Is Quick Weight Loss A Good Thing? – A Progress Report

It’s been almost two weeks since I finished my 2 weeks of intermittent fasting and whilst I have posted a few informative posts lately, I haven’t posted on my own progress lately.

One of the reasons for me not posting on the site is because I have been working a little bit behind the scenes in trying to optimize some aspects of this site and promote through social media and this has led less content being produced.

That being said, an interesting topic was bought up to me that I wanted to explore a bit more and it has to do with quick weight loss and whether it is sustainable?

To give some background, I recently posted an article about Keto to a social media platform and I had someone respond to it by posting a link back to me that had a story about unsustainable weight loss due to crash diets and the such.

The conversation didn’t really go to far, but the gist that I took from the conversation was that this person assumed that the Keto diet is a just crash diet and that is not sustainable and weight gain would follow shortly after.

So Is Keto Good Or Not??

I began doing the Keto diet around mid-June this year (2019) and at the start of the diet, I spoke to a doctor about the diet and asked for his opinion on whether he thought it was a good diet to follow.

He said, “Maybe we should check out that rash before we talk about diet….”

That was actually a joke, but what he actually told me was that in the short term, many people have had success with the diet and have had good results, but there have not been any long-term studies that can give any definitive answers to this question.

He told me that fiber and some other nutrients are lacking in the diet and that if I am to do this diet then I may need to take some supplements to maintain adequate amounts of these to be healthy.

What’s Your Point, Stevie?

OK, so this all seems a little bit convoluted right now, and it is. This is what happens when you drink and blog…

Going back to old mate’s comment about crash dieting and sustainability. Is this Keto deal sustainable?

The truth is, at this point is, I don’t really know about the long term, I can only go with the here and now.

I have been doing Keto for 3 months now and not only have I not found it hard, but I have found it easier and easier as I get more into it. There is nothing in my life that I have ever been able to stick to like I have with this diet and the results speak for themselves.

I agree that “crash” diets don’t work. Simply because they are not sustainable. For instance the “Soup Diet?” Having soup every day. Yeah, like that’s sustainable…

You have to enjoy what you are doing or else you get over it very easily and that is where the Keto diet differs from most.

What Makes It So Easy?

The thing that makes it easy for me, is the lack of appetite. The lack of cravings that usually come from high-carb diets. You don’t have the high blood sugar levels and the crash that comes soon after, so you are not looking to try to find more food an hour after you’ve eaten.

When you don’t have the cravings, you tend not to overeat and you feel more satiated, particularly from protein. The hunger just isn’t there, for me personally. If its different for anyone else, I’d like to hear in the comments below.

At the end of the day I don’t actually know if this diet or lifestyle is sustainable in the long-term. All I can say right now is that I am losing weight and I feel good.

I feel that if I continue along this path and make sure that I am getting enough electrolytes and micronutrients in my diet, then I will continue to have success and good health.

My Current Weight

OK, so to get to my progress I will just recap. After the 2 weeks of intermittent fasting I finished at 122kg (269lb) which was about a 2kg loss over that period. Mind you, if you followed any of those posts you would’ve seen that my looser weekends were the downfall of more weight loss. But we can’t keep living in the past.

I’m happy to say that since that last weigh in on the 9th Sept, I have lost 3kgs. That’s not too bad, 3kgs (6.6lb) in 13 days. So I am at 119kg (262lb) at the time of writing. The lowest weight I have been in almost 5 years.

This brings my total weight loss, since I began my “journey’ to 15kgs (33lb) in just over 3 months.

What I Have Been Doing?

Well… last week, I loosened up a bit on recording my calories and just ate as I normally would without actually recording into my app as I had been. I aimed for a couple of days that I was going to exercise and fulfilled those days with a 3.1klm (1.93Mi) run on one day and a gym session a couple of days later.

I weighed in again on the following Monday and was a bit disappointed to see that I could not record weight loss for this time period. Booooooo……

I know why, though. The weekend is where I tend to have a few drinks and a few extra carbs. This almost always single-handedly messes up a good weight loss result for the week. And the weekend struck me out again.

What Happened Next?

If you have been reading attentively, then you would realize that despite having a week where I did not register any weight loss, I still ended up with a weight loss of 3kgs (6.6lbs) for the last fortnight. So how did that happen?

The day after my “no loss” weigh in, the battery in my digital scales went flat. Oh, my….

It was probably a blessing in disguise, because it put me in the dark of what was happening with my weight and knowing that I hadn’t lost anything for that week, I was more determined to make amends, so I wanted to push myself more exerciseredly (yeah, its a word, shut up….)

Olympics Contender…

Anyway.. this week, I stepped it up a notch with the exercise. I had 3 days where I ran my 3.1klm (1.93mi) block and had a good gym session on Friday night (where I would usually be sucking on some nice rums!)

The result is I lost 3 kgs (6.6lbs) in 5 days. This can’t really be a surprise, though. I mentioned in my IF conclusion that exercise is the “catalyst for weight loss” and it has proven its point massively this week.

I have worked my butt off to get that kind of weight loss and its a great feeling. I have been looking at my guts lately, trying to work out where the 15kgs I have lost has come off, and this week I can actually notice a difference.

One nice thing I have also noticed this week noticed with my tracking apps, is that there was a slight improvement in my cardio fitness according to Fitbit and I have improved on each of my run times on Map My Run.

Well… all except one. I have a feeling I should’ve had a rest day from exercise, because I didn’t really feel as though I had the energy to go for a run on Sat night, but I did anyway.