#68 - What I learnt on my 6-month fat loss journey
What I’m Watching
So this week just gone was Henley Royal Regatta which is often described as the Monaco Grand Prix of rowing, an event that takes place over 5 days with teams coming from all over the world as far as Australia. Here’s footage of one of the races, what’s interesting is the boats are mic'ed up, so you hear the coxes motivating their teams which I’ve never seen before.
Resource of the week
Straightforward no-nonsense calculator to show how many calories you need to eat to: lose weight, gain weight, or body recomposition by Jeremy Ethier whose work I have been a fan of.
Quote
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Other stuff
Thoughts
This week I reached my goal body fat percentage of 11% after 6 months of a consistent cut. I’m not a health expert but it baffles me that in this day and age that the weight loss industry is as big as it is and there’s so much pseudo-science.
How did I do it? Just sticking to basics, nothing fancy. I tracked every single thing I ate, weighed myself every day, adjusted accordingly and exercised. That’s literally it. It’s calories in vs calories out, nothing more or less.
The key thing is setting a sustainable target that I knew I could stick to, which in my case was 450g loss per week. Not doing anything extreme. I still ate ‘junk’ or ‘bad’ food (terms which I hate btw) like crisps, chocolate, cookies, almond croissants, strawberry cake with a creme patissiere filling etc, consistently but overall maintained a deficit. And sustainable is the key word here, which I try to apply to all walks of my life. It’s a waste of time jumping from one diet to another, like with property investing chasing some holy grail strategy. It’s normally a lot simpler than people think.
Things I DIDN'T do:
- Fast for 3 days at a time (or at all).
- Go on a keto diet.
- Didn't drink lemon and cayenne to clear my 'toxins'.
- Survive on smoothies made from grass (or similar).
- Avoid coming into direct physical contact with sugar.
- Cut all carbs out.
- Use protein shakes or bars.
Having said that simple doesn’t mean easy. I fed myself like some people feed their pets for 6 months, apart from cheat days, I would weigh and track every single meal, always keeping within 100 calories of my daily target. This is why to some extent you have to enjoy it by letting yourself have some of the foods you like otherwise it’s impossible to keep that up for 6 months or more.
The good thing about losing fat is feedback is almost instant and direct which is rare in other pursuits. If I’m off, I’ll reduce my calories the next day by 100 for example. So when I’m undertaking something I ask myself how can I best enjoy it?
To give an example when it comes back to property, some investors like to save money on lettings agents saying it eats into their ROI otherwise. While this is true, for me personally, having a tenant call me up at 10 pm on a Sunday night saying they’ve locked themselves out, or that they’ve blocked the toilet sounds like a nightmare to me. It would make me miserable over the long term. Similar story with social media, my TikTok sometimes goes through a lot of growth sometimes none at all, it’s that I enjoy researching and making the content that keeps me consistent over the long term, which is required to see results.
So instead of asking how you could get results faster, make more money etc, my question is: are you enjoying what you are doing? If not what could you change so you are?
Having said all of that what are some useful tips I’ve learnt on my recent journey that might help you:
- Eat foods higher on the satiety index, meaning how full they make you feel for the same amount of calories. Potatoes are one of the highest and croissants are one of the lowest for example.
- Eat lots of fibre.
- Coke Zero was a lifesaver since it has no calories and quenched my sugar cravings. (I relied on it a bit too much and seems like I'm a bit addicted, now slowly coming off it!)
- Doing high-volume, low-intensity cardio (walking, slow steady state workouts on a rowing machine) burns more calories over the long term for most people than high-intensity stuff as the latter can wear you out.
- The absolute best thing you can do is to track your calorie intake every day, but if not, combining the above points with exercise should help if you are early on your journey.
- Make sure to save some calories for the foods you like along the way so you don’t blow up and gorge.
- Set a realistic target, and understand it will take time. You're not going to lose 1kg+ a week consistently unless you are morbidly obese.
- Eat foods high in protein to minimise loss of lean mass.
Property
On the property front, it’s clear that market sentiment is low. A few people have asked me whether they should invest or hold out. The way I see it, at the moment there is more scope to have an offer accepted than in the last few years. It’s impossible to predict what will happen in the short term. I personally have a long-term outlook and it’s the same as always, if I get a good deal and the figures stack, I am still moving forward.
With the current rates, the bottleneck will be finding a deal that meets ROI requirements.
Hans