Lent plans

Yesterday, I went and had another body composition scan done, almost exactly three months after the previous one. I've gained 3 kilos of muscle tissue in that time, and gone from 11 percent body fat up to almost 14 percent. I've been thinking about doing another bout of keto and seeing if I can continue gaining muscle tissue while losing fat. Obviously that would be a massive dietary change, so Lent provides a good opportunity for it. Starting tomorrow, I'm giving up solid food for Lent. I'll be consuming 3 keto chow shakes per day, but that only gets me to about 70 grams of protein per day. My strength training regimen specifies more like 160 grams per day. So I will also be consuming the same whey protein shakes I've been using with the program so far; 3 scoops per day on weight lifting days, and 2 on other days. Between keto chow powder and protein powder, that means I'll be consuming 980 calories on weight lifting days, and 780 on other days.

I want to be running at a caloric deficit in order to lose weight, but that's way too much of a gap. Of course, keto chow is designed to be mixed with fat. So the plan at the moment is to mix up keto chow each evening for the following day, adding enough fat to get within 1000 calories of what was burned the previous day. For example, tomorrow is Wednesday. So, when I mix up three shakes this evening to be consumed tomorrow, I'll add enough to get to 2,558 calories, since I burned 3,558 yesterday. Tomorrow is a weight training day, so 2,558-980=1,578 calories of fat. Since I plan to use avocado oil, which has about 800 calories per 100 mL, I've got to use just under 200 mL between the three shakes.

In order to keep myself somewhat occupied and to give myself something to look forward to, I plan to make a variety of foods over the course of the next six weeks that require extended periods of time to prepare. For example, I'm going to make cured egg yolks, which I think will be enjoyable grated over some fresh pasta. I've been meaning to try making agnolotti; that could easily be frozen. I'm going to make a nukadoko pickling bed, essentially a bed of damp, salted rice bran with various vegetables buried in it that eventually develops a lactic acid bacterial culture which will preserve and flavor vegetables buried in it. The bed takes a fair bit of time to develop, but I should be able to get it done by the end of Lent. I'm strongly considering making soy sauce, although that would be a much longer-term project.

Last week, I got no swimming done. Well, I got about fifty yards done; I broke the zipper on my thicker wetsuit early in the week, and I tried swimming in the thinner one. It was WAY too cold. But I got the zipper repaired rather quickly, and today I got back in the water. I need to spend more time swimming greater distances at a lower level of effort.