Date Weight Body Fat %
4/16/2012 181.6 11.5%
4/17/2012 179.4 11.0%
4/18/2012 176.1 10.1%
4/19/2012 173.6 9.5%
4/20/2012 173.0 9.3%
4/21/2012 172.4 9.0%
4/22/2012 172.8 9.1%
4/23/2012 174.4 9.8%
4/24/2012 173.6 9.5%
4/25/2012 172.6 9.0%
Starting off from what I would call the "Easter Bulk". I have given it this name to give somewhat of an educated notion that I had a specific goal in mind. In all honesty, this bulk was driven by gluttony and an overabundance of Easter leftovers and candy. So knowing there was no way of this ending up well, I chose to have a workout everyday that my body would let me. I believe I only missed a workout one day within a 3 week period. Surprisingly, with the excessive calorie intake my body was able to handle this new workload quite well. Everyday was Reverse Pyramid Training, (RPT) after warming up I would start with the heaviest weight I could for 3-5 reps, then dropping the weight by 10% and adding two reps until I was performing around 13-17 reps for the last set. For those of you who havent ever done RPT, it is one of the most exhausting and draining exercise protocols I have ever done, typically you wake up the next morning completely drained independent of how much sleep you get. So with this caloric intake I was still exhausted but my mentality wouldnt let me miss a day. Even with my diet consisting of complete crap (ie. Peeps, snickers, sopes, weiner schnitzel, etc...) my lifts were consistently increasing. I recall during the 3 week period my bench press (I had jus previously fixed my bench for and changed my style to close grip index on inner ring) went from 225x3 to 255x5, extrapolate data for the same rep count would be something like 225x3 to 280x3. Although there was a whole week dedicated to bench press, this improvement is still quite impressive.
Now, back on track. The first day starting off we see fat percentage and weight are relatively close together on the graph. Roughly 2lbs of fat loss would equate to 1% body fat change. The diet being used is a ketogenic diet, as little carbohydrates as possible on most days <20g were consumed.
The start of day 2 we see over 2 lbs of a weight drop but only .5% body fat drop. Day 3 we see an additional 3.3 lbs drop and a .9% body fat drop. So now were down 5.5 lbs and 1.4% body fat. So whats the deal? I thought we agreed that 2lbs lost equals 1% body fat. If you guessed it wasnt fat, you get a golden star ( I would pass out candy, but that would be counter productive). So what is the weight that is being lost? Well, there is more than one answer. Free fatty acids, Protein, Carbs, and mostly water.
Free fatty acids, is basically fat, its the mobilized form of all the attractive jiggly stuff we carry around our waist and darn near everywhere.
Protein, for our purposes is basically muscle breaking down.
Carbs, or more correctly glycogen, is stored in our muscles and liver and is stored 1g with 3g of water.
After reading the above of carbs we are able to connect why on this low carb diet we are losing lots of water. As we get to Day 4, it is safe to say that we are in Ketosis, a metabolic state that shifts the body from primarily using carbs as fuel to using mainly FFA and ketone bodies. To learn more on ketosis scroll to the bottom of this post. Day 4 it is also safe to assume that whatever weight we lose from here on is majorly a function of fat loss. As we can see for the continuing days until 4/23/12 there is a relatively linear loss of weight and bf%. On 4/22/12 we can see a slight increase in both which isnt concerning because the night before was a heavy meal and the effects of low fiber intake has started to show. Beginning on 4/23/12 we see the weight spike bringing along bf% with it. This increase was induced by diet, a carb refeed if you will. If you saw the large amount of what was consumed you would be quite pleased to only see that small of a gain. As in past keto diets with carb refeeds the weight rebounds were upwards of 17lbs. Although this refeed was designed with continued dieting and carb depletion in mind, so the carb load was far fewer in quantity to facilitate continued fat loss but also restore some sanity lost during the low carb portion. Interestingly enough, the weightloss since has seemed rather linear as well, which makes me speculate what might be going on. The weight loss shouldve been a little greater the first couple days back on the diet. So today I will be implementing a bit more water and fiber content to see if that will help to speed up the evacuation of foreign contaminants.
While protein/muscle loss is typically a concern in hypocaloric diets, I feel that due to the high intake of dietary protein in combination with a Intermittent fasting proctocol along with a ketogenic diet I am confidently discounting the loss of protein loss on this diet, as it does not seem logical that to any significant degree it is a factor of the weight loss.
ALL BODY FAT % MEASUREMENTS WERE TAKEN WITH A FOOTSCALE USING BIOELECTRIC IMPEDANCE. The actual values themselves may be off but the the downward and upward trends can be seen as accurate changes.
Ketosis Continued:
The main predictor of ketosis is carbs in the diet. Since roughly 100g of carbs are needed to support brain function on a day to day basis, any diet lower in carbs than that will induce ketosis. Commonly you will hear people quote that the brain can only run on carbs, which is mostly right. In a mixed diet environment, there are carbs available and is the perferred fuel. In ketosis, there are minimal carbs and available and the body spares carbs every way it can. There are a number of tissues that can only use carbs as fuel, brain, nervous system, neurons, bone marrow. All of them but the brain create a byproduct called pyruvate which can be sent to the liver to create carbohydrates thus creating a net carb decrease of zero. So the brain is the only tissue that needs external (external from itself) sources for carbs. The brain in ketosis can run on ketone bodies as they can cross the blood brain barrier, in the first few days the ketones cross the bbb and are sent to cells in the brain that convert the ketones to ffa and then are used as fuel. After the first couple days the brain circumvents this step and uses ketones as fuel directly. However, the brain can never fully run just on ketones, it can use ketones for up to 75% of its fuel source but will still always need the remainder from carbs. Lets say the diet is completely void of any dietary carb, how will the brain function? Well the body is very well adapted for circumstances just like this (which is why Im so confused when people are deathly afraid of not eating carbs or missing a meal, fasting can produce these same changes its called fasting ketosis). The body has ways of making carbs from internal and external means. Primarily protein will be broken down either from muscles, or dietary protein and will create carbs though a process called gluconeogenesis (gluco= carb, neo= new, genesis= creating) supplying enough carbs for the brain to run day in and day out. The rest of the body is fueled by FFA and ketone bodies for the next few weeks until the body adapts and stops using ketones are a larger percentage of fuel and typically uses FFA for the majority, a mechanism probably induced to make sure that the body does not use all the ketones so there is enough for the brain. This is probably far more than you would ever care to know about ketosis, but is a very basic and short summation of ketosis
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