We’re now at the end of week two and already in week three, wahoo! It’s been an emotional one, especially when I learnt that I put 2% of body fat back on when I was having my first body fat percentage checked. So, today, I knew I had gone down but I wanted to find out by how much.
So, what happened today? Well, it looks as though my body fat percentage went down exactly 1 percent (from 22.3% to 21.3%) over the last seven days, which I’m happy with. Would I have wanted more and the ability to see the previous week’s gains turn into a negative and be removed from my body? Of course I would, but I’m happy it’s on the way down.
And, if I can keep going at 1% per week then I should be down to near 10 percent body fat as part of my fitness goals by the end of the 12-week weight loss programme.
From the above you can see that my weight has come down a little and that all of my fat check zones reduced apart from my hamstrings and supra-illiac. These two could be due to toxic load in the body and carbs, respectively. The first might be down to a spike because I’m detoxing and the second could be my body getting used to understanding the processing of carbs.
Next week body myself and my Biosignature Pracitioner should have a clearer understanding of what is going on by looking at patterns. It is noticeable that the supra-illiac reading is much higher than last week and the week before, so it could be down to something not being right in the body, but who knows.
But, let’s not concentrate on the negatives about things going up, eh? Most of the other readings have come down close to what they were when my body fat was measured at the start of this challenge and I feel a lot better about what I am doing now, both in terms of what I’m eating and how I feel after I exercise etc.
Main Changes:
- Weight: 104.1kg (down 0.6kg)
- Body fat percentage: 21.3% (down 1%)
- Lean mass: 82kg (up 0.7kg)
Some changes I made in week 2:
- After my depressing fat gain last week, I decided drastic action was needed. This wasn’t immediate, but I made a few major changes: I changed my eating habits, adopting the five meals a day plan I’d read about from Ultimate Perfomance’s muscles meal plan. This involves around 140-170g of meat/fish and 100g of green veggies for each meal, plus some fruit on the meal post workout. If you look through the guide then you can see that it includes more carbs than I eat. That’s because I’m trying to keep my carbohydrate intake quite low (around 70g per day).
- I’m recording my sleep. So, I’m going to know when I’m going to bed and what time I’m getting up.
- I’m meditating more to help with sleep and reducing the stress hormone cortisol
- I’ve started taking supplements recommended by my personal trainer
How’s My Food Been?
It’s been okay. I’ve been boosting my intake of meals up to the five a day that I changed a few days ago and I seem to be moving across to the difference in consuming stuff. But, I’m still not happy with my intake of foods. We will see how this next week progresses and what the analysis shows.
As you can see below in the nutrition analysis from MyFitnessPal, while I’ve been keeping my carb intake fairly low throughout the week, I’ve been consuming too much fat and not enough total protein. That means this week I need to improve on my consumption and what I feed to my body.
I’m understanding the 150-180grams of fish or meat per meal alongside the 100g of green veggies that the UP guide recommends, but it does seem as though the amount of extra fat (through goats butter and other fatty add-ons) that I’m consuming needs to be reduced. I’ve looked at where I can cut it out of and ways in which I can boost my protein intake, which is mainly through lean meats and fish protein.
Other Thoughts
I also came across an interesting article on Ultimate Performance’s website about nutrition and losing fat and packing on muscle. If you’re following me along and are also interested in this stuff then it’s well worth a read. It covers the actual fact that you do need to monitor your calorie intake, understand that going overboard on fats isn’t a good idea, carbohydrates should be cycled correctly according to your body type, pre and post workout consumption is important, and that small amounts eaten frequently will help.
A key part of the above article that I got was that a post workout shake should contain at least 50grams of whey, 10-20grams of glutamine, 5-10grams of creatine, and some greens powder from Poliquin. I think that week 3 I’m going to start using this in a post workout shake to see how it works for me. I’ve put the ingredients into MFP and it looks like there’s quite a lot of carbs already in it (20ish grams with koko milk), so that does seem really interesting seen as a small banana has about 20-30grams of carbs (according to MFP).