Physical transformation update

Decided I might as well do my quarterly post update re weight loss and body transformation progress today, as it is already almost the end of the second quarter of 2024. Since hitting my all-time maximum weight (122.8 kg) on 5 July last year I have managed to reduce my weight by just over 30 kg (67 lbs) so far, to about 92kg. My goal from here is to lose another 10 or 15 kg of body fat without losing any more lean body mass (muscle). To do so I will need to increase my daily caloric intake slightly, and be more consistent about getting to the gym three times a week for weight training sessions, and doing some short sessions of HIIT indoor rowing (at about 85%-90% MHR) on my non-gym days. I have managed to get into a routine of walking 16K-24K steps/day, which seems pretty effective at maintaining a caloric deficit and ensuring most of my weight loss has been due to fat loss. I have found that not having my first meal of the day until noon has been quite easy (I don't feel particularly hungry when I wake up, so 'breakfast' was more of a habit that an urge to eat something), and it isn't too hard to stick with a rule to not eat anything after a reasonably early dinner around 6pm or so. This results in an 18:6 'intermittent fasting' regime that I find is easy to stick with, once you get out of the habit of 'snacking' after dinner. Apparently most of the longevity benefits of caloric restriction found in rodent studies may actually be achieved by simply restricting the food consumption period, rather than total calories per se. So having a daily 'fasting' period of 75% of every 24-hours may provide similar health benefits as 20%-30% caloric restriction, and may not have some of the adverse side effects (eg. sacropenia and increased sensitivity to the cold) that higher levels of caloric restriction might impose.

I had made little progress with my attempt to lose excess body weight up until 12 Feb, when I commenced the '90-day transformation challenge' that I had signed up for towards the end of 2023. While there was nothing revolutionary about my approach to diet and exercise since then, it did make me more aware of the need to consume quite a high level of protein while maintaining a caloric deficit (around 1g per lb of ideal body weight), and I switched from tracking my daily food intake 'on paper' (and then having to use a spreadsheet to calculate macros - which was quite a chore) to using the free version of the myfitnesspal app. Being able to just scan barcodes or search for a food item within the app, and then record the total macros at the end of the day made it much easier to keep an accurate track of my daily macros and keep an eye on my weekly averages. The impact of this change of approach is quite apparent in the chart of my daily morning weigh-ins:

I had been a little concerned that (according to my bathroom scales) my body fat percentage was remaining quite high, despite the constant weight loss. And using the body fat readings to calculate lean mass it seemed as if around 1/4 of my weight loss was due to decrease in lean mass. However, I had a new DEXA scan done last weekend, and it reported my actual body fat percentage as 17.9% (a *lot* better than the 27% being reported by my bathroom scales). The DEXA reading of body fat seems more realistic, as didn't seem to have lost any muscle mass since February, due to more regular weight training sessions and higher levels of protein intake.

My goal for the next six months is to lose the remaining 10-15kg of body weight to get down to a 'healthy' BMI value (and body fat around 10%-13%), while also (hopefully) putting on a bit of muscle mass via regular weight training. If I do manage to retain muscle mass during the next six months of more gradual weight loss I should end up weighing about 78-80kg with 10% or so body fat. I'll get another DEXA scan at the end of the year to see how things have worked out, and then for 2025 will focus on maintenance caloric intake while continuing with weight training, walking, indoor rowing, and sticking with the intermittent fasting routine. I'll also do another DEXA scan at the end of 2025 to check on progress. My long term goal will be to stick with 18:6 IF and maintain a health body mass of around 78-80kg with ~10% body fat.

My DEXA scans and key metrics from 2019 and 2024:

Still quite a way to go, as I have previously managed to get my weight down below 90kg on several occasions over the past 40 years, but then didn't have a plan for the transition to a long-term 'maintenance' program.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2024

Net Worth - MAY 2024

Chart updated to end of May in sidebar.

Stocks/cash increased $1,009 (+0.39%) to $259,831. Mostly due to making the quarterly contribution into the Investment Bond account, so not due to the market per se.

Retirement savings (SMSF etc) increased by $34,725 (+2.01%) to $1,76,503 pretty much just bouncing back from last month's market decline.

Est. valuation of our home (my half) increased by $16,583 (+01.44%) to $1,167,296. The 'Other real estate' (my 'lake house' and the investment apartment) decreased by -$52,954 (-2.42%) to $2,138,781. This reversed most of the exceptionally large rise last month, so is just a reversion to more typical price movement over the past two months combined. Goes to show that individual monthly estimates are quite 'noisy' so it is really only worthwhile looking at the general trend over periods of several years.

The outstanding balance of the investment property mortgage remains at $999,993 during the 'interest only' period of the mortgage. Another ~4 years remain of the 'interest only' period. During that time I will accumulate as much cash as possible in the offset account to reduce the effective loan balance.

