BroBible / Cass Anderson
Well, I did it. On January 30th, 2025, I set out to lose weight when my friend Prasad turned me onto the MacroFactor App and last Friday I’d decided I finally hit my goal. I say ‘decided’ because the goal posts moved several times for me on this journey and I’ll get more into that in a minute.
Let me say straight up: this is not normal content from me and I didn’t set out to do this to write an article about it. I was at a point in life where I’d been exercising regularly (cycling + lifting) and wasn’t losing any weight.
I’m just a wee fella who stands at 5’7″. I know, I’m short. But for this article I went back and looked in my medical logs and on January 29, 2024 I weighed 199 pounds. Three months prior I was 201.8. That is around the time I started resistance training/weight lifting but was still a year out from discovering MacroFactor.
I have written at length in the past about how the app works, what I eat, my daily routines, and more. Today’s article is mostly about results as I turn the page on a new chapter in my MacroFactor journey. Which, by the way, if you read this article and feel compelled to sign up you will get two free weeks using the promo code ‘BroBible’ but that is entirely up to you. I’m not here to push you into anything, I’m just sharing my results.
Download the MacroFactor App For iPhone or Android – use code ‘brobible’
My MacroFactor Journey: From 193 to 148 Pounds in 281 Days
On January 22, 2025, I weighed in at 193 pounds even. Someone once described me as ‘Cass looks like someone who used to be in great shape’ which was a devastating cut they said in passing and I thought about often in the years since.
Last Friday I was out to a family dinner. Earlier in the day I’d looked down at the scale and saw this… Apologies for the hair. I took the photo to send to my best friend Phil who has also been on this journey with me.
Cass Anderson / BroBible
When my friend Prasad texted me out of the blue on January 30th of this year he was fired up about MacroFactor. His energy was infectious. It caught me at the perfect time. I was coming off recent injuries (torn calf 2x) and felt like I was exercising a ton without seeing any progress on the scale… Losing 10 pounds in a year while exercising 6x a week felt like I was spinning my wheels. I was doing something wrong.
So I downloaded MacroFactor. At the time, my wife was using the free version of the MyFitnessPal app. She’d already been calorie logging and tracking macros for a few months but hadn’t pushed it on me at all. So when I came to her saying “this is what I’m doing now” she was already 100% on board.
That first day, I was 193 on the scale. My initial weight loss goal was to get to 165 pounds. After the first month I decided I wanted to get to 160. Then around April I had ‘148’ in my head as an arbitrary number I’d like to see for no reason other than I hadn’t seen the 140s on the scale since college or high school, I forget.
When I saw that number last Friday, despite that being my Scale Weight and not my Trend Weight in the MacroFactor App, I took stock of how I looked and decided that was enough for me. My weight loss and body recomposition goals had been met. I’m now training for my first sprint triathlon (in January) and have already signed up for another race after that because throughout this process I have realized more than anything that I need goals to keep me going.
Download the MacroFactor App For iPhone or Android – use code ‘brobible’
How’d I Do?
I know I can still make a lot of gains in certain areas. I’m not trying to be perfect. But I wanted to put myself out there and share my results so you guys knew this was legitimate. That I wasn’t trying to sell you on some silly ‘get skinny fast’ scheme.
This was 9.5 months of my life, tracking everything I ate, following my MacroFactor weekly macros and calorie recommendations. And I continued to lift weights and do cardio regularly along the way. Importantly, as I lost fat and gained muscle my daily energy expenditure (TDEE in MacroFactor) went up and I was able to regain calories and eat more while still losing weight.
I did this buy lifting M/T/Th/Fri, walking/jogging/running/cycling in the evenings, cycling + jogging on the weekends. It sounds silly and simple, but walking more steps every day and lifting weights will absolutely help you achieve weight loss goals faster than you ever thought and I can 100% attest to that being a difference maker for myself.
Cass Anderson / BroBible
Cass Anderson / BroBible
If you’re wondering why the BroBible logo is plastered over my face here, it’s primarily because in my head I still feel like that guy on the left. That’s who I’ve been for years, someone who when they were wearing a shirt/sweater you couldn’t tell how much weight they’d gained since college.
I’m that guy on the right now with no end in sight but I’ll always carry the vulnerability of not wanting to take my shirt off in certain situations because for years I wasn’t in love with the body I saw in the mirror.
And that’s 100% on me. Bodies come in every shape and size. I’m 100% NOT HERE TO TELL ANYONE THEY LOOK BAD. Nor am I here to tell anyone they need to make a change. I’m simply here to share my results, my journey, and how for the first time in 20 years I no longer have high cholesterol or any concerning results in my lab work.
Download the MacroFactor App For iPhone or Android – use code ‘brobible’
One thing I’ll say about the MacroFactor App interface is when I look at my total results and it shows the ‘average’ weight I find that a little frustrating. It currently shows my average weight as 164.2 with a difference of 36.1 pounds. But it’s averaging my weight from January through now. When I look at my Weight Trend chart for the past month, that’s a clearer indication of my actual weight at this moment which for the past month it lists as 154.0… I’ve seen a bit of a bump in poundage after Halloween. What can I say?! Thankfully, I know how to easily get back to where I was a month ago.
