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Miscellaneous Ramblings Nutrition/Weight Loss

Still Alive!

I was out at a party the other night when a relative came up to me and asked if I still had my blog. I assume he was talking about this one. It occurred to me that I haven’t posted to this or my other blogs in quite some time. That’s sad – I like writing. I just abhor the thought of writing as a way simply to draw clicks/revenue. Let’s face it folks – low-carb and just about any other type of diet out there can be summarized in a post or two. Anything beyond that is simply a shell game or relatively insignificant nuance. But enough of that…

How Have I Fared Since My Last Post?

I last posted over 3 years ago. That’s astonishing to me that time has passed so quickly. In a nutshell –

  1. Shortly after my last post, I started eating a lot more carbohydrate, for a number of reasons.
  2. I saw initial success – I was increasing my carb intake but also increasing my workouts. This worked for a month or so…
  3. Then I, very slowly, gained weight over the past couple of years (about 10 pounds).
  4. This past December, I felt bloated, had lost all muscle tone, and just was not happy with my body. I realized that I had slipped into the slow, insidious weight gain that naturally comes when overeating carbs along with age. I believe Mark Sisson wrote about this – it’s why most runners, even though they burn a shit ton of calories running daily, still slowly gain weight as they age.
  5. I decided enough was enough and began actively watching my diet. I focused on a 40/30/30 macro breakdown, figuring the increased carbs would be fine given my workouts. I tracked every calorie/macro using either MyFitnessPal or LoseIt! apps for months. My weight fluctuated but didn’t budge much. December through the end of February I actively tracked everything and was pretty diligent at staying under 2000 calories per day and yet I still did not lose weight, and was hungry all the time.

Back to Low(er) Carb

So in late February I decided that I had done my due diligence – I definitively proved to myself, with the daily tracking data and net results, that carbohydrate reduction was the best approach for me. I focused on keeping my carbs low, under 30g per day, especially on my non-weightlifting days. I immediately started losing weight. And my weightlifting has been going very well (that deserves a separate post). I’m now back to a pretty good weight, having dropped 8 of that 10 pounds I set out to lose. I will cut carbs hard the next 2 weeks because I have a 1 week vacation coming up in June where I’ll invariably gain a few pounds back due to drinking and eating (parties every night…).

One thing that has hindered my life greatly since my last post: about a year ago I switched squash shoes and aggravated my knee. Ever since I have been battling knee soreness to varying degrees. I need to stop playing squash for a couple of months (or three even) but I love it too much. We’ll see.

That’s all I got for now. No one reads this anymore, which is probably for the best – I contradict myself constantly in this blog : ) But heck, it’s an honest blog that is not making money off of peddling a ‘keto’ or any other type of diet. That’s a rare thing these days…

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