Bogus's Journey (-20%BF and -50Lbs)

[bogus83]

155.2

I've been doing some cardio work this week, I really need to get my endurance back up. I was in much better shape the last time I was at this weight. Of course I was around 15 then and I'm almost 30 now, but who's counting? But seriously, I used to be able to bike for 40 miles and swim all day (not in the same day :P) and now a good bike workout kicks my butt and I can barely swim a few laps without taking a break. That's the downside to losing this much weight without working out, something I'm looking to remedy one step at a time. After all, I live in southern California and I have to be able to swim well if I'm going to start surfing!

[bogus83]

This morning I was 155.x. I did a bit of cheating this weekend at a day-long music festival. Something tells me it'll be a pound or two lower tomorrow... call it a hunch.

[bogus83]

154.2

[bogus83]

I'm starting to think my scale isn't working. This morning I weighed in at 154.2, both before AND after using the bathroom. And that's exactly what it read yesterday. Coincidence?

[bogus83]

Ok, it's time to get this thing back on track. The "week off" for vacation turned into "mostly keeping up with the diet" followed by "a college friend I haven't seen in years is visiting" which lead to "I'm just going to do whatever."

No more of that.

This morning I weighed in at 155.4. The same EXACT weight as I was last night. I still think there's something funny going on with my scale- it seems to be remembering the last weight recorded and using that to account for minor differences- but that's no excuse. I was 162 at the end of 2010. That's not even ten pounds in eight months. A year ago I was 176. Twenty pounds in a year? Sure, twenty pounds is twenty pounds and I'm a lot happier at my current weight than I was then, but I was really hoping to be DONE with this whole thing by now.

There are 20 weeks left in the year. That should be enough time to get under 140. I might have to spend some time kicking my own ass to get it done, but I think that needed to happen anyway.

So! Re-motivated and ready to go.

[bogus83]

Weigh-in 9/2/2011

155.0

It has become clear that breaking this plateau is going to be more difficult than I'd anticipated. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if 155 is my body's "set point". At this point I'd be happy to be under 155 by the end of the month- I'm taking a trip back to NY in four weeks.

[bogus83]

I've not been doing well lately with my diet. In fact, I'm willing to estimate that I'm up to 165 right now. Haven't weighed myself in a while. I also haven't posted in over a month, and I think the last time I updated my spreadsheet was sometime in July. It's funny how it gets easier to lose track of your progress when you stop keeping track of it.

Time for some accountability. I'll be starting a new spreadsheet tomorrow morning, and re-starting my quest to get in shape. There are eleven weeks until the first weigh-in of next year, so my goal will be to lose at least ten pounds between tomorrow and January 2, 2012.

[bogus83]

W: 166

10 weeks and 6 days to go.

[bogus83]

W: 163.2

There goes the water weight.

[bogus83]

W:160.2

Guess there was more water weight than I thought.

[bogus83]

Ok, this has gone far enough. I am making a commitment right now to getting back on track. I'll be posting weekly updates.

W:170.6

Yeah, I really let it get away from me. But I was up to 176, and I've gotten back down this much already. I'm going to return to what worked before, aiming for a pound per week. My birthday is in April, so my new goal is: Under 160 by my birthday. Just over 10 pounds in 10 weeks. Stay tuned.

[bogus83]

W: 171.8

My weight has been fluctuating a lot. It was down as low as 169.0 and up as high as 175.6. I think it's going to take a while to level out.

[bogus83]

w: 172.4

Super Bowl party.

[bogus83]

Yes, I'm necro'ing a ten year old thread.

So, life happened, I didn't keep up with fitness much over the past decade, and with WFH and the pandemic added on top... I ended up at 230 pounds. Yeah, I'm not especially proud of that.

But I decided to do something about it. Starting in September of 2021, I got my diet back in order and I'm back on The Journey. As of today I'm down 36 pounds, which I think is a pretty good start. No protein shakes or anything like that this time, just cutting out all of the junk food and booze, almost all of the red meat, and piling on the grains/fruit/veggies/chicken/fish.

