Fair warning: this will be a long post filled with data and graphs and some potentially controversial commentary. You may feel the urge to express how I am doing something wrong, not eating enough, etc. I’ve seen and read it all so it will fall on deaf ears here, but have at it I suppose. I plan to save the controversial bits for a section at the end. I have been disappointed with a lot of the commentary lately — attacking success posts with ridiculous and misplaced pseudo-science that keeps getting repeated over and over. These comments are sadly upvoted the most.
Some intro:
I am 33M. In my teens and early 20s I was pretty fit. A solid 175 and pretty athletic. Since I was about 23 or so, I have gone up and down. Unfortunately, like most people that know what I’m talking about, I would go up more every time than I would go down. I eventually likely topped at around ~320lbs in this last go around. Given this, I would say I have a solid decade of experience on exactly how my body reacts to any number of diets and regimens. I know how fast I can lose weight, and, sadly, I know how fast I can gain it it back. I track my weight daily in as a controlled environment as possible using multiple scales. It’s a bit crazy but I appreciate the data and being able to work out trends (moving average and polynomial etc). Other things I track religiously: heart rate, blood pressure, 90% pressure on a (automatic) CPAP. I plan on showing all of this below.
Start on 2/24 at 312.2
Current 4/28 at 261.3
Total loss: 50.9
Overall rate: 5.5/week
Strategy: IF (specifically 23:1, aka OMAD)
| Date | Recorded | Loss |
|---|---|---|
| 2/24/2020 | 312.2 | 0 |
| 2/25/2020 | 311.9 | 0.3 |
| 2/26/2020 | 309.5 | 2.4 |
| 2/27/2020 | 307.7 | 1.8 |
| 2/28/2020 | 306.3 | 1.4 |
| 2/29/2020 | 305.3 | 1 |
| 3/1/2020 | 304.3 | 1 |
| 3/2/2020 | 302.2 | 2.1 |
| 3/3/2020 | 301.6 | 0.6 |
| 3/4/2020 | 301.2 | 0.4 |
| 3/5/2020 | 300.4 | 0.8 |
| 3/6/2020 | 298.9 | 1.5 |
| 3/7/2020 | 298.7 | 0.2 |
| 3/8/2020 | 297.7 | 1 |
| 3/9/2020 | 297.7 | 0 |
| 3/10/2020 | 297 | 0.7 |
| 3/11/2020 | 296.7 | 0.3 |
| 3/12/2020 | 294.8 | 1.9 |
| 3/13/2020 | 293.6 | 1.2 |
| 3/14/2020 | 292.5 | 1.1 |
| 3/15/2020 | 291.4 | 1.1 |
| 3/16/2020 | 290.9 | 0.5 |
| 3/17/2020 | 290.3 | 0.6 |
| 3/18/2020 | 289.3 | 1 |
| 3/19/2020 | 289.1 | 0.2 |
| 3/20/2020 | 289.4 | -0.3 |
| 3/21/2020 | 289.1 | 0.3 |
| 3/22/2020 | 287.9 | 1.2 |
| 3/23/2020 | 287.5 | 0.4 |
| 3/24/2020 | 286.2 | 1.3 |
| 3/25/2020 | 286.2 | 0 |
| 3/26/2020 | 285.7 | 0.5 |
| 3/27/2020 | 284.1 | 1.6 |
| 3/28/2020 | 283.6 | 0.5 |
| 3/29/2020 | 282.7 | 0.9 |
| 3/30/2020 | 282.9 | -0.2 |
| 3/31/2020 | 281.9 | 1 |
| 4/1/2020 | 282 | -0.1 |
| 4/2/2020 | 281.5 | 0.5 |
| 4/3/2020 | 279.7 | 1.8 |
| 4/4/2020 | 279.5 | 0.2 |
| 4/5/2020 | 279.2 | 0.3 |
| 4/6/2020 | 278.4 | 0.8 |
| 4/7/2020 | 277.6 | 0.8 |
| 4/8/2020 | 275.8 | 1.8 |
| 4/9/2020 | 274.3 | 1.5 |
| 4/10/2020 | 273.6 | 0.7 |
| 4/11/2020 | 274 | -0.4 |
| 4/12/2020 | 273.1 | 0.9 |
| 4/13/2020 | 271.8 | 1.3 |
| 4/14/2020 | 270.7 | 1.1 |
| 4/15/2020 | 270.1 | 0.6 |
| 4/16/2020 | 268.7 | 1.4 |
| 4/17/2020 | 268.7 | 0 |
| 4/18/2020 | 268.5 | 0.2 |
| 4/19/2020 | 267.2 | 1.3 |
| 4/20/2020 | 267.2 | 0 |
| 4/21/2020 | 266.1 | 1.1 |
| 4/22/2020 | 266.3 | -0.2 |
| 4/23/2020 | 266.8 | -0.5 |
| 4/24/2020 | 265.4 | 1.4 |
| 4/25/2020 | 264.8 | 0.6 |
| 4/26/2020 | 262.7 | 2.1 |
| 4/27/2020 | 261.3 | 1.4 |
| 4/28/2020 | 261.3 | 0 |
The raw data. The recorded weights are averaged with multiple weigh-ins. They happen at the same time every day, wearing the same clothes, etc. While a bathroom scale is never perfect, I’ve tried to control is as much as possible.
