My weight loss

Just a casual post. Nothing really important. Since I keep updating my routines and my lifts, I thought I'd put this too. I'm in the insti olympic weightlifting team and we have the Inter IIT happening every year. I'm supposed to be in the under 62kg weight class, i.e. my weight has to be less than 62 kg. On July 10, I weighed 67.2kg- a lot of weight.

There are different kinds of people, genetically. People are usually recognized as ectomorphic (slim, can't gain or lose fat/muscle quickly), endomorphic (big, gain or lose fat/muscle quickly, esp fat) and mesomorphic (muscular, gain muscle quickly but not fat). I'm an ectomorph, a hardgainer- cannot gain fat or muscle quickly. This was my genetic thingy but after lifting for 2 years, I've put on a lot of fat. I definitely had to worry about my weight and so decided to go on a cut, to get down to about 63kg or so by mid September. Generally lifters go on bulking(gaining muscle and fat) and cutting(losing fat primarily) phases but I never went for a cut till last month. So this was my first cut ever, aimed at losing weight at the rate of 0.5kg per week.

First I'll tell the result. I started my cut on July 14 and on July 27 I weighed 64kg. Lost 2.5kg in 2 weeks, which is rather unhealthy. But this morning I checked my weight and I'm at 64.8 kg. So the 64kg was only a temporary one. I've probably lost around 2kg in 2 weeks, which is still a little too much for my body. But anyways, I'm quite happy with my weight now.

The diet I was on was a little tough. I was at home, still had to eat only small meals. The part wasn't about the small meals, but about being at home. With all the delicious food at home, I had a really hard time resisting the temptation to eat. I planned on going for 5 meals a day, with 4 eggs in a morning meal and soya chunks (some call it meal maker) in my last meal at night. But I ended up with only 3 small meals a day, and 2 eggs in the morning, and not even any juices. I'd snacked on a couple of biscuits sometime but that was all, nothing else. And on 25, 26 and 27 I ate even less- only 1 proper meal, in the afternoon, and 5 eggs . In the last 3 days, I've been having a better diet- a small meal in the afternoon, 2 chapatis in the night and 4 eggs, a glass of milk and 3 fruit juices per day. This has looked pretty good till now.

Other than the diet, I did a lot of very low intensity cardio- walking. When at home (from 17th to 25th), I'd eat a couple of boiled egg whites and walk some 6km early in the morning. Again, in the evening, a 4km walk (but no eggs before this). Back in insti, I've been doing some olympic lifting and also some high intensity strength training.

Weight loss is almost always accompanied with strength loss, unless the weight loss is very slow and accompanied with a good diet. I havne't noticed significant loss in strength, but my endurance did suffer. While I'm used to lifting for about 70 min (my sessions were 100min long about an year back, but cut down to 50 min now), when I hit the gym for the first time on 27th, I was totally exhausted after 25 min. And I didn't even hit my maximum, was just doing a lot of reps. Just for info, I was doing snatch pulls, 8-10 reps in each set till 80kg and 6 reps each of 90kg and 100kg. My calorie intake was too low on 25 and 26 and that must have been the reason. Right now I feel a lot more energetic than I was 3 days back.

A little more info on losing weight. Cutting down on the calories is only one part of it, and you need to have good physical activity along with it. Also, cutting down too much is not good, it results in muscle loss and bone density loss. The cut should be gradual, not more than 0.5kg per week. I've crossed that limit though. When you go low on calories, your regular metabolism is slowed down, hence as you go through the cutting phase, your weight loss starts getting slower and slower. Say you started at 2800 calories per day and were losing 0.4kg per week, to continue losing at the same rate, after a couple of weeks, your calorie intake must be lesser than 2800, maybe 2600 or so.

Right now, I'm going to load up on calories for two days- will have a nice heavy meal in the afternoon and in the night. Then I'll go on another 4 week cut, with only rotis in lunch and dinner. Target now is to come down to 63kg by the end of August.