i think you should focus on cutting before you jump to the custom.
I mean, unless you wanna end up with multiple versions of the same custom for bulking, cutting, and maintaining, then its actually better for you to work on creating a new baseline first.
also, your data-fied journaling is amazing 
props to you G
That’s the plan! I’ve got just under 2 months worth of tesofensine on-hand, which is really helping as well, so I’ll use that daily and consider it the end of my cutting cycle when that runs out. Which is also, conveniently, about 2 days before my bday… a perfect reason to indulge in some (still not too-unhealthy) awesome food lol.
Nope, I’d consider that if I had gobs of money with nowhere else to use it, but with a kiddo and living in a rather expensive city, that just doesn’t happen anymore lol.
Thanks!! I prefer data over “Well, I feel x…” if actual data is available.
Time to vent. Because I am PISSED.
At some point within the last couple of years, some friends of ours decided to try our scale to see how their fitness stacked up against ours. Today, for absolutely no reason that I can comprehend, my wife decided their accounts were “cluttering up” her app, and tried to delete them… but instead she accidentally deleted ALL the accounts.
All of my data, for all of my progress, is gone.
I am way more upset about this than I should be… but f***ingdammit. All I’ve got are my screenshots… the interactive charts, the graph that tumbled down like a hill… all my little progress badges, gone.
“Calm down, it’s not a big deal.” she says… well it is to me. 
Now use that energy and smash some extra goals 
Based on some wording on one of the FAQ items on their website it sounds like the data may be recoverable, but that’s speculation… I’ve reached out to their support team to ask.
In the meantime, I’ve installed the app on my phone and synced today’s data at least. With some interesting results… it’s different.
It’s now showing my body fat as 18.1% rather than 12.9 (which makes more sense really, based on how I actually look right now.) but my calculated age has dropped from 38 to 36, to the further chagrin of my wife who is actually 38… meanwhile, chronologically I’m almost 43.
So… Renpho, the manufacturer of the scale, has replied to me to say the data is not recoverable if it’s deleted from a user’s phone. But as it turns out, only some of the measurements were accurate anyway!
The calculation of body fat was incorrect for some reason and was reading as lower than it is now.
New data as of today, most of the metrics are still going in the right direction:
77kg / 169.78lbs
17.9% total body fat (down from 18.1 2 days ago)
5% visceral now (it’s still right on the line between 4 and 5, gotta be a sensor issue as I’m definitely eating in a deficit…)
21.6 BMI
and I’m still 36 years old, apparently lol.
EFST2/3 for my stack, currently doing OMAD with a daily dose of 0.5mg tesofensine, combined with 2x 500mg metformin, 2x 500mg berberine…
Meals are virtually the same every day.
Breakfast (8:30-9:15-ish) - 12oz mug of bulletproof coffee with 1.5 tbsp C8 MCT, 1.5 tbsp inulin prebiotic fiber, and 2 tbsp of 18% cream.
Lunch (1pm-ish): Same coffee, but decaf
Dinner (6-7pm): baked chicken breast, 8oz or so, 1 full bag of frozen broccoli (steamed) and drizzled with avocado oil, 2 pieces of cheese, and a huge greens salad with a small sliced avocado, cherry tomatoes, with keto-frriendly dressing.
All-in, this should be about 1,800 cals, which is just above my BMR… I feel good, not hungry for the most part, but I am looking forward to the next phase haha.
76.55kg / 168.8 lbs - we are deep into “wtf I haven’t been this light since high school” territory here now…
17.8% body fat (not much movement here…)
5% visceral
21.4 BMI
scale says I’ve lost almost as much muscle as fat since my last measure… ooops. That’s not good.
I’m looking at adding creatine back in, as well as upping my (at-home) resistance training, as right now it’s about as regular as my posting frequency… I’d cut the creatine on the advice of @Plutus he suggested it might interfere with the tesofensine.
I was stung by something… an insect I’m presuming, but could just as easily have been a scratch from something while gardening, and for a few days my ring finger knuckle swelled up like crazy. I finally managed to get my wedding band off just to relieve the pressure on my finger and let it heal, so for several days I went out without my ring on.
