I lost 10kg in 48 days and made a jupyter notebook on everything
including exercises, macro and micro nutrients of every meal I had
The notebook
If you would rather view the notebook version of this article, which contains the code necessary to visualize your own data source:
If you’re here for the charts, keep reading.
Beginning
48 days ago, I challenged myself to finish a goal: by end of year, I have to reduce my weight to 100kg -- at this point of time, I was 138.4 kg, the aftermath of a long trip to Vietnam.
At the time of writing this article, I haven’t finished the goal, but I have gone a quarter of the way by losing a whopping 10.2 kgs.
And luckily enough, throughout this period, I've recorded everything I ate along with what I did.
This means I logged over:
88 exercises
138 meals and 314 food items, all of which have both macro and micro nutrients data.
In this article, I will go through a brief analysis of the data I collected during this time in hopes of searching for new insights that might help my journey further.
Overall
1. Weight Lost
I began my journey on 14th of August. If you’re one of my friends, you might ask: “Ain’t that the day you went back to Hungary?”.
And the answer is yes. I literally started logging my food on my flight back to Hungary from Viet Nam. My first log was of Air China's onboard food: bread and water — it was their mid-afternoon snack for passengers on board.
There is a saying: "The best day to start was yesterday, the second best is today". So I decided I won't wait until I came back to start my journey and just did it.
2. Nutrition
I'm pretty strict with logging my calories. Everything I eat, I put it in my log, no matter it's a cheat day or not -- fyi, in the whole 48 days, I only had 1 cheat day.
So this data is quite accurate down to the macro and micro nutrients. For food that I can't estimate the calories, I won't eat it.
Before we go to further sections, I would like to introduce you to Total Daily Energy Expenditure. You should calculate this when you begin your weight loss journey to ensure your diet is healthy and your calorie burn is adequate.
My thought process was like this:
My TDEE is estimated to be 3200.
I aim to be 100kg by end of year.
So I should lose 1kg per week.
Knowing a kg of fat is roughly 7700 calories.
Therefore I should sustain a deficit of 1100 calories per day.
This means I will still have a calorie budget of 2200 per day, a lot.
Over 48 days, my average calorie intake is 1700 calories per day, well within my allowable range, with an average of:
64g of fat
170g of carb
86g of protein
Perhaps the best thing about my diet is I have no strict diet, meaning no restrictions on certain types of food. I just plainly care about my calorie in and out. So my diet is like this:
Carbs take most of my diet. This is simple to explain, I'm a South East Asian and rice is my first love.
My protein is considerably high every day. This helps me ensure my muscle has the resources it needs to sustain and build.
Fat is my second love, food without fat is flavor hell. I don't want to make myself suffer so I still leave fat in my diet, albeit I try to restrict it as much as possible.
Micro nutrient is also very important in anyone’s weight loss journey. To be honest, the effects of having imbalanced micro is much more severe than macro.
My top 3 micro nutrients are:
Sodium: well, this one is easy to explain, if you're not familiar with the terminology, this is probably from salt, NaCl.
Potassium: bananas and also salt, KCl.
Vitamin A and Vitamin C: vegetables and fruits, yummy, I'm quite happy I see a good amount of vitamins in my diet.
3. Exercises
Now comes the most crucial stuff. For 48 days straight, with only a few exceptions, I do HIIT Boxing for 30 minutes every evening.
I can't afford the time to go to the gym everyday, as my work and study don't allow me to arrive home until 7PM. Therefore, HIIT at home is my best pal.
It's refreshing to do exercises everyday, besides, I'm quite a boxing fan. Each session costs me 400 calories, in addition to the 200 calories I burn by forcing my body through my school campus and the 1 hour commute from my house.
From the summary above, you can see that I have an average active calorie burn of 468 per day. On days when I’m sick, I still manage to squeeze some walking in.
Consistency is key. From the chart above, I can cry. It's beautiful.
The outliers of the chart are when I go on hikes or long trails. I'm really into nature, photography and filming. So I would normally take my camera out for a spin on weekends.
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In-depth
1. Calorie Deficit Per Day
On average, I sustain a deficit of 1900 calories per day, which is quite a lot and alarming for a normal person to be honest.
However, through this article, you probably have seen that it's just because I have a high TDEE and a moderate taste.
2. Calories By Meal
Breakfast
Breakfast is my most unstable meal. Out of 48 days, I only have breakfast on 27 days. The average calories I take for my breakfast is 473.53 kcal.
Lunch
Lunch is my biggest meal of the day. Schnitzel and fries at TTK canteen is my most popular food. I cost an average of 767.71 calories for my lunch.
Dinner
Dinner is my best meal of the day, normally eaten at home. It has an average of 641.2 calories.
Ending
To be quite honest, I wrote this article for myself to motivate me and find insights which can help me further in my journey.
God knows what can potentially make me think about stopping in the future.
However, I figure it can be a great source of insights for others as well.
I hope you enjoy this article. And if you have any recommendations, please feel free to comment below or ping me directly.
This is awesome dude! Where’d you record all your data?
How you used track these details of the food?