I had a Marvel83' Alone with You session last night with LibreOffice Calc that ties the macro targets of my diet into the grocery budget. And I pulled it off!

What will the weekly template's daily averages look like?

1. Fat (g): 235
2. Protein (g): 70
3. Sugar (g) : 1.8

Sunday & Wednesday (FF) (230/4/0)

• 32 oz of coffee
• 2½ sticks of butter

Mon & Thu (Salmon) (235/100/1)

• 1 burger patty (2.2)
• 2 eggs
• 2 salmon (4 oz) patties
• 32 oz of coffee
• 2 sticks and another tbsp of butter
• 2 packets of gelatin

Tuesday & Saturday (normal) (241/91/3)

• 3 burger patties (2.2)
• 5 eggs
• 32 oz of coffee
• 2 sticks of butter
• 2 packets of gelatin

Friday (Liver) (235/102/5)

• 4 burger patties (2.2)
• 1 liver (3.3 oz)
• 32 oz of coffee
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 packet of gelatin

On the surface, the only difference from The 38th is the 10 grams of protein bump. Under the hood, I only had 7 eggs in The 38th; I nearly equal that today with 5. As the failure of The 38th was low protein, I'll be adding a couple gelatin packets to my coffee to plug an Easy button into the mix.

While I remain unsure, I still feel there's just something there at 235 to be mined; I don't want to give up on it just yet. And I don't really know if having two Fat Focus (FF) days enables me further. I do know it gives me mental vigor. If I go without protein every 2-3 days, I find that when the kids eat Marco's Pizza, I can easily rise above the temptation. And I suspect the metabolic confusion has somebody at the switches yelling, "Zounds, man! Zounds!" It's funny how I can feel the missing protein and hunger for them on those days—it's like fasting, while on paper it is only a missing 264 kcal.

But again, calories are stupid. It is a shame that doctors focus on that metric and then prescribe sugary foods—even a diet that's 65% sugar! Our pancreas is like, "Whoa, Nellie!" While I use calories as a tool in weighted averages among the macros, my diet would be COMPLETELY different if it was 235 grams of sugar—take your pick for 70 and 1 for fat to fall under, both of which I would literally die on 'cause surprise: you don't need sugar—err, carbohydrates. You do absolutely need polypeptides and triglycerides et al.

Once upon a time in the cool evening breeze of 1995's autumn after wrestling practice, I drove every evening up to Piggly Wiggly in my old 1979 F-250 pickup. As I heard fall 1993's Virtua Fighter echo from around the corner, I pulled two 32 oz bottles of Powerade out of the cooler. The first was finished in the walk to my cute friend at the register, the other for the drive home. The combined sugar for that single night is the same amount as ALL that I've had since January 29. Think about that the next time you look at that plate of broccoli smothered in oxalates, something you'll DEFINITELY rethink the next time a kidney stone rolls into your life.

Funny how they just dress up just ONE of the macros: "It sounds important, I gotta eat it!" Just call it for what it is: sugar. Ahh, remember the 90s, when fat was evil and sugar was king. Pass over the Snackwell's.

Would you expect anything less from this topsy-turvy, exchanging truth for a lie, 1984 world where...

The Ministry of Truth...was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Extended edition rant tabled, the downside is that my one-meal-a-day approach with protein is too big! Satiation hits around 80 grams.

I first referenced FF in 35E's January 11's This Cowboy and had a series of Expeditions that outperformed their HFC #1 counterpart. Implementing its twice-a-week feature began in January - March's 36E. I had a wheelbarrow of wins across that time even in the context of being locked down by those zombies!

And it took me years to stumble across this system of weightloss, but as it has been sung, "It's not the way I hoped or how I planned...you go and save the best for last."

And here with a sweeping flourish, I shove all of that off my desk:

I find this beautiful.

And thus begins the 2nd day of The 39th Expedition. When I started this whole thing back in the spring of '18, I was 39. I wanted my 40s to be different. I just...refused to keep doing what I did through my 30s.

Yes, yesterday, I was miffed that I didn't drop below 200 lbs. I forgot that I am 127 lbs down the road from New Year's Eve 2018—add another 5 to it for the heaviest weight of my life.

