Progress (and plateau) with (too much) data
I'm a big (6'4") bloke who had been steadily putting on a bit of weight each year but just about managed to keep it deniable. Not least because I remained reasonably active. "I'm quite fit, I can't be that fat", I'd tell myself, even as the scale crept relentlessly upward.
I'd done a few diets (Fast 800 among them) but I'd hated them and put the weight back on almost as quickly as it had come off. The dreary food on Fast 800...
And then, one day, I heard about ADF because someone I knew had done it. She wasn't big to begin with and I hadn't seen her results but it caught me the right way and I just jumped in.
I'm a Monday Wednesday Friday chap and I eat over the weekend. I can't be working out the diary consequences of fasting different days each week and I absolutely positivey cannot be bothered with calorie counting. My fasting is strict but not doctrinaire, if you know what I mean. I would plan to be strict (black coffee, white tea, water and electrolyte) but, if I needed a banana to get me through the evening, or to eat a fish finger to encourage my five year old, I wouldn't freak out.
I've stuck to that regimen pretty well - with two exceptions, one for a family wedding and once last Friday for a friend's birthday. On each occasion, I ate the meal associated with the occasion but skipped breakfast and lunch and didn't snack.
Anyway, the first few weeks were a revelation. Mostly, the fasting days revealed just how much of my day was taken up thinking about, cooking, eating or clearing up food. I walked a fair bit, and I exercised a fair bit, I would get on a rower for 45mins, I'd get in the pool and swim 2-3km or I'd run. I found a new route and, by going slowly, I managed to run further than I ever had before. Over three weeks I worked up to a (VERY slow) half marathon. And then I did one each week. I even did one on a fasting day - although I do not recommend that at all. And, of course, the weight fell off.
For about eight weeks.
Having started at 114.6kg (252lbs) I got down to 105.6kg (232.3lb) over the course of eight weeks.
And then I plateaued. And I've been stuck at that plateau for a while now. But I had been weighing myself every day on my new fangled Withing body composition scale so I thought I'd share what that looked like and canvas the wisdom of the crowd.
So, the first chart up top is just weight. I have included a fair bit of data from before I started the diet. You can see where the diet starts though - not only from the shape of the trace but also because I added in a projected trendline from the start and which represents a weight loss of 1.5kg (3.3lbs/week) as you can see, I tracked that, fairly accurately for the first eight weeks before I parted company from it.
But there's no question that I have parted company from the trend. As of this morning I had lost just 7kg
So, when others have hit plateaus, one of the first things that people cite is fluctuations and, in particular, water weight.
But I can plot that too. Here is a chart of the change in the various components of body composition (fat, muscle, water), relative to the figures recorded on my start date. The good news, is that weight loss and fat loss track each other very closely - almost all the loss has come from fat rather than muscle or water (at least according to Withings' algorithm). In fact, at my most recent weigh in, (this morning) my scale said I had lost slightly more fat (7.6kg) than total wight (7kg) and that I had, consequently gained muscle. I think that's a bit unlikely but it's certainly within the margin of error for the machine's sensor. (Look how changes in water and muscle track over the week - I ostensibly gain about a kilo of solid muscle every weekend when I have two non-fast days together)All in all, I'm generally pleased. I have lost weight. I look better, my clothes fit better and I don't think I'd have been able to run any sort of a half marathon at all at my old weight. So, in some sense, I'm doing well - even as my absolute rowing performance has fallen off.
But I admit to being pretty mystified by the plateau.
I'm not counting calories or denying myself on eating days but I'm probably eating better than I was before I started anyway. I snack less and rarely have as big a lunch as I might previously have done. I do still have the occasional snack in the evening on eating days but it's generally a couple of crispbread with some cheese rather than a leftover drumstick. What I'm saying is that the plateau isn't because I've started eating 4,500 caliories on my eating days.
My measurements haven't changed quite as much as I thought they might either. My waist probably started at 41", it's now 38.5". It's certainly an improvement and, as I said, I'm back into trousers I haven't worn in years, which is great. But I seem to have stalled there.
And, of course, there's the looming thought that this is a pretty tough regimen to achieve maintenance. I don't want to do this forever and I don't want to gain it all back again. when I stop
I've got a few theories about this.
One possibility is that I am over-fitting the line. The plateau isn't that that big. Maybe I lost more weight at the beginning as my shocked body dumped water and (ahem) took a different view about the contents of my colon but what is now happening is that I am acclimatising a bit. I therefore had the illusion of losing fat a bit faster than I actually was and my present weight is a fairer reflection of how I'm doing. That would be consistent with my calories in. My fasting means I'm proabably 7500calories down on the week before exercise. Add in another 2,000 for the exercise and I might be at a total deficit of 9,500 calories, which isn't quite enough to deliver the 3.3lbs/week of of loss I was originally seeing - even before accounting for those stray bananas/fishfingers.
On that view, I should carry on as I am for a few weeks and it will come right in the end.
The other is that there is some sort of metabolic rebalancing going on and I need to do something to punch through, re-shock my metabolism and make more gains.
If you've read this far, you've earned the right to tell me precisely what you think.