Other assets (my online depository bullion account at Perth Mint, and the bullion value of my gold and silver proof coin collection) increased by $437 (+1.01%) to $43,669. Part of this rise was due to resuming my monthly 'savings plan' contributions -- adding $100/month to purchase $50 each of gold and silver. As I won't have to fund the monthly overhead expenses for my financial adviser registration/AFSL/ASIC levy etc. I will have some extra cashflow available. I will transfer most into my mortgage offset account every couple of months, but can afford to allocate a small part to my asset allocation into bullion.

I lodged my income tax variation application for FY2024-25 last week, so I should get the official response from the ATO by the end of June and will then have to pass it on the my employer's HR department to ensure payroll takes this into account and adjusts my PAYG tax withholding for next financial year (last time it took several months for them to eventually get the correct tax rate applied and had to have two attempts to make the correct payroll adjustment). I won't get as large a reduction in withholding tax as this FY, as I was fairly conservative regarding likely tax deductions for doordash business expenses, and didn't bother adjusting for the 'work from home' hourly rate deduction. So I'll probably end up with a small tax refund when I do my FY25 tax return.

Overall, NW decreased by -$200 (-0.00%) to $4,384,087 during May.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2024

'Passed' my PhD 'confirmation of candidature' milestone -- with conditions

Since I have been enrolled as a part-time PhD candidate now for just over 12 months (time flies!) the 'confirmation of candidature' milestone was due. The normal timing is within 6 months for full time PhD students, but as a part-time enrolment mine was due at the end of 12 months. I had to prepare of more detailed 'research proposal', with a decent literature review and outline of the methods and data analysis techniques to be employed, the main research question(s) and hypotheses, and also present a short (20 minute) 'seminar' (powerpoint presentation) summarizing my research project.

The 'mock' presentation I did last month went OK, so I did the actual online seminar presentation today, which went quite well. I then had a meeting with the 'confirmation of candidature panel' (HDR admin and school staff, my princiapl and co-supervisors, and another 'independent' university academic) to go over my research proposal, do some Q&A, and get feedback from me (about my supervisor team) and from the supervisor and co-supervisors (about me).

There were some very helpful questions and suggestions on how to improve my research (some extra questions to include in my survey questionnaire), and some difficult questions (about the theoretical basis for my research, and about obtaining a random sample of survey participants rather than just a self-selected or biased sample). All good questions that I don't have all the answer to just yet.

Ultimately I "passed" the confirmation -- but with a couple of conditions. Mostly to do with including a more substantial (or any!)  theoretical basis/framework for my research in the research proposal, and to address the issue of possible sample bias with the approach I had proposed for obtaining survey participants. At least I have another 6 months to "dot all the i's and cross all the t's".

As I was sort of planning to do a 'thesis by publication' (where the core of the thesis is three or more published peer-reviewed academic papers based on the research) rather than a 'book' style thesis, the confirmation panel also indicated that I need to work out with my supervisor team the gist of what the papers should be about, draft titles and so forth. Shouldn't be an issue, but it seems a bit odd to be planning the title and content of research papers before having any data or results. But I suppose I already know the specific questions I *expect* my research to answer, so expressing that in the form of a series of paper outlines should not be too hard. I think I had the 'thesis by publication' route as my 'plan A' option (with the thought that if I didn't get the required number of papers accepted for publication I could revert back to the traditional 'thesis as a tome' option (with the results subsequently being published in one or more academic papers).

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2024

Decided to switch from being a 'financial planner' to a 'wealth coach'

I finally decided that paying over $20K pa in licence fees to my AFSL, ASIC fees, etc. simply to remain on the FAR (financial advisers register) to be able to provide personal financial advice was not worth the expense. Having a full-time salaried job that was totally unrelated to financial planning, plus doing PhD candidature part-time, made it practically impossible to spend enough time and effort 'prospecting' for clients to even cover the 'running costs' (especially since the AFSL would keep another 20% of any fees charged to clients, plus I would have to pay a few hundred dollars per client to have my SOA documents reviewed by the AFSL (or else pay even more to have the SOAs drawn up by a contract paraplanner service).

Rather than provide personal financial advice (taking into account the client's situation and details to provide a written 'statement of advice' recommending particular financial products), I think I will just offer my services as a 'wealth coach' providing education regarding DIY financial planning techniques, retirement and investment projections, budgeting, information about the tax and superannuation system and common strategies, and all the other things that go into planning ones own financial strategy -- without recommending any particular financial products (or class of products) and making specific recommendations based on the details of the person's situation, or providing personalized taxation advice (otherwise you risk running foul of ASIC requirements to provide 'general' financial advice).

As there will be $0 overheads I should be able to do this 'for fun' and only charge a reasonable hourly rate, rather than the thousands of dollars it costs to provide compliant personal financial advice. I might even do some general topic youtube videos.

Subscribe to Enough Wealth. Copyright 2006-2024