I won't be posting daily or probably even weekly, but I'll come back to update on major milestones. My first big goal is to reach 150 before the end of the year.

More to come.

[bogus83]

189

41 pounds down.

[bogus83]

180. 50 pounds down!

Time to buy some new clothes, everything I have is way too big now.

Next goal: 150 by mid-September.

[CommitmentRulz]

180. 50 pounds down!

Time to buy some new clothes, everything I have is way too big now.

Next goal: 150 by mid-September.

Nice! Congrats!

[bogus83]

177.7. Kind of a random number to update with, right?

Not that I'm expecting anyone who read the original posts in this thread to still be here, but last time around when I got to 150 pounds I ended up going on vacation with my folks and managed to put on ten pounds of temporary weight (https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...#post723362301). Same thing happened this month; I hit 180 and spent a week in NC for a family wedding, and went from 180 to 191. But this time I didn't just turn into a human garbage disposal... I made an effort to try to at least stay below a maintenance level of calories. According to my scale and watch which both provide body composition metrics (although they don't quite agree on them), the weight was almost entirely water. I chalk that up to a higher than normal salt intake and insufficient water intake while doing a fair amount of physical activity in hot weather (hiking, dancing, etc). That's still a LOT of water for my body to hold onto though.

Anyway, I got right back to business when I returned home, and I've lost all of the short-term weight plus a few pounds. It was a quick enough turnaround that my health app warned me about the rate of weight loss. Moral of the story is that it helps to have prior experience and current determination.

It was also a good trial run for what will be the real challenge of the year. In mid-September I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks, and I expect that there will be a similar if not even greater amount of temporary weight to lose when I get back.

I'm revising my goals a bit and focusing more on shorter sprints. Given my weight as of today, my next goals are to be under 170 by the end of July and under 160 by the end of August. That's a fairly aggressive two pound per week goal but I think it's doable.

[bogus83]

172.1

Why is that significant? Well, see post #73... (https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showt...#post829498301)

Last time I was working on losing weight (in 2012), I stopped tracking when I had bounced back from 150 to 172.4. So that means my weight is the lowest that it has been in a decade. Heck yeah. And another 20 pounds down doesn't really seem like all that much, so I'm feeling good about my progress.

As of July 3rd I've started adding some cardio in the form of 3.5 miles walks. I'm fortunate to live at the base of a mountain, so there's a convenient loop through the neighborhood that includes a lot of hills and takes almost exactly an hour. I've been doing that six days per week, mostly in the morning before work, and if my watch is anywhere near accurate I've been burning an extra 3-400 calories while improving my base level of fitness. It's interesting to see how metrics like maximum heart rate, time in different heart rate zones, and VO2max change, even over a fairly short amount of time.

I'm still on track for the 170 and 160 milestones, maybe even a bit ahead of what I'd anticipated. Can I hit 150 by September 12th, in time for the Hawaii trip? It'll be close... we'll find out soon enough.

[bogus83]

169.9. 60 pounds down!

I may need to bring my calories up a bit after the upcoming trip, I'm not sure that cutting this hard is sustainable long term.

Edit: Reached another weight loss milestone this morning; I'm down to my last belt hole. It's always nice to have tangible evidence that the effort is working.

[bogus83]

It's really ridiculous how much water my body holds on to after eating anything with salt in it. On Saturday I was down to 167. Then I had a single slice of pizza for dinner on Sunday, with all other meals from the weekend through today being on point, as well as getting a good amount of exercise and nearly a gallon of water per day... and tonight I'm up to 172.5. I gained five pounds of water as a result of having ONE piece of pizza? If I didn't know that it was literally impossible to gain real weight while in a significant calorie deficit, this would be pretty frustrating. As it is, I'll just have to see how many days it takes to flush the water out of my system.

And here I was, getting excited about the next milestone...

