Fat Bastard

Fasted Deadlift Results

2011-05-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well my fasted deadlifting attempt was a disaster. Or so it seemed! I get in, get 8 reps on my first set.... not a good start. Fully believe I'll make up for it next set and maybe get 11. Then get 3 on my second set (keep in mind I'm going for 2X10). Total Disaster.

So I panic, knee-jerk reaction, run to Burger King, because I know junk food will work. I order 2 whoppers, a chicken sandwich and fries. ...which sounds terrible. And for your average carb eating American it would be... but I don't eat like this all the time, I'm pretty glycogen depleted, most of it will go to refilling that glycogen (which is the whole point). RICE would have been a better call, but it's a knee-jerk reaction to the fucking THREE reps I just got on my second set.

Go about my day, give it 5 hours to digest, back to the gym and THREE reps again!! What the fuck man!? Ok, so now it's clearly NOT a calorie/available muscle glycogen issue. The damn weight is just to heavy. I've been moving this same weight for at least 6 months now. Come in every week 2 sets of 10 on 225, even in the midst of a very calorie restrictive diet. Even back in January that one week I did the really extreme diet with 600 cals 5 days a week and 1,100 calls on the 2 lift days, even on that much of a calorie defecit I STILL got my 2X10 @ 225. What changed?

That damn every-other-week frequency I experimented with. That's what I'm dealing with now, consequences of that. I did lose strength doing that. It wasn't fasting, it wasn't calorie restiction, it was workout frequency. Oh well. You can't find where the line is if you don't push the boundary sometimes. ...just ask any woman, cause they use the same strategy with their boyfriends! ;-)

I realize what I'm trying to do is just "magically" get those 2 reps back. Because remember I did get 8,10 last week. But doing TWO work sets in a rep range BELOW 10, training once a week is NOT how I made such excellent progress in deadlift in the first place.

The only thing I've got right is the frequency. I made progress in deadlift, going after it once a week, 3 work sets, in a rep range ABOVE 10. I would get 3X12, before I added weight, and then add only 5% or so, so the next week, I could come in and still be able to get 9 reps on that third set.

So that's what I decide to do. I drop the weight enough to make a good run back up to 225 over a couple weeks. I drop it to 185, and bang out 15/15/16. My intent was to only go for 12, because that's what worked in the past, but it was too easy so I went for 15. 16 on that last set was pretty tough, but not impossible. Gun to my head I could get maybe 1 more.

So for next week, I could go up to 195 and shoot for 3X15 again, and if I get it up to 205 the week after. But what I did in the past to make progress on deads was not 15 reps on the last set, it was 12. If I've already discovered what WORKS.... then do that again, don't try to reinvent the wheel.

With that in mind.... I know I'll easily get 3X12 on 195, so I'm going to do a 20 pound jump and work with 205 next week, to purposely get the rep range DOWN from 15, closer to 12. I don't think it will be so heavy that I can't get at least 9 on that 3rd set. And that's what I want. I expect it to take about 3 or 4 weeks to get back to 3X12 @225.

The diet really has nothing to do with this. Even as restrictive as it is, I get enough protein to lay on some strength. I've gotten stronger on 4,000+ calories a day and on 1,700 a day. In this case, it's the volume and workout frequency I needed to tweak.

I still think it's CRAZY that the every-other-week deadlift frequency which was clearly not enough to maintain strength, took 8 WEEKS to catch up with me?? Why wouldn't I start slipping the very first time I came in to the gym after 2 weeks off?? I guess it was sheer force of will. Deadlift is such a big, compound movement, I guess I was getting a little weaker every 2 weeks, but I could get the reps anyway... my form probably deteriorated, until finally on the 4th workout, 8 weeks later I couldn't do it anymore. Very strange to me.

So the bigger question is... What about fasted deadlifting? Well.... since I ate all that Burger King and came back to the gym and still couldn't get the reps, I question how much being in a fasted state had to do with it. I probably could, load up on fruit carbs the night before and do it fasted next week.

That being said.... why push it? Even if I break the I.F. schedule on deadlift day and wind up with 2,500 calories for the day and don't cut one single calorie. Or I get 3,000 cals and run a +500 calorie surplus... with 6 other days ON the I.F. schedule, I'll still run a great calorie defecit for the week and continue to lose bodyfat. I'd rather deadlift FED and glycogen full, then have ANY chance of running out of gas. That workout is just too important.

Remember my goal is NOT "lose fat at all costs." It's lose fat AND keep your muscle/strength. I'm in a small hole right now on the strength side of the equation, until I get deads back to 2X10 @225. Do I REALLY want to push it and try to do deads fasted while I'm trying to ADD reps/weight? I don't think so.

So my plan going for next week is this. 6 days ON the I.F. schedule. Load up a bit on fruit Sunday and Monday nights before Monday's chest workout and Tuesday's chins workout. Those workouts I will do fasted first thing in the AM. That's pretty damn easy. But on deadlift day, break the I.F. schedule. Eat RICE in the morning to power the workout 5 hours later. After the workout it's not an "off" day for the diet, it's right back to fruits, veggies, meat.

I'm going to power the workout with rice, not white bread buns and french fries from Burger King. That was a knee-jerk, panic reaction to getting 3 reps on a set where I should have gotten 10. It gave me glycogen, but my calorie total for the day was 4,500. Completely unacceptable. I'll still run a defecit for the week because I'm that good! ;-) But next week, RICE-powered, I should only hit about 2,500 on DL day, not 4,500. Also RICE falls in line a lot better with my primal/all natural plan, than white-flour bread does. Deadlift is NOT a cheat day, it's not an excuse to eat crap. It just requires more glycogen than a sit-in-front-of-the-computer day.

I know the rice plan works because it's exactly what I did on May 5th. Rice in the AM, deadlift 5 hours later, got my 2X10 reps, wound up with 2,600 calories for the day. Done deal!

It's crazy to me that by the time I get this figured out and completely dialed-in and actually do a week 100% the way I WANTED to do it... I'm going to be about done with fat loss anyway! I'm sitting right around 17,500 total calorie loss since I started this final push. Which means I only have another 17,500 to go. By the time I get done tinkering with the fucking plan, I'm only going to be able to employ it for 3 or 4 weeks anyway! Ahhhhh-haaaa! Ehh, what can you do, it's the nature of the beast. You gotta' write everything down and ADJUST those variables if you ever want to stop repeating mistakes, and actually make progress.

The good news is, even with all these detours and fuck-ups, I AM making progress. Every week for the past 8, I've run a calorie defecit and am getting leaner and leaner. Not quite as quickly as I would have liked, but whatever it's still working.