It was actually rather striking, how many smiles and waves I got from random girls, especially when I was out with my daughter. It’s like normally they see the ring and then I’m invisible, but without the ring… they see me now? lol Where were all these girls when I actually was single? 
More updates to come.
15% and pudgy? Whut :’)
Keep up the good work man! Great progress.
Also scales are very bad at reading accurate data, best would be DEXA-scan.
I’m definitely closer to the 20% look than the 15% look, though I’ve got some loose skin on my gut that is hiding what I can feel are some decent abs just underneath. The 10% look is definitely what I’m going for, my hope is it’ll start shifting more toward that once I really get back into the gym and am not focused so much on cutting. Right now I look almost too thin, I think, but I still have squishy areas lol.
Definitely looking forward to the muscle-building part.
Thanks!
Yeah, I know… a Renpho bioimpedance scale from Amazon is a fraction of the cost of even a single DEXA scan though. 
Wowwww long-term break from this journal.
After I got to the point where my ribs were literally showing and several people asked if I was healthy, I decided that I needed to move up my schedule for muscle building rather than pure cutting.
76.85kg total weight
17.9% bodyfat
still holding at 5% visceral fat
But, here’s where it gets interesting.
When I started actually trying to exercise more specifically, I struggled to do pushups. I’ve never been good at them, due to a combination of poor upper body strength and a high body weight… so I decided that I needed to start doing pushups every day. I started with 20, as that felt like a reasonable goal to start with… and I was STRAINING to finish the set.
Within a few days I was up to 25 no problem. Then 30.
Then 50…
A few days ago, as a personal challenge, I decided to hit 100… this was about 10 days after I struggled to do 20… and I did it. 4 sets of 25, spread across an hour or so as I had time.
Then, disaster struck… I was stung by something on one of my toes, and it swelled/blistered up like mad… and a few hours later, my daughter accidentally kicked that toe as she was walking in front of me, between my chair and our patio table… searing pain, and when I looked down she had basically torn the top of the blister off and blood was pouring out. Ouch. I bandaged it, and it was throbbing so bad, I laid down with an ice pack on it.
TL;DR… no pushups that day.
But, here’s where it actually gets interesting.
The next day I jokingly told my wife that I should have to do 200 pushups that day to make up for missing the previous day…
and I did. 
I’m maintaining 100 per day now, and while I understand it’s purely “beginner gains”, last night while I was changing my shirt before bed, my wife saw my chest and said that my man boobs were now completely gone (I’d hope so, at 169lbs…) but I now had some quite visible pecs too.
Plus, I swung along the monkey bars at a nearby playground the other day, for the first time since I was a kid.
TBH I know these are probably not major achievements for many people, but as a guy who has been fat for the majority of his life… I’m super pleased with my progress. Nowhere near done yet, but I just wanted to share a quick update.
100 pushups a day is now easy. I’ve done 100 so far today already, and it’s just past noon here. 200 will be no sweat today. Yesterday was an interesting twist… my daughter jumped on my back (she’s just shy of 30lbs) and I still managed to do a full set (25), though I couldn’t go quite as far down as I can otherwise.
I am getting stronger.
You should be super-pleased. It’s major progress. And impressive.
Thank you! 
I did complete the 200 reps yesterday, 25 of them with my daughter on my back yet again, attempting to ride on me like a horse lol… I also added 50 (air) squats, some additional exercise when I rearranged my garage and carried/dragged 2 large workbenches around by myself.
I was in the process of doing some pullups at the playground, but my daughter interrupted that by throwing up after getting dizzy spinning around on one of the… rides? playground equipment? (what are they called? lol) so we left right after that.
We’re into summer mode here, which means barbecues… we had a barbecue with some friends that included burgers (so, buns…) and grilled fruit for dessert. So tasty… but, I really do feel like $hit the next day after having a big carb spike like that. Veggies? bring 'em on… a bunch of fruit, and processed carbs? newp… groggy, sluggish, and bloated the next day.
