Reporting In: I've Become a Fat-Loss Fanatic

Just now, while cooking, I put a small bowl on my kitchen scale and poured in some oil. Apparently I have no feel for what 10 g of oil looks like, because I accidentally poured in 15 g.

Honestly, 10 g and 15 g are both tiny amounts. In the bowl you can't even tell the difference. But I still panicked a bit and poured some back out. I didn't get it all the way down to 10 g, though. I stopped at 11.7 g, figuring some would stick to the sides of the bowl when I poured it into the pan anyway, so it'd come out about right.

Sure enough, when it was time to cook, I poured it all in, gave the bowl a few shakes, and put the empty bowl back on the scale. It still weighed 2.something grams. Whatever, I thought. Less is definitely better than more.

Weighing cooking oil on a kitchen scale is something I honestly never imagined doing. Last year I went from 23% body fat to 16%, and I never once weighed my oil. I don't usually track fat precisely. I just keep it as low as I can.

Who'd have thought this day would actually come. When I used to see people online weighing their oil on a kitchen scale to lose fat, my first thought was: obsessed. It's just a cut, is all that really necessary? And now I've turned into the very person I used to think was obsessed.

Why? Because I've had a new realization about cutting diets lately. The method I started with is called a 5:3:2 carb taper. 5:3:2 is the ratio of carbs, protein and fat in your total intake, which works out to about 50 g of fat a day. The carb taper means you keep protein and fat intake fixed from the start, and keep lowering your carbs as your weight drops, which is how you lose fat.

I followed this method for a while and got some results. But here's the thing: once I'd eaten enough carbs and protein, I wasn't really hungry at all. I simply couldn't eat the two-hundred-plus grams of carbs (in the early phase). I tested it. When I'd eaten enough protein and fat, I could not get down that many carbs no matter how hard I tried.

And before I started tracking the numbers in detail, I often didn't get enough protein, so I'd easily end up eating more carbs. That's reasonable enough, but a protein shortfall definitely matters more than a carb surplus.

So my approach now is: always hit my protein and fat, and eat as many carbs as I can manage in the time I have. If I can't eat enough, there's nothing I can do about it. I don't feel hungry anyway. Worst case, my calorie deficit is a bit bigger, but at least I got my protein.

And as my weight goes down, my carb budget will shrink anyway, so I won't have to worry about not eating enough carbs.

Today I ate two chicken legs, a duck leg, a protein shake, 200 g of chicken breast, 200 g of beef shank, and a grab bag of plant protein. I had to scrape it together from all over to hit my protein.

At least meat shrinks when you cook it. Put 200 g of rice in the rice cooker and it comes out as a whole big pot. I also have oats in the morning. With that much meat, there's no way I can eat all of that.

Never thought I'd one day be stressed about eating too much meat, haha.