13 Weeks: Two Weeks in, I See Some Real Results
Tools
The last thing I wanted to talk about today is the tools I’m using to track my experiments. Right now, I’m primarily using an Excel spreadsheet, which you can download here. The spreadsheet has two data entry pages, for daily and weekly measurements, and several charts of results. It’s kind of a work in progress, so feel free to let me know what else you might like to see.
The real useful tools here are, first of all, just the data. Keeping it filled in is some motivation in itself. More important than the data though, I think, are the cahrts. My weight has plateaued for more than a month, hanging right around 272 pounds most days. Without the chart, I wouldn’t be able to notice that this plateau is, in fact, a slow decline, and that my lowest weight gets lower every time: I’m setting a new low every week or so. In other words, this isn’t a plateau, it’s a slower weight loss.
Another useful tool is a Seinfeld Calendar. Here’s my calendar for doing daily exercise.
My 13 week “Seinfeld calendar” for exercise.
The concept’s really simple: make a calendar and put an X in every day you do whatever you’re tracking. As you see, I had a couple days break last weekend — I was feeling kind of sick and weak and just didn’t do the workout. But knowing I was accumulating blank days really got me motivated to get back on it.
Finally, what I know everyone is waiting for: the before and after pictures.
Me at the start of the first 13 weeks
Me after 13 weeks (well, 14, actually).
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Congratulations, Charlie! As they say, you didn’t put the weight on all at once and it doesn’t come off all at once. Best wishes.
I just noticed this series and I would really like to read the whole thing starting from the beginning. I have looked through a bunch of the posts and I cannot find any links back to the beginning. Could someone please post a list of links to all the posts in this series?
Also, I don’t know if this has been mentioned before (because I cannot find the earlier posts) but there is an amazing (and free) fitness website at myfitnesspal.com. They have awesome tracking tools, a huge database of nutrition and exercise metrics, integration with Apple, Android and loads of stand-alone devices and apps, and best of all, a super active, supportive and knowledgeable community forum. I have used it to lose over 25 lbs in the past 6 weeks. I urge everyone to check it out!
Peg, if you click the “Bio” link under my picture, you’ll get everything I’ve done on PJ Lifestyle. I’ll see if I can accumulate the links later today, but in the mean time that will get you there.
Looking good.
One question: are your arms hanging “limp”? Because they are holding well out from your body, especially your right arm.
I have the same condition. My right arm “hangs” further out and forward than my left arm. I think it might be from too much right-handed mousing.
Rich, they are; in my case, I am *ridiculously* barrel-chested; it takes significant effort to bring my arms in farther.
An idea of another value to measure (because it is easy and changes are meaningful): resting heart rate.
Hi Charlie
I went on the no/low carb a year ago, dropped 30#. At 6’3″ and 205# and age 68, not bad. In high school as a junior I could never get down to the 183 weight class without days of sucking lemons. All the blood indicators went positive.
Do not fret the various pauses. Consider ignoring the weekly stuff and looking at quarterly. There will be various birthdays and holidays and whatever, so eat what pleases you at the time and fall back on the no/low carbs. Now I have potatoes in the am, and even bread at lunch, but stick to meat and salad and veggies for dinner.
The diet and exercise is not punishment. It is a slow and balanced return to what should be sort of normal. It may take several years. Enjoy the journey.
Awesome Charlie. I know about slack-jawed docs. After something always taking precedence over my scheduled after-normal-work-hours gym time I decided in December to go when they open at 5am. My January physical after a month of that (4 or 5x/week) moved my cholesterol from borderline high (almost treatment w pharmaceuticals, don’t recall the #) to solid in the normal range for everything except total cholesterol which is now just a bit >200. My LDL dropped significantly and a rise in HDL (almost tripling) offset some of the LDL drop for the total #, so my current 3.1 ratio is much reduced. Closer attention to my diet will bring the LDL and total down more.
Lets you and I keep up our new lifestyles and stun our docs to the good side again.
Great news Charlie. I started a similar low carb routine based on Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint. (https://www.marksdailyapple.com/) I’m 51 and 5’10″, down 28 lbs from a high of 218 back in mid-November. My main concern was blood pressure that had crept up over the last five years and the doctor was pushing hypertensives. I started at 145/90 and am now at 120/80 without medication. You’ve numbers have inspired me to get back in to get my blood numbers rechecked.
Of course not of this keeps mainstream medicine from calling low carb/high fat diets dangerous, continuing to vilify Robert Atkins ten years after his death, and push low fat diets along with “healthy whole grains”. When obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease are the seemingly inevitable result, they reach for the prescription pad. You can only see this happen so many times without wondering what in the world is going on. LC/HF diets literally reverse metabolic syndrome within weeks and are easy to follow, yet they are repeatedly denigrated by established medicine. At the risk of venturing into tin-foil hat territory, it does make one wonder if the goal is pushing patented drugs rather than improving people’s health.
How were your triglycerides? The triglyceride/HDL ratio has been shown to be a good indicator heart disease, lower than 2:1 is considered protective. It’s not uncommon for low carb diets to result in ratios lower than 1:1.
Keep it up and please keep posting on your progress.
Way to go dude. Great progress. And those boxer briefs are very slimming. I’d stick with those.
Hi Charlie,
If you having good luck with blood sugar and cholesterol, but are having a hard time losing weight, you might be missing the enzymes that process fat. You are probably stressing your stores of those enzymes with your rather radical (over time) weight loss.
