Cut H1 2024

I got fat during this trip. How fat?

• Weight: 183 -> 196lb
• BMI: 27 -> 29.
• Body fat %: 21.5 -> 24.8
• Muscle %: 50.7 -> 48.6

App says my metabolic age is 38.

I've started snoring.

So, the plan is to cut a lot of weight and fat (while retaining as much muscle as I can). Intent is both for aesthetic and health. Here's a snapshot of where I'm at right now.

Plan

The plan's to:

• Eat 1500 calories. Rule of thumb is if you want to lose weight at X pounds, you should at 10*X calories. I'm too lazy to dynamically adjust calories so I'll just set it at 10*(Goal weight).
• Do ~200g protein a day
• Workout + cardio

The Food

200g of protein at 1500 calories is hard because you'd normally just resort to chicken breast. Luckily, Alex Hormozi released some recipes that are:

• Low prep time
• High in protein
• Low in calories

A few recipes I'll play with:

Tuna protein bomb:

• 1.5 cup fat free yogurt (Fage)
• 2 cans of chicken of the sea.
• 96g protein.
• 440 calories
• The recipe says add mustard to taste, but I don't have mustard so will add sriracha instead. Will buy mustard later and play around with that. Edit: Mustard's fine too. I like sriracha better but there's a shortage so mustard's cheaper (also 0 calories).

Chococlate Protein Cereal

• 2 cups premier protein cereal
• 1/3rd of a premiere protein shake
• Almond milk to taste
• 50g protein
• 413 calories

Chose this because the cereal and the shakes are relatively cheap. Also, at 1/3rd a shake per meal I can stretch the $2.5 shakes for a while.

Cauliflower ground beef

• Cauliflower rice
• 1 lb ground beef (90/10)
• Sriracha to taste. Or garlic/onion to taste.
• 88g protein
• 800 calories

Instead of cauliflower, can feel free to substitute it with any leafy greens/0-calorie veggie (non-starch). Above's broco for example. Don't use additional oil when stir frying; use the oil from the beef, so toss in the beef a little earlier than you normally would to render out fat.

Hot pot lamb

Weee sells these hot pot lamb packages that's 600 calories + 92g protein.

• 1 lb lamb, boiled.
• Veggie.
• Sriracha, hot chili flakes to taste.

Boiled shrimp

I buy frozen shrimp that I boil and eat. 1lb frozen (with shell and all), translates to 74g protein, 300g calories. About 1/3rd of the weight is shell and water weight.

• Boil it.
• Eat it.

In the PDF above, he just says buy frozen shrimp, already shelled, and eat it with cocktail sauce. That, for me, is fucking disgusting. If you like it, by all means do it. But I like eating hot shrimp (unless it's sashimi-grade ebi). This is just a demonstration that you don't have to follow any recipe to a T--adjust to your liking, as long as the calories/macro fits.

He also has kind of "bro" recipes which consist of 1L of egg whites which is too much for me. I also skipped more expensive options like beef jerky and expensive protein shakes.

As you can see, I can hit 200g protein pretty easily without hitting 1.5k calories. Especially since I have whey iso powder that'll let me do ~40 grams of protein at around 250 calories. Some examples:

So I can do a yogurt + cereal + protein shake for 1100 calories, and then back fill the rest with ice cream or something. Who cares. I'm not going to cry about 14 missing calories especially if my target weight is much under 200lb (and thus don't need 200g strictly for 1g/lb of body weight). Example of how much ice cream I can eat if I need to backfill 400 calories once I hit my protein requirements:

Look mom, I'm on a diet!

Or I can do a half portion of yogurt + Cereal + beef + 1 scoop of protein shake and hit my macros / calories.

Or I can do a beef + yogurt + 1 scoop protein shake to hit my protein, and eat some snacks for an extra 150 calories.

Or I can just do a half portion cereal, plus beef, plus 2 protein shakes (4 scoops) and it'll also be kind of perfect.

Notes:

• For the yogurt recipe I prefer to split it into 2 sittings, spread 2 hours apart, so I can digest it better (average about 50g protein per meal).
• Beef can be split into 2 meals this way as well. But depends on time. Reheating it in the microwave takes time, whereas taking a prepped tuna+yogurt doesn't.

Exercise

I plan to just do simple Zone 2 cardio for about 20-45 mins a day (starting at 20 and then progressing to 45 over 6 months). This is just jogging outside or if weather doesn't permit or if I'm lazy, just do inclined treadmill speedwalking.

For lifting, I plan to just do my regular lifting routine 5 days a week, except since I haven't worked out consistently in 2 months, I'll reduce my weights by about 20% and then start from there. If I have to go do more reps to failure, so be it. Then increase weights as my body feels "warmed up" across a bunch more sessions.