That's significant.

Come to think of it, I suppose my goal is to have lost more weight than what I once weighed, like weigh 160 after losing 171 (two weight classes in my high school wrestling; I was the latter). I used to dream about that sort of thing. At 326 lbs, double my high school 163, my thoughts would drift away as I tenderly sculpted my Blue Bell Cookies 'n Cream. I envisioned as how I weigh exactly two of me, maybe I could split into two! That other guy could do the yardwork.

Somewhere along the way, a fire was lit. I wanted more.

And yeah, it has been the rollercoaster ride—you know the one. "Up and down the scale we go, where it'll stop nobody knows!" I unashamedly share that with my tables and charts. It is easier to not share that, to hide away with baggy clothes. "Look away! No, these orange-encrusted fingers are not clinching a makeshift panini of Doritos!" But, we know we're not fooling anybody, least of all, that ol' mirror.

So we make great strides; we beam with pride; buy new clothes! And...fall flat on our face. The weight stack clinks together ever higher. That happens to us, doesn't it? We're disappointed in ourselves and turn to the thing that put us there in the first place!

BUT, we pick ourselves up off the ground, shake the dust off, and Do It Again. Some time ago, I declared that I would NEVER be 300 again. And while there were close calls, I left April 2018 behind.

I want to do that again. Not for 300—that's laughable. For 200. Yes, THAT 200 that I ever-yearned to achieve yesterday.

See, on paper, I have NO business weighing in the 200s. But, life just feels like I ought to be there, the SAME sort of feeling I once felt about 300. The time I've lived in the 100s just seems like a dream.

I gotta change that! I want to see 200 as I now do 300: laughable.

And I've got the roadmap. Since October 29, I have lost 70 lbs. What's another 40?

The results are in: -4.23% or -9 lbs.

On its face, I am not happy with these results. It snapped a streak of 9 consecutive double-digit weight losses on my High-fat Carnivore diet. And it is the lowest negative percentage in three years (September 2021).

It is still a success, but perhaps it should have been much more. Or I am lamenting that I am so close to that 200 lb threshold!

Why, Oh, Why?

I set out food targets and hit them exactly. Honestly, I cannot find a correlation to my weightloss success to even make an adjustment. Take a look at my intake table. What's the relative positive correlation?! I have been lamenting the too low protein numbers as halfway through I saw it was a problem.

I let ChatGPT 4 take a crack at my data and the excerpt is below. I exclude 28E and 34E because they benefit from the carb withdrawal bump.

Conclusion:

When excluding 28E and 34E, the strongest positive correlations with weight loss percentage appear to be with:

• Butter (lbs): Higher butter consumption correlates with greater weight loss.

• Broth (gallons): Increased broth consumption also correlates with better weight loss percentages.

• Coffee (gallons): There is a noticeable but less consistent positive correlation with coffee consumption.

Overall, butter and broth consumption show the most consistent positive correlations with weight loss percentage.

Further evidence how calories don't count: these are the daily calorie numbers for ALL of my HFC Expeditions, and no, I didn't track them at all:

HFC #1 Calories

• 28E: 2253
• 29E: 2111 - Most Bacon: 9.5 lbs! 2nd Least Butter: 10.1 lbs!
• 30E: 2162
• 31E: 2310
• 32E: 2307

HFC #2 Calories

• 34E: 2102
• 35E: 2367
• 36E: 2266
• 37E: 2243
• 38E: 2361 - Most Butter: 22.4 lbs! 2nd Least Bacon: 1.7 lbs!

Both combined is 60 weeks worth!

The Takeaway

All that aside, there's this weird bit:

In The 37th, I lost 6.17% and trimmed ¾" around my gut. In The 38th, I lost 4.24% and hacked off 1 ¾"–more than double! *shrug*

Perhaps my 235-gram fat target burns fat more effectively, even if my Google Charts' playground slides are not as intense.

As to how this syncs up with my New Year's Resolutions:

• I can now squeeze into 34" jeans for a one-and-done wear—I'm all about my black polyester!
• My shoulders-to-waist ratio is close to 1.1, though that 1.6 seems like a good NYR for '25
• My arms dropped an inch! Dag burn it.