Fat rant on fat

Dear Emma,

Yes dear, my tummy has reached the 32 inches threshold... And no dear, I'm not fat, it's just my abs workout finally bore fruit...

Who am I kidding... Ever since hanging up my running shoes, it seems someone that lift weights regularly like me is not spared from the beer belly problem. I'm not really sure if it fat or muscle but it seems I no longer need a belt for me to wear old office pants. The stats seems to be pointing to muscle since when I last scaled the fat % machine, my fat was 17% while indicate a slight ~0.5% increase but considering my weight that arose from 65kg to 67kg, a simple math calculation yields:

Weight increase = 67kg - 65kg = 2kg
Fat at start  = 65 x 16.5 / 100 = 10.725kg
Fat at current  = 67 x 17 / 100 = 11.39kg
Fat increase = 11.39kg - 10.725kg = 0.665kg
Estimate Muscle gain = 2kg - 0.665kg = 1.335kg

So I gained an estimated 1.3kg of muscle vs 0.7kg of fat. So logic dictates more muscle go into my belly than fat noes?

Personally I feel a bit sluggish compared to my past self when I actively run. Understandable since I neglected the cardio component of my workout for the past 2 years. To counter measure my "fattening" of my belly, I decided to try to reduce my fat to the recommended 15% mark. So some maths...

15% fat is...
 15kg fat for 100kg fat ass
7.5kg fat for 50kg skinny ass
1.5kg for 10kg ??? ass

To calculate my current weight if I have 15% fat, assuming I maintain my muscle mass

Non fat weight = 67kg -  11.39kg = 55.61kg
55.61kg / New body weight = 100% - 15% = 85%
New body weight = 55.61kg x 100 / 85 = 65.42kg
Fat at new weight = 65 x 15 / 100= 9.75kg
Total fat to lose = 11.39kg - 9.75kg = 1.64kg

My goal is to lose my weight to 65kg, losing of 1.64kg of fat at the price of 0.5kg of muscle.

1kg fat = 3500 calories
1.65kg fat = 5600 calories

I'm planning to achieve this when I start work in March, hence I got a nice month to achieve this.

5600 calories / 4 = 1400 calories deficit per week
1400 calories / 7 = 200 calories deficit  per day average

Now that I done the complete math on it, time to totally chuck it aside and ignore it... In this fitness game, I'm a believer (No Emma, not bieliever) of sweat and stomach. Sweat means workout while stomach means diet.

I will be gradually add back the cardio component into my workout regime. For starters 2 cardio session, a 5K run and a 20 minutes tempo run is what I have in mind. I want to try to limit my cardio work to around 30 minutes max if possible as I fear aggravating of my old injury. I will most likely need to reduce my strength training to facilitate the cardio components, hence I will lower the strength sessions to only 2 per week.

As for diet, I'm think I will start by cleaning up my breakfast and lunch:

2 x Egg breakfast per week
2 x Oatmeal + Protein doping breakfast per week
2 x Pasta lunch per week
2 x Meat lunch per week

Rather than have a radical change to my current eating habits, I think a gradual and flexible "To eat in a week" style diet has better chance to being implemented. By having technically 4 days to fixed breakfast and lunch, I still have a good 3 days and my dinner to look forward for to satisfy my taste bud. Personally I think egg for breakfast and meat for lunch would help me lose more weight but after my previous 2 weeks eat fish for lunch stint, I don't think a diet that simply focus on one food is feasible to implement despite the results.

Possible problems? Oatmeal without the doubt will be my major concern cause:

1. I dun like eating oatmeal
2. Oatmeal never satisfy my hunger
3. I dun like eating oatmeal
4. I dun like eating oatmeal

I'll have a 2 weeks trial on this menu before making making adjustments to it.

Crash Diet

Dear bloggie,

By principal, I'm never a believer of crash diet as I belief that fitness is a marathon not a 100m sprint...

However inspired by a youtube video I saw where a dude which has a similar body fat as I current have that undergo a 2 week fish and broccoli diet... which resulted in a ripped belly made me wonder if I can achieve the same result as well.

I will be trying out a less extreme version of his diet.

In his diet, he ate

70g oats for breakfast followed by
200g of fish and 200g of broccoli every 3 hours later on (total x5)

An estimated total of 1,350 calories perday

From what I read, the minimum calories a male should consume a day is 1,200 (eating less then this figure would result in body going into starvation mode, lowering our body metabolism rate hence making it harder to burn fat)

I decided on the following diet:

70g oats for breakfast
200g of fish and 1/2 can of beans for lunch
Any dinner meal
Egg sandwich (2 slices of gardenia breads and 1 fried egg) for snack
1 cup of protein dope

Making it an estimated 785 + x calories, where x is the calories from dinner meal. I estimate I require a heavy 400-500 calories dinner meal to make the 1,200 safety calories mark. My strategy is to reduce my daily calories intake by cutting down in carbs and fat, while maintaining my protein intake. I also allocate a wildcard dinner meal to satisfy my "tasty" food craving to prevent my morale to go over the line and make it easier on myself as I usually eat dinner prepared by my mom.

On side note, I forecast I can save quite a lot in eating this diet as well, as the cost perday would be around RM7 excluding dinner meal, which is dirt cheap. I however do have concern on meeting the minimum 1.2K calories requirement, how this diet will affect my energy level for my workout, getting insufficient nutrition and minerals from vegetables from my wildcard dinner meal alone and how DEAD my tastebud would end up after this diet.

Anyway, lets see how tis diet plays out for me... If I managed to gather enough discipline to follow it that is...

Incase ur wondering, wtf bout the vid tat actually made me EVEN consider going for a diet: