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egervari 06-15-2018 11:56 AM

Lost 40 Pounds in 70 days - 40 more to go
 
I've been doing a ketogenic diet combined with 16-18 hours of intermittent fasting since April 6th - exactly 70 days from today. I started at 225 pounds and I'm current 185.0 pounds.

4/6/2018 - 225.0
4/13/2018 - 217.6
4/20/2018 - 214.8
4/27/2018 - 209.8
5/4/2018 - 207.8
5/11/2018 - 201.8
5/18/2018 - 198.2
5/25/2018 - 194.0
6/1/2018 - 191.6
6/8/2018 - 187.6
6/15/2018 - 185.6

On top of this, the results from my latest blood test were stellar - the lowest LDL I ever had in my life, and only 23 triglycerides - miles away from heart disease risk (which is above 150). The rest of the markers were all great, including 103/74 blood pressure, and that was 145/89 only 2 months ago.

I did reach a little plateau last week - only lost 2 pounds rather than the typical 4.3 pounds on average each week before, but I'm pretty sure that was due to eating Konjac Noodles - the fiber completely destroyed me, caused tons of bloating and feeling sick for days. And as we know from science, you can't lose weight with fiber bloat. I highly recommend to be cautious of these if you don't tolerate oatmeal or kale and things like that. Healthy ramen isn't worth sacrificing weight loss.

As for exercise, I didn't really do any. My main strategy was just eating paleo/primal whole foods with ketogenic macros. I eliminated all sugar, all grains, all refined carbs, all processed vegetable oils, and all fruit. It was hard to give up things like bread and rice at first, but honestly after 2 weeks I didn't miss them. Now, I don't even see them as real food - I have almost nothing in my pantry these days. I mostly eat spinach, asparagus, broccoli, avocados, mushrooms, garlic for vegetables (with some onions and tomatoes - not much). I eat only the highest quality meats - pasture raised without antibiotics or hormones, grass-fed and grass-finished (bacon, rib-eye steaks, ground beef, chicken thighs and breasts, pork chops, etc.). I eat a ton of eggs. I eat lots of wild fish that wasn't farmed, like wild Alaskan sockeye. I use butter, coconut oil and avocado oil as fats.

I also cut back on the number of meals per day - I restricted myself to just 2 meals with no snacks. Again, this was difficult to get used to, but the high fat in my diet increased my satiety quite a bit over time - my leptin and ghrelin hormones were slowly being repaired due to the lack of sugar and carbs - and then this became stupidly easy - fasting 16-20 hours per day is honestly a non-issue, and I feel great.

As for calories, I don't really count, but I suspect they are somewhere between 1300-1700. I don't care about calories that much - we really know weight gain and loss is determined by insulin production and how fat-adapted your body is. The calories in vs calories out model doesn't make sense when you look at my results - losing 4.3 pounds per week on average would mean a restriction of 2000 calories per day, and in order to accomplish that, I wouldn't have been able to eat - but I clearly did.

I didn't lose any muscle mass due to fasting. Honestly, I feel much stronger. I never had any bulge in my arms in my entire life, and I do now. Lifting things just got a ton easier than I ever remember (and I wasn't at 225 for a very long time... I used to weigh 145-150 pounds actually... I gained the weight due to stress of being an executive).

Anyway, I still have 35-40 more pounds to go, but I'm pretty confident I got the right solution going. I would post pictures of my meals - I have loads of them to show the portion sizes and what I ate - but the site won't let me.

tpizzie51 06-18-2018 11:21 PM

Wow keto on top of IF sounds amazing for weight loss. So essentially when you eat your eating keto? and what percent protein to fat do you have when eating keto?

egervari 06-19-2018 12:00 AM

Yeah, keto with paleo foods and IF is not a fad diet - the science around it is very solid. Even since I wrote that email on the 15th, I am now 182.6 pounds - lost 3 pounds since I typed that original post.

My macros are:
Protein: 80g
Carbs: 10-20g (lower is better if you're not losing weight. I have to go to 10g now)
Fat: 70g+ (doesn't matter that much... a lot of it gets converted to ketones and you breathe and pee it out anyway). Don't go crazy though - 140g of fat will probably cause your body to burn dietary fat and not body fat.

