How I Lost 8 Pounds In Two Days
Yesterday I wrote a post about losing 6pounds in one day. Today is the follow-up, where I lost two additional pounds for a total of 8 pounds. Much of the weight loss, perhaps most, is water weight. I had this idea of “cutting weight” like a fighter to fit into my pants and belt again (comfortably, I was squeezing my waist with my belt, I refused to buy a longer one). After some research I determined early on that I didn’t want to go the dehydration route because I don’t have any experts monitoring me and dehydration can be dangerous to your organs. So, how have I now lost 8 pounds? Here’s how:
First Day
The first day I fasted two meals (breakfast and lunch) and ate a normal sized dinner. The only snack I had at night was popcorn. I went on my bike a couple of times to burn calories and sweat out weight and took a hot shower to sweat some more. This resulted in losing 6 pounds of water weight overnight.
Second Day
On the second day I didn’t fast. I had my coffee with cream only, cutting out sugar and Torani syrups. I wanted to make a concerted effort with each meal to cut out as many simple sugars as I could. Then I made a smoothie consisting of kale, blueberries, banana, water, and probiotic whole-milk yogurt. I followed up my smoothie with a plain boiled egg in order to have something more solid in my gut.
Note * It has been ages for me to have a health smoothie in the morning. I used to have smoothies all the time for breakfast until I started to drink coffee. After I began drinking coffee I found that I felt sick to my stomach if I drank coffee and a smoothie. So I cut out the smoothie and wrote them off.
Smoothies definitely seem to be best to have in the morning. I have never had a smoothie at night or in the afternoon, whenever I make them it seems to be easiest to do it in the morning. I am lucky enough right now to work in the evenings so I didn’t worry about a sick stomach. This time I did a smoothie plus coffee because I could pass some time in-between the two, but I didn’t end up feeling sick to my stomach and I am not sure why.
I had read from the fighters to have your carbs early in the day so you burn them throughout the day instead of having carbs to burn at night. I found this to be logical so I followed that protocol.
I jumped on my bike for 20 minutes and mostly watched the calories-burned counter instead of the time. My legs felt depleted for many hours after. For lunch I had a big salad with lettuce, kale, chopped peppers, chopped onions, avocado, chopped mozzarella cheese, some strips of bacon, and a little olive oil for dressing. The fighters eat their salads dry when they are cutting, but I couldn’t do that. They also avoid as much salt as possible, but I found I couldn’t eat the salad and feel full without the bacon and cheese. I then had a handful of pumpkin spiced almonds as a snack. I had wished I had different nuts to snack on, the pumpkin spiced almonds had a little bit of sugar on them.
Nothing eventful happened between lunch and dinner other than me feeling very hungry by dinnertime. I ate leftovers which were beans, ground beef, peppers and onions, wrapped in a low-carb, high-fiber burrito. I smothered the burrito with sour cream. I had a few more almonds after this, since I knew I wouldn’t be eating anything else until I got home from work. I justified the few carbs from the burrito because, A) it was high-fiber so you subtract the grams of fiber from grams of carbs, and B) I was about to walk 11k steps at work and felt like my legs needed some fuel to get me through.
When I got ready for work I could already notice the difference in my weight on my belt. It was tight, I still had to pull it to get to the first hole, but it wasn’t uncomfortable and I hardly noticed the feeling through my whole shift. Also, my legs felt fine as I walked and worked, I seemed to have gained a second wind, which I was grateful for because we were busy as hell. I kept my hoodie on throughout work so I’d sweat more.
When I got home I didn’t feel famished, but I did drink a glass of milk and popped some popcorn as a snack before bed. Ideally, I would have had water and nothing else, but I am still new to this and my self-control wasn’t completely on point, and it always could have been worse, not that long ago I would eat a big bowl of ice cream an hour before bed AND popcorn AND something else.
Takeaways
- As I mentioned before, I thought to do this weight cut in the way a fighter does to make weight for an upcoming fight. My primary goal was to feel comfortable wearing my belt again and to not have to buy a new belt. It helped to have this very specific and very small goal, it gave me a reason and purpose to do this diet. Any time I have tried to think “I need to eat healthier” or “I need to lose some weight” I haven’t followed through. But this time I followed through (and currently working on day 3, already had my smoothie and egg) and I attribute it to my specific tiny goal.
- I feel highly motivated to continue eating clean and cutting weight because of my early loss of six pounds. I only lost two more pounds this past day, and had I only lost two pounds my first day I would have felt a bit defeated. Instead, I have lost enough to notice a difference, and for us beginners, those of us who are now getting back on the fitness horse, we need to see sudden results to get us motivated. Am I hoping to keep off this weight? Not necessarily. Sure, it would be nice to keep it off, but I know I didn’t burn eight pounds of fat in two days, I have mostly proved I can cut weight when needed and I can stick to a cleaner diet longer than one meal.
- I already notice a difference, not only in my belt, but my gut is much smaller and its fat feels firmer, tighter. Other parts of my body that were starting to feel doughy feel firmer, like my neck and traps. I also used to have a lot of trouble with my digestion, having to use the bathroom a lot, and thankfully, in the past two days my digestion hasn’t given me any problems. Part of the reason why I wanted to be doing this was because my belt squeezed my guts and I had to use the bathroom frequently at work. Last night at work I didn’t have to go at all, which hasn’t happened in months.
- I find when your guts feel better you can work out harder and push yourself more. Common sense, right? I guess what I mean is I no longer notice my waist and ignore or stop caring about anything squeezing my waist. When I am fat and unhealthy I can’t stand wearing tight clothes, but when I’m following through with clean meals tight clothes no longer feel uncomfortable.
- I’ve now gone from 222 pounds to 214. The thing is, not that long ago, maybe 4 months ago I was 200 pounds. It was easy to gain 22 pounds because I didn’t even notice it. If it weren’t for my belt I wouldn’t have believed I gained so much weight. And, oddly enough, I can hardly remember what it felt like to be at 200. When I was at 170 ten years ago I also didn’t feel very different. I always felt like I had the same padding of fat on my gut, I would gain or lose weight and never change how much definition I had (which wasn’t much). My ultimate goal is to be at 170 and work on definition, aka, less body fat.
Today I plan on doing roughly what I did yesterday, burn about 1000 calories from exercise, load the carbs in morning, fats/protein in afternoon and dinner. Avoid simple sugars and salt. My biggest difficulty will be to avoid calories after work, well that and, I will be out of the house for dinner and have to find something to eat out that isn’t disgustingly unhealthy. I’m actually have a hard time thinking of where I can go to eat before work that isn’t loaded with carbs and calories. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