A simple recorded vs. date graph:
Another type of metric that I personally like to keep track of is recorded loss (delta) vs date. This type of peak and valley chart is very help for me in tracking trends and moving averages.
Loss vs Date (with trend) - 10% error range
This is obviously pretty extreme weight loss in this case (hovering around 0.6lb/day. But it’s a fun metric for anyone to track regardless of what the actual numbers are. I mean if you’re nerdy about the data and find it helpful like I do, anyway.
Tracking my BP was very eye-opening for me. The shocking realization of how quickly I adjusted and everything dropped was not something I expected. The raw data:
| Date | Systolic | Diastolic |
|---|---|---|
| 2/22/20 | 147 | 98 |
| 2/23/20 | 144 | 94 |
| 2/24/20 | 142 | 92 |
| 2/25/20 | 126 | 88 |
| 2/26/20 | 127 | 90 |
| 2/27/20 | 126 | 89 |
| 2/28/20 | 125 | 85 |
| 2/29/20 | 124 | 85 |
| 3/1/20 | 123 | 84 |
| 3/2/20 | 123 | 83 |
| 3/3/20 | 120 | 82 |
| 3/4/20 | 119 | 82 |
| 3/5/20 | 120 | 82 |
| 3/6/20 | 122 | 80 |
| 3/7/20 | 122 | 80 |
| 3/8/20 | 121 | 79 |
| 3/9/20 | 120 | 73 |
| 3/10/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 3/11/20 | 117 | 75 |
| 3/12/20 | 118 | 80 |
| 3/13/20 | 119 | 75 |
| 3/14/20 | 116 | 76 |
| 3/15/20 | 116 | 76 |
| 3/16/20 | 117 | 77 |
| 3/17/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 3/18/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 3/19/20 | 115 | 78 |
| 3/20/20 | 115 | 74 |
| 3/21/20 | 116 | 79 |
| 3/22/20 | 117 | 80 |
| 3/23/20 | 116 | 76 |
| 3/24/20 | 116 | 78 |
| 3/25/20 | 120 | 77 |
| 3/26/20 | 119 | 77 |
| 3/27/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 3/28/20 | 115 | 75 |
| 3/29/20 | 115 | 75 |
| 3/30/20 | 115 | 75 |
| 3/31/20 | 116 | 75 |
| 4/1/20 | 115 | 76 |
| 4/2/20 | 116 | 74 |
| 4/3/20 | 117 | 74 |
| 4/4/20 | 115 | 75 |
| 4/5/20 | 115 | 75 |
| 4/6/20 | 116 | 76 |
| 4/7/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 4/8/20 | 118 | 77 |
| 4/9/20 | 117 | 77 |
| 4/10/20 | 116 | 75 |
| 4/11/20 | 120 | 76 |
| 4/12/20 | 119 | 77 |
| 4/13/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 4/14/20 | 117 | 77 |
| 4/15/20 | 118 | 79 |
| 4/16/20 | 117 | 76 |
| 4/17/20 | 118 | 78 |
| 4/18/20 | 116 | 77 |
| 4/19/20 | 115 | 76 |
| 4/20/20 | 115 | 73 |
| 4/21/20 | 116 | 76 |
| 4/22/20 | 115 | 76 |
| 4/23/20 | 116 | 75 |
| 4/24/20 | 116 | 78 |
| 4/25/20 | 117 | 77 |
| 4/26/20 | 115 | 76 |
| 4/27/20 | 116 | 75 |
| 4/28/20 | 115 | 76 |
My readings before starting this were terrifying to me.
Next I want to talk about heart rate — specifically resting and even more specifically sleeping rate.
Everyone and every app kind of calculates their RHR in a slightly different way. What I’m going to show is my statistics via my AutoSleep iOS app (in my opinion the best sleep tracking app on iOS). I (very snugly) wear an Apple Watch Series 5 every night to track as much data as possible. The absurdly sharp and immediate decrease in my sleeping heart rate after I started OMAD still blows me away every time I look at it.
