I have promised myself that I will not write about my ongoing saga with weight loss too often. That said, in the 23 days since I started this new regime, I have already written about the process in one way or another four times. While that is only 17% of the stories I have posted, I heard inadvertently from my friend Steve from Phoenix that he wanted me to update him on my progress privately since he was sure my writing about the topic would interest very few of my readers. Steve is also a writer, so I don’t think that was a random comment. Steve has never really completely understood why (or probably how) I write. We seem to have quite different motivation and process in our writing. I am sure there are many, many valid ways of approaching writing and I am equally certain that Steve’s and mine are not he same. The message I took from his comment was that he suspected that my readership would not find the details of my weight loss all that interesting…or at very least too much information (TMI). What Steve fails to grasp is that while I like it when people tell me they enjoy or like my stories, I have long since not been driven by that motivation in my writing. I don’t write for money and I don’t write for praise. I write to please myself, to learn from my research and to record my thoughts of the moment in a manner that puts the world as I experience it into context. The beauty of my blog, as I have discussed with a number of my regular readers, is that they can skip it, read a little or read it all…as they choose. And I will never need to know.
Since I have started this program, I have taken three injections of Zepbound. I know that some think that is all one has to do to lose 20% of their body weight. When I got my LapBand twenty years ago, my bariatric surgeon told me I didn’t need will power and that the LapBand would do all the work (I hesitate to say “all the heavy lifting” for obvious reasons). I told him I didn’t believe him. To be honest, I think he was more correct than not. For me, the LapBand worked really well and despite the fact that I haven’t done anything in 20 years to fine tune the device, it has mostly stopped me from eating more than I should. Now, I think you can trick out any sort of device, so I imagine I could find ways to eat the wrong stuff 20 times a day if I wanted. But otherwise, for me, the LapBand did and still does help me eat less. No one has told me that Zepbound works the same as a LapBand. I know it works on the fat absorption and appetite receptors such that you want to eat less and feel full faster, but trust me, when you’re eating something that tastes good (as I was this evening at dinner, Bulgogi Beef from Trader Joe’s), Zepbound cannot stop you from eating more of it than you should. That actually does take will power and its a testament to my current commitment to this program that I left 25% of the dish on the plate when I could easily have gulped it all down.
Therefore, my program is about taking Zepbound AND both counting calories and recording it all and diligently being conscious of everything I am eating. I’ve read plenty of articles that say this is not what matters, but fuck that…its working great for me so far. And, given my vast experience with all sorts of techniques for weight loss, I can unequivocally say that if it works, stay with it. At this point, my personal control mechanism is a spreadsheet where I record my daily weight (I know you aren’t supposed to do that either), the calories I am consuming during that day (I do not put down what I’m eating, which would be way too much for me to do, but I do very religiously add a caloric value for everything I eat). Those two inputs then drive several added columns of calculations. The obvious one is to show the cumulative weight losss over time (note that I highlight the days when I take a Zepbound injection…I guess because it seems to have some direct impact on the digestive movements that must determine some of the weight loss process). But I also have built in several modeling functions to predict my weight loss trajectory going forward. I could tell you that this mostly serves to track that I am staying on course, but that would only be 40% correct. The other 60% is motivational so that I can scan forward to certain dates (like when I will next see my family or that particular group of friends) and fantasize about how much weight I will have lost by then. I will note that this projection model is self correcting based on reality, but there is another column that shows how reality has progressed compared to what the caloric math tells us should result in weight loss of a specific amount over time.
One of the big benefits of doing this is to track that I am not kidding myself about how much I am eating and that I am approximately capturing the correct caloric value. As for the composition of the calories I am following general rules of the road for Zepbound and for staying in keytosis. That adds up to getting at least 170+ grams of protein per day and keeping the carbohydrates very low and getting my energy quotient mostly from fats. I may at some point start recording those sorts of details, but for now, caloric intake strikes me as more important and it does connect directly with weight loss expectations in a numeric sense. As we know, a pound equals 3,500 calories. We also know that caloric utilization is a function of body weight and activity level. My chart has body weight, but I do not try to capture activity level. In fact, I see the long-term output of the weight loss versus the calories consumed (assuming I am capturing it more or less accurately…which I why I have Kim estimate it for me regularly) as giving me valuable evidence of just how active I must be.
This should all give me a good sense of how I function over time, but let’s see how the numbers are talking to me after 23 days. I am doing this today because I have had a great few day run of weight loss and just today weighed in at 2.5 pounds lighter than yesterday (an outcome that no amount of math could justify). In other words, I’m jazzed about my performance today. So, I have lost 16 pounds over 23 days. I have averaged 1,716 calories per day as best I can estimate. Over that time and factoring in my reducing weight, using an “inactive” activity level, I should have lost only 10 pounds (that is a 10X factor). Zepbound would suggest that I should have lost only 6 pounds, but they do not try to suggest lowered caloric consumsumption and, after all, they do not want to exaggerate the possibilities of their product. I think the most interesting calculation to make is to suggest that in order to lose that much weight, my activity level would have to be on the moderate side (12.6X). I know myself and my habits well enough to say that that is quite likely. So, I would say that when I do the math, it seems to pretty much work out.
I’ll check in on this regularly, but if I’m right, that will mean that at my birthday in late January, I will be down over 70 pounds, which I think is pretty optimistic. I will take a bet that that number could be 50 pounds, but let’s see…from here that would require we to keep my calories at 1,700 per day and literally have zero activity level of 10X. So, I’m thinking I can do that. Right now, my Zepbound-driven calculation says that number might only be under 40 pounds…so, like I said, let’s see…