Exercise for strictly losing weight isn't that important--it's mostly diet. But since I want to lose as little muscle mass as I can, I'm maximizing protein (see above), and then also trying to get some intense lifts in.

Hurdles

This is January 2024 as I'm writing this but I'll go to:

• Thailand for about 1.5 weeks in Feburary
• California for a a few weeks in March
• Dubai for about 1.5 weeks in April.
• Vienna in August.

These will present hurdles and halt any weight loss. On vacation, I'll try to exercise but I probably won't adhere to any sort of diet since I want it to be fun.

Thus, my prediction is that I'll make some decent progress come February and then revert some of it in Thailand, and then resume good progress again until March, where it'll be reversed a bit again, and then I'll continue to cut until June-ish, or until I hit one of the following goals, or stop conditions:

• I stop snoring, and then minus 10-20 lbs after that
• 150 lbs.
• I feel significantly weaker (my lifts have declined 25% from max).

I want to be very skinny to build a good base so I can bulk to around 180-200lb again where my muscle % would be much higher and my fat % much lower.

Cheat Days

I will do this without cheat days mostly because of the hurdles above. I'll already have large refeeding periods in February and March, so I don't feel like cheat days are necessary.

I may add cheat days after March's trip though.

Results

To keep myself accountable, below's a log of my results. Keep in mind body fat is not going to be accurate since nothing really measures bf accurately. I'm mostly looking forward to have it go down in a trend. Weight by itself is also a poor measure of a diet.

But weight + bf is easy enough to understand so I'll use those stats. To supplement my understanding of how the cut's going, I'll look at my physique, energy levels, strength, and make adjustments from there.

Daily reports are kind of a waste of time. Some say you should take the average (or median is probably better) of your daily measurements across a week. I'll just update the below once or twice a week, and then post-process after.

Final Results

Down 29.6 pounds. Down 6.7% bodyfat.

Endurance weight lifting (5x10 at 70% 1RM) has decreased to about 70-80% of what it was (can only pump out 70-80% of reps compared to at peak bulk).

My max bench has maintained, however, at 235 lbs. No significant max strength loss.

What went well: Despite traveling and cheating for about ~8 weeks in 1H 2024, I still lost 29.6 pounds and 6.7% bodyfat. Looked at some photos and I was pretty fluffy and now shredded.

**What could have went better: ** Probably a little bit more cardio to cut more. Probably could have not have 'let loose' as much while traveling.

Below's a graph of my real weight (blue trend) vs. ideal (if I lost 1% body weight per week):

As you can see (if you open image in new tab and zoom in), my ideal weight is 150.9 for this cut and I ended up at 166.7. Or about 15.47lb more than what an optimal diet would be. This is around an additional 50% of weight cut. Even though that is significant I am still somewhat happy with the results. Physique looks much better than 6 months ago and without much strength loss.

Log

"Raw" means I just woke up, peed, and naked. Otherwise you may consider it as uncalibrated / more or less a rough estimation of state.

• Jan 9: 196lb, 24.8% bf.
• Jan 12: 191.2lb, 23.7% bf, raw.
• Jan 16: 190lb, 23.4% bf, raw.
  • Note: Only lifted 3x past week. Won't hurt my cut but will be dangerous for muscle loss. Power is fine, 5x10 (endurance)-type sets are a lot weaker.
• Jan 20: 189lb, 23.2% bf, raw.
  • Weight loss will start to taper. This is when the real diet is starting.
  • Treadmill: 30:00 -> 31:00, increase 1min/week on weekends until 45m.
• Jan 23: 188lb, 23% bf, raw.
  • Lifting roughly back to 5X/week now. Not sure why I always land on whole numbers for my poundage.
• Jan 25: 187.4lb, 22.8% bf, raw.
  • Cardio feeling a little harder. Not sure if it's because I'm weaker, or if weather's hotter.
• Jan 28: 185.6lb, 22.4% bf, raw.
  • Cardio felt better today. Could be fluctuation, but this week could be too much weight loss. Will monitor over next couple of weeks and if losing weight too quickly, do 1600 calories instead of 1500.
  • Treadmill: 31:00 -> 32:00
• Jan 30: 185.8, 22.5% bf, raw.
  • The novice will see that they've gained 0.2 lb in 2 days and freak that the diet's not working. For me, it just seems like Jan 28 was an outlier. And losing 2.2lb in a week is roughly on track. Also with my diet, I'm not having as many bowel movements weight can fluctuate.
  • Like day-trading, looking at your weight every single day is not useful because it's mostly nice. Look at the longer-term trends. Luckily unlike the stock market where you need to look at 5-y to 30-y trends, there's a lot less noise in a diet and you can just take a 1-3 week window and make adjustments.
• Feb 2: 186lb, 22.5% bf, raw.
  • Flat trend could be due to many variables: Water retention, reduced BMR, accidental caloric intake, etc.
    • Reduced BMR can be caused by too much exhertion. Will slow down from 3.1 mph peak on inclined treadmill to 2.8 mph. Will also lengthen it from 32:00->33:00 tomorrow.
    • Accidental caloric intake: If sauces and stuff proves to be too many calories, I'll reduce my calorie count by 200. But caloric reduction is a last resort. Will see how the Feb 6 weigh-in looks.
    • Water retention: Water isn't fat so I don't care much. But too many carbs can cause water retention (which is fine), and glucose spikes (which isn't that great for health). Will do a bit more fiber prior to carb-y meals. Main thing that changed past few days is udon/ice cream for backfilling calories, which may be too many carbs. So going back to dumplings is a way to eliminate some variance.

