Hello friends! Welcome to another edition of Heavyweight, a monthly report of my fitness journey.
Disclaimer: the contents of this post are for informational or educational purposes only and do not substitute professional medical advice or consultations with healthcare professionals.
Diet
This month, there were good things and bad things. I tried a softer approach to fasting and averaged 18 hours of fasting a day. I started paying attention to what I ate during my eating window, focusing on protein and fat. I know this makes sense to everyone, but I was putting all my eggs in the fasting basket to solve my problems.
Weekends are my weakness. I’m not as disciplined on Saturday and Sunday as Monday through Friday. I need to be more deliberate about what I consume on the weekends. The weekend feels like a time to relax and let loose, but how can I do that without hindering my progress?
For the second half of the month, I aimed to eat 50 grams of carbs per day, which is the ceiling for a low-carb diet. However, if you're not paying attention, you can effortlessly blow through that carb budget. Thus, being intentional and deliberate is becoming a theme.
Eating enough protein is another area of opportunity. No one accidentally eats one gram of protein per pound of goal weight. Even if I aim for 0.7 grams of protein per pound of goal weight (200 x 0.7 = 140), that’s still a lot of food I would need to ingest in the six-hour windows I’m eating—without the help of protein shakes.
I’m almost tempted to experiment with shrinking the fasting window even more (16 hours) but focus on hitting my protein goal and staying within my carbs budget. Still, I may need to wait until Easter since I’m participating in the Great Fast, i.e., one meal a deal for all of Lent (coming to you March 5th, 2025). As you can tell, there’s a lot of finessing going on.
Exercise
My hip flexors started bothering me after 12 rowing sessions (66,437 meters up to February 19th), and I knew the repetitive rowing motion was getting to me. I foam rolled, stretched, and theragunned to manage the pain. I focused on walking as an active recovery for a few days.
I need to find a better balance, like with my diet, where I can have more options to exercise and prevent injury. If you have been reading this series, you know I frequently go down rabbit holes, and it seems I have found a physical limit when it comes to rowing. This is funny because I started rowing to avoid impact on my knees, but now I need to focus on hip health. Getting old sucks. In terms of recovery time, hip flexor strains can take one to three weeks to heal, so that’s that.
I’ve been adding walks to my routine, but it’s getting hot in the southwest, so I might need to switch from lunch to early morning or after-dinner walks. It doesn’t feel as strenuous as rowing, but I remind myself that moving is better than not moving. In a way, it’s a good thing that I want to do more.
I’ve also been crawling—you read that right, crawling, as in what babies do. Crawling can help with coordination, stability, mobility, and functional fitness. The first time I tried it, it felt good, and I started sweating almost immediately, so there’s something there. I’m pacing myself and trying it out as an alternative to rowing or kettlebells.
The name of the game in March will be getting my steps in and working on functional movement and strength, assessing every week, and making the necessary adjustments.
Results
January 2025 = 314.2 lbs
February 2025 = 306.2 lbs
March 2025 = 302.6 lbs
That’s a 3.6-lb loss for the month and an 11.6-lb loss year to date. Getting under 300 seems an elusive goal for now. However, I’m happy I lost 0.8% body fat and added 0.6 lbs in muscle mass.
I was looking at all the available data about my weight and found out that in March 2020, I was 277 lbs (125 kg). This is the lightest I’ve been in the last five years. In 2012, I was around 220 lbs (100 kg), a weight I felt terrific in—also, I like round numbers.
Having said this, I think the short-term goal is to get under 300 lbs. Then, I will work my way down to 275 lbs and continue trucking to 220 lbs. This would still put me in the heavyweight category (if I were a UFC fighter), which I know was an arbitrary range I chose, but I really like the heavyweight title of this section.
So there you have it: much more finessing, tweaking, and striving for progress.
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Before you go
Have you had a Flying Dutchman from In-N-Out?
Anybody here does calisthenics? Thoughts?
Did you know there is such a thing as GPS drawing?
Previously: 228.2
Today: 230.0
Trending the wrong direction. Fell off the horse in a big way, with travel, generous friends supplying non-keto food, stress, and just letting all domains slide.
I’ve got 1 week basically before a big change and then ill be figuring out a new routine and equilibrium. Im not saying “im just gonna let it ride until the big change” but i know myself enough to know thats whats coming.
Im thinking about lent coming up too. That might be a good spiritual reset. Idk man!! Its “only” 2 pounds but it represents an unwelcome trend. April 1 i dont want to be up again. Ill even take 229.9, just get me in the right direction.