Wowwww… I suck at journaling on a regular basis lol.
I snapped a pic last night (ignore the spots on the bathroom mirror… blehhh) and wow, what a difference compared to before!!
The pic on the left is from 2019, so not that recent, but it represents what I looked like for a few years. Now? man boobs gone, replaced by rock hard pecs… more squared shoulders and visible triceps, rather than squishy and rounded… much more jaw definition, veins popping out of my arms and even across my abs in one spot (don’t worry, no shirtless pics are planned lol, you’ll just have to take my word for it now) and very visible muscle definition across much of my body.
If my Renpho scale is to be believed, I’m around 175lbs, 16% bodyfat. I’ll get more precise metrics sometime soon.
EF ST2/3 helped me quite a bit, aided with some supplements. Tesofensine in particular helped me get to OMAD without excessive hunger, but I was pretty close to that (18/6 IF) already with EF… and I’m back to that now, mostly…
I missed out on one of my favorite parts of summer last year - the food! specfically bbq and fresh fruit, so I have been indulging a bit more this summer.
I’m still doing 10k steps a day most days, as well as 100 pushups daily… as for resistance training, I’ve been building a new office by myself so I wonder if lifting frame walls and sheets of drywall count? lol.
Anyway, that’s all for now.
That’s an amazing transformation! Keep up the good work bro
If you already established a good eating routine, then don’t worry too much about enjoying your cheat meals
I would rather have a slightly unoptimized eating routine that i can realistically keep doing for years than a super “optimized” one that i will give up a few months after
Since you are doing push ups, consider adding a horizontal pulling exercise (anything with a rowing-like motion, pull up is also a good alternative if you don’t have access to one) into your daily routine to avoid muscle imbalances.
It counts! It’s not the conventional bodybuilding method but it definitely helps with functional skills and strengths. Endurance & stamina too to an extent.
Thanks!
I’m a bit tired of chicken and broccoli… lol.
I do pull-ups on the monkey bars when I take my daughter to the park, as well as tricep dips on the parallel bars. I’m tempted to pick up some used home gym equipment for my garage, but half of it is going to be an office and the other half is my workshop… there’s room for equipment but it would get dusty lol.
Haha yep
Definitely get a pull up bar, it’s one equipment that almost doesn’t take any space (if you mount it into your doorframe or your wall). it gives you access to a ton of exercises and it will almost never be obsolete.
Another good alternative when space is tight is getting gymnastics rings, it’s simply a pull up bar but better. You can use it for both pulling and pushing exercises. It can also be portable so you can bring it anywhere. You just have to think about where to hang the rings.
If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your goal with your exercises? You seem to do a lot of endurance work with 100 push ups a day
I actually do have one of the doorway ones, but it might be worth building a proper one in the garage… space isn’t tight, my garage is actually quite big… but it’s not a tall ceiling so that poses a bit of a design challenge.
My goal is to achieve a level of fitness where my strength or endurance isn’t a limitation for anything I want to do, whether it’s moving sheets of drywall or 50lb bags of soil for the garden, or picking up my daughter and carrying her all the way back when she falls asleep an hour away from home lol.
Appearance wise… probably a bit of a stretch to really attain, but, are you familiar with Chris Heria? (just not all the ink… looks cool, but not for me lol)
since you want to build a proper one, be sure to have enough clearance horizontally to do a front lever in case you want to do it in the future.
yeah, a doorway bar is quite limiting if you plan to do wide movements like archer pullups or swinging movements like muscle ups. it can also be potentially more unsafe if you plan to do weighted pullups. building a proper one is definitely the play long term.
as long as you don’t plan to do muscle ups or anything above the bar then that shouldn’t be a problem. installing a low bar or getting rings can circumvent that problem anyway in most cases.
we have similar goals! functional strength is way more appealing to me than looks. though I do focus on conventional bodybuilding too. maybe you would want to consider adding weights into your push ups routine or working your way towards one armed push ups? 100 sounds like a lot of endurance already
yes I am, he’s one of the big calisthenics youtubers. definitely an inspiration
Holy sh*t!!!
