TDEE Spreadsheet, 09/23/19–09/23/20 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
Progress Pics: 169 lbs on 10/19/19, 158 lbs on 02/25/20, 145 lbs on 06/18/20, 141 lbs. on 09/09/20
In July I hit my first milestone which was my GW of 145 and I posted about it in LoseIt. Today marks exactly one year since I started tracking my TDEE and CICO in a TDEE Spreadsheet and started a cardio + strength exercise routine and I wanted to share my experience.
Background: I have been heavy for most of my adult life, topping out at 190 in 2016. Prior to starting CICO/TDEE I had never had a nutrition and exercise plan that stuck. Through some major depression and IBS issues between 2017–19, I lost a little weight and then yo-yo'd around between 170–175 for about a year. I have always at least been active as a walker, with regular long walks and walking commutes to work. I was able to run a very shitty treadmill 5K when this started that would completely gas me at a 10-min pace.
First phase, 09/23–01/01 (12 lbs. lost):
I started this plan on 09/23/19 at 174 lbs. When I started TDEE/CICO, my targets where at around 1800 kcal/day, but I broke it up to eat somewhere closer to 1500 kcal on weekdays and 2500 kcal on Friday and Saturday. I did not pay attention to macros other than to increase protein and decrease sugar. I found thinking of my TDEE/CICO on a weekly basis rather than day to day and planning meals for the week accordingly made it a lot easier to be good from meal to meal.
This early nutrition phase was done in coordination with a Peloton spin routine, specifically power zone training. I know people have mixed feelings about Peloton, particularly the cost/culture, but my gym had two that were free to use and I found them very useful as a person who had never adopted a well-considered training routine or had a coach. I did Peloton about 4x/week and upped it to 5x within a couple months. What I found particularly valuable — and this advice can be ported to other cardio training routines — is the power zone training. In power zone training, you take an extremely vigorous 20-min FTP test that gauges your functional threshold power, i.e. your maximum output. It uses that number to create 7 power zones — recovery, endurance, tempo, threshold, V02 max, anaerobic, and neuromuscular. I spent most of my time in the course of a week in endurance and tempo, with occasional intervals in zones five and six. If you are new to aerobic exercise, I can't recommend power zone training enough — it's not Peloton specific, either, you can do it on any bike. I'd add that building a cardio routine on a bike was much easier than my past attempts to build one on the treadmill or in outdoor running; there wasn't such a strong acclimation period of muscle soreness from all the impact and the metrics on the bike made it easy for someone like me who did not have a feel for strain/intensity to appropriately work out and progress my aerobic base. I have since shifted to distance running as my primary activity and I could not have picked it up and sustained it if I hadn't done the bike first. Comparable zone-based training plans exist like this for other cardio — Strava, for instance, has pace zones or you could get a cheap HR monitor and do HR training. For me, metrics worked extremely well in making helping me build a consistent progression.
In addition to spin, I did 3x/week strength training. I'm going to be straight: I have never had a good and consistent strength training program so I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about it here. I did a circuit of four exercises 5x5 3x/week, hitting different areas each day along with assistance exercises (squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press, hammer curls, curls, rows, pushups, planks, crunches). I've tried to attempt pull ups a bunch of times. I think I've been able to do 2 max? Lol. The bottom line is that I aspire to have a consistent strength routine and I'm looking forward to getting on it this winter, but right now I'm just trying to survive marathon training. Anyway...
In terms of diet and nutrition, these first few months were easily the roughest in this whole year. My activity volume and intensity were not nearly where they're at now, I was lacking in muscle mass, and it took a lot of trial and error to figure out satiety and energy with food. Here were my general principles:
1) Alternate breakfast between high protein on strength training days (eggs, greek yogurt, etc.) and raisin bran (or comparable) on the other days to keep myself regulated and have some variety.
2) Light lunches or skip lunch. Lunch I found the easiest meal to cut back on by far. I basically made a deal with myself — I know how much I like having a big dinner and a glass of wine after a stressful work day and there's no way I could have kept this up and deprived myself of that. So lunch a lot of times was salads, baby carrots with homemade light-oil hummus, *very* stripped-down chipotle bowls, or just homemade sourdough /w olive oil and an apple. If I had a particularly active day I'd throw in some almonds or a granola bar.
3) Sunday–Thursday I need to always have something whole and homemade in the freezer, very often big batches of stews, soups, curries, etc. that can be easily reheated, have a high vegetable and protein content, and taste spicy and good. Most of these dinners were around ~400-500kcal. I usually paired them with a 5 oz glass of wine and a 100 kcal fudge pop. Friday and Saturday were cheat days. Typically I would skip lunch on Friday to save calories for dinner, often sushi or non-fried chinese food. I ate a lot of popcorn as a salty movie snack. Ice cream, beer, and martinis were my real cheats.
