Using Science to Lose Body Fat

I'm an active person and yet as I approached 50 years old, no matter how much exercise I did, I was getting fatter. I've found it quite perplexing. I've spent years trying to address it and failing but this year had a bit of success. With this Instructable I'll tell you what I did in the hope that it'll help you too.

It's not really all that scientific I just made sure to do some good measurements. I lost around 1lb (0.5kg) a week; 24lbs in total (10.8kg). Although this involved a bit of fasting and a weekday vegan diet, I managed to avoid abstaining from drinking alcohol!

I'm not going to explain why you should lose body fat since the health benefits are very clear.

Get some WiFi connected scales. They are not cheap but how much is your health worth? For me, being healthy was worth the spend. I bought Withings scales, now owned by Nokia - in the UK they are currently £47 - https://health.nokia.com/uk/en/body/shop (you'll also get the free Nokia Health app which shows you the graphs)

Weigh yourself as often as you like! I choose to weigh myself naked and after I've been to the loo (toilet) so I can get my lowest possible score.

But here's where there's a bit of science. Your weight is going to fluctuate day by day by quite a lot (especially if you are very active). For example, if I stop exercising for 4 days, on the 4th day I will be 4lbs (2kg) lighter. I believe this may be caused by Glycogen energy stores in my body. 1 molecule of glycogen stores 3 or 4 molecules or water. I should say I'm not a chemist but I am sure about the observation that I lose 4lbs in weight after 4 days of inactivity.

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't be concerned about fluctuations in your weight every time you jump on the scale. Have a look at the graph from my scales. The thick blue line is the moving average, THAT is what you should care about. The grey lines are the individual measurements which will fluctuate, sometimes quite a lot, like for me up to 4lbs (2kg) at a time.

I think we've all heard the weight loss mantra about how you 'shouldn't weight yourself every day'. With WiFi connected scales and a moving average you can weigh yourself as much as you like! I found this kept things quite simple.

I've cycled to work for 10 years and in that time I have managed to grow fat! However, if you are trying to lose weight and don't have some level of activity built into your day, you probably need some.

Cycling to work is one way of doing it. If you buy a folding bike like a Brompton you can easily jump on a bus or train if you need to.

Re-designing your way to work, perhaps adding an extra bit of walking or even jogging could be one way to do it.

I used to reward my cycle to work with a Pan Au Chocolate but when I checked I noticed they are about 260 calories each, so I switched to eating an Apple from my tree at around 80 calories.

After the Apple season I switched to completely skipping breakfast. This turns out to be one of the intermittent fasting approaches.

I have dinner around 9pm, a cup of tea with Soya milk around 11am, and then lunch at 1pm so that's a daily 16 hour fast on weekdays. I don't find it at all difficult.

Another of my daily rewards for cycling to work used to be cooked lunch with pudding and lots of custard. YUM! OK so that had to stop.

I switched to eating leafy salad, which I didn't like much, and piling on the cheese. That wasn't brilliant either since I didn't like leafy salad very much and I was piling on the fat with eating so much cheese.

So I switched to so called "superfood" style salad which was heavy in grains such as quinoa, couscous, bulgar wheat, lentils, chickpeas and that sort of thing. And I switched to eating humous instead of cheese, in fact, I switched to eating a vegan diet.

For dinner I ate soup either from a can or a fancy supermarket fresh soup. Sometimes I make my own soup! But always vegan during the week.

I allow myself a couple of slices of bread with it.

I once gave up alcohol for 6 months, all the while cycling to work. Although I wasn't measuring my bodyweight accurately then, I did not appear to lose any weight at all.

So during this diet I carried on drinking! Though I tried to moderate it a bit mindful that a bottle of wine contains around 625 calories.

You already know that refined products like sugar and flour are full of energy and are readily absorbed into your body. This is why pizza, bread, sweets (candy) and cake cause you to gain body fat.

I choose to avoid these during the week especially the sweets and cake that get brought into the office with great regularity!

I quite like to snack so choose to raw nuts (not salted) such as walnuts, brazil nuts, almonds, peanuts, etc. These have quite a bit of fat but are not refined so your body has to work a bit to absorb them and they have quite a number of health benefits.

So, I lost around 1lb (0.5kg) a week; 24lbs in total (10.8kg).

Christmas has messed up my routine a bit but I'm starting back with this method tomorrow and let's see if i keep losing 1lb a week. I'm cutting alcohol at the moment so let's see if that accelerates things.

The nice thing about this method is the continual measurement. If what you are doing isn't working, trying varying things for a couple of weeks and see if that works for you.

Good luck!

Carl