Revisiting the 2014 Fat Loss Bet

Before I cover my recent fat loss success, I first want to close the loop on The Fat Loss Bet from early 2014. Longtime readers might recall that myself and three friends entered into a bet to each drop 20 pounds. We all failed.

It is interesting that when I look back at the strategies that I wanted to implement, I was mostly on target. Yet it didn’t work. Here were the ideas:

#1 Remove Foods that I Eat Past Satiety

I did a decent job here and I think it accounted for the majority of my early success.

#2 Create a Food Journal

I started fine here but quickly gave up. I hate tracking food. For others, this might be an amazing strategy, especially people that haven’t spent years looking at labels. For me, writing down foods and measuring them was uninspiring.

#3 Reduce Eating Window

This was another great idea, but I had trouble implementing it. The only way for me to reduce my eating window would be to delay breakfast for 3-6 hours after waking. The problem here was I workout in the morning twice a week plus I often need food to deal with the jitteriness from coffee. So I most days I was unsuccessful in reducing my eating window.

#4 Increase Protein

Another great idea, but I messed this one up as well. It is one thing to decide to eat more protein, it is another thing to make it a habit. I failed to create a plan to consistently eat higher levels of protein.

#5 Cold Thermogenesis

Back in 2014, I still believed that cold thermogenesis had the potential to measurably increase fat loss. I no longer do. Maybe if you are a thick-wristed 300-pound man that can’t do other forms of exercise? I still believe in CT as a way of building resiliency and possibly reducing inflammation, but not for fat loss.

Cold Shower by Jinx!

Boring

All this year, I have been thinking about the power of the story. The ideas I came up with in 2014 mostly made sense. But collectively the strategies were boring and uninspiring. Had I lost the 20 pounds with these techniques, I believe that I wouldn’t have kept off the weight. Maybe I would have gained half of the weight back. Then I would have perceived my effort as either being too much or misplaced, which could have affected my mood and lead to further weight gains.

This year I decided to address the aspect of the story and failure before I even began. How I did that will be the topic of an upcoming post.