Fasted Chin-Ups Workout

2011-05-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

Well since the chest workout went so well, I decided to do the same thing the following day for my chins workout. So I had ample fruit the night before on Monday, woke up Tuesday morning, had my very RITUAL-istic morning coffee, and then got right to it. Since I have a pull-up bar in the house I don't have to go to the gym for this workout. I actually hadn't even finished my coffee before I started, so this was in the FIRST waking hour of my day.

I eeked out 14,12 on the reps after 13,10 last week. So that's good, but honestly it was the second week of a new exercise. ANYONE can make progress the first 4-6 weeks of a new routine. If I'm still making progress on chins in 2 MONTHS, I'll be really stoked.

But that's actually not the point. The point is I had ample glycogen to work with and POWERED through my workout. I didn't feel glycogen-depleted at all. Even completely fasted. Chins are systematically draining. It's not as draining as deadlift, but it's still a big compound movement. And I had ample reserves. You can't fake muscle glycogen with caffeine. So don't think I was running on coffee, it doesn't work that way.

I mean it makes perfect sense. Eat a DECENT amount of carbs from fruit the night before, and then what do you do? You go right to bed... maybe I was up for 2 more hours then bed. So my body had 10 hours to digest and make that glycogen available in my muscles and liver. How much glycogen demands do you think your body has while you SLEEP?! As low as you'll ever have. So it's the optimal situation, time to digest and almost no glycogen demands. Soooooo, with the diet and intermittent fasting schedule I'm using, FIRST THING IN THE MORNING is when you would have the most glycogen available for a workout.

I've also heard the argument in BB circles that fruit is no good for workouts because it fills liver glycogen over muscle glycogen. Completely irrelevant! Who cares?! What do you think your liver does with all that glycogen right about the time you're hitting your second rep on chins? It releases it and sends it to the muscles that are demanding it. That's WHY the liver stores glycogen, so when you do something like workout one muscle group hard, it can refill quickly before your next set. Now when you run into trouble is when your liver glycogen is empty. As I'm sure mine is late in the day towards the end of the fasted window. But first thing in the AM after a night of digesting fruit? Good to go!

It's so OBVIOUS now that I think about it. Why was I trying to do it the hard way? The hard way is cram in a whole bunch of rice (or some other primal compromise) for that first meal of the I.F. day, and then have to give it 5 hours to digest and not be able to workout till 10:00pm. OR.... completely break the I.F. schedule and have that rice earlier in the day... which works but you won't stay under 2,500 calories that day. AND more importantly it breaks the I.F. routine, which can potentially fuck-up your whole week if you get off plan. Or WORSE, try to get quick carbs from sugar and cause a binge!

This makes way more sense to me on this diet. This diet I've constructed is fucking AWESOME for fat loss... but I haven't found a good way to power through the workouts AND stay on the IF schedule on workout days and stay in the "diet zone" until now. This is it. Ample fruit the night before, and use the time you're sleeping to refill glycogen. Then get right to your workout the next morning.

So I'm going to do the same thing tonight (Thursday) and do my deadlift session fasted first thing Friday morning. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous... because it's deadlift. It's no joke. But in theory, with ample glycogen I should be good to go. And actually it's not just theory, I've got 2 fasted first-thing-in-the-am-after-late-night-fruit workouts under my belt already. But this is dealift, the big show, the big test.

How much fruit?
I'm glad you asked! So Sunday night before Monday's workout I had apple, apple, 16oz pineapple, then 9 oz pineapple. Monday night before Tuesday's workout I had a pear and an apple for the first meal in the IF window, and then later in the night: apple, apple, 6 oz blueberries, apple. (Shut up I like apples!) So not that much. It's certainly not a carb-up BINGE. You don't binge with primal foods like you do with grains and sugar anyway. Monday my day's total calories clocked in at 1,500. Which is very typical on an 8 hour fast day. So unlike the primal-compromise, rice powered on the same day workouts where I have about 2,600 calories for the day, I can still easily run a calorie defecit this way. And power the workout. Win-win baby!

Also when I say late at night.... I mean like anywhere in the last 4 hours I'm awake. I'm not like cramming all this fruit down my throat and then immediately going to bed, it can be hours before bed. Usually on an I.F. day I have 2 meals, 1 to break the fast, and then one a couple hours later. Sometimes I have one big meal, and then just snack on fruit whenever I want for the rest of the night.

Keep in mind it's the fasted window that makes all this possible. I did have a day where I broke the IF schedule because I had a daytime date and didn't feel like being depleted all day long. Depleted in front of my computer? Easy. Depleted riding bikes.... Ehhh, I'd rather not push it. So that day I ate a normal schedule like I would if I wasn't cutting fat. But I still stuck to all primal foods, and sure enough I clocked in right around 2,500 calories. Makes sense. I didn't restrict intake, but stuck to primal foods and ate the exact amount I needed to not gain or lose weight, just maintain.

Got back a rep on Deadlift... Slipped up on Diet again.

2011-05-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

Well the good news first. I reclaimed ONE rep on deadlift. Considering I'm on a cut diet, running a calorie defecit and considering how full-body taxing deadlift is, I'll take 1 rep a week! ;-) So yeah, I did exactly what I said I was going to do and moved deadlift back to once a week frequency. I kept it to 2 work sets not 3. I only got 8 reps on the first set, but then got 10 on the second set. Last week I did 10,7. So I'm up a rep.

I also DROVE to the gym, I didn't bike.... I can't help but think had I biked I would have been warmed up enough to get another rep or two on that first set. The weight still felt REALLY heavy. I mean the last few reps, it took me a while to stand straight up with my lower back working hard. But not TOO hard, I didn't pull anything.

I really think the key to not hurting yourself in deadlift is hamstring flexibility. I stretch out good before and inbetween my warmup sets and continue to stretch between work sets. I've blown my back out before deadlifting, and it's awful, you can barely walk afterwards. It's always been related to how LOOSE my hammies were, not how hard I went or how heavy the weight felt. 225 felt about as heavy as it's ever felt to me, but I didn't blow my back cause I was properly stretched.

That's the first bit of good news, the second bit I'm even more excited about. After changing chest press frequency from twice a week to once a week because I thought twice/week was a bit much on a caloricly restrictive cut diet, I made tremendous progress and added 7 reps! From 15,13,10 to 15,15,15. Next week I get to up the weight.

