Overclocked - Lost 38lbs(213-175 lbs) in 3 months , What did I accidentally do right?
I’m not here to say that what I did was right or healthy, and I absolutely DO NOT RECOMMEND that anyone to try what I did.
Summary
About two years ago, I lost 38lbs(15–17 kg) in roughly 3 months, dropping from 213lbs(96 kg) to 175lbs(80 kg), by essentially starving myself, doing extremely high-heart-rate anaerobic full-body workouts,and taking no peds, supplements or whatever.
And even though two years have passed, and I returned to a relatively normal lifestyle with moderate exercise in my life . I didn't get a weight rebound.(last form picture is recent, I sit around 185lbs these days). I do not have the muscle mass of the past heavy lifting days thus have lower maintenance calories and despite being 35, I am maintaining my shape easier than my 20s eating the same.
I feel this extreme weight loss challenge, what would many claim that would have adverse effects, actually benefited me in the long-run.
What did I accidentally do right?
What can I do better for the future?
TLDR:
On and off, I’ve been involved in different sports and weightlifting all my life. At 2024, with work and life getting in the way, I had pretty much let training go. I would occasionally go lift weights or swim, but diet-wise... forget about it. Around the mid-2024, I realized I had become really uncomfortable with my body.
I enjoyed playing sports and going to gym for my whole life but somehow I am so lazy to think about it usually. I am unplanned and undisciplined about it and never have a dream or a goal around sports. When I started to gain weight, thoughts like “I need to take this supplement,” “I shouldn’t eat that before bed,” ,” “I should be eating this many calories“,"I need to follow this workout routine,” were constantly filling my head. , All of these half-ass learned fitness and health cliches over the years were in my head and having no real context or proper planning behind them were exhausting me. I found myself unable to stick to a plan. And I had neither the time nor the motivation for it. And I continue to slowly gain weight even though I kept exercising.
When I see 213lbs(96kgs) on my 33th birthday , I finally snapped. I thought "screw the all the noise. I just wanted to lose "weight". I want to get lighter and faster." I didn’t want to feel heavy anymore and don't care about muscular look and muscle retention.
So I completely stopped the half-assed weight training I was doing .No weightlifting. Shut my mind to all the science and designed a totally instinctive full-body workout plan in my head. My program only required a smart watch,10-litre water can(I couldn't be bothered to buy a kettlebell), a medium-resistance band, and a chair.
One-hour functional strenght training five days a week for 3 months that consisted sets of burpees, jumping jacks, lunges and squats with the water jug, seated knee tucks and different variations of crunches with chair, push-ups seated rows, frontal raises and biceps pulls with resistence band by trapping the resistance band in the door. followed by 20-min rope jumping. Idea was to get the highest hearth rate in average possible in that 1 hour. I did experiments, added more reps on each move with less resting in between etc., to increase the hearth rate average as my stamina and VO2Max was increasing over the weeks.
Every workout, my body was going into fight-or-flight mode. In none of those one-hour sessions, I allow my heart rate average to drop below 170. Whenever I thought I couldn’t do even one more burpee, it felt like there was a cylinder inside my chest filled with adrenaline.that exploded and gave me that final bit of push. I was doing these workouts after work on weekdays. Some days, I was genuinely terrified on the way home, knowing what was waiting for me.
Starting from end of the month two , I dropped this to 4 times in a week and start doing a 1 day upper body workout.
My diet, well as I said, my only goal was to "shrink" as much as possible( muscle, fat, water whatever) and able to do my exercise on very high hearth rate average. I didn’t care. I ate one meal a day after the workout, ate around half a kilo of red meat or minced beef with some cheese on the side. In the third month I started eating 200 grams of beef jerky during the day, along with 100 grams of mostly almonds and other nuts.
In the transformation you see above, not a single injection was used, not a single supplement was taken except electrolytes during workouts, and not a single calorie was counted. 213lbs(≈96kg) to 175lbs(≈79kg) around like 2.5-3 months. Not the best form for a bodybuilding competition maybe but worked out perfect for me.
I already knew this approach was not going to be sustainable, especially since I had lost around 15% of my body weight in such a short period of time. After that, I gradually got used to eating normally again and started following a weightlifting routine. But my appetite never returned to what it used to be. My resistance to hunger increased dramatically. I assume this may be related to some kind of improvement in insulin sensitivity. My energy levels, both inside and out of the gym, are quite high. Even during periods of overeating or being more sedentary, I don’t seem to gain much weight.The strange part is that I did the opposite of what the fitness rulebook says. No to little weightlifting, extreme caloric deficit during weight loss. Yet I didn't seemed to suffer much on lean muscle mass loss and adverse metabolic effects. I didn't get a major weight rebound, moreover my metabolic rate seemed like increased?
So what did I accidentally do right?