No Nonsense Fat Loss. Day 2
Three days ago I began a fat loss programme, kicking off the journey with a thirty-six hour fast. I wrote about that in my article No Nonsense Fat Loss.
The original plan was to fast on Mondays and Fridays. Today is Monday. Yesterday I decided to change the protocol slightly, whilst still sticking to the underlying principle. The revised plan is to fast every third day, meaning I eat for two days, then fast for a day, then eat for a further two days, then fast for a day, and so on.
A good start
After my first day of fasting, my belt was a little loser. That was two days ago. In the interim, I’ve eaten more dessert than usual. But I’m still slightly slimmer than I was when this began.
Non-fasting days
On non fasting days I eat three meals a day and avoid snacks. All those snacks add up quickly. A good day looks like this:
7am Breakfast. A bowl of muesli or porridge. A cup of coffee and a glass of blackcurrant squash or water.
12pm Lunch. A cheese and chicken sandwich or a three egg omelette with peppers, onion, garlic, mushrooms and tomatoes, and three slices of buttered bread.
5pm Supper. This can be anything. Often it will involve sweet potato, pasta or rice and some meat or vegetables, occasionally both.
On workout days I will have a cheese sandwich when I get back from the gym, between midnight and 1am.
Fat Loss and exercise
I only work out once a week. In my original article I wrote about the overall futility of exercise as a tool for fat loss. At best, it is a very, very blunt tool. To illustrate this point I used a Maryland chocolate chip cookie. One cookie takes approximately five seconds to eat and contains 52 calories. To burn 52 calories I would have to run for five minutes. If we could burn calories as quickly as we consume them we would need to eat continuously just to survive. So steady state, cardiovascular exercise is an extremely inefficient and time consuming way to lose fat. The most effective way to lose fat is to eat less.
The exercise I perform once a week, is not designed for fat loss. It serves to build muscle and provide cardiovascular conditioning. If you see a workout promising to blitz, burn, blast (insert salesy hyperbole) belly fat (or any type of fat), you can safely conclude the workout is not scientifically sound. Intense work and muscular contractions do not use fat for fuel (they use sugar). And you cannot reduce fat on a particular part of your body with a particular exercise. Your pattern of fat storage is genetically determined. Having flabby thighs is a result of having consumed too many calories over a period of time. It’s not the result of not performing enough special squat variations with tension bands strapped around your knees and your arse sticking out in a particular way, but telling you it is helps somebody to sell you something or get more views on their channel.
Of course any activity is better than none, but if you want to lose fat, the only way you’re going to do it without surgery or medication is by consuming less energy than you use.
How’s it going?
Day two has not started perfectly. It’s February Valentines day and my youngest daughter woke up early to make everyone body waffles with chocolate spread for breakfast. I couldn’t refuse. Yesterday, whilst I was out all day, my girls baked heart shaped cookies. I had to have one of those as well.
That’s okay. Its only 10:43am and I won’t be eating again until 7am tomorrow morning.
The only rule that matters
So many people struggle with obesity; and so many people point the finger of blame. Whose fault is it that humans are becoming fatter and fatter? It’s nobody’s fault. There are several factors at play; evolution and the wider availability of food are chief amongst them. Food has never been as abundant as it is now. That is nobody’s fault.
If you believe in free will, and you realise that you have the ability to control what you put in to your mouth, you must accept that you are the only person who can do anything about how many calories you consume. And that is all that matters. Consume more than you require, and you will store energy as fat. Consume less than you require and you will burn stored fat.
I have read and heard all manner of bright ideas and arguments that suggest fat loss and fat gain have nothing to do with calories. There are studies out there there to support some of that too. There are probably studies to support everything, which is why we must consider the totality of evidence and draw our conclusions from that.
You probably don’t have access to all the data, and if you do, you don’t have time to sift through it all. That’s fine, you don’t need to. Speak to any medical doctor not in a private practise that might be hawking their latest drug or treatment for profit, and ask them what you need to do to lose weight. They’ll tell you to reduce your caloric intake. It’s not about eating ‘clean’, or eating organic, or being vegan, or paleo; it’s about eating less. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just the way it is.
Back to day two
I’m already starting to feel hungry. Having anything sugary always leads to a spike in my appetite. Eating that chocolate covered waffle and those homemade cookies this morning has made things difficult. But it will pass.
By 7am tomorrow morning I will have consumed three to four thousand calories less than I would usually have consumed over the course of four days. A calorie deficit of almost a thousand calories a day is far easier for me to achieve by fasting than it is by making sure I stay within a certain calorie limit every single day. Freedom interrupted by occasional privation is easier to implement than ongoing moderation. The net result is the same.
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