems like a faster than typical loss rate to me. I’ve done 0.5 kg/week for extended stretches twice, and enjoyed it, but I think doubling that would be tough for me.
@asb Hmm, not that I can think of but that's probably individual. I guess occasionally I'd have a headache right before a scheduled meal and it'd go away immediately when eating, but even that was rare.
@Sharlock93 Nah, no exercise at all for the first six months and it doesn't really move the needle enough to worry about if you wouldn't do it anyway. I added some walking and later running but kept the deficit the same (i.e. offset additional burn with additional intake). The running messed up my knees/hips a bit and I'm still taking it easy; I was reminded why I stopped running last time I was in shape, so I stopped.
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