Day 792: Road to Shredded - 3 Month Update

fitness

It’s finished! Three months after deciding to get shredded, my first serious cut is officially over.

The morning of my final body scan, I woke up and weighed myself as usual and was surprised to read 143.1 lbs on the scale. For comparison, I had weighed in at 140.7 lbs the morning of my scan a month prior.

I knew that I hadn’t been dropping weight this past month, but I wasn’t expecting to weigh in 2.4 lbs heavier. Losing progress in my final month was sort of an anticlimactic ending to the whole project, but it is what it is so. Regardless of my scale weight, I was happy with my physique in the mirror so I resolved to accept whatever the body scan results came out to be.

So with the anticipation of slight disappointment, I got my scan and opened the results…

Report

Unreal. I had gained weight, but my body fat still dropped from 11.2% to 10.5%!

Changes compared to the previous month:

  • Lean tissue: +2.1 lbs
  • Fat tissue: -0.9 lbs
  • Body fat: -0.7%

Changes compared to baseline (3 months ago):

  • Lean tissue: +7 lbs
  • Fat tissue: -9.8 lbs
  • Body fat: -6.3%

Amazing. These results are way better than what I’d imagined was possible when I started this cut. I expected to lose muscle during this process, not put on 7 pounds of it while dropping 10 pounds of fat. Turns out that knowing what to do and simply being consistent is unreasonably effective.

Weight

The surprise on the morning of the scan was a good reminder that while tracking weight is usually a useful proxy for measuring progress, it’s not perfect. On a cut, it’s typically assumed that a higher number on the scale is “bad” and a lower number is “good”, but that’s not always the case — for novices like me, it’s very much possible to put on more muscle while still losing fat and end up improving body composition with increased weight.

Over the entire 3-month process, I only needed to drop less than 5 pounds to go from 17% to ~10% body fat, whereas I had originally estimated that I’d need to lose around 10-15 pounds to get the results I wanted. Pretty neat.

Routine

Diet

  • Average calories per day: 2061 calories
  • Average protein intake per day: 155g

On average, I ate slightly more than my intended intake of 1940 calories. Each month, I’ve consistently eaten more than my target calories. I think this largely stems from thinking “I can still eat more!” even if I only have like 10 calories left for the day and then going way over by consuming a 200 calorie snack. I feel like a simple UI change in MyFitnessPal where it shows that you’ve met your daily goal once you’re within 100 calories of your target rather than always showing the remaining calories would help here. Of course, I can also change my psychology to not try to “hit” my calorie goal for the day and be fine staying under it, but it’s much easier to blame software than myself. 😛

In terms of what I ate, here are some pictures! I’ve gotten even more into cooking and been having fun finding ways to incorporate protein powder into meals and snacks. And of course, I have to mention that this was done entirely on a vegan diet because I want to combat the stereotype that you can’t get enough protein or build muscle unless you consume meat. I do think you do need to be more creative on a vegan diet because almost all of the classic fitness foods are animal products (eggs, chicken breast, lean fish, greek yogurt, etc.) but it’s definitely possible to eat in a way that’s compassionate towards animals while getting stronger and looking great.

Exercise

I switched back to hypertrophy training using gymnastics rings, and it paid off! Instead of losing muscle in my arms and legs like in the previous month where I focused on lower-volume skill-based training, I put on muscle across every category:

Lean tissue report

Based on my experience, I would highly, highly recommend the Body by Rings program for anyone looking to put on muscle. I love that the only equipment needed are gymnastics rings so you can set this up at home and do it anywhere without having to invest in purchasing a squat rack and a ton of weights.

I’m also really glad that I took time off from skill-based training because it gave my injuries time to heal. At this point, I think I’m mostly recovered and can get back to training for the front lever, planche, handstands, and climbing — I’ll just need to make sure to take it slow this time so I don’t re-injure myself. I’m especially excited to get back into climbing! It’s been far too long.

Photos

With the cut complete, you can see the full progression from 16.8% body fat to 10.5% month-by-month in both normal lighting and good lighting!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to perfectly recreate the “bad lighting” setup for my final picture: I had to to take the photo in the morning rather than in the evening as I normally do due to a flight that evening. As a result, I had some natural lighting streaming in from the window which made the “bad” lighting much more flattering than usual. Oops.

And here’s the summary image that shows before and after side-by-side in both lighting conditions:

In addition to the standard photos, I decided to go full vanity mode and took a bunch of pictures in the gym after getting a nice pump (important disclaimer: LIGHTING MAKES A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE AND I NORMALLY DON’T LOOK LIKE THIS):

What next?

So it’s done. Even though I technically didn’t hit my goal of getting to < 10% body fat (0.5% away!), I still consider this goal very much complete and I’m more than pleased with how this cut turned out.

At this point, I’m not interested in getting leaner but I’d like to try to see if I can maintain this physique. Getting down to 10% was a ton of work and honestly pretty annoying due to the food cravings and drop in energy, and I’m hoping that maintaining here will be much easier. If it turns out to require a similar level of work and effort to stay at this level compared to dropping down here, I don’t think it’s worth it because I have other things I care about in life besides having abs and this can be pretty all-consuming.

I’m also considering writing a “complete guide to getting shredded” that lays out everything someone needs to know in order to have a successful cut. There’s honestly not that much you need to know because it’s more about being consistent about a few key things than it is about accumulating a wealth of knowledge, but sometimes it feels like you need to have a PhD in biochemistry to sift through the endless dumpster fire of nutrition advice and information out there so it might be fun to create a distilled guide that starts from the very basics (e.g. what is “total daily energy expenditure” and a “calorie deficit”) and includes tips and tricks as well as high-protein recipes that I found delicious and helpful.

Now that I can cross this goal off my checklist, I’m excited to start devoting more time and energy to my other projects and goals! No more feeling like a low-energy zombie, yippee!