A screenshot of my AutoSleep (iOS) app
I did not change how I slept, when I slept, my CPAP settings, nothing. The only difference was eating garbage all day long to eating one meal a day.
Lastly, the final metric I want to talk about is something with CPAP users called “90% pressure”. This is a simple number, it means the pressure the machine was at for 90% of the session. I know I will lose a lot of people for this last bit but hang around if you have some sleep apnea for a minute—
An automatic CPAP machine is one that allows you to set a range of pressure. Someone that has a lot of severe apnea events every night might set their minimum pressure to 10 (cm H2O) and a maximum pressure of 20. This means the machine won’t go below 10 whether you need that amount of pressure or not. But as you fall deeper in to sleep or change your sleeping position throughout the night, the muscles might relax some more and you might require more pressure to keep your airways open. If the machine keeps you around 15 cm H2O for the majority of the night, then that is what your 90% pressure number would be. Given that (most) people suffer from OSA as a direct result of their weight, this is an amazing metric to keep track of as you lose weight. I know personally I start to need a CPAP machine around 240lbs. Sadly I (and my wife) knows that from experience going up and down. So, hopefully, that happens again this time and I can get rid of the machine for what I hope is the final time.
I self-diagnosed and learned how to deal with sleep apnea and bought my own machine— while I firmly believe it saved my life: you should not do this! Self-medicating and buying your own equipment is not only time-consuming and expensive but it’s also potentially dangerous. If you think you have sleep apnea or if you already have your own machine and need to adjust your settings, you should reach out to your sleep specialist. That’s my disclaimer. **If you take anything away from this post at all — PLEASE do not ignore signs of sleep apnea. **20 years from now we are going to look back in disbelief at how casually we treated this absolutely deadly sleep disorder.
Anyway, as I lose weight, I am slowly bringing my minimum pressure down. My minimum pressure used to be 9 and it is now at 5.5. At this point I’m dropping it about 0.5 every 10-15lbs or so.
Lowering my minimum causes the sudden drops. This is my favorite thing to track with very real consequences.
Equipment: Phillips DreamStation (with DreamWear mask)
I never go above 1.5 AHI a night. Most of the time I am below 1.
I use DreamMapper and OSCAR (formerly/forked from SleepyHead) to analyze data from the machine.
Now that the data is out of the way, I can talk about what I did. A reminder, this is what I did.. it works for me. It’s actually easy for me. What works for you might be different!
Supplements:
Multi-vitamin
Garlic oil
Omega-3s
Vitamin D3
CoQ10
Exercise: Minimal. At least a 30 minute (not vigorous) workout a day to make sure I close my rings.
I started with OMAD. Probably eating about 800-1400 calories a day. Not really caring about limiting anything like bad carbs. This was naturally very easy for me because I enjoy eating one meal a day — I keep myself busy enough that I don’t go crazy during the day and I start to look forward to (and appreciate more) that one meal a day. Anyone who has done this can attest: food just starts to immediately taste that much better! During this time, I was also drinking coke zero and sugar-free MiO all day long. Then about a month in, I read “The Obesity Code” by Dr. Jason Fung. That book and man needs no introduction here, but needless to say, it changed my worldview. No longer obsessed with calories and macros, I instead shifted my focus to exactly when I eat, and exactly the ingredients in what I was putting in my mouth. I so appreciated all of the science and studies that backed nearly every claim in the book. Calories seemed pointless, all I cared about now was insulin and insulin resistance.
That’s when I made another shift towards the end of March. I cut out ALL the sweetened stuff throughout the day. No more Coke Zero, no more flavored water and sugar-free energy drinks. This turned out to be substantially more difficult to adjust to than simply eating one meal a day. I didn’t realize how much I needed my Coke Zero fix. My savior became what is now my favorite gadget in the kitchen: my SodaStream. I make and drink (plain) sparkling water all day long and I love it. I was a sparkling fan before but now it’s a way of life. Gives me that fizz that I desire too. I realize I could also probably get away with black coffee or green tea, but honestly I’ve felt no need. It took a week or two to get used to doing OMAD the right way. It’s been smooth sailing since.
I have learned to deal mentally with the plateaus (and even the jumps) in weight every day. But it is not simple. It can be very difficult to deal with seeing the scale pause or even go up over the course of a week when you are barely eating anything. It still hurts when it happens to me but I am getting better at brushing those periods off and basically ignoring it. It’s like during the NFL season; every time my team wins a game I spend all week on NFL.com, ESPN.com, looking at power rankings, reading about how we crushed our opponent. When we lose a game I usually just pretend the NFL doesn’t exist that week. The good news is it’s only a matter of time again until we get another W. Unless you’re Cleveland.