The really nice thing about keto is that your metabolism doesn't lower - even if your dietary intake is in a deficit, the body fat makes up for it and the metabolism doesn't slow down, which is not the case with other macros.

So what did I eat? Whole foods, everything organic or pastured-raised and grass-fed and grass-finished (the expensive stuff). I think it really does make a huge difference. The body loves being fed with this stuff consistently.

Vegetables (and 1 Fruit): Spinach, Asperagus, Avocados, Broccoli. I occasionally had mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, etc.
Meat: Beef (Rib-Eye, Flank, Ground), Chicken Thighs and Breasts, Pork, Paleo Uncured Bacon with no sugar, Duck
Eggs: Only grass-fed and worm fed eggs, where the chickens roam free and play in the mud. Like 12 a week.
Fish: Wild Salmon (like Wild Alaskan Sockeye or Wild Pacific. Stay away from Wild Atlantic... it's not wild). 2x a week.
Dairy: Grass-Fed Butter, and 0-lactose, 0-carb cheeses, such as Parmigiano Reggiano, Aged Cheddar, Goat Cheese, Mozzarella, etc.
Seafood: Crab, Shrimp, etc.
Nuts: Macadamian Nuts and Pecans - the two best nuts in the world for weight loss. Also Coconut Milk. These are great for filling in calories without adding carbs or much protein.
Fats: Grass-Fed Butter, Refined and Unrefined Avocado Oil, Refined and Unrefined Coconut Oil and Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Beverages: Water, Coffee and Almond Milk (with no starch)

That's pretty much it. I never cheated or got off the plan. I ate 2 meals per day only, and no snacks. If I wanted a snack. I had it with the meal to lower insulin spikes throughout the day, because Insulin, not calories, is what causes you to gain weight.

rosabella2012 06-19-2018 03:40 AM

Thanks for the meal ideas and glad this has worked for you!

egervari 06-19-2018 11:16 AM

I also want to add, it's really important that everything you eat - not just for a diet, but for general health - has to contain no sugar, especially fructose. This means unsweetened almond milk, no sugar in coffee, no condiments like ketchup or Chinese sauces, no palm sugar in curries, and especially NO FRUIT (it's fructose, not glucose, which encourages insulin resistance and you really want to avoid that. Fibre in the fruit will not protect you from all of the damage fructose does). This is also why I didn't consume that many tomatoes - like once every 2 weeks tops. When you're metabolically healthy, you can probably get away with 5-10g of sugar per day, but if you're overweight and you especially have belly fat, you really need to avoid sugar like the plague. The average adult consumes something like 80-110g sugar every day - this is a huge reason for triglycerides going up, ldl going up, and hdl going down. The obesity is just a symptom of the insulin levels caused by refined carbs, sugar, processed vegetable oils, etc.

Generally, if I didn't list the food in that list, that really means I didn't consume it. Of course, things like curry pastes with zero sugar and all whole ingredients are probably okay, and fermented foods are probably okay too, but I don't consume them often. You'd be surprised just how diet-friendly green curry is if you omit the palm sugar and don't have it with rice.

morphasia 06-20-2018 03:52 AM

Fantastic success story, thanks for sharing. Your food choices look absolutely amazing. I do low-carb and IF which is quite similar. I lost 34 pounds in under 6 months so my weight loss is not as high as yours, but I was 194 and am now 160 pounds. IF is absolutely amazing and a lot of gym rats have known about it for years. You're right - it's not a fad. Our western culture eats FAR more than we need. I'm improving my own choices in the area of grass-fed meats and wild caught fish. A bit more expensive but not really when you think about reducing to 2 meals per day. Sugar is the devil. Cutting it out in all areas is the way to go.
I want to get to 140 and will be looking at some of your lovely food choices for ideas.

egervari 06-20-2018 04:33 AM


Originally Posted by morphasia (Post 138648)
Fantastic success story, thanks for sharing. Your food choices look absolutely amazing. I do low-carb and IF which is quite similar. I lost 34 pounds in under 6 months so my weight loss is not as high as yours, but I was 194 and am now 160 pounds. IF is absolutely amazing and a lot of gym rats have known about it for years. You're right - it's not a fad. Our western culture eats FAR more than we need. I'm improving my own choices in the area of grass-fed meats and wild caught fish. A bit more expensive but not really when you think about reducing to 2 meals per day. Sugar is the devil. Cutting it out in all areas is the way to go.
I want to get to 140 and will be looking at some of your lovely food choices for ideas.