Once again a "less is more" approach is proving to be true. Now granted I took that too far by moving Deadlift to once every 2 weeks. That's too infrequent. But for chest press, moving it from twice a week to once a week proved to be the right decision. I mean shit man, SEVEN reps! On a cut diet?? That's freakin' awesome. I couldn't be happier about that. Especially since chest and upper arms are an area I really want to grow a bit. Oh, and my external rotator specific exercise also moved in tandem with that and gained a bunch of reps as well. I do that exercise FIRST since I can't increase chest press or chest anything without healthy shoulders.

The other change I made is I stopped doing curls and started doing chin-ups. I wasn't making progress in curls.... just kind of treading water. And I just feel like curls.... they're too much of an isolation exercise. And chins are just an awesome full-body compound workout. They feel like the deadlift of the upper body. I don't need lat growth, my lats actually developed nicely from deadlift, but I just feel like a pussy doing curls and not chins, you know?? It's not just that it hits your lats too, it's your serratus and part of your shoulder and a bunch of other small upper body muscles that curls will never hit. It's a compound exercise. Compound for the win!

I also moved it to Tuesday. I was doing x-rotators, chest press, curls on Monday and deadlift Friday. Since I have a chin-up bar in my home, I moved it to Tuesday... still far enough away from deadlift to ensure I'm well rested going into that workout, but why not have it on it's own day? I can do chins fully rested instead of last thing AFTER rotators/chest and have enough glycogen to work with. ...all these little variables DO make a difference. I mean look what happened just by moving chest from twice a week to once a week. I keep thinking one day I'll get this "dialed-in" and not have to make any changes for a while. And I think that will happen, but right now it's a work in progress while I keep tweaking variables looking for that optimal plan. My golden rule is "if it's WORKING, don't change it". I wasn't really getting anywhere with curls, so I was ok, making the change to chins and moving it to Tuesdays.

I have my reservations, because I've NEVER been able to make meaningful progress on chins. I mean never in my life! Sure for a couple weeks I'll add a few reps, but right away I hit the wall and can't get any stronger. Maybe I can do 8 chin ups first week and a couple weeks later I can do 12... and then that's it! I can't ever make any more progress than that. Honestly that's WHY they're not part of my routine right now.

But that was all before everything I've learned in the past 2 1/2 years, about excessive cardio destroying muscle, about a primal/paleo diet, about IF'ing, about workout frequency.... so I remain cautiously optimistic that I can make it work this time. Also I do realize I'm in still on a cut diet... but so what! I've proved to myself repeatedly that I can add SOME strength/size/muscle even mid cut. I'd get stronger, FASTER on a diet with excess calories... but without chronic cardio working against me even my skinny-ass ectomorph genes can add SOME strength in the midst of a cut. ;-)

It's a MYTH that you can't get stronger AND lose bodyfat. If you have all the variables right, and you aren't working against yourself with hard cardio, you absolutely CAN get strong while you lose fat. Even at the level I'm at, dieting BELOW 10% bodyfat.

So how did it go? I haven't done chins in at least a year. Maybe longer. First set I got 13! I'm pretty stocked on that. 13,10. But I'm also pretty light at <10% bodyfat. The real test will come tomorrow (1 week later) when I see if I can add any to that. Contrary to all the advice on the bodybuilding forums, I do BETTER and make MORE progress and add more muscle with higher reps. That 3-5 or even 7-10 rep range shit doesn't work with me. I go till I can get 15 on the last set, THEN add weight. So when I can get 15,15 on chins, I'll start doing them with a 10 pound weight, then 20 pounds, etc... Until I can get that I'll work with bodyweight. Good thing I'm close or I'd have to start with pull downs, until I could do my weight in the 10-15 rep range.

That's the good news. The BAD news is I blew the fucking diet again!! Not so badly that I didn't make progress for the week - I did. But for the week down about 1800 calories not the 3500 I was aiming for.

Here's what happened. It's deadlift day, it's Friday, for once I have plans for Friday night. It's gotten late and I haven't eaten. Like 5:00pm. I'm fairly glycogen depleted. If I have rice right now, that will work, but I gotta' give it time, I won't be lifting till 10:00 o'clock at night, and there goes my Friday night. So I decide to PURPOSELY cheat and eat some sugar so I can be lifting in an hour or two. I have a couple candy bars, and some fast food burger with a white flour bun. And it works! 2 hours later or so I power through my workout.

But like a fool, somehow I managed to completely forget that I am a sugar ADDICT. I can not have "a little" sugar. Even if there's a good reason for it, like quickly filling glycogen reserves for a deadlift workout 2 hours later. If I don't eat sugar for a couple days I'm fine, I'm not craving it like crazy. But if I get a taste?? Psssssh! Forget it. So that night, after the bar (water only) at 2:00AM I go on a binge and eat all manner of crap from across the street. Long story short, my calorie total for that one day was 4,300. Doh! Luckily I did so well with the diet the rest of the week, that I still managed an 1,800 calorie deficit for the week.

Here's the thing, I can get in the diet ZONE... do my IF'ing for 8 hours every day, stay primal when I do eat and run an fantastic calorie deficit of like 800-1,000 calories for days and days on end. No problem. It's the lifting days that are getting me OUT of my routine and FUCKING me over!

But.... my goal isn't "fat loss at all costs" my goal is fat loss ONLY IF I can maintain my muscle mass. The lifting days are not optional, they are part of the program. I'll already a genetic ectomorph, I'll look anorexic if I don't lift.

I've tried sticking to my IF plan and eating late like I do on non-lift days, then lifting even later. But that's wicked inconvenient going to the gym at 10:00 o'clock at night. So much so that I temporarily lost my mind, forgot about how I react to sugar and thought I could get away with using it to power my deadlift workout with no consequences. Ha! I've tried breaking the IF routine and just eating that rice meal earlier in the day.... that certainly works better than the sugar plan, but I HATE breaking the routine, it fully knocks me out of the zone I'm in. And.... you know GOOD LUCK running any sort of calorie deficit with a normal eating window. Intermittent fasting WORKS brilliantly! You cut your fed window in HALF and it's easy to cut calories. I don't know HOW traditional fitness aficionados do the whole "6 smaller meals" thing. I can't meaningfully cut calories WITHOUT intermittent fasting. I really don't know how they do it. I don't go berserk on a normal eating window if I don't eat junky foods, but I have a hell of a time keeping it under 2,500 calories.

Last night for whatever reason I was really hungry so I kept eating, I kept going back and having pineapple. I had 27 ounces total, so lots of carbs, even though it was all primal/paleo fruit carbs. TODAY was chest press /x-rotators day. And I could feel how much energy/glycogen I had in the morning, so I decided to get to the gym quickly, roll the dice and lift fasted. ...and I told you how awesome the workout went. +7 reps baby! So that kinda' shows me that if I load up on carbs the night BEFORE - even fruit / veggie carbs, I can use that glycogen to power a workout the next day. With the huge added benefit of being able to stick to my IF routine and not have to knock myself out of the diet ZONE. And of course I still get to run a calorie-defecit that day instead of struggling to stay under 2,500 or worse, using sugar to power the workout to my own demise!!

So I'm going to take that same approach Thursday night prior to Friday's deadlift session. So you know, stick to my I.F. schedule Thursday, but Thurs night in the fed window, especially late night before bed have plenty of fruit/carbs. Pineapple seems to work really well. Then Friday, continue to stick to the I.F. schedule and go deadlift fasted. I'm concerned because it's DEADLIFT. It's no joke. I'm talking about deadlifting FASTED! I know how crazy that sounds. But honestly you don't need a full belly to lift hard, you need ample glycogen to work with. I think loading up on fruit the night before will do the trick. And shit man!! Look what I've learned. If conventional wisdom says don't do it, then I'm probably doing the right thing by taking the opposite approach! Haaahaaa, that's sad, but frequently true!

Oops! Training a little TOO infrequently

2011-05-07T00:03:00.000-07:00

Well it finally happened. I dropped some reps on my deadlift workout on Thursday. I've been doing 2X10 on the work sets and this time I got 10, then 7. I was well rested, well fed. I made that "primal compromise" I talked about and had 600 calories of rice 5 hours before the workout. I had plenty of cals and glycogen that day. I think it's just that once every OTHER week training frequency is a little too infrequent.

The weird thing is how long it took to catch up with me. I made that switch 8 weeks ago. So for almost 2 months I've been doing deadlift every OTHER week, and holding my strength and now, 2 months later I start losing strength. I thought if it was going to happen, it would happen the first or second workout, right??

I think the reality is the optimal frequency to just maintain strength is somewhere between once a week and once every other week. Like maybe every 11th or 12th day or something. So I was ALMOST holding my strength on the every-other frequency, and probably eeking out those last reps with some form slip ups. But over time it caught up with me, until I couldn't get the reps.

The weight DEFINITELY felt heavy. And it wasn't depletion. I know when I don't have enough glycogen and I just feel drained. I had ample energy, the weight just felt too damn heavy. I could feel it in my knees and really feel it in my lower back.

Today, the day after I am SOOOO sore. My hammies, my ass, really sore, like you are the day after lifting weights for the first time in 6 months. Not a normal level of soreness you experience when you lift regularly.

So what am I going to do? I'm gonna' switch it back to once-a-week. I realize the ideal # of days off is probably something like 11 or 12, but that's way too much of a pain in the ass. I certainly won't OVERtrain doing it once a week, so I'll just stick to that.

Plus.... even if I'm not going for growth and trying to add muscle, there are other benefits to regular once-a-week deadlifting, aside from just maintaining muscle mass. If you've never deadlifted heavy, you might not understand, but it's an amazing stressor to your cardio-vascular system. You're heart is POUNDING after deadlift. I've had to lean against the bar so I don't pass out after racking the weight before. I've had to sit down so I don't drop before. I mean it's a WORKOUT. The only other ways I know of to work your body THAT hard, is squats or running all out sprints. It's good to OCCASSIONALLY stress your body like that. NOT every day, not "chronic cardio", but brief periods of all out effort are really good for you.

Additionally that once-a-week all out effort releases a cascade of hormones that are good for you, insulin-like growth factor, testosterone, growth hormone. All naturally. All from lifting hard. Those hormones will help my efforts in other areas, like trying to grow chest and biceps. You NEED those hormones if you want to grow muscle.

The other thing I want to change is to go back to biking to the gym on deadlift day. I've been driving lately in an attempt to conserve glycogen. But the downside is I'm really tight and not warmed up. I do my two warm up sets.... but it's just not the same as when I arrive after a 12 minute bike ride. I don't bike hard, it's a nice, leisurely <75% max heart rate bike ride. I'm NOT blasting through glycogen. So I think I'll switch back to that. I also noticed I arrive at the gym in a WAY better mood, a lot less stressed when I bike -vs- when I drive. Biking makes me HAPPY. I just enjoy the little 2.5 mile ride over there. It's good stress relief. AND a good warm-down after deadlift. And I save gas. It's all positive.

Now the only other factor is number of sets. When I'm trying to grow and gain in DL I do 3 work sets. I only do 2 to maintain strength. So..... I don't know. I bet you money I can get those 3 reps back in a week or two with just the 2 work sets. I'll try that first. It's already 100% more volume each month right?? 4 workouts -vs- 2.

So anyway, that's the plan. DL back to once a week. Chest press/x-rotators/curls are already on once a week. So it looks like that workout every Monday, and Deadlift every Thursday. Nothing else changes. No cheating this weekend, staying ON the diet straight through Monday, and ZERO sugar. Game on!

Soooooooooo Close!

2011-05-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Today is May 2nd. This journey is going to take as long as it's going to take. And I'll stick with it for however long that is. I've been at it 2+ years. I'm not giving up. But it occurred to me today, I COULD be done as soon as June 1st. Since I got the 8 hour I.F. schedule combined with a low fat Paleo diet all dialed in, I've shaved 12,000 calories in 4 weeks. So I'm down 3 1/2 pounds. And that's with some pretty gnarly cheating.

The hardest question to answer is "Well how much do you have to lose?" I don't know. I'm periodically amazed by just HOW LEAN you have to get to see those lower abs. I thought I'd be done dieting fat off 20 pounds ago. Your average American has NO CLUE how lean you have to get to see abs. It's way, way, WAY beyond, lean enough to not look fat in clothes, and way beyond the threshold for just a plain healthy weight. I think a man at 15% bodyfat is pretty healthy. But he's a good 15-20 POUNDS away from six pack abs. That being said, my best guess, is before shaving those 3 1/2 pounds off, I had 10 to go. So my GOAL has been to write everything down and the one number that matters is total calorie defecit. Right now it stands at 12,224. When that number gets to 35,000, I've dropped 10 pounds of fat. And should be done.

Now I think, I HOPE, that at that point I'll be as lean as I want, I'll be able to see those lower abs, have the body I've always wanted and my fat loss journey will be at an end. ...but who knows. Logically that makes sense to me. But I wouldn't be surprised if I get there, and it's like "Oh shit, nope! You've got 5 more pounds to go that you didn't think of!" Because while I wanted to reveal my abs, my stupid ass body was burning off a fat store I didn't even know I had in between my toes, or on the bottom of my foot, or in my hamstrings, or some ridiculous definition in my ARMPIT that I don't care about. That's the way it seems to go.

But for the sake of argument... lets assume I'm right, and it is exactly 10 pounds. Well I'm 3 1/2 pounds on the way there. That leaves 6 1/2 in 4 weeks if I want to make June first. I've been doing a bit less than a pound a week. BUT.... I've done some mucking with variables like workout frequency. And I LET myself cheat. I foolishly thought I had control over sugar.

So I think, with one rule that I am 100% strict about, I can burn at a rate of MORE than a pound a week and get those 6 1/2 pounds in the next 4 weeks. And that one rule is, NO SUGAR. I'm not saying my willpower won't crack at some point. It's easy to say what you want to do on Monday morning. Friday afternoon is when you're tested, not Monday night. But if my willpower does crack.... then I'll have a slice of pizza. Or a fastfood burger with bun. But I will NOT have sugar. It's been sugar time and time again that really gets me off track and causes me to straight up BINGE on junk.

In the absence of cheating, this diet has been SOOO effective, I've run calorie defecits of 1,000 - 1,500 a day. Now of course... a day doesn't matter it's how you do over the course of a week. And since I have cheated at least once a week, I don't know how I'll do sticking to it for a month at a time. Maybe I needed those cheats as "refeeds". I think that's a cop-out. I think with a little willpower I can stay on plan for the entire month of May. I just have to stick to my one cardinal rule: NO SUGAR. And while I'm at it, weekends are not "off". Stick to the damn diet! It's ONE MONTH out of my life.

If I can stick to it and don't cheat - and that's the thing, this diet is NOT too difficult. It's not so tough it causes unmanageable cravings and cheating. I've ALLOWED cheating, but I don't believe it was inevitable. With the 8 hour I.F. and keto diet??? Cheating was inevitable. THAT diet caused massive, massive carb/sugar cravings. This one does not. If I stop being such a pussy about it, and stop using the "I deserve it" excuse to go completely off the damn plan EVERY friggin' weekend! ...well then I can stick to it.

Without cheating, I could drop 2 pounds a week. I know that sounds like a lot... but do the math. I was able to run a 1,000-1,500 calorie defecit each day as long as I wasn't cheating. That's more than enough. At 1,000 cals/day I'll hit 7,000 a week or 2 pounds. So I figure a little MORE than 1,000 cal deficit on my non-lifting days and a little LESS on lifting days (keeping in mind there are only 1 1/2 of those a week now) and I'll hit it.

I'm gonna' go for it. What have I got to lose? If I aim for 8 pounds in 4 weeks and "only" manage 6 1/2 I'll still hit my goal. I know enough about what I'm doing to know I won't lose muscle even with calories that reduced. ...cause I get enough protein, I'm not overtraining, and I'm not doing any muscle-destroying cardio. No sugar, ON PLAN on the weekends. And freakin SUCK IT UP! It's one month out of my LIFE. To be good to go by June 1st??? Are you kidding me? Totally worth it.

And who knows, maybe one month with no sugar will be enough to break that addiction and I can give it up for life. ;-) I'd like to do that.... but that's another post altogether.

Changing the Workout

2011-05-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well the twice-a-week workouts for biceps, x-rotators, and chest is proving to be too much with the calorie restriction. I got the rice last week pre-workout, and then I made use of all the cheating I did over the weekend and powered through my workout on Monday. So "available glycogen" is not an issue. Even with ample fuel, I still hit the wall on reps. I think twice a week is a GREAT plan for a muscle I want to grow.... IF I'm eating for it. But this is a DIET. A calorie restrictive diet. My goal is fat LOSS and no muscle loss. If I get ANY muscle growth.... that's just a bonus. It's really kind of nuts to be lifting for growth with the amount of food I'm eating. Here's a picture I'll get to in a minute...

So what I'm goint to do is knock the x-rotators/biceps/chest workout down to once a week. And leave deadlift where it is at once every OTHER week. That discovery with deadlift kind of blew my mind. That I can do that lift once every OTHER week and hold all my strength. That tells me I don't need to train nearly as frequently as I think I do. Not just "don't need to" but that training more frequently is actually causing me to make LESS progress.

I'm completely stalled out in x-rotators/biceps/chest. I'm not really regressing, but I'm not making progress. +/- a rep or two each week and pretty much staying the same. So why am I doing it twice a week? I can HOLD my strength on once a week. I KNOW for a fact I won't lose strength at once a week. I've proven that in the past. I suspect... I'll even start to slowly GAIN again once I make that change.

So, what this means is instead of lifting 2 1/2 times a week (M,F one week M,W,F the next) I will now be lifting 1 1/2 times a week (M one week, M,F the next) x-rotators/biceps/chest every Monday. Deadlift every OTHER Friday. On Deadlift I'm not changing a damn thing. I'm going to keep doing what's working, do my 2X10 work sets at 225 each week and just hold my strength. But on x-rotators/biceps/chest I am going to try to get more reps and add weight. We'll see what happens. At the worst I bet I just don't get any stronger... like I am already.

LESS workouts actually helps my diet. A lot! Because I have to eat more on workout days. If I can keep it to 1,500 cals on a non-workout day... I'll be lucky to keep it to 2,500 cals on a workout day. And the primary goal right now is FAT LOSS. No, not at the expense of muscle, but at the expense of muscle gain? Absolutely. If I just hold my strength and don't lose any muscle, that's fine.

I'm stoked on this change. I think it will work out really well. It's so crazy to me, that the LESS I workout, the better my body composition gets. The more muscle and less fat I end up with. NO cardio, less lifting. It's just the complete opposite of what the mainstream fitness media tells you. But I'm in the BEST shape of my life! I've dieted down below 10% bodyfat WITHOUT losing muscle this time. I was NEVER able to do that in the past with all the cardio I was doing, because I always lost way too much muscle.

In fact that was the limiting factor every time. I have tried to get this lean in my life 10 times before at least. And it was never lack of effort that held me back, it was lack of KNOWLEDGE. I was working hard, but working hard at the wrong things. This is the only time I've succeeded. Every other time, I'd try to get lean using cardio. And after X number of months of doing cardio, I'd lost so much STRENGTH in the gym, I had to give up and go back to a "bulk" phase. I spent 15 years TRAPPED in that cycle. Dieting "down" to a pathetic 15% bodyfat then bulking back up to 20%. I never made any progress either direction, adding muscle or losing fat. Sure I actually did put some muscle on during the "bulk." But I took it right back off with cardio during the "cut".

I have spent my entire life up to this point trapped in a skinny-fat body. My entire 20's were spent in a shitty weak and fat body I hated. Despite working my ASS off to change it! You don't understand.... I listened to all the advice, I tried everything. There were times where I was in the gym lifting hard 5X a week. I must just not be training hard enough right?? And then I couldn't understand why I'd only get stronger for about a month and then start dropping reps in everything. I bought the BULLSHIT lie of "the plateau". I figured I must have hit a plateau so I'd change to a different exercise. 6 months later I'd circle back around to the first excercise with the exact same strength I had when I started. It wasn't a plateau, it was OVERtraining.

Don't buy the "muscle confusion" bullshit. If you have the variables right and have diet and training frequency and sleep dialed in, you can make progress on the SAME damn exercise for months or YEARS at a time. If you have to "switch-it-up" every six weeks, something else is off. When I first started deadlifting, by LUCK I got the frequency right, and didn't overtrain. This was also after I stopped tearing muscle OFF my body with cardio. I made a huge run and doubled my strength in deadlift. I made progress - more reps or more weight nearly every time I deadlifted for over a YEAR. ...so don't tell me you need to "switch it up" every 6 weeks. If you aren't making progress toward your goals, and you're working at it, it's KNOWLEDGE, not effort.

I got here by NOT doing cardio, by dieting fat off instead, by completely eliminating "healthy whole grains", by skipping breakfast AND lunch! And by lifting LESS. ...it just blows my mind to stop and think about it sometimes. It's like the mainstream advice.... they could not possibly have gotten it more WRONG.

So back to that picture:

On the left is me following the advice everyone follows. I'm a grain based dude, eating 3-6 times a day to avoid "muscle catabolism", watching my fat intake, lifting weights 3X a week and doing cardio every spring to try to take fat off. Believe it or not I'd just come off 3 months of doing hard cardio for an HOUR a day in a feeble attempt to "get in shape" for spring. It's the weekend, so I'm drinking.... because "I deserve it". Plus beer has no fat in it anywway right??? ;-) Hard to believe I was in the gym 3X a week. I lifted HARD. But all the grains made me fat, and all the cardio kept me weak. MONTHS of work before that picture and absolutely nothing to show for it.

On the right is me last week. ZERO cardio, lifting far LESS than I did before, skipping breakfast and lunch and fasting for 8 hours a day (don't do that, you're starving yourself it's unhealthy!!) and eating very few grains (some cheating, but almost none on the day-to-day plan). I'm a fruit and veggie based dude, using DIET to take the fat off.

The really remarkable thing is, I've been on a CUT diet for 2+ years. I haven't really tried to add muscle, except for a 6 week stint last year. And yet I still have way more muscle now than I did in the picture on the left with 6 months of "bulking" at a time. I'm also not a bodybuilder. I don't want to be some giant guy, but I do want to completely AVOID the "skinnyfat" look on the left. I think I've successfully done that! ;-)

I mean..... shit! You tell me which plan seems to work better! I just can't get over how WRONG "they" have it. ZERO cardio on the right. TONS of cardio on the left. It's DIET people. DIET the damn fat off so you can keep your muscle. ...or don't and stay skinny fat forever. Your choice. ;-)

Down another 1,700 Calories this week

2011-05-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Alright, first of all this week was a dieting DISASTER. I failed miserably, fell off the diet wagon, cheated my ASS off, ate pizza, a big mac, ice cream, candy... and I STILL managed to shave off 1,700 calories for the week.

I really need to thank the commenter that directed me to Martin's Leangains.com site. I had used intermittent fasting before, but full day, or even as long as a 40 hour fast... that's brutally hard. That's more of a test of will than anything else. But the "first 8 waking hours" fast on the other hand is soooooo EASY! You just get in your zone, get productive as hell, have a couple coffees and before you know it 8 hours have passed, you've gotten tons of work done and it's time to eat. VERY rarely do I get low on energy before the 8 hours is past. (You don't get hungry fasting, you get low on energy sometimes) And since I do it EVERY day, I have some leeway. If I've really hit the wall at hour 6, fuck it, I'll eat! If I'm really being productive at hour 8, then screw it I'll go 2 more hours and keep working. It's just an awesome, awesome discovery.

3 things are allowing me to succeed right now:

8-hour intermittent fasting every day
Going low FAT, low calorie primal foods in the fed window allows me to eat TONS of food and still keep calories low
Writing EVERYTHING down, so I know where I'm at for calories for the week

It's not JUST the 8 hour fast that's helping. I did that the first couple weeks, but still couldn't keep calories low enough. I was doing a keto diet during the fed window and just kept hitting 2,500 cals or more EASILY without trying. Whoever said fat fills you up quickly is full of shit. Plus all that carb restriction causes outrageous sugar cravings.

What's working on the other hand is LOW fat, high fruit and veggies in the fed window. You can literally eat POUNDS of fruits and veggies and not even hit 1,500 cals for the day. You should see the size of the salad I eat every day. It's MASSIVE. I eat right out of the family size serving bowl. And it's under 400 calories. I don't use any dressing. Instead I use vineagar and a splash of hot sauce. You hardly miss the ranch dressing at all.

The other bonus to this diet -vs- the keto one I tried, is all the fruit keeps sugar cravings at bay.

...which brings us to WHY I fell off the diet wagon this week and got into trouble. Very simple... I ran out of fruit! I wasn't careful and didnt' stock enough fruit at the house. When I couldn't get my fruit, cravings took over and I opted for sugar from across the street. So let's get into what's causing me trouble. Because this definitely wasn't a good week. I should have been down another 3,500 cals. 1,700 is good and way better than a surplus. But.... I cheated my ass off. I could have done much better. The only reason all the cheating didn't really fuck me up and cause a 4,000 surplus for the week is the 8 hour fasted window. Even totally off the wagon, you're limited on how much damage you can do in what amounts to a HALF day of eating.

The things that are causing me to stumble are:

Sugar.
Thinking I deserve to cheat on weekends.

I can't allow ANY sugar in. That's what got me into trouble this week. I allowed ONE candy from across the street (I live right next to a Circle K. It may as well be a damn candy shop!) and it snowballed into 3 days of cheating. So my plan for this week is STOCK MORE FRUIT AT THE HOUSE!! I can fully stave off a craving if I have grapes, or an apple to eat. But not if there's NOTHING available. That's what got me... it's so obvious in hindsight.

The other thing is mentally.... I still think on some subconscious level that I deserve to have the weekends off. We are so CONDITIONED into thinking all bets are off on weekends for everything. You know M-F we work and eat right, and work out. But weekends?? There's no work! Weekends were made for fun! Eat whatever you want!! Get drunk as hell, live it up, it's the weekend!! You know what I'm saying?? That's a VERY strong, entrenched belief in modern American society.

I don't drink anymore, so getting drunk on weekends -vs- weekdays isn't an issue. I just don't get drunk at all. I don't work a M-F job anymore, I run my own business from home, so really... weekends should have very little meaning for me. But they still do! I still feel like I should work hard M-F and take the weekends off. On my business. On my diet. On my workouts at the gym. ...I don't know it's ok to take time off from something, but if doing that means sabotaging your progress, then it's not good. This week, I'm going to do my best to stick to the diet STRAIGHT through the weekend. Step one is HAVE FRUIT IN THE HOUSE. And step 2 is no fucking sugar! Sugar is addictive. I've proven to myself time and time again I can't have "a little". It's like a heroin addict trying to have "a little" heroin. So the easiest way to avoid a sugar binge is to never have the first little bit. Even on Friday night when I feel like "I deserve it." It's keeping me from my goals. I don't deserve or need it.

I have data that shows me exactly what sugar does. I write EVERYTHING down. Everything that I eat. You know how RIDICULOUS it is to go through my diet log and see "grapefruit, salad, orange, apple" one day and then "Reeses pieces, Klondike bar, donut" the next day?? Lol! It's insanity. Not surprisingly the day I stick to the plan I'm clocking in UNDER 1500 cals for the day, and the day I went off the diet deepend, I'm over 4,000 for the day!

I hit my calorie defecit goal for the week last week by WEDNESDAY! On Wednesday the total since I started was down to 14,730, by Thursday it was 14,953. But by Sunday I unwound that with cheating and sugar to 12,224. So it's very obvious what I need to do. No sugar. And no weekend cheating.

The diet isn't so severe that I can't stick to it. I can! I just need to keep fruit in the house this time.

The other good news is.... the "primal compromises" plan I came up with WORKED. I had my rice on Thursday about 4-5 hours before the gym, and was able to easily power through my workout. With no junk. ...and then because I did so well, I ate sugar AFTER the gym on Thursday night.... and that's what started the downward spiral over the weekend. Fuckin' A man! I'll get there. It's just frustrating to see in black and white on paper exactly what I did. Jackass! ;-)

Down 10,200 calories in 3 weeks

2011-04-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

Well I got all my reps back and then some, so nothing to worry about. It was just a lot of new exercises + deadlift + only 2 days rest.

Ahhhh man, this new diet is the tits! It's working out soo well. The #1 thing is - I CAN STICK TO IT. It's been 3 weeks now, I'm right about where I should be. My plan is to shave 500 cals/day or 3,500/week. A pound of bodyfat is about 3,500 calories, so that's the goal. So @ the 3 week mark I should be at 10,500 cals and I'm at 10,200.... I'm right there.

Back in January I outlined a more extreme diet that worked well, but was BRUTAL from a willpower/hunger standpoint, and ultimately resulted in binging on crap. This one doesn't do that. And I know why.... First of all if I want to 'push it' on the fasted window and extend it to 10 or 12 waking hours I do. But only if it's not going to leave me feeling really deprived. If I hit 8 hours and I'm reasonably hungry or running low on energy, I EAT damnit! So I'm not making it too brutal any one day, instead I'm focusing on progress for the week as a whole. I'd rather cut 500 cals for 5 days, then cut 1,200 cals for 3 days then binge on junk for 2 days and be back to zero.

Secondly - and I think this is the most important factor - you don't get hungry/weak when your body runs low on fat, you get hungry/weak when you run low on GLYCOGEN (carbs). The diet I was doing in January also involved fasting for the first part of the day, but then when I ate it was ketogenic, all protein and fat. There's lots of good things about a keto diet, but it's REALLY hard to stick to. I'm telling you, there's no way I would have succeeded on that diet over the long haul because it's just TOO hard to stick to and eventually you give in to the cravings. On that diet it was all I could do to stop thinking about sugar, and junk and the ice cream and candy available to me at Circle K right across the street.

On this diet, temptation crosses your mind from time to time, but it's not a severe CRAVING. And that's because on this diet, even shaving 500-1,000 calories each day I get AMPLE fruit each night apples, pineapple, pears, bananas, very SWEET things. I satisfy my sweet tooth and get enough glycogen to fend off cravings. I mean anyone who's done a keto diet like Atkins Induction can tell you how bad the carb cravings get. It's rough. It requires TREMENDOUS willpower.

******************************

But the diet does have a a couple flaws. I'm doing my weight training in the fasted window before I eat... just because it's more convenient timing for me. But it's not going well. Last deadlift day I got 2 reps on my first work set! TWO! Where I should have gotten 10. It wasn't muscle loss, I was too glycogen depleted.... probably around hour 5 of the waking fast, plus 8 hours sleep, so 13 hours without food. I went to Burger King and pigged out, came back 5 hours after that meal and got all 10 reps on my first work set and then for good measure added one to the second work set and got 11. Junk food is terrible for cutting fat, but damn if it ain't near MAGICAL in the gym!

On Friday, I tried my rotator, bicep, chest workout totally fasted. I got through the rotators fine (although I didn't add one rep), but by the time I got to biceps I was completely glycogen depleted and got 8 reps first set where I should have gotten 12.

Interesting side note... I've actually got enough experience dieting and with glycogen manipulation that I can actually tell BY FEEL if I'm depleted or not. I know the difference between depleted and tired and over-trained. Kinda' cool! It was nice to KNOW this time what was going on. I didn't panic and think it was massive muscle loss, I instinctively knew I needed glycogen.

I went home and did not eat junk and decided just to take the bad workout for the sake of the fat-loss plan. But the next day I remembered my initial plan and decided I ONLY want this fat loss if I can at the very least HOLD my strength in the gym. I don't have to get stronger, but LOSING strength is unacceptable. And I KNOW if I get all the macros and workout timing right - I don't have to! It's a matter of knowing what I'm doing.

So for the next 2 days I ate fastfood junk and went back for that workout. Sure enough I got 12 reps on the first bicep curls set where I only got 8 reps, 2 days prior.

I'm also not too stupid to step back from the situation and look at the bigger picture. I'm attempting to lift heavy weights FASTED (12 hours fasted minimum) calorie-restricted and very glycogen depleted. Well DUH!! Is it any wonder I'm having trouble??

So I've got a couple options. I can break the morning fast plan on workout days and eat a big meal a couple hours before working out. I'll be able to power my workouts that way... but there's probably no way I'll be able to meaningfully reduce calories those 2 1/2 days each week. ....and more importantly it breaks my routine. When I get in the dieting "zone" of fasting for 8 hours then eating, it's a lot easier to do that EVERY day then to pick and choose when I do it.

