Fitness after 60: Intermittent Fasting was Not Enough

The Point

The point of this post is to describe a recent breakthrough in a recalcitrant fitness goal, a breakthrough that was achieved via some hard discipline along with a little encouragement from a few Twitter connections. The other point is to describe some of the how, why and when involved in getting there.

Another point here is that while intermittent fasting and proper diet, along with resistance training of course, is now an important and permanent part of my routine (see this TedX talk by Cynthia Therlow; follow Alex at foreveralphablog.co.uk or on Twitter @TheForeverAlpha; or follow PD Mangan @Mangan150 or roguehealthandfitness.com) it was not, in the end, enough for me. Alcohol elimination (temporary) and calorie counting were necessary to push me all the way to my goal.

Background

Some of the background I've already described here in my Post-60 fitness page.  The basic idea is that in Q3 2017 I was overweight, sedentary, in a dead-end toxic relationship, drinking too much (not alcoholic or binge-ing, just too much calorie-wise or liver-wise), and more or less isolated.  Spurred by my daughter's pushy interest in my longevity, I entered a self-directed program for resistance training, good diet, and weight loss (esp cardiac-implicated visceral fat), among other things.  This program was started somewhere around the end of 2017.

The main elements at the time were:

  - Intermittent fasting, which I had successfully used twice before
  - Focus on diet: high protein, low carb, low/no sugar, moderate veg/fruit, no obsessions
  - Progressive load, inverse pyramid resistance training
  - Low dose cardio
  - A hard shift personally from other-person-centered frames of reference to self-frame

Metrics and Goals

The metrics for better or worse were mostly subjective.  Weight is hard metric to use because under the program I followed I put on a fair amount of muscle weight while also losing a fair amount of visceral fat. That puts a premium less on absolute weight and more on aesthetic mirror-judgement and tape measures along with body fat metrics.  Even given that, I still had some objective, specific weight goals.  In terms of weight, my lifetime average before divorce around 2008-9 was around 165. My lifetime max, somewhere in 2017 (i.e., near the beginning of the program described here), was pushing up between 190 and 195. In addition to weight, tape measures don't lie so I had that as well and took some measurements in 2018 and formed some goals for 2019 (not included in this post; expectations were partly conditioned on my youth as a competitive swimmer). I also had body fat calipers.  That means the metrics and goals were as follows:

1. Get weight under 170:  hit 169.9 and declare a provisional victory then try to keep it there
2. Get waist under xx and chest above yy.
3. Subjective mirror metric: ok with taking off shirt for any reason
4. Achieve a reduction in BF percent from ~20% to less than 17-18%

The Stages of Grief and Victory Along the Way

Stage A - about 1 year: Q4 2017 to late 2018.

In this stage I focused on a hyper-commitment to resistance training starting with the lowest bar possible (i.e., merely opening the door of the gym) up to now where I go almost every day (adjusted for proper age-based recovery depending on muscle group stressed). I also went back to the intermittent fasting which I had done twice before with great success.  My fast was a daily cycle of 18 hours fast and 6 feed. Food choices focused on mostly animal protein, vegetables, and light fruit. Carbs were limited but not obsessively so. Sugar, however was forsworn.  This seemed hard on a daily basis at the time but in retrospect was pretty easy.  Using metric 1 alone it looked like this for stage A. This is chopped off because we'll show the later progression below. The Y axis is weight (morning only, undressed) and the X is calendar date:

Figure 1 - stage A

So, 195ish down to ~183 over a year. So far so good but pretty "meh" and mundane. For the remainder of this post we'll focus mostly on metric 1 even though I said this is a tough metric if one is putting on muscle weight (even at 61).

Stage B - about 3 months: mid 2019

Up to this point I thought I was doing ok enough.  My strength gains were pretty good, I'd dropped (a measly) 10 lbs, and the mirror thing was vaguely better. At least my kids and a couple random adult women noticed something.  I considered 183 lb a decent achievement but not anywhere near my lifetime average of 165 nor my near-term goal of 169 (I wanted that 6 in the second digit). In retrospect 165 was maybe not strictly reasonable since I was putting on more muscle mass than I had 20 years ago.

During this stage I was very assertive about the fasting (IF).  For those that have not done it, see the TedX talk link above; it's a good thing for a human body along a lot of different dimensions. Also do not underestimate the amount of criticism, push-back, and shaming one can get from decent people that are invested in their own choices when you are on a different path than theirs. 

