In 2017, I challenged people to choose junk food categories that I would use to diet and get to race weight. The idea was that for every 1kg lost, I would move to the next food group. I did burgers, ice cream, pizza, beer and then cake. Beer of course was a total disaster, but in the end I did hit my race weight sooner than anticipated. This year, I’ve modified it a bit based on what I learned last year. In addition to the “calorie test” I’d like to experiment with various popular diets to see how they impact both weight loss and performance.
- Instead of basing each food on losing 1kg, I’m now doing each food for 2 weeks and seeing what the weight loss for each one is
- I’m choosing the best foods of the 2017 project to start with (ice cream, burgers, cake)
- I’m thinking of also including some “healthy” diets to see if that makes a significant difference to the amount of weight lost, or to how I feel (or both)
- My target is 2000 calories per day, based on previous experience on what I need to target for weight loss but still feel good.
- I’m not adding calories back for exercise. If I have a particularly challenging workout, I will fuel that with 300 calories per hour, but I won’t add those calories to my daily total, and I also won’t increase my daily calorie goal with the exercise calories.
- The project starts January 1st and will go up until Ironman Texas which is on 28th April. The month leading up to IMTX I’ll aim to eat whatever I need to for performance, and not be in calorie deficit. I will no doubt gain a bit of weight then, but the purpose of including that is to see how much I gain back.
- On Jan 1st I weighed in at 180.6 lbs (82kg) and to perform well in a race I should be at around 165 lbs (75kg) or lighter (I can probably safely get down to 72 kg without adverse health issues, it’s just really, really difficult for me to get there).
Here’s the provisional schedule
- Jan 1st – Jan 14th: ice cream (done – 9.4 lbs lost)
- Jan 15th – Jan 28th: burgers (includes a Vegas trip to start)
- Jan 29th – Feb11th: vegan with whole food
- Feb 12th – Feb 25th: mediterranean
- Feb 26th – Mar 11th: paleo or cake (I hope cake)
- Mar 12th – Mar 25th:TBD
- Mar 26th – April 28th (Ironman Texas): no calorie restriction, eat to perform!
I started the diet off with a bang! 10k swim on New Years Eve…
I love this project! I am looking forward to following along. So you are just going to eat 2k of calories each day regardless of how long you work out?
Hey Chris – yes 2000 per day regardless of workouts (but at this time of year they are not very long). If I do have a long workout (let’s say something like a 3 hour ride) then I will fuel that ride at 300 calories per hour and exclude both those calories and exercise from the daily calorie calculation. But at this time of year most of my workouts are one hour or less.
Yes, but for workouts longer than 90 min I’ll fuel at 300+ per hour, excluded from the 2000
Looking forward to following along for another year as I’m trying to shed the winter weight gains, too. Also planning on incorporating intermittent fasting (18:6 regimen) to help shift my metabolism to burn fat rather that sugar.
Hey Joël – good to hear from you! With both ice cream and burgers I actually end up doing something like an intermittent fast, because of the high calories per meal I wait until the end of the day before I eat. There is nothing worse than eating all the ice cream in the morning and then not being able to eat the rest of the day – somehow it seems a lot easier to just start eating late afternoon, plus it helps to not go to bed hungry.