Where my attention shifted
I started this phase tracking weight, and at the beginning that made sense. Weight was easy to see, easy to track, and easy to project forward. Early on, it worked. The scale was moving, and the trend confirmed that what I was doing was working.
But after a few months of consistent tracking, weight started to feel like the wrong primary number. Not because it wasn’t changing, but because there was too much noise in it. Water, digestion, glycogen, muscle, all of that rolls into one number, and two people can weigh the same while being in very different health states. Given my height, my frame, and the fact that I was actively trying to preserve lean mass, weight alone wasn’t telling me whether I was actually getting healthier or just watching fluctuations.
That’s when I started paying more attention to body composition instead of just scale weight, and more specifically to body fat percentage.
That shift changed how I thought about the whole process. Body fat is much more closely tied to health than weight alone. As it goes up, the risk curve gets steeper. Insulin resistance, cardiovascular strain, joint load, overall metabolic stress. Weight doesn’t really capture that relationship very well. Body fat does.
Once I started tracking fat mass alongside fat free mass, things became clearer. Fat free mass stayed fairly steady, fat mass kept coming down, and instead of chasing a lower weight, I could see where I was actually landing from a health perspective. That’s when the idea of a first green zone started to make sense to me. Not an end goal, not a finish line, but a point where risk drops enough that you don’t need to keep pushing as hard.
That reframed the question entirely. Instead of asking how much more weight I could lose, the question became when it made sense to stop being so aggressive.
From there, the focus naturally shifted to transition. Aggressive fasting was a lever, and it worked, but it was never meant to be permanent. The real question was how to step things down without losing control or sliding back into old habits.
That didn’t mean removing structure. It meant easing off while keeping the things that were already working. The tools that got me here were familiar: intermittent fasting, two meals a day, prioritizing protein, not grazing, eating whole foods, staying active. None of that was new. This phase wasn’t about discovering something different. It was about using the right tool for the right moment.
Instead of jumping straight from long fasts back into eating every day, the transition itself became intentional. I reduced fasting frequency, kept my meals structured, and kept tracking long enough to make sure things stayed stable. The goal was to let my body show me that it could hold steady with less force applied.
Weight loss was never really the point. Health was.
And health isn’t about driving numbers lower forever. It’s about getting out of the danger zone and back into a place where life doesn’t revolve around constant monitoring. That first green zone isn’t where things end, but it is where the pressure comes off. From there, progress becomes a choice instead of a requirement, and health moves back into the background where it belongs.
The biggest takeaway from this phase wasn’t a number on the scale. It was learning how to recognize when it’s time to stop pushing and start living.
