Lose weight cheaply

It’s been four weeks since I started alternate day fasting and things are going very well. This week I tweaked the food eaten and implemented a major change in the exercise program. This benefited me.

Weight Lost

This week I lost a total of 5 pounds. This is what I expected based on the math at the end of the week and it’s what I hit. You’ll notice the greatest difference in weight was 7 pounds, which is more than in the past. I believe this is due to the timing of the fasting days.

The third week went just ok. I think I’ve come across the fact that you absolutely need to have 8 hours of sleep to lose weight.

Weight Lost

I lost a total of 3 pounds this week with the greatest difference of 5 pounds. It was disappointing, but like I said, I discovered that 8 hours of sleep is my sweet spot.

Here is the weekly graph. Click to enlarge:

Food Eaten

The week’s food diary was complete, but a 2500 per day average was too much to increase the amount of weight lost. I stayed low carb, but I did increase a couple of comfort recipes.

Exercise is critical to weight loss, especially if you are alternate day fasting. I thought it best to address my exercise routine and why I do it.

CARDIO

The cardio aspect of the exercise routine ensures that calories are being burnt by raising your heart rate and effort level.

My cardio is on an elliptical machine. It’s low impact on your knees and can help both the upper and lower body. I do 30 minutes on the elliptical 5 times a week. I average 500 calories expended based on the readout on the machine.

WALKING

I am 100% caught up with the food and exercise entries into Nutribase. The second week went slower, as expected, than the first week. Wrapped into this week was my first trip, so I learned a few things that I will detail below.

Weight Lost

I ended up 3 pounds down for the week. This was disappointing. Rather than it being a plateau it was related to an increase calorie count during the week and some awfully nasty jerkey I ate on the trip. Click for a larger graph.

Food Eaten

Since I am documenting the results as I go along, I needed to choose a period of time to do it. A week sounded good. In these entries I am hoping to show the following:

• Weight Lost
• Food Eaten
• Exercise Completed
• General Thoughts

Weight Lost

For the first week I lost a total of 17 pounds. I cannot explain the rapid weight loss, but I will add it to my ongoing research. This was a very satisfying start.

Food Eaten

This is a running list of topics I need to cover in the book, Lose Weight Cheaply. Yeah, I am not sure of the title of yet, but it’s what I am going with.

This list is A) Not complete and B) Not in any order. This is just a running list of things I think I need to address.

• Do you need to eat carbohydrates
• How is fat digested
• How is protein digested
• How are carbohydrates digested
• Why low fat makes no sense
• Why is exercise important in losing weight

One of the things people can’t believe when I tell them I’ve lost so much weight is how I’ve done it.

Them: You don’t eat?

Me: No.

Them: But, you have to eat.

Alas, I never continue the conversation. It’s really tough to educate someone in a five minute conversation, which is why I’m glad I started this site.

Alternate day fasting is simply not eating every other day. Simple, right? It does two things: