Saturday, September 17, 2011

Progress Slowed is Still Progress

As I mentioned in my Leptin - A Hack that Finally Works post, I was losing 3 lb a week for a while when doing the Leptin Reset Protocol. I had dreams of this continuing for months and me reaching my goals although I knew that was unlikely. Well, the weight loss for the last couple of weeks has slowed to 1.4 lb a week, which is honestly not too bad. It's still more consistent than what I experienced prior  to the LR and is a reasonable rate to lose weight. I do noticed other changes like clothes continuing to fit differently and better muscle tone. These are harder to measure directly but are detectable nonetheless. I have eliminated weekly cheat meals for a month now and diet soda completely for three weeks which means I'm also artificial sweetener free. I'm considering looking for another hack that may give me a temporary speed increase, every extra pound is a step closer to the goal and it's a morale booster to see the scale shift a little more every now and then. So here are some options I'm considering:
  1. Eliminate Dairy - I actually don't eat that much dairy at the moment, don't drink any milk, but I do eat a fair amount of cheese and a little cream so I could fairly easily cut it out and see if I see an improvement.
     
  2. Eliminate Nightshades - I'm not sure if these can have a direct impact on weight loss but many doing the LR removed them from their diet and Dr K recommends avoiding nightshades.
     
  3. Try to eat dinner earlier and go to bed earlier. This is a big part of fixing a damaged hormone regulatory system as proposed by Dr K. It's a struggle though since my wife and I have a 2 month old baby so sleep is sometimes elusive.
     
  4. Increase intake of omega 3s. This is a big part of the Primal diet and something I try to follow by it's tough at time. A major contributor to this effort is to eat more grass fed beef which we've been trying to do. Also, I need to improve my supplementation.
     
  5. Increase vegetable consumption further. My carb intake is possibly a little low although I have no solid reason to think eating more will improve weight loss it's something I can experiment with.
  6. Continue with the weekly sprinting and weight lifting but walk more. I'm not doing enough moderate exercise because all that walking just takes up time. Nonetheless I think I need to look at ways to squeeze it in. A daily morning walk with the dog is probably a good idea and if I work on number 3 a little bit I'll get enough sleep to pull it off.

Honestly, I can definitely work on 4 and 5 without too many issue, number 3 is almost impossible and 1 and 2 and quite probable. So I think I'm going to stop eating cheese starting tomorrow and when we hit the supermarket I'm going to pick up a bunch of vegetables but I'll skip any nightshades which will help address 2 and 5. Number 6 is something I'm going to work on too, it's tough to fit everything in with a demanding job but I think it's worth it plus I've been feeling guilty that the mutt is not getting sufficient exercise.

I'm not confident any of these changes will improve the speed at which I'm losing weight, my body just seems to find homeostasis yet again, but hey, maybe a few of these changes will result in a bit extra lost for a few weeks, totally worth it.

2 comments:

  1. This sounds like a good plan. If you are sprinting and lifting, you may just be building muscle. The fit of your clothing should be telling.
    Recently I gave up milk for a time, and then brought it back. I now have some sour cream, and some cheese a couple of times a week, but I don't have it every day like before and the cravings for it are way down, so yes, it's doable.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed on the increased muscle mass although it should show up in body fat %. Then again, the device I use to measure that % is pretty inaccurate, so who knows. I do notice less objective measures like how clothes fit but I prefer something tangible.

    This week I've cut out cheese the only dairy I'm consuming is a little heavy cream in scrambled eggs. I doubt it will have an impact yet, assuming it will at all. So I'll stick to it for a few more weeks.

    ReplyDelete