Well here I am. Technically this topic is a lie, I will be at day 60 tomorrow, but I also won't be on my computer tomorrow, so I'm doing my check-in a day early. So at "59" days I am now at 251lbs (still huge, still got a long way to go) but back at the beginning of January I was 280lbs.
I have been weighing myself daily, it's my every day morning routine: wake up, use the restroom first, then weigh myself. And then, I record the weight on Notes in my phone so at some point I can dump it into Excel on my computer. I know that all sounds like a little much, and I'm not suggesting to anyone else to do the same, but for me personally, putting every weigh in into Excel and creating visual charts really helps me stay extremely motivated and excited about my weight loss. It also helps me nerd out and crunch the numbers.
I lost 17lbs in the first 30 days, and an additional 12 in the second 30 days. At first the number be smaller (12 versus 17) alarmed me.. but I know that I have read about a million times, like all of you have, that in the first 2-3 weeks of weight loss we commonly see the "woosh" effect where you drop water weight quickly, but then it will level out, depending on where your deficit is.
I would like to say one thing, and this MIGHT get me the "torches and the pitchforks," because I know how you guys feel about AI. Last time I mentioned AI on here, I was immediately downvoted and told by multiple people "dude, don't." but.. the truth is I am using AI to calculate my calorie intake and maintain my deficit, and it seems to be working.
I am also the guy who was on here whining before about how I'm not able to count calories because my wife home cooks dinner every day. She adores cooking, and its her "zen" but if I tell her "honey I need you to weigh every single ingredient you are putting into this pan and tell me how many cups, ounces, etc of each ingredient went into this so I can look up how many calories this is" she gets extremely upset and says that she doesn't want to do that. And I can't really blame her! Even typing that out just now makes it sound so incredibly unrealistic, lol. Like, who is going to do that?
So instead, I have been just "ballparking" it with AI. (I don't subscribe to any AI service, I just go to Google Search and click "AI Mode" and that's it. I will ask it "estimate how many calories this meal is: sauted salmon with couscous and brocollini, cooked in lemon butter sauce with penzies spices on it. I had one plate with about two "fist-sized" portions on the plate, and a glass of water."
It will respond to me that this meal is around 550-750 calories. Since it's AI, and an estimate, I always go with the high number. So I calculate my calories for the day as being 750 for that meal. And when I ask it to calculate my TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) I always go with the low number. For example if it thinks my TDEE based on my exercise I did that day (or lack thereof) is let's say 2400-2800 calories, I always go with the 2400. So that way I am leaving a TON of wiggle room, and using "worst case scenario math" to make sure I consume significantly less than my maintenance level. Usually I aim for 1000 less than maintenance. That is just the standard number I am using. I don't know if it's too much, or too little, but it SEEMS to be working. When I look at my weight loss each 7 days, there are weeks with higher and lower numbers, but the overall AVERAGE over 8 weeks so far (I'm still in the middle of the 9th week) is 2.26lbs a week lost.
And that lines up almost perfectly with what most sources are saying "healthy, stable weight loss" should only be 2lbs a week.
Now if I do look at the average of the first four weeks, it's 2.6lbs per week average, but if I look at the average of the second four weeks, it's 1.8lbs per week average.. so MAYBE the overall rate IS starting to slow down a little. It's too early to say. I'm not panicking yet and not planning to change my routine in any way, YET. If the rate starts to slow down significantly more to where I'm SEEING it slow down in my excel chart, then I will probably be back here hat in hand asking how I can do better lol.
One big thing that is kicking me hard right now is that I've had a cold for the last 7 days, which means zero exercise this past week. It is absolutely KILLING me to be missing out on my routine that I was so proud of establishing, but.. it is what it is. I have to rest up and refrain from any exercise until the virus is completely wiped out, that way I can bounce back and jump back on the routine next week.
I don't really expect anyone to read all this, lol. But if you do, I thank you for your time! I know I write like a novel every freaking time I write, and it annoys people (especially on reddit) and the trend lately is to just immediately say "he used AI to write this" because it's more than 2-3 paragraphs, and I already said I'm using AI for other purposes earlier in the post, but for what it's worth I wrote this whole message directly from my heart lol.
Have a great weekend everyone.
