I have been thinking about losing weight for a very long time now, but I didn’t take any action to enforce this decision up till now!

I’m experimenting on myself, with a couple of logical nutritional concepts (I guess they are!), which some of them I knew about from a long time ago, and others I found on the internet and decided to incorporate them in my experiment.

Before telling you what am I exactly doing, I’m going to brief you on some information, which might help you in imagining the goals better.

The following lists some info, and describe my eating lifestyle before I started the diet in brief:

• Height: 170 cm
• Weight: 85 Kg
• Daily Meals: One or Two main meals, mostly junk food, thin Italian pizza, Manaqeesh for breakfast, etc… (fatty stuff, with lots of oil, fat, & carbohydrates).
• Daily Snacks: Chocolate, Cookies, Chips, Jelly Beans, etc… (in between meals)
• Exercise/Workout: none.
• Average total Hours of Sleep: 5 to 6 hours a day.
• Smoker: Yes.

So, this had to stop, and I’m in need of changing this, what did I do about it?

I decided to make peace with my body, by changing the way I eat and cutting the junk food out of my eating lifestyle, then I stumbled upon an article on the internet which talks about the Metabolism and I liked the concept of Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), which is the rate of the Metabolism process which your body go through while it is in the rest state.

The RMR helps you in defining how much is the maximum number of Calories you can burn a day without gaining weight, and you must stay below this number of calories to start losing weight, and this is where I started from :)

I calculated my RMR using this formula, which I got from the same article I found:

RMR = (9.99 x W + 6.25 x S) – 4.92 x A + (166 x G) – 161

• W = weight in kilograms; if you know your weight in pounds, divide by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms
• S = height in centimeters; if you know your height in inches, multiply by 2.54 to get your height in centimeters
• A = age in years
• G = gender = 1 for males, 0 for females

The maximum calories you can consume a day, or as they called it in the article “maximum maintenance intake”, is equal to:

Maximum Maintenance Intake = RMR x 1.15

It’s been 8 days already, and this is how I was dieting:

• Eating 4 to 5 meals a day: this has really enhanced my digestion (no need to explain how :p).  They were 3 main meals, and 2 snacks in between them, with trying my best not to take carbohydrates during the dinner meal.  I tried my best to keep 3 to 4 hours in between each of the 5 meals, to keep my metabolism working and prevent my body from entering the starvation mode, which makes the body start storing food in the form of fat, so it can consume it when needed.
• No junk food at all: I feel light, my brain is capable to do more work than before, and I feel less numb during the second half of the day.
• No Chocolate, Candy, etc… Unhealthy Snacks: I started to take veggies and fruits as a snack in between meals, this might not have affected me directly (it had a role in enhancing my digestion), but it’s a good step, since I have a family history of diabetes and blood pressure issues.
• Less Salty meals as much as possible: this is a good point since too much salt intake will let more water be stored in your body, which might increase your overall weight.
• Trying not to exceed the “Maximum Maintenance Intake” (Maximum Calories Intake per day):I don’t have a formula for this, but I was working on estimating how much calories did each meal contain, so I can stay below the maximum calories I can take per day.

What was the result?

Till the morning of the 7th day, there wasn’t much of weight loss going on other than adapting to new eating habits and lifestyle.  I only lost 1.5 Kg, which is good somehow, since I’m against losing weight fast, because you’ll gain it fast if you lose it fast.

What’s next? I started with the next step on the 7th day, which is no dinner.  I will continue with eating 2 main meals and having 2 healthy snacks a day, but no food after 7:00PM.  Here I am combining the no dinner technique, with the diet steps above, and this is how am I going to spend this upcoming second week since I’m already in the 8th day.

SOMETHING YOU NEED TO CONSIDER: if you lose weight, recalculate your RMR, because the formula result will change and you’ll need to cut down your calories more in order to lose weight.   Also,  if you workout, and gain weight because of replacing fat with muscle, you need to recalculate RMR.  Some people have an almost fixed RMR, when they work out, gain muscle and replace fat, and have good metabolism, but everyone will need to recalculate it just to assure everything is going right, at least in the first 2 months of diet and exercise.

What’s next after the second week?

After I finish the second week diet, which will be 4 meals (Breakfast – Snack – Lunch – Snack) and no dinner, I’m going to start working out.   By then, I will have total peace with my body (hopefully!), and the training schedule I’m going to follow is going to be focused on weight lifting, since I believe 100% that weight lifting burns more calories than daily cardio exercises (at least I know my body works this way). The training I’m going to go through, will be 5 days a week, every other day I cover 2 or more muscle groups, and in between those days, I have 2 days for cardio only, as follows:

• Day 1:  Chest + Triceps.
• Day 2: Cardio only for 30 – 45 minutes.
• Day 3: Shoulders + Biceps + Abs.
• Day 4: Cardio only for 30 – 45 minutes.
• Day 5: Back + Legs.

Note: Never workout the same muscle group (as in weight lifting for gaining muscle) during the same 48 hours, this will wear out the muscle tissues and won’t give your body the time to heal and regenerate the muscle cells.

The diet (food), will stay the same when I start working out, because I need my metabolism to stay working just as well as it should, and prevent my body from entering the starvation mode.

Is there any dietary supplements to consider?  Actually there are some I’m considering of taking, but they aren’t fat burners.  After 2 weeks of exercising, if I found the results to be good as in reaching 78 Kg of weight, I might consider taking whey protein shake as a meal replacement once a day, then increase it eventually while replacing the fat with muscle to 3 times a day as a meal replacement and support for building muscles faster.

I’m not going to consider protein supplements any time sooner, because the extra protein which the body takes and does not burn, will be turned directly into fat, and I have enough fat already.

Another supplement I’m considering after the 2 weeks training is L-Carnitine, which has a role in burning the stored body fat (fatty acids metabolism), works as an antioxidant, and a lot of other stuff as well.

I hope you found this post interesting, please stay tuned for more to come soon.

Note: I will post before and after photos, but not now :D

Tags: weight loss