[bogus83]

This morning I'm down to 170.5. I'm surprised that I haven't shed the rest of the water weight yet, particularly because I've been tracking every calorie and exercising daily, and I'm 100% certain I'm in a calorie deficit. What's interesting is that both my scale and watch are saying that my fat mass is down and my muscle mass is up; I know that neither device is particularly accurate, and it's not usually possible to build muscle while in the significant deficit, but considering I've been walking and hiking for about a month now, I wonder if my body is attempting to build some amount of muscle, and by association, storing a bit more water/glycogen. That's the only thing I can think of considering I was able to drop almost ten pounds of shorter term weight a few months ago.

I'm not going to stress about it. Getting stronger and more fit is better than seeing weight numbers go down. Still, it helps to have goals, so I'm going to target ten pounds in the remaining five weeks before the trip, and we'll see what actually happens.

[bogus83]

And today I'm down to 168.7. Water weight is weird. Oh well, onward!

[bogus83]

Once again I was up to 170 and now I'm back to 168-ish. My body composition is improving (less fat at same weight), but it still feels like gaining and losing the same two pounds over and over...

Hopefully I'll finally break this cycle this week. I've increased my walking distance to five miles most days, which should burn 450-500 calories and help to sweat out some of the water weight.

[bogus83]

166.6. That's a new low, and if I'm lucky, an indication that I've finally broken out of the range I was stuck in. Just for fun I ran the numbers:

7/28: 167.5, 32 lbs fat, 135 lbs muscle
8/11: 167.5, 28.6 lbs fat, 138.9 lbs muscle
8/16: 167.4, 28.6 lbs fat, 138.8 lbs muscle
8/17: 166.6, 27.1 lbs fat, 139.5 lbs muscle

Once again, I know the readings from this scale aren't very accurate. But the trend sure looks like I stayed at almost the exact same weight for three weeks while improving body composition.

[bogus83]

165.8.

Ten days ago I was at 172. Sheesh.

There are exactly four weeks left before my trip. Six pounds in four weeks shouldn't be too hard, barring any salt-related plateaus...

I've now been hike/walking five miles per day for a week. It's enough that I'm tired at the end, but not what I'd call "difficult". This weekend I'm going on a similar length hike, with a pretty intense climb at the beginning. Should be a good test to see how far my general fitness has come since getting off the couch a month and a half ago. I definitely feel like my leg strength and cardio endurance has improved, but considering where I started maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.

[bogus83]

163.9.

According to BMI, I'm no longer "overweight". Which is laughable, because I'm obviously still overweight.

But progress is good. I haven't quite been hitting the two pounds per week rate that I was hoping for, but I am still dropping weight every week. I should be pretty close to 160 by the time I leave for vacation in two weeks,

[bogus83]

It's sad, even on this site there are people who want to make everything about themselves and try to put you down if you don't immediately stroke their ego.

Well, **** 'em. I don't need anyone's permission to succeed in my own way or at my own pace. The important thing is that I get there in the end, because I'm doing it for ME.

And now I'm off to Hawaii. It's going to be a very active trip with more "hiking volcanoes" than "beach sitting", and while I definitely do intend to enjoy the local cuisine, I think I'll be able to minimize the impact on my progress. The next update should be in early October.

[bogus83]

The Hawaii trip was awesome. My weight is up nine pounds, pretty much all of it is water according to my scale and watch. Which is interesting, because that's right around the same amount that I gained over the long weekend in NC earlier this year and this trip was two full weeks, so I wonder if there's a literal "saturation point" for water weight gain due to increased salt intake. I guess that's something I should anticipate when I end the weight loss phase and switch to a caloric surplus; not that I'll be adding much more salt, but I'll be getting more just by eating more.

Anyway, the next goal is to see how much I can drop by Thanksgiving. That's about seven and a half weeks away, so I figure it'll take two weeks to drop the water weight and then maybe another 10 pounds in the remaining five weeks.

[bogus83]

My weight is back to exactly what it was the day I left for the trip. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still pretty wild to gain and lose that much that quickly; I had expected that it'd take at least a week if not two since it took two weeks to gain it. I've been dropping 2-3lbs per day without doing anything out of the ordinary.