The way I think of it is that of an investment. We can save money and buy cheap, garbage food now and pay the price later with heart disease, cancers and other problems, or pay for quality food now, and live in our homes and walking on our own 2 feet at 80 years old.

I for one am never eating sugar, grains, processed vegetable oils and starchy vegetables again - paleo for life now until science says otherwise. I never want to have to lose 85 pounds again - I'm a 38 year old female and it would only get more difficult as I age. I'm really enjoying my meals - doesn't feel like dieting at all and I'm certainly not suffering or feeling hungry in the slightest - but I never want to look into my closet and see thousands of dollars of beautiful dresses, jeans, coats, etc. not worn for 1.5 years. It's too depressing :( Sugar, rice and bread are not that important, especially when you can have bacon and eggs, duck confit, cauliflower crust pizza, cheesy casseroles, massive rib-eye steaks, thai curries and a bunch of other delicious foods all you want.

morphasia 06-26-2018 07:30 AM


Originally Posted by egervari (Post 138649)
The way I think of it is that of an investment. We can save money and buy cheap, garbage food now and pay the price later with heart disease, cancers and other problems, or pay for quality food now, and live in our homes and walking on our own 2 feet at 80 years old.

I for one am never eating sugar, grains, processed vegetable oils and starchy vegetables again - paleo for life now until science says otherwise. I never want to have to lose 85 pounds again - I'm a 38 year old female and it would only get more difficult as I age. I'm really enjoying my meals - doesn't feel like dieting at all and I'm certainly not suffering or feeling hungry in the slightest - but I never want to look into my closet and see thousands of dollars of beautiful dresses, jeans, coats, etc. not worn for 1.5 years. It's too depressing :( Sugar, rice and bread are not that important, especially when you can have bacon and eggs, duck confit, cauliflower crust pizza, cheesy casseroles, massive rib-eye steaks, thai curries and a bunch of other delicious foods all you want.

OMG so true about dresses in our closet. I was just commenting to a friend that I'm so happy I can wear my wardrobe for a change. I'm 56 and weight loss definitely becomes harder each decade. So it's awesome that you already know the route. And I agree with never wanting to lose the same darn weight over and over again. Low-carb or paleo really doesn't feel like dieting because we can enjoy SO many filling foods and I find eating out at restaurants not that hard. Yum, I'm going to have to look into cauliflower crust pizza!!

egervari 06-28-2018 12:40 AM


Originally Posted by morphasia (Post 138736)
OMG so true about dresses in our closet. I was just commenting to a friend that I'm so happy I can wear my wardrobe for a change. I'm 56 and weight loss definitely becomes harder each decade. So it's awesome that you already know the route. And I agree with never wanting to lose the same darn weight over and over again. Low-carb or paleo really doesn't feel like dieting because we can enjoy SO many filling foods and I find eating out at restaurants not that hard. Yum, I'm going to have to look into cauliflower crust pizza!!

This is the recipe I used when I made it: Search "my food channel cauliflower pizza crust" in google (they won't let me link it). It should be the first result.

The recipe called for "parmesan", but to be clear, I'm pretty sure they meant Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is what I used. It's only 8g of carbs per serving and only around 550-600 calories unless you go crazy with the toppings.

morphasia 06-29-2018 04:16 AM


Originally Posted by egervari (Post 138775)
This is the recipe I used when I made it: Search "my food channel cauliflower pizza crust" in google (they won't let me link it). It should be the first result.

The recipe called for "parmesan", but to be clear, I'm pretty sure they meant Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is what I used. It's only 8g of carbs per serving and only around 550-600 calories unless you go crazy with the toppings.

Found it on google. Thx!! Looks amazing.


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