It is now day 17 of the 30 day Extreme Weight Cut Challenge. The goal is to drop 45 pounds in 30 days. Obviously I am just slightly past the halfway mark at this point. As of 9 AM this morning I have lost 28 of the 45 pounds. I am over halfway there (for the math inclined I have achieved 62% of my goal).
Based on those stats I have lost on average 1.65 pounds a day. Taking that daily average loss and applying it to the 12 remaining days that should net a loss of 19.8 more pounds. I will just round off the number to 20 to get rid of the fractions. That should in theory give me a total loss of 48 pounds which would exceed my goal by 3 pounds.
While that seems to work out great for me the number crunching doesn't tell the true story. The human body is by far the most complicated machine in existence. Yes even supercomputers, harrier jet fights, and Swedish Suregrip Suck Machines cannot compare to the complexity of the human body. Some people might shake their heads at that comment but let me ask you this, has anyone created an artificial human body? Hell as far as I know no one has even created an artificial cat and all they do is eat, sleep, screw, and use the bathroom. That doesn't sound like that awful of a setup. Maybe cats are truly the highest form of life on Earth and we humans are the morons who pay bills and taxes and work long hours for no rewards.
The reason why I am saying that the human body is incredibly complicated is bring up the point that there is absolutely no absolutes when it comes to weight cutting and dieting. Any person who has lost a significant amount of weight knows that the first couple of weeks can sometimes produce big results but after that things can slow down tremendously. Think about it, you are used to pretty much eating whatever you want and your idea of exercise is walking from the car park to the grocery store to buy corn chips and beer. When you throw a complete shock to your system by cleaning up your diet and *gasp* exercising your body will quickly shed a lot of excess water stored in it. The human body is after all 50-65% water (but that statistic is only 35% true). That initial 20 pounds you lost was not fat but rather mostly water. You might not want to hear that but it is the truth. It requires burning 3,500 calories more than you take in to loss a pound of fat. Do you realize how much it takes to burn 3,500 calories?
Since every fat person is convinced that cardio is the only way to drop fat (the truth is they are afraid to not be pussies- weight training and a solid diet along with a small amount of cardio is the best way to lose weight by far) I am going to use jogging as an example. On average an adult male burns 124 calories for jogging 1 mile. So if said average male jogs 3 miles 3 times a week then he will have burned 1116 calories during the week for his cardiovascular training. In 3 weeks he will have burned 3,348 calories or basically just under the amount to lose one pound of actual weight (again we are ignoring losses in water). So to lose a pound he had to jog 27 miles or just about a marathon in length. Of course this doesn't tell the whole story because exercising, both cardio and weight training, can speed up your metabolism which means more calories burned throughout the day (with weight training being the better of the two), but that effect does not create nearly the impact you would think. Now take the same person and have them eat 500 calories a day below the caloric amount it takes to maintain their current bodyweight and then in a weeks time they will have burned 3,500 calories. While that is by far the easier of the two methods it still only results in a loss of a pound a week.
The truth is a large amount of initial weight change is water weight. That is why dieters who have a cheat meal or cheat day sometimes weigh 3-5 pounds more the next day. Do you really think you actually gained 3 pounds? You would to have had eaten about 10,000 calories OVER your maintenance level. I know some big eaters but you would have to be world class to put away that many calories in a day. All they did was add some water weight that will quickly drop back off as soon as they resume their diet.
Well that was all just a really long way to illustrate that a true beginner to dieting and exercising would have a big advantage over me. Before starting this weight cut I was already training very hard and have been for several years (minus 2011 during my hand surgeries). My diet was not currently spot on (otherwise a drop of 45 pounds in 30 days would have been impossible) but I was no stranger to a lot of blood and sweat in the gym. So for me I didn't get that initial huge jump down in weight like someone who has not been training regularly will. My body has adapted to stressful stimuli. That is one reason I am throwing a lot of cardio into my mix because it is something I don't normally do very much of and I want to shock my body into a continuous loss of weight for the duration of the challenge. After this 30 day challenge is over I am going to transition to a more rationale 40 minutes of cardio done 3 times a week for overall heart health and then use my diet and weight training to carve up my physique and make use of all the muscle I have been building for the last several years.
So back to my original point. The next 12 days are going to be much much (MUCH) harder than the first 17. I might get a few whooshes (when you are dieting some weeks you might lose a pound others you might lose 5 pounds with no real changes it is just that your body is complicated and does weird things sometimes- this phenomenon is commonly referred to as a whoosh) but I am likely just going to have to grind down the weight with a ton of cardio training and very strict dieting.
I am having a free meal today to keep my body charged up. It should be my last one but I may throw one in on Thursday if I see good results from this one. This will be a big meal for sure I want to get some serious glycogen storage going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment