Current Progress

Weight

My #1 priority. Here’s my overall weight chart since seriously starting dietary experiments in late 2022. I’m no longer obese, just overweight. Yay!

Here is my weight, ever since I started recording it in late 2016:

The red line helps me visualize how much I weigh compared to the past. E.g. right now, I weigh less than I have since March 2017.

Pants

Just kind of a fun list, I think. I went from a 46 jeans size to a 34.

DEXA body composition

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a DEXA scan until after my initial, very rapid weight loss, maybe 40lbs in. Still, interesting to measure long-term progress.

Note: even though DEXA is considered the “gold standard” in body composition, it’s still quite noisy. I once did an experiment where I “gained” 4.4lbs of lean mass by DEXA in 24h. Same machine, same technician. Probably all intra-muscular water retention and glycogen.

There’s body fat percentage:

And the individual fat, lean, and muscle mass in pounds:

(Note that lean mass includes muscle mass.)

My visceral fat has also decreased pretty significantly:

Resting Metabolic Rate

I’ve written about testing my metabolic rate after losing 46lbs and how important I think it is.

There are ways to lose weight, even fat, that will drastically lower your metabolic rate. Starving your body puts it.. well, into starvation mode. That’s not a great idea, especially if you want to keep the weight off long-term and not feel like crap all the time.

I am thus happy to report that, another 26lbs later for a total of 72lbs weight lost, my metabolic rate is essentially the exact same as it was back then.

This was accomplished by eating to satiety every day, and never consciously restricting food intake or “calories.”

Note that the RMR is the energy you’d use in a coma. It doesn’t include any daily activities or exercise.

OmegaQuant phospholipid composition

One of my main hypotheses about obesity is that polyunsaturated fatty acids/seed oils are causing the body’s energy metabolism to malfunction. One way to estimate the degree to which these are interfering with normal energy metabolism, and to measure your progress in getting rid of them from your body fat and cell membranes, it to do an OmegaQuant test, as I’ve previously written about.

If this doesn’t mean anything to you, check out this post from Fire in a Bottle and the rest of his work on fatty acid metabolism.