But the problem was that IF was not enough for me.  I stabilized in the 177 to 183 range for 3 months and I was feeling pretty healthy. But after 3 months I hit 183 on the nose again and realized two things: (1) I had progressed exactly nowhere in three months, and (2) I considered 183 a "gateway" to every weight level above it which I refused to even consider ever again. It dawned on me at this point that I had not really truly committed myself to the goal. I was still just messing around and hoping for something to happen. On or around June 9, 2019 I decided enough was enough. If I had I goal, then total commitment and discipline were necessary...and still untested. I call June 9 "the day."  On a chart, stage B looked like this :

Figure 2 - Stage B

Stage C - about 1 month: June 2019

Stage 3 was born of frustration with stage B and also inspired by a couple posts by Alex at ForeverAlphaBlog, along with some others on that platform.  I don't usually listen to younger guys but he had a way that broke through my deafness. He happened to have a challenge goal in May for those that were stalled (i.e., me) to: (a) stop alcohol for at least 30 days (after tuning yourself into what type of user you are: occasional, social or binge...to which one might add some other categories as well), and (b) get to know your maintenance calories and then count what you consume.

This is solid stuff.  My GP once told me to go look up the calories in alcohol. I didn't then but now I know it's really high.  A two ounce pour of whisky is around 140 before any mix if I have the right source. Also, I had never once determined my maintenance calories, or any calorie metric ever for that matter.  That was probably fine at age 18 when I was burning about 10,000 a day in competitive swimming but at 58 or 60, with almost no motion at all and a lower age-related metabolism, that was an unnecessary blindness.

So in stage C, on "the day," I decided to very simply: (a) stop alcohol, (b) count calories and try to keep them below my maintenance level (~2500, see this calculator here), and importantly (c) not relent until I had punched through the goal (169). Behold, that day is today.  It was a surprisingly easy and direct and fast path once taken. If we were to continue the chart above, which we will, it'd look like this:

Figure 3 - stage C

In addition, with respect to the other metrics:

1. Achieved as described
2. Waist -2, chest +3"
3. Ok enough. Body fat loss and lifting revealed someone I hadn't seen in a while
4. It's impossible to do one's own caliper but BF is maybe -2-3% or more

There is a lot to celebrate here but I'd caution on over-celebration. First, as mentioned I would not underestimate the amount of crap one can take from otherwise nice people negging on your personal choices.  Second, this goal is in no way locked in. It is provisional. Fortunately, the method (IF) and the diet (open ended within boundaries) are both sustainable forever as opposed to some oppressive death-march-diet that once completed is then abandoned.  This, now, is simply in play forever. Especially for age 60+. Third, Stage C was a little fast. I'd not recommend more than a couple pounds a week. I just happened to be ready for this and exceptionally committed and disciplined.  3.5 lb per week might be pushing it a little, health-wise.

Conclusion

What can I say?  I am a fan of IF now and will not abandon it.  For me it was and is necessary but was also clearly not sufficient since I was over-consuming some dead and unnecessary calories and was not in a deficit (or even aware of the calorie deficit concept). The "total discipline" of alcohol elimination and calorie awareness worked and took me to the place I needed to be.  I will take on alcohol again (will have a celebratory cocktail tonight) but only in the context of a disciplined calorie-aware plan. I will also, just like the retirement-finance methods in this blog,  institute a monitoring and management program that,  hopefully, will prevent any retrograde motion or long-term trends upward.  We'll see.  Modesty prevents another shirtless photo other than the one here but maybe I'll do that in another post if it'd help other old dudes get off the couch.  The body fat loss and the hard resistance training does work pretty well in that area, too, even at this age.


Postscript 7/4/19

The magnitude of the change (or vanity) in my own mind compelled me to add the shameless before and after thing. Maybe it's not totally vanity (one guy on twitter called me thicc,though). Mostly I hope that by example I can represent that it's never too late even at 61 to fire up the iron for older guys.  Also it is self re-enforcement of a type for myself. If I get too negged on it I'll pull it out. This is the same as the one I shared with TheForeverAlpha except here I'm about 15 lb lighter than what I sent and about 25-30lb lighter left to right. Left: Dec 2016 ~193.  Right: July 2019. ~168. Age 61.

Also, this was as of July 29 2019. The point here is that a reduction in body fat reveals not only abs but esoterics like Serratus and obliques.  My take away is that: working out is not enough and IF is not enough, it has to be "all in" on everything. I still have a little baby fat around belly and love handles but hey: I'm 61 and relative to the peer group I'm doing ok.  If I can drop down to 10-12% bf I might be able to have one last chance to be truly fit in life and while some of this may sound superficial to you it's a goal for me and anyway, I am role modeling for other 60+ men as well as my kids. Honorable work in my book but we'll see...