If you haven’t heard, the Core 4 and a group of our friends are nearing the tail end of our 2021 fitness competition.

The main focus of the competition is body fat %; more specifically, who can reduce theirs the most. To start out the competition we hopped in the Bod Pod at the University of Akron. It’s essentially a big egg that uses air displacement to measure your body fat percentage. We’ll be hitting the Bod Pod again at the end of the competition to calculate the % of body fat lost.

Since we were going pretty hardcore on the initial measurements for this competition, I figured I’d go hardcore on the diet part of the competition as well. We’ve done these challenges before and I’ve always done… well… pretty average.

My problem with previous challenges has been that I put off the weight/fat loss portion of the challenge until about 2 weeks before the end. I’ve always been a procrastinator, but it has really been on display in our previous competitions. “I’ll start eating healthier tomorrow” has been my battle cry for pretty much every other competition and the results show that. I’ve consistently had the most weight to lose, but generally haven’t placed in the top 3.

I decided early on that this competition was going to be different. After doing some research and talking with some friends and family who have done it successfully, I settled on the Keto diet with a sprinkle of intermittent fasting to maximize my fat loss.

One of the main reasons that I landed on Keto is that it provided a mechanism to lose fat, while at the same time allowing me to eat enough protein to maintain, and potentially even build, muscle. This was a key aspect for the other areas of the competition, which focus on strength.

The other main deciding factor was that it seemed sustainable. Our competition is only 7 weeks, but that is by far the longest time that I’ve ever tried to hold strictly to a specific diet. I figured it would be pretty easy for me to eat ALL the meat and ALL the fat ALL the time; and surprisingly, it has been.

If you’re not familiar with the Keto diet, I’d recommend starting with Thomas DeLauer on YouTube. He talks all Keto, all the time and he really knows his stuff. He has proven to be an invaluable resource while walking through this journey.

So, how has it been working? Really well! I’ve held to the diet for the past 7 weeks; sticking to a limit of 20 grams of net carbs per day. As a result, I’ve seen my weight drop by 20+ pounds, fat falling off my midsection, and no appreciable decrease in strength.

I’ll provide an update to this post once our competition finishes with my actual numbers for weight loss, fat % lost, and body weight % lifts.

I’m also planning to share a picture of myself with the championship belt.