Some random observations:
In the last 2 weeks, I started adding magnesium supplements and making sure I get my psyllium husk down before every meal. I have noticed a distinct lack of bowel movements for long periods of time that were becoming troubling. Since adding the magnesium (I went with mag glycinate) everything has been so, so much better. Please try to make sure you are getting enough fiber… can’t stress that enough.
Days I worked out much harder, my weight stalled. Sometimes it stalled for days. There are several reasons why this can happen (you can find plenty of info on this sub) but try not to sweat it. It’s mostly water retention from increased glycogen in the muscles. Take measurements with tape if you can! That’s something I regret not starting to capture from the beginning.
Everything, as you might expect, has improved for me. My mental clarity and acuity is noticeably higher. Headaches are gone. It’s much easier to move around and get stuff done. I’m sleeping normal hours instead of randomly getting tired and taking naps every day.
Intermittent fasting saved my life. I’m sure of it. It is the first time I’ve taken this journey with such ease. Weight loss benefits aside, I plan on sticking to OMAD or some form of IF for the rest of my life. It’s just too easy not to. Autophagy alone is plenty reason to keep going long after I hit my goal weight. If I go on vacation, I can enjoy myself for a week and get right back to it when I get home. Never in my life have I been so sure I can do this indefinitely.
The controversial bits
I want to begin by expressing how shameful some of the comments have become lately. Every person goes on this journey in some unique way. Just like the same people were attacked 20 years ago while trying to defend fat and being told basically “shut up everyone knows meat is bad and bread is good”, I see the same type of garbage repeated over and over again. But instead of being open to discussion, this crap is just repeated with some kind of invisible authority and confidence. The argumentum ad populum is upvoted. The few voices brave enough to respond “no, a calorie is not a calorie” are immediately downvoted, despite the mountains of evidence actually in their favor. The truly ironic comments are the ones that say “It’s all about CICO!” and “it’s not healthy to eat that little!” and “you can’t fast that long!” while ALSO RECOMMENDING PEOPLE READ “THE OBESITY CODE”. FYI to those people: Dr. Fung spends the entire book shitting on the whole concept of calories. He also believes you should just eat until you’re full (which might only be 800 calories a day for some people). He all but directly says there’s no harm (in fact there is great benefit) in fasting for extended periods of time. I don’t mean hours. I mean days. Weeks. Months, even.
If you actually bothered to read that book or any of the other literature and studies around intermittent fasting and insulin control, you would stop trying to shame people for not eating enough. You would stop saying “starvation mode is a myth.” Dramatic changes in diet (increase or decrease) cause almost an immediate and equally dramatic change in your daily expenditure. Get rid of your silly TDEE calculator. There are plenty of studies out there that show if you cut your caloric intake in half, almost immediately your daily expenditure is also cut in half. Turns out the body is pretty damn good at its job. When you stop eating as much, the body spends less energy. One of the first things it does? Stops trying so hard to keep your body temperature up… and it turns out that requires a significant amount of energy. If you started eating a lot less and wondered why you immediately felt so much colder every day, now you know why. This is just one example.
Fortunately we have plenty of studies with more ongoing now. Randomized isocaloric, eucaloric and crossover studies. TRF (time restricted feeding) benefits are massive. It’s all about insulin levels. Insulin makes you fat, not calories. Obesity is a hormonal issue, not a caloric imbalance. Insulin goes up, the body stores more energy. When you don’t eat, insulin goes down and that stored energy is used. Excess amounts of insulin (like, from eating all day long with no real break) causes your body to become resistant to the effects so it has to produce even more. It’s a nasty cycle. This is what fasting is all about.
A calorie is not a calorie. Is isn’t just about CICO! Knock that shit off. People will cut to 500 calories a day and eventually stop losing weight and wonder what’s going on. That’s how people give up and gain it all back. Or worse, how some people develop eating disorders. 200 calories of white sugar is not the same thing as 200 calories of broccoli. Stop saying that it is. There isn’t some magic computer in your body that is just depositing and withdrawing currency in the form of calories. Sugar is going to spike the hell out or your insulin. Broccoli is barely going to do anything. Stop looking at calories. If you look at anything, look at glycemic and insulin indexes.
Some sources that I've personally looked up and checked out. There's a ton more but I'm not going to drop sources that I haven't actually read myself.
I plan to update at 100% goal.
Cheers! And stay healthy out there.
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