Started with a cut on 1/1/24. Trying to go from 16% - 18% body fat to 10% - 12%. Started at 228. (I’m 6’3") Logging everything into my Fitbit app. First week averaged 2400 cals. Weighed 230 after 1st week. Dropped to 2200 for the 2nd week. Dropped 7 lbs to 223 at the end of the 2nd week. I thought that’s a lot but maybe water weight or something. Weighed this morning and I’m at 219. So 11 pounds in two weeks at 2200 cals per week.
I’m on a deload week now and will be doing almost no upper body work for a few weeks as I try and get over a pain in the ass tennis elbow.
I’m averaging 200g protein per day and staying really close to a 40% protein and 30/30 between carbs and fat daily.
My TDEE is around 2800 cals so at 2200 I’m at about a 20% - 25% deficit. I didn’t think I’d lose 11 pounds in 2 weeks. I’m fine with the weight loss but obviously want to retain as much muscle as possible.
This is my first legit cut with really watching food and tracking calories legitimately. Half assed it a lot in the past but I feel like I’m dialed in this time.
My concern is I’m losing weight too fast. Is this somewhat normal for a first cut?
My experience was when dropping fat a used a strength metric to track loss of strength during the diet.
The problem with this is that I thought a upper body press movement was the best strength metric. The alternative would be a compound leg movement, e.g., Squat or Leg Press. I found lower body movements a little less sensitive to notice a drop in strength. But you could attempt to use one.
Even with a fair amount of water weight drop, 11lbs in two weeks is quite a bit.
Note: I never counted calories. I knew my body well enough to either add food or remove food to adjust my bodyweight. I used the feedback system to adjust the amount of food I ate.
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I agree about the weight loss being mostly water. Or maybe water and glycogen.
Its easy to eat “clean” and inadvertantly end up Low Carb and Low Salt. Then you end up with less “stuff” stored in your muscles. And I guess your guts too.
Its only a problem is you end up getting crampy or light headed from lack of salt, or head-achey and really, really sore from lack of carbs. Or just generally feeling like all around shit from too little food.
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I like to tell the story about how I cut all fast food out of my diet and found myself waking up on the floor in the middle of my pressing workouts, only to check my bloodpressure and find out it had dropped down to like 90 year old levels.
I never salted my food normally, and it turned out I was getting all my salt from fast food (since, as Dan John put it: “salt is a cheap seasoning”). I had to make it a policy to AGGRESSIVELY salt everything I ate after that, and now I supplement with electrolytes.
And yeah, I was already on a stupidly low carb approach at that point, so that didn’t help.
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I woke up thirsty and dried out the other day. My hands were all shaky making making coffee, and I thought of that story.
Then I pounded some OJ with added salt and felt better.
Its cool that after years a lot of this stuff seems less mystical.
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I think I’m still strong as ever. I’m “deloading” this week but really just starting up a new program and seeing where my lifting weights should start and trying some new stuff. Given the elbow it’ll be very leg intensive for a few weeks. On a side note, I’m trying BPC 157 for the elbow pain. We’ll see. I feel completely normal other than being hungry a lot but I’m getting used to that. I’m going to stay on plan and check again in a week. I went from a 7 lb loss in a week, to 4 lbs the next week, if I’m down to 2ish next week I figure it’s “plateauing” out on the weight loss and I’ll stay put. If its 4lb or better I’ll add some cals back in. I appreciate the feedback.
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