• Feb 6: 184 lb, 22% bf, raw.

  • Gonna do 1100-1300 cal/day to prep for going to Thailand next week, where I'll be eating more.
  • Losing 1.8lb is about right (1% of bw per week).

• Feb 11: 182 lb, 21.6% bf, raw

• Feb 13: 181.8 lb, 21.6% bf, raw
  • Probably not gonna be this low in a while since I am going to Thailand!
• Feb 27: 190.4 lb, 23.5% bf.
  • Weighed right after flight / got home. Probably mostly water weight. Will take a few days break from lifting while jetlag is reset. Cardio remains the same.
  • Did lift most days in Thailand.
  • Will also substitute canned tuna to canned salmon since each canned tuna is about 1 week's worth of safe mercury consumption according to FDA limits. So each day on cut where I eat tuna, I'm eating about 2 week's worth of mercury.
• Mar 4: 182.4 lb, 21.7% bf.
  • Not raw measurement. Not much to say, other than let's continue the program.
• Mar 6: 178.4 lb, 20.8% bf, raw.
  • Wanted to get a raw measurement. Downspike probably followed by a mild upspike. So without weighing myself, I expect to go back up to ~180lb some time this week and probably land ~178-179 next Monday. Let's see how good/bad my predictions are.
• Mar 9: 180.2 lb, 21.2% bf
• Mar 11: 179lb, 20.9% bf
  • Not raw measurement. But, seems like my prediction was bueno.
• Mar 15: 177.4lb, 20.6%
• Mar 20: 180.4lb, 21.3%
• Mar 22: 178.2lb, 20.8%

• Mar 26: 176.2lb, 20.3%, raw

  • Some fluctuations. Relatives in town and ate many cheat meals, but trend is OK still.
  • Traveling for a bit, so it is hard to weigh myself accurately the next month or so.

• Apr 26: 179.2lb, 20.6%, raw -- new baseline.

  • Good, all things considered. Traveled for a month and didn't cardio for a week in Dubai since the gym was flooded and the treadmills were dead. The streets were also dangerous to walk in. I could've been more hardcore and just walked in circles in the hotel lobby, but didn't. Will weigh-in again on 30th as that lands on Tuesday, the day of the other weigh-ins.

• Apr 30: 176.6lb, 20.4%

• May 21: 172.8, 19.5% bf, raw

  • Bad. Seems like I've lost some water weight and stuff. But, I've also gotten weaker at the gym by a lot. Instead of 180g+ protein per day, been slacking and maybe only doing 100-120g for past couple weeks. As such, endurance is almost halved for lifting heavy weights. On top sets, probably only about 80% of beginning of bulk.
  • Due to this messup, I probably need to cut the cut short to around end of June (more specifically, July 2nd as that lands on a Tuesday) and then start bulking up.

• May 28: 174.6, 19.9% bf

  • Not raw weight so hard to know what this means. Though over the weekend there were more cheat meals.

• May 30: 172, 19.4% bf, raw.

  • I was sick for the past 5 weeks and working out has been hard in terms of being able to do max effort due to coughing. Now that I've reunited with Serena, she seems to have picked up a strain of some other cold or COVID and I am getting sick all over again. So max effort in gym is very hard, which means cutting or bulking extremely difficult.

• Jun 4: 171.2, 19.2% bf raw

• Jun 11, 170.4, 18.9% bf raw

  • These final few weeks of cut, I will probably subtract cheat days.

• Jun 18, 169.0, 18.7% bf raw

• Jun 25, 171.0, 19.1% bf
• Jul 2, 168.4, 18.5% bf raw
• Jul 9, 166.4, 18.1% bf raw
  • End of cut. Fasted day before.

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