Second Phase, 01/01/20–06/29/20 (17 lbs. lost):
A lot of the principles and routines from the first phase stuck around but, of course, the pandemic happened and changed things quite a bit for me in terms of my exercise routine. After about a month long plateau from late-December to the beginning of Feburary, I got back into my nutrition routine and things stayed the same right up until March 13th. My gym was closed that day and, though it's reopened since, I haven't gone back. I turned to outdoor running doing about 4x/week alternating 5k and 10k runs, so around 15–20 mpw. Like a classic running rookie I was running too fast and probably too much, but because of the aerobic base I'd built on the bike, and with a little research on r/running and r/advancedrunning, I transitioned into a sustainable running routine over time. I did my first half marathon on a whim on May 16th and then slugged it out with low-HR and easy miles throughout the dog days of summer, my goal being to slowly increase volume and improve efficiency.
I'd say this second phase is where I first started to transition from losing weight predominantly through diet to a 50/50 mix of losing weight through both diet and exercise, or, to put it another way, this is when I started to value exercise and fitness as my predominant concerns rather than weight loss alone. Weight loss kind of became a ride-along achievement for improving as a runner.
And, of course, because my gym closed, my strength training went to total shit. I tried to keep up some bodyweight circuits and did some yoga in the first couple months and then totally lost interest. I'm not proud of it.
Third Phase, 07/01/20–present (~3 or 4 lbs lost, Marathon Training):
Against the advice of people who have done marathons before and who know how much they suck and how much it helps to have a crowd and fellow runners, I decided to do the Virtual NYC Marathon. I started a Runner's World training plan for a 3:30–4:30 pace and I have been modifying it heavily to meet my fitness level — in retrospect, I wish I had chosen one that didn't have such a wide goal range. I do basically 3 easy ~10k runs, a workout run (hill repeats/fartleks), and a long run (13+ miles). My longest run now is 19 miles and I'm doing 20 this Sunday. Honestly, to me it's completely fucking bonkers that I'm running 20 miles this coming Sunday when one year ago I weighed 174 lbs and could barely make it through a 30-minute 5K without barfing. This is the one part in this where I will allow myself to become a bit sentimental and self-congratulatory — holy shit, I'm doing it. Virtual marathon is on 11/01.
In terms of nutrition, I have majorly tried to slow down my weight loss to the point of caloric maintenance and it has gone... ok? Lots of trial and error and my metabolism is adjusting. Around week 8 I had some real wake-up calls involving post-long-run crashes and hardcore fatigue. I had a very silly goal to try to run the marathon at 135 lbs, but that idea was terrible; if you're doing marathon training, do not try to lose weight, however slowly. I actually am still losing weight, and weirdly think I've started losing more weight since upping my calories? The last few weeks I've been exceeding my TDEE, but I think my TDEE Just keeps going up as volume increases and my physiognomy changes. Marathon training really gets your system scrambling is all I can say.
Future Goals (Becoming Stronger, Gaining Muscle Mass, Long Term Recomp to 135 lbs, Sub 4-Hour Marathon):
I know the secret ingredient I'm missing in becoming a better, faster runner is strength. After marathon training is over, I'm going to buy some resistance bands or build a weight bench and get to work on a consistent 5x5 routine 3x/week. I'm going to cut running down to 30 mpw with a plan to pickup my next training cycle sometime in February. This should give me at least three months or so to really make strength training the thing and, hopefully, build some good long-term habits. Fellow distance runners: Advice welcome!
Physically I feel very good, but I'll be the first to point out that I have wound up kind of skinny fat, or at least with a kind of fleshy endurance runner physique. My physical appearance has not been the main reason for me to do this plan, but I'd be lying if I don't look in the mirror a lot these days, feeling simultaneously pretty impressed with myself, but also self-conscious about my weirdly stubborn lovehandles and fleshy torso, which could easily be fixed with a 5x5 strength routine. I mean, whatever, I love my body, body positivity etc., but I wanna be strong and I want to look strong and I think that's where I'm going.
I'm going to mark it now: I think one year from today (09/23/21) I want to be a much stronger 135 lbs. I want to stay light for running, but I want to achieve most of my strength gain through recomposition. So I think this is all to say that deliberate weight loss is done for me and as far as these last 6 or 7 lbs go, I'm expecting that if I eat at maintenance while very gradually upping my duration and intensity of strength and cardio training over the course of the next year, that the 6 or 7 lbs will come off as a result of an increased TDEE, not through deliberate weight loss. I may even find that I'm happiest at 140. We shall see.
I guess that leads me to one capping point on all this: I still feel really uncertain about deliberate weight loss plans and whether they are a good thing. For me, undoubtedly it worked and was fairly safe and healthy; but I'd be lying if I didn't think in the past year or so that I am slightly over-obsessive about intake and that the initial phase of weight loss didn't feel kind of unhealthy. If I could put it another way, I'd say that all weight loss plans — with obviously varying degrees — are essentially disordered eating and if you're not getting enough energy, it does kind of mess you up; it can certainly lead to a bad place. Psychologically I am still a little conflicted about my weight loss, but I also think I'm just putting this phase in my rear view mirror as something I had to go through to get where I am in my holistic, long-term fitness plan. I had to do what I did to become an athlete and I have no regrets about it.
So, if you're in the position I was a year ago, my advice would be: do a very slow cut (no more than .75 lbs/week), find a manageable training plan to avoid injury and burnout, prioritize consistency in your workouts, set reasonable long-term goals so that you're excited when you exceed them, think of yourself as an athlete, don't starve yourself if you have intense training blocks, and cherish food — it is not the enemy!
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* This article was originally published here
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