Dates: November 17–November 24
Starting calorie target: 2090 kcal (8745 kJ)
End calorie target: 2072 kcal (8669 kJ)

Some weeks are great. Some weeks are bad. And then you have weeks like this one. Kids these days might use the word mid about it; personally, I’d go with mediocre. While bad weeks are arguably more interesting, I’d rather have a mediocre week than a bad one. Since it was a rather bland and uninteresting week, let’s just get to the data, as there’s really not that much more to report.

Weight

My starting weight was 128.3 kg (282.9 lbs) and my ending weight was 127.1 kg (280.2 lbs), i.e., I had a loss of 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs). As you can see, I lost almost all the weight on a single day—the last one. This experience is a common one for people trying to lose weight. If I’d fussed over weight on a day-by-day basis, I might’ve thought I plateaued. I’m sure you’ve all heard it before, but you should therefore not be hung up on your day-to-day weight.

The last time my trend was roughly at 129.7 kg (285.9 lbs) was on April 17, 2022, only ten days before my trend from last week. If it’s not already obvious, April 2022 was clearly a month of heavy weight gain for me.

Diet

I was nearly 1000 kcal (4184 kJ) over my calorie budget this week, more or less entirely because of Monday. Still, since I more or less stayed on target every other day, I’d call the week overall successful in the diet department.

There was nothing special about that Monday, per se; I just didn’t have it in me to hold back my hunger and cravings. Still, I stuck to my secondary target, which is to not eat much above maintenance¹. My intake was ~1000 kcal (4184 kJ) above my target, and since my target is 1000 kcal (4184 kJ) below maintenance, I succeeded. If I continue to “fail” in this manner, I should only ever lose or maintain my weight, never gain, and to be perfectly honest, after all this time eating at a deficit, that Monday felt like a feast in comparison.

On Saturday, I started supplementing my protein intake with protein shakes. As much as I’m sure I could increase my protein intake naturally, for one I really enjoy the way I’m currently eating, and I don’t want to risk making my successful deficit intake boring or negative in other ways, and second, adding or substituting in more protein in my meals would add to my food cost, which I honestly don’t have that much room for in my (monetary) budget these days. Not that protein shakes are free, but they are an insanely cheap protein source per gram of protein compared to “real” food.

For breakfast, I consistently ate an overnight oatmeal I prepared the day before. To change things up, I bought crushed flax seeds, which my partner helpfully pointed out could be a source of cyanide. But, based on what I found , you’d have to eat enormous amounts of it to actually hurt yourself—it was found to be safe to have over eight tablespoons per day , and I only eat 4 teaspoons in my oatmeal. Still, because of my partner’s warning, I stopped eating flax seed this week, but I found a way to start safely incorporating it again next week. I also substituted my fresh blueberries for a frozen forest berry mix. While the fresh blueberries are tasty, they’re something like 4 times the cost per unit of weight, and I believe there are more health benefits to eating all the various berries rather than the single one; the forest berry mix contains blueberries, blackberries, redcurrant, and blackcurrant. Starting on Saturday, I also started adding 5 g (0.2 oz) of honey, mostly to offset the increased sourness of the berries compared to the blueberries. If honey has some health benefits—of which I have heard rumors—all the better. Due to all these changes, my meal’s calories differed quite a bit, but the one I settled on at the end of the week came out to 540 kcal (2259 kJ).

For lunch, I had my scrambled eggs with vegetables four of the days. The exceptions were Monday, where I had 350 g (12.3 oz) of medister kaker, which were responsible for me meeting my protein target on that day (784 kcal (3280 kJ)), Wednesday, where I forgot to have lunch, and Thursday, where I bought some high-fiber breakfast rolls and had those with mackerel in tomato sauce  and smörgåskaviar  (999 kcal (4180 kJ)).

For dinner, I had chicken wok on Monday (688 kcal (2879 kJ)), breaded cod with a sauce made of lemon and parsley with green beans and potatoes on Tuesday and Friday (535 kcal (2238 kJ)), pinnekjøtt  with rutabaga purée and potatoes on Wednesday (1199 kcal (5017 kJ)), breaded cod with a sauce made of basil and parmesan with broccoli and potatoes on Tuesday (621 kcal (2598 kJ)) and homemade chili with green beans on Saturday and Sunday (572 kcal (2393 kJ) and 543 kcal (2272 kJ) respectively).

Nothing much of interest to report in the snacking department. I had some most days, except Thursday, where I had none—no doubt because of the very high-caloric lunch. My snacks were finishing the remainder of the chickpea-based puffed corn-like snacks on Monday, some Christmas cookies most days, and an orange on both Saturday and Sunday.

Exercise

• November 18:
  • Walking for 35 minutes at a distance of 2.4 km (1.5 miles) (speed 4.1 km/h (2.5 mph))
• November 19:
  • Walking for 16 minutes at a distance of 1.1 km (0.7 miles) (speed 4.1 km/h (2.5 mph))
  • ~1 hour of strength training at the gym
• November 20:
  • Walking for 53 minutes at a distance of 1.8 km (1.1 miles) (speed 2 km/h (1.2 mph))
• November 21:
  • Walking for 45 minutes at a distance of 3.1 km (1.9 miles) (speed 4.1 km/h (2.5 mph))
  • ~1 hour of strength training at the gym
• November 22:
  • Walking for 1 hour and 58 minutes at a distance of 7.5 km (4.7 miles) (speed 3.8 km/h (2.4 mph)) under the guidance of my county’s healthy living program

This week I walked for 4 hours and 27 minutes at a distance of 15.9 km (9.9 miles) (speed 3.6 km/h (2.2 mph)). I did no walking on Saturday and Sunday because of a blister building up under my right heel. Otherwise, I probably would’ve added quite a few more km and been closer to last week’s number. I’m also going to avoid any extraneous walking today (on Monday), and hopefully that’ll be enough to recover my heel.

Here are my exercise summaries from Fitbod this week:

I do not know why I ended up lifting ~2900 kg (6393.4 lbs) less volume this week. I suspect it is doing some bodyweight exercises, like crunches, push-ups, and lunges, which I think the app counts as 0, even though it really should be whatever proportion of my weight I end up using.

Sleep

It says 2 days on schedule, which is technically true because I fell asleep “too early” on Thursday, but the real numbers are that I had 3 good days and 4 bad days. I wish my sleep was better, but I feel mostly rested on most days at least.

Final thoughts

There is not much to say that isn’t already said. I am hoping for the upcoming week to be better than this one, and that’s about it!

Here is the graph for the last 30 days for today:

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