I was busy over the weekend and neglected to post about my weigh-in. Being very honest, mainly because my weight had gone up since my mid-week weigh-in, effectively erasing this week’s weight loss almost entirely.
I was back to 17 St 5 / 243lbs (110.5kg), just 0.1lb lighter than my previous week’s weigh-in.
There are various possible explanations for this. One is that I’d reduced my exercise – not deliberately, as you may recall, just over a week ago, my treadmill broke during my run workout, so not only was I unable to finish that run, I skipped the next two run sessions. The weather here in the UK hasn’t been great and running in the rain isn’t one of my favourite things.
Fortunately, we had a break in the weather, so I was able to get out for a run on Saturday, my first outdoor run in a long time. It is always disheartening to switch from the treadmill to outdoors as your fitness appears to take a massive drop. Where I’d built up to 5 mins running, 1 min walking on the treadmill, outdoors, I had to drop down to a measly 2 mins running, 1 min walking.
Rationally, I understand that this is because running outdoors – especially trail running, which is what I normally do – is much harder than treadmill running. But it’s still a bitter pill to swallow.
Anyway, my run went fine for what it was. I also got some exercise on Sunday of a different kind, but we won’t go into that here. 😈
And at the same time, I had actually increased my swimming volume this week. Knowing I’d be cutting back my running, I made sure I swam three times this week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
I also mentioned that I had been focusing on bilateral breathing – breathing on every third stroke, symmetrically – ie breathe to the right, on the tail end of the right hand stroke, then left, right, left and breathe to the left on the tail end of the left hand stroke. Previously, while I had been alternating sides, it would be every few strokes. So breathe to the right, then stroke left, breathe right again, stroke left, right, left, and breathe to the left.
By switching to fully bilateral breathing, you effectively place more demand on your cardiovascular system, effectively reducing the amount of oxygen you’re taking in while doing the same amount of work.
Not only did I increase the number of swims and add bilateral breathing, but I’d also been building up my laps as I mentioned previously, having gone from 1km to 1.25km.
And finally, I had also been reducing my rest periods and increasing my sets – instead of 4*250m I was doing 2*500m + 1*250m to make up the 1.25km.
All of this increased swim volume, reduced rest definitely hit my shoulders pretty hard last Monday, so for my Wednesday swim I backed down to 4*250m but was able to return to 2*500m + 1*250m on Friday.
So to be honest, when I weighed in on Saturday after my second 36hr swim that week, I was genuinely expecting to see a significant weight loss.
As I mentioned before when talking about these blips, there are various reasons for them – the body has a tendency to plateau and try to hold onto either water or body fat during fasting.
Another possible reason is an increase in snacking. It’s frustrating as I know I’ve been eating diabetic friendly, but I had gotten into the habit of snacking on bits of cheese with a dab of dijon mustard, and also bought some very diabetic friendly pork scratchings, which were moreish. I also had cooked up some chicken breasts in the air fryer and had them in the fridge to snack on.
Anyway, whatever the reason, the end result is the same. I didn’t really lose weight over the course of this week.
This is one of the challenges of trying to lose weight while exercising. Of course, the exercise is going to put additional stress on your body and need both fuelling and repairing, leading to increased feelings of hunger. Much as some proponents of both fasting and keto might try and convince you otherwise, a calorie deficit is completely essential to weight loss. Even if you are eating “healthy” (from a diabetic/keto perspective), if you aren’t in a calorie deficit, then you aren’t going to lose weight.
But what does this do to my weight loss average, which I need to keep to over 2.56lbs to hit my target? It’s now gone down from 3.7lbs per week on average to 3.0lbs. Still significantly over my 2.56lbs target.
An average of 3lbs per week is still incredible and represents great progress. My early rapid weight loss has definitely acted as a buffer, giving me some leeway, although now the buffer is shrinking, something I do need to be aware of.
I’m currently 21 hrs 45 mins into my first 36hr fast of this week, and have just come back from my first swim this week. I did a “leisurely” 1km swim only, to rest my shoulders a bit, and tomorrow I’ll go for another outdoor run.
I will also be weighing in tomorrow, and am keen to see how that looks. If I haven’t bounced back from this blip and lost a decent amount of weight since Saturday, then I will switch from 2*36hr fasts to 3*36hr fasts, which should significantly reduce my weekly calories and get my body back into a deficit.
More tomorrow.
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