The precursors to the enzymes are Pantothenic acid (B-5) and L-Carnatine. This has helped my kids with their acne (also a fat processing problem) and my wife with weight loss. I was quite impressed.
The scientific article backing this up is found here – for free download:
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1997/abstracts/1997-v12n02-p099.shtml
Good luck with everything.
James, thanks for those ideas, I will be looking into those enzymes. And to Charlie, as always, thanks for your perserverance (in the experiment and with your followers) and the inspiration you give.
I similar to the significant data you offer as part of your content pieces.I will bookmark your web site and take a look at once more listed here recurrently.I’m really sure I will learn about an awful lot of recent things right listed here! Good luck with the next!
Plunging LDL comes from the liver not being flooded with “loose” ADP (adenosine di-phosphate, a degradation from ATP) being released from the cells of smooth muscle & blood. The lowered levels of loose ADP resulted from a combination of less hyper-glycemia & the dynamic sequel of regular exercise.
The baseline ADP level loose outside of cells is regularly quite high in those with high blood glucose levels. LDL’s core apoB-100 protein output by the liver is increased by ADP, so metabolic syndrome & diabetes get high LDL.
One of the 2) ADP receptors on human liver cell membranes responds to high ADP by downstream causing less protea-some action (ie: reduced breaking down proteins) inside that cell’s cytosol. This, in turn, leads to cellular processes that instigate the up-regulating of even more apoB-100 output as a result.
Inversely, ADP (via the same G-coupled receptor P2Y) raising LDL’s apoB-100 has the opposite effect on HDL’s core apoA-1 protein level. It has lead to cellular process of untoward auto-phagy (cell response to poor protea-somal degradation ) which then stymies HDL output (despite auto-phagy increasing LDL).
((HDL level does have a genetic component, but one may consider experimenting with regular full flush Niacin for greater HDL elevation. Niacin limits the G-coupled receptor engagement on the liver cell membrane because niacin acts to hold down the enzymatic process that otherwise breaks ATP into ADP (ie: less loose ADP to signal for more apoB-100, that itself in turn would indirectly stymies apoA-1 secretion in liver). Although this is not medical advice, a daily niacin intake of 1,000 mg is usually considered safe & certainly over 1,500 mg daily is best monitored with subsequent liver enzyme tests as a precaution.))
Charlie’s low rise in HDL’s crucial core apoA-1 protein level is modulated by the above mentioned liver G-coupled receptor (P2Y). But despite apparent dialing down ADP reception (as per above regarding LDL) there is another factor blocking apoA-1 output.
Adipose tissue immunological factors (macrophage pheno-type secretion patterns) complicates the ability of HDL to rise. An individual’s adipose tissue macrophages are also responding to circulating oxidized LDL (not the subject of this comment).
Pro-inflammatory TNF-alpha, in addition to ADP, will also activate the same liver cell membrane receptor (P2Y). The other result of P2Y activation is to block the engagement of the insulin receptor (IR-beta) of that cell.
Without the IR-beta signal processing going ahead there is no downstream response generated inside that cell to normally switch on Akt (protein kinase B) in response to one’s circulating insulin. What naturally holds auto-phagy under appropriate control is reliably phosphorylating (activating) Akt & this limits the degree of auto-phagy that might otherwise hold down the HDL level.
((So, the surmise is one’s fasting glucose/HbA1c may admirably improve, weight go down, LDL drop & insulin signalling still impaired – mostly likely by cytokines churned out from the individual’s adipose tissue immunological factors. Type 2 diabetics show poor initial post-prandial insulin spike & more of a too late time delayed insulin rise. It is the same G-coupled receptor P2Y that, when engaged, stymies the Beta cells of the pancreas from putting out new insulin.))
This looks like very interesting information, if only I could understand it..
I went through a total transformation beginning 26 months ago. I released 104 pounds in six months (without exercise), another 61 (with exercise) before the year was up. My MD was also slack jawed at the improvement in my health after just a few months on the program and has since been absolutely amazed that I continue to improve my health long after my weight loss goal was met. Not only have all of my “numbers” improved, I am sleeping soundly after decades of poor rest despite using various sleep remedies, I consistently have clean, focused energy, my skin, hair, and nails are remarkable. I may be 56 years old, but I now look 40 and feel 20. Keep at it, Charlie. The end result is worth the effort!
Great job Charlie.
I asked this once before but you didn’t have a feel for at the time — any sense that wheat is worse than other carbs for you? (Per the Wheat Belly book)?
Yes, I can definitely say now that wheat gives me trouble. I had a Chinese New Year bun a few days ago with a crust sort of like a fig newton and had heartburn as well as a sudden water weight gain.
Last night I had some toffee and a little rice, but no wheat, and had much less discomfort and little water weight gain.
Proof Positive that Taubes/Aitkins were on to something. Good Work Charlie. You’re an inspiration to us all.
Well done! I’m getting my hip replaced on March 2. I’ll be in a walker (they tell me) for six weeks. After that, I’m going to do my own “13 week program”. I don’t know if I’ll share it online, as you’re doing – I’m waaaay too shy for that, I think! — but I’ll consider you one of my inspirations! Thank you!!!
I’m sure you had this in an earlier post, but how are you measuring your fat %age? Is it one of those scales that uses resistivity to estimate it? Or some other technique.
I’m using three techniques: I hve a Withings scale, and it does the measurement by electrical impedance. I have a skinfold caliper, and compute it based on that. And I take the neck and waist measurement and use the Army empirical to compute it. It turns out all of these agree within about plus or minus 1.5 percent, so I have been mostly watching the Withings scale.