Cass Anderson / BroBible
From a medical perspective, in between my last two lab/blood tests, my Total Cholesterol went from 234mg/dl to 186mg/dl. My HDL (so-called ‘good cholesterol’) went from 52 to 58 and my LDL dropped from 155 to 109. Triglycerides dropped from 162mg/dl to 82mg/dl. This was also taken several months ago so presumably I’ve made even more gains since then.
I’ve Learned To Love Food More Than Ever
Let me also say that historically, for the vast majority of my life, I’ve simultaneously been a picky eater and a very adventurous eater. I’ll try anything but if I don’t like it I’ll cast it aside forever.
Back during Summer, I powered through the book How Not to Die by Dr. Michael Greger and while I was already coming out of my shell as a picky eater I have since embraced all whole foods.
That’s not so say I’m 100% free of ultra-processed foods and I’m still far from a vegetarian, but I am eating more fruits and vegetables daily than I ever have in my life and honestly, I’ve come to love the flavors more than I could’ve ever imagined.
With that said, I have had to address some things about my eating I found I didn’t love. For instance, I have found the idea of a ‘cheat day’ to be disastrous for me. Letting my inhibitions down and eating anything and everything, which has only really happened on 2 or 3 occasions since January, but it turns into proper binge eating and I’d pay for it by losing a few weeks of progress.
So I’ll plan days ahead where I know I’m going to eat more. I will factor that into my week ahead by changing my habits Monday-Thursday in anticipation of a big weekend. And in some instances, I’ll just say ‘f— it’ and live my life because ultimately I did all of this to feel better and I’m not trying to adhere to 100% strictness at all times.
What’s Next For Me And My MacroFactor Journey
Tracking my macros / calorie logging is now a new way of life for me. It empowered me to lose weight at a healthy weight without losing the muscle I was building in the process.
MacroFactor does have a Workouts App coming out in January. I will 10000% be using that from the first day I can.
For months, I’ve been tracking all my workouts using the Hevy App for lifting and Apple Health + Strava for cardio-related workouts. Here are my Apple Fitness changes in the past year:
Cass Anderson / BroBible
I’ve been using the free version of the Hevy App (which is great btw) so I only have 3 months of data there but I have a 23 week streak going which dates back to when I first used the app. My gains in the gym have been noticeable and I cannot wait for the new MacroFactor Workouts App which will incorporate progressive overload into my decisions.
Body recomposition and BMI
At so many times throughout this weight loss and body recomposition journey people have encouraged me to go do a DEXA scan. I’ve been hesitant because (1) they’re expensive and (2) I learned through a MacroFactor article they are less useful than we perceive.
Over the weekend, Jeff Nippard who is one of the original MacroFactor App team members/creators, published this video on body fat percentages. It was EXTREMELY interesting to see how miserable people are at 12% and under. Truly, all they think about is food when they’re not impacted by brain fog.
One moment in the video that really stood out to me was at 20:03 he cites a recent report which included 9,000 American men. He then asks the participants in this video how many they think of the 9,000 have 12% or less body fat….1 person out of 9,000. That was the answer. I think we as a society have really misconstrued what low and healthy body fat looks like and I think my journey with MacroFactor has gotten me really comfortable with data.
While I still haven’t done a DEXA scan, the measurements for the U.S. Navy method put me around 17.8% at the moment and I’m perfectly okay with that.
Up next, I’ve signed up for my first sprint triathlon in January. I wanted to commit to the Olympic distance but my better half said I need to just go do it before I keep trying to bite off bigger challenges.
I’ve already signed up for another race after that but I’m not saying which one yet. But goals are important to me now. Throughout most of my life, I haven’t been the kind of person to define concrete goals and attain those.
At the start of this year I set out to ‘lose weight’ which was ultimately a subordinate goal to ‘getting healthier’ and I’ve drastically improved my health in measurable ways from both lab/blood work to physical fitness and not being chronically injured all the time from inactivity.
Next year, my goals will be more traditional in the endurance sports space. Once I complete my few hours of timed exercise in the January sprint triathlon I’ll have baseline numbers to improve upon. I already went out and did the three legs last weekend and have a general idea of how fast I want to finish, but soon I’ll have some speed and distance goals to strive toward.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge that it has been a privilege to be able to change my body at this age. Eating what we traditionally perceive as “healthy” is both time consuming and expensive. Exercise is time consuming and requires a lot of flexibility in one’s life to be able to stick with it.
Without the support of close people in my life I absolutely would not have been able to accomplish my goals this year and I don’t want anyone out there to feel discouraged by this if life is simply too busy at the moment. But I will encourage you to find those extra minutes in your day to do more. I now wake up at 4:45 AM every day to go lift for 90+ minutes and back by breakfast to walk my son to school. Then I do a second round of exercise, typically cardio, in the evenings.
If you want to follow along, you can find me and my really slow split times on Strava by searching Cass Anderson. You can find me on the Hevy App at ‘cassanderson’ as well until the MacroFactor workouts app comes out. And you can always find me on Threads at @cassanderson or on X/Twitter at @casspa.