Coffee Space – Coffee Space

Fitness Plan

It has now been a month since I officially ended my keto diet, after being on it for more than a year! It’s time for an update!

Short Debrief: Keto successfully took me from somewhere between 180-190kg down to 110-120kg, representing between 60-80kg in total loss in just over a year. Whilst I would consider it successful, it was an awful process to maintain. My goal was to get down to 90kg before Christmas, but in the end I was just maintaining my weight, as keto had become too difficult to maintain.

Current situation: I have now been off of keto for a month, and whilst I introduced carbohydrates back mostly, I refused to add refined sugar back into my diet. I will discuss this shortly, but I am currently sitting at about 120kg, despite my lightest being 110kg. This is part of the expected result of retaining water weight and the re-introduction of carbohydrates.

January

January I have spent in a “relaxed” mode, where I have been trying to introduce the right foods, without worrying about calories or portion sizes. This has meant the exclusion of refined sugars and an attempt to choose low-carb foods where possible.

Unfortunately this is where the good news ends. My current portion sizes are quite large, and I have ordered take-out a few too many times in this month. To make matters worse, I have also failed to start exercising regularly again. I did attempt a run, but I appear to have lost some cardio capability, despite my knee now being mostly recovered. As a result, I have put on some weight over this period.

Obviously, seeing this bad pattern, I should address it early! (Fuck doing all of this all over again.)

Goal

Firstly, I will set a goal:

By the 1st of July, 2022, I want to weigh 80kg and be able to do a half-marathon.

For me this time is important - I will likely be leaving New Zealand at this time, be seeing my family for the first time in two years and meeting with RoboCup friends hopefully in Thailand. I want to present the best version of myself to the people I care about.

February

In the next month I should try to stick to a much better regime.

Food

With regards to foods, I have the rough goals in mind:

Reduced carbohydrates
Under 1000 kcal
No refined sugar
No vegetable limit (for low-carb vegetables)

As a basic meal plan, I intend to create the following:

Meal Time	Planned Meal
Breakfast	Oats + peanuts + coca powder
Dinner 1	Rice + tuna + vegetables
Dinner 2	Rice + soup + vegetables
Snack 1	Soup + bread
Snack 2	Keto protein bar
Snack 3	Keto noodles

The reason for using oats and rice is that they are super cheap and I need to save money for this final leg of the PhD. I will use these as the carbohydrate base as sparingly as possible.

Exercise

I think for me, it makes sense to restart from the ground up. I believe my initial mistake was pushing too hard, too quickly.

It is currently very hot during the day, NZ has some awfully strong UV, so I will do exercise after midnight when it is coolest.

The plan looks as follows (for the next month):

Note: 2 miles can take 45 minutes to walk.

Date	Day	Exercise
`2022-02-01`	Tue	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-02`	Wed	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-03`	Thu	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-04`	Fri	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-05`	Sat	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-06`	Sun	Walk 4 miles
`2022-02-07`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-08`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-09`	Wed	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-10`	Thu	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-11`	Fri	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-12`	Sat	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-13`	Sun	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag
`2022-02-14`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-15`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-16`	Wed	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-17`	Thu	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-18`	Fri	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-19`	Sat	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-20`	Sun	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x2
`2022-02-21`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-22`	Tue	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-23`	Wed	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-24`	Thu	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-25`	Fri	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-26`	Sat	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-27`	Sun	Walk 4 miles + weighted bag x3
`2022-02-28`	Tue	Run 2 miles

I will look to add some 10kg each time to the bag itself in order to make the walk harder. Doing this consistently each day should raise $VO_2$ max in preparation for the last day of the month, where I will trial again another 2 mile run.

Future

Depending on the success of this, I will then re-evaluate and re-plan accordingly. All going well there should be a part 2 to this!