Calories up, fat up — weight down

Last updated on April 18th, 2017

OK, this is more like it.

Yesterday (Monday, July 6) I consumed 2,400 calories, with 73% coming from fat. That’s about 800 more calories than I consumed on an average day during the previous week. Today my weight is 219.4 pounds, down eight-tenths of a pound from yesterday.

I don’t put much stock in a one-day weight loss. In fact, as a regular reader of this blog knows, I have made a point of NOT weighing in every day. I even have my doubts about a weekly weigh-in.

But I am pleased that eating a lot more calories than usual didn’t result in weight gain. As a couple of readers have commented, I was eating too few calories. While I wasn’t trying to cut calories, my daily average had fallen well below the 2,000 mark. As a result, my body may have gone into survival mode, holding on to what it had.

So yesterday I made a deliberate effort to get my calories up.

A deliberate effort, but not all that difficult. At the same time, I increased the amount of fat I was eating.

For me, 73 – 74% of calories from fat seems to be the sweet spot. Of course, I need to keep the carbs under control — I ate around 40 net carbs yesterday. But the key is the fat. Probably the exact percentage differs for everybody, but I need to get above 70% to lose weight.

For some people, a low-carb, high-fat diet for weight loss may work if they eat 60% fat, 25% protein, and 15% carbs. But for me, that is at best a formula for maintaining my weight.

Another positive sign this morning is that I blew a 56 with my Ketonix Ketone Breath Analyzer. That’s up from a meager 39 on Sunday, and indicates a moderate level of ketosis. However, a few weeks ago, I was regularly getting results in the range of 63 – 74.

Maybe another factor in the one-day improvement is that I went a solid 12 hours without eating anything. I finished dinner at about 6:45 p.m last evening, and ate breakfast at 6:45 a.m. today. So my breakfast was truly that.

So my plan is to keep eating around 2,000 calories a day, with more than 70% of the calories coming from fat, and to avoid any snacks after dinner.