Even though I feel about 99% better and much healthier than a year ago I’m still struggling with my weight. I was up to 159 in December and thought that I was on my way to 160 and done with all this weight loss that I’d been struggling with after dropping from 183 to 146 earlier in the year. Then early in the year I dropped down into the 156-157 range and stayed there for several months. In March I dropped down into the 153-154 range and ended up stuck there for months. Most of the early summer I fluctuated in this range and started trying to eat more to see if I could bump it up. Then in late July Catherine said I was looking gaunt again so I weighed myself and was at 151 which was the lowest I’d been in a year. Since then I have been struggling to stay above 150, mostly stuck right around 152 even eating around 3000 calories per day.
Now I’m getting serious about it. I want to get to where by BMI is at least 20.5 (currently at 20.05) which means I need to be at 155 but really I’m still shooting for a sustainable 160. I’ve given up on ever hitting 170 again and don’t even want to be back in the 180s but 160-165 seems about right since this was my weight when I was in the best shape and able to run a 50k. How do I do this? I got inspired watching American Sniper on a flight to Chicago so I’m following Bradley Cooper’s plan, well kind of. In getting ready for the movie Cooper ate about 8000 calories a day and worked out like a mad-man to add 40 lbs and bulk up so he looked something like Chris Kyle. It worked for Cooper, maybe it will work for me.
I looked at going to 8000 calories which seems impossible given my dietary limitations and the fact I can’t eat 6 meals a day so I’m going to shoot for 4000 calories per day. Yes, this means I’m snacking again since I can’t push in that many calories at meals alone. I start the day with a huge breakfast, it has about 1500 calories on average:
- Coconut flour blueberry muffin
- Cold-brew coffee with 1 c. whole coconut milk
- 4-5 oz. sausage and/or 3-4 pieces of bacon
- Scramble made with 1/2-3/4 c. squash, 2 c. chard, the meat and on some days 3 eggs
- Big bowl of fruit with 1 banana, strawberries, blueberries, peaches
I’ve been having a snack after fishing in the morning, usually a couple of coconut flour chocolate chunk cookies and some Epic Bites or some smoked salmon. This is about 400 calories. For lunch I have leftovers usually and a lot of them, another 1000 calories. I usually have another banana and a good piece of chocolate after lunch. Some days I have an afternoon snack with a muffin, Epic bar or another banana, another 100-200 calories.Dinner is my big meal. I almost always have a good starch source with dinner along with other vegetables and a good serving of meat, poultry or fish. I finish with a bowl of Paleo ice cream and fruit. This is usually another 1000-1200 calories pushing me upwards of 4000 calories per day.
On top of this we joined Gold’s Gym again and I’m trying to go 3-4 days a week and lifting really heavy weight with low reps. I know my first upper body workout was done right, I’m still sore 3 days later. My lower body workout yesterday didn’t get me sore so obviously I wasn’t pushing enough with the legs. I’m a fat burning machine now so I know I can’t put on fat so really muscle weight gain is my only hope to get the weight back on and the only way I know to do that is heavy weight work. I’ve scaled back on the running to try and not burn off any more weight but will still run a few events that are upcoming.
I’ll give this a few months to see what happens. If this doesn’t put on some weight then I don’t know what to try next. My diet is greatly expanded, my digestion seems to have improved drastically, I’m regular these days and I think my gut is well on its way to being healed up. I’ve been adding a lot of probiotics and fermented foods which should be helping my colon bacteria which I will be testing in the next week or so again to see where that stands. I’m also doing the IBSChek test too in order to see if I really have the autoimmune version of SIBO so I can set expectations for the next 5-6 years.