InstagramHey there,
First, I want to thank you for being here and taking an interest in my journey. My aim with writing this blog is to motivate, inspire and hopefully help you guys in some way with your fat loss journey.
In this one you’re going to get a first-hand view of how I conduct my fat loss journey. All the way from the number of calories I’m consuming per day/week, what my macronutrient split is, what kind of activity I’m doing and I will also be giving you guys a few key tips.
So, to start this off I’m going to give you a little bit of a background. I started this journey on 27th April weighing in at 88 kgs (193lbs). I decided to hop onto this journey for two reasons.
1 – To gain my discipline back that I had lost due to the whole covid 19 situation we’re in.
2 – I had gotten a little bit too fluffy and wanted to get back into better shape.
Now, before we get into the nitty gritty of my training and nutrition. I want to make one thing extremely clear. Everything you see here, is customized to me. By no means is it something you should just blindly follow. You and me are very different individuals and our individualistic needs with regards to training and nutrition will differ based on a lot of factors.
I hope that’s abundantly clear! Cool, let’s move on.
Training: I am currently training 6 days a week as I have for most of my lifting career. Following a 6-day full body split with each day having a greater emphasis on a particular muscle group. My training sessions usually last anywhere between 45 mins to 1 hour including mobility work and stretches.
Key tip 1 – When figuring out how many days a week to train. Make sure to pick a number you’re 100% confident you will be able to stick with consistently. Even if that number is 3 days, be honest with yourself. Don’t get excited and say 6 days and by the time you’re in week 3 you’re only training 3-4 times. It’s counterproductive.
Nutrition: Starting calories and macros
Week 1 to 4 – Calories: 2300 per day
Protein: 180-190 g. Carb: 240-250g. Fat: 65-70g
Week 5 (Dropped calories) – Calories: 2200 per day
Protein: 180-190g. Carb: 230-240g. Fat: 60-65g
I dropped my calories in the beginning of week 5 because my weight loss was starting to plateau.
Key tip 2 – When your weight loss begins to plateau you don’t need to slash a ridiculous number of calories or add in a tonne of cardio. Even a 50-100 calorie drop per day from your daily food intake or adding in a little bit of more steps or cardio is enough to kick start the process again.
N.E.A.T: Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. To simplify, this is me tracking the number of steps I walk in a day using a pedometer (Fit bit/Apple watch). Below is the number of steps I hit per week.
Week 1 – 17,000
Week 2 – 17,000
Note: Week 1 & 2 I was just getting used to the idea of walking and tracking my steps so kept it at a number I knew I could comfortably hit.
Week 3 – 21,000
Week 4 – 35,000
Note: Around week 4 is when I saw my weight loss slowing down so I decided to increase steps (activity level) by 2000 per day. I had kind of gotten used to walking and was enjoying it, so I went ahead and did it.
Week 5 – 40,000
Note: Week 5 is ending today and I have about 4500 steps left to do for the day. I’m assuming I will hit 40k. Week 5 was a smaller increase in steps because I also dropped calories in the start of week 5. So, didn’t feel the need to increase activity a lot.
Lastly, the thing you guys have all been waiting for – My daily weigh ins. Before you see the weigh ins it’s important to know that I haven’t messed up even once on my calories in these 5 weeks. So, the weigh ins you see are based on me consistently hitting my calorie and macro goals.
Couple of pointers in the weigh ins.
- The initial first 7-14 days it is very easy to drop weight because you’re mainly just dropping water weight. Provided that you are truly in-fact in a deficit.
- You’re not going to have a new low every single day. Weight loss isn’t linear. Also, as the weeks go by the rate of weight loss will slow down. As you can see here, the first week I lost almost 2 kilos and then the week after just 500-600g and that continued. Even if you are being 100% consistent, this is just how it works.
- Overall at the end of 5 weeks I have lost just about 4 kilos. Which averages to about 800 grams per week or about 1% of my total weight per week. This is what sustainable weight loss looks like. A lot of you’ll might consider this slow but this is genuinely the rate at which you should be going. Could be slower also. As long as you want to retain muscle. The slower you go, the better it is.
- Lastly, if you notice. In week 3 on 11th May I hit a low weigh in of 84.6kgs and then went 9 days till I saw a new drop (19th may – 84.4kgs). Most people wouldn’t wait this long. Most people would get frustrated – think something is wrong and drop calories. This is something a lot of you guys need to get. Trusting the process and reacting via logic not via emotion.
- Week 5 is when I finally decided to drop calories because I could tell based of my experience of dieting for so many years that it was time to. All I did was drop 100 calories per day and boom the process kickstarted itself and today I broke into the 83 kg mark.
All this being said I’m going to end this with a couple of key tips.
Key tip 3 – Consistency and patience are two things every successful dieter will need to have or develop if they constantly want to keep making progress. Being consistent is what will get you to your goals and being patient is what will help you make rational decisions when you’re at a plateau or think you’re getting to a plateau.
Key tip 4 – Enjoy what you’re doing. Enjoy your training, enjoy your nutrition. If you don’t – you’re bound to fail. I’ve said this time and time again. Dieting does not have to be boring. You do not have to cut out foods you love. It’s all about moderation!
Key tip 5 – All this data tracking is not necessary. But it is really helpful when you need to make logical decisions about your next move. I enjoy tracking all this. I’m kind of a freak that way. But you most definitely don’t need track to the degree I do. But some amount of it will do you good!
That’s it. That is all that has happened so far in my fat loss journey. I hope you guys found this insightful and helpful. Feel free to comment down below or text me on Instagram if you have any questions. I’ll be more than happy to respond!
Much love,
Coach Dhruv