The other option - so effing SIMPLE I don't know how I didn't see it earlier - is to simply lift 3 or 4 hours AFTER I eat. I'm still awake for 8 hours in the eating window... PLENTY of time for a workout. Yeah, I like riding my bike to the gym at 3:00pm in the sunshine and doing my workout. It's convenient, it fits my schedule. But I absolutely CAN drive to the gym at 10:00pm and do my workout instead. Especially if it means I'll have glycogen available to power those workouts.... AND I don't have to break my routine of doing the 8 hour fast each day.

Plus... this is a temporary thing! I've only got maybe 7 pounds of fat to go. If I stick to the diet, stick to the 3,500 calorie weekly deficit, then I'll be DONE cutting in 7 weeks. Even if I'm way off and some unseen factor blindsides me and it takes 20 weeks... or another YEAR - I can still do it. I don't mind working out at 10:00pm at night if there's a damn good reason for it. And this is a good reason.

So.... the big change I'm going to make, is moving my workouts to later at night AFTER I've eaten. 10:00pm sounds late, but keep in mind my schedule is different than your average office worker. I wake up at 11:00am and go to bed at 3:00am.

Now the thing I haven't mentioned (but that some of you may have noticed anways) is this... I was able to cut 10,200 calories in 3 weeks WITH cheating. On two different occasions I cheated on purpose because my workouts had suffered and I wanted to come back STRONGER. It's kind of a knee-jerk reaction... but one I would gladly do again in a heartbeat. Getting WEAKER in the gym is NOT acceptable. If I have to shortchange my fat-loss efforts with fastfood to have a good workout I will.

But.... I don't think I do have to do that! From what I've typed up here today and the new plan of moving my workouts to the FED state.... I think I will be able to get through them just fine without having to break the diet and eat fastfood.

That's EXTREMELY meaningful because I broke the diet because of the need for glycogen to power through workouts..... NOT because of hunger or lack of energy or CRAVINGS. The cravings are not bad at all on this diet, it requires willpower sure, but it's manageable. So what I'm saying is if I'm able to successfully power through my workouts this week... I have no reason to cheat - no out-of-control cravings and no urgent glycogen need. I'll stick to the diet and I'm confident I can actually get AHEAD of schedule and cut slightly MORE than 500 cals/day. I actually did cut more than 500/day this time, it's just that the 2 times I ate junk fucked the averages. I had a couple days where I easily shaved more than 1,000 calories off WITHOUT severe deprivation/cravings.

I'm also going to make some "paleo compromises" on workout days. Yeah I get SOME carbs from salad veggies, apples, bananas, etc. But nothing like I do going to Burger King. I don't want to got to Burger King and eat junk just to get through a workout. I don't want to eat sugar or bread... but there are some "gray area" paleo foods that I can (and for the sake of my workout SHOULD) indulge in, in those meals before the gym. I'm thinking those days would be a good time to have a potato, or rice or beans, or wild rice, or sweet potato.... Or sushi!

I could very well use this as a time to break the diet, satisfy my cravings and eat fast food or junk and know that the glycogen is going to good use. That would be fine if it was JUST that one meal pre-workout. But the problem with eating fast-food or sugar.... is that it makes you want MORE! The problem with breaking the diet....is breaking the diet! Know what I'm saying?? It rarely stays compartmentalized to one meal. It can easily be the start of a big fall off the diet wagon. I've been dieting fat off for 2+ years now. I KNOW BETTER. You're a fool if you think you can fuck around and have just ONE bad meal - even if it is for the sake of glycogen for a workout. Fast food and sugar IS addictive. It'd be like a heroin addict saying he's just going to have a LITTLE heroin. Or an alcoholic trying to have just 1 beer before a workout. You know what I'm saying?? It's a STUPID thing for a dieter to do. I think the far better option is to find appropriate paleo athlete compromise foods.

Plus if I stick to those "paleo compromise" foods, I have FULL CONTROL over fat/calories. I can get 50 carbs from rice, flavor it up with salt / hot sauce and maybe only have 300 calories. Whereas the Burger King chicken sandwich that gives me about 50 carbs also checks in at 630 calories and a lot of fat I don't need.

I'm happy with my progress these past 3 weeks. Yeah, I could have cut more calories without the cheating... but WELL WORTH IT if that's what it took to fix those fucked workouts. I learned a valuable lesson and made a tweak so that this week I'll be doing the workouts in the FED state and with ample carbs from rice or beans and not need to cheat. To LEARN a lesson that valuable, have 2 separate pig-out on fast food cheats and STILL manage to cut 10,200 calories in 3 weeks?? That's pretty damn awesome! I mean that speaks to how really CLOSE I am to having this completely dialed-in. This diet is THAT good that even with 2 major cheats, I still could manage a great calorie deficit. AND.... I got my reps! When all was said and done, I got my reps and am STRONGER now than I was when I started 3 weeks ago. And in that time I shaved 10,200 calories, that's close to 3 pounds bodyfat. I'm really excited to see how these next 3 weeks go! And I'll definitely follow-up with a post around that time.

Dropping Reps???

2011-04-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

Well Friday was the first UNofficial day of my new routine. I did hammer curls (new exercise) and cable chest press (also new exercise) but I didn't do x-rotators for some reason.

Today, Monday I did hammer curls, chest press and x-rotators. I'm not sure how I did in chest press, since I upped the weight... I got a decent # so I may be on track. But in curls I dropped 2 total reps from the previous workout. And with external rotators I dropped NINE total reps. What the fuck man?! Rotators went from 17,20,21 to 15,15,15. What the hell is going on??

The only thing I can think is that the CABLE press I'm using relies on a whole lot of stabilizer muscles, probably different stabilizers than the flat dumbell press I was doing. So maybe that movement is working my rotators IN ADDITION to the rotator specific exercise I do. It's worth mentioning I do the rotator exercise FIRST. So it should be VERY fresh. And I fuckin' drop NINE reps. I'm not happy about this. But if the cable press is a new stressor to the rotators, maybe they're just still thrashed from doing that exercise on Friday (Monday is only 3 days later).

I've done these 2 exercises before in tandem and made progress on both of them. So maybe it's just because cable press is a NEW exercise (I haven't done the cable press in at least 4 months). You know the first time you do a new exercise out of your routine you are sore for DAYS. Maybe it just stressed the rotators more than they are used to.

The other thing I'm keeping in mind is this is ONE workout. I'm concerned but not panicked. We'll see what happens with Friday's workout before I sound the alarm. If all the 20 rep sets is just too much volume for the caloric restrictive diet I'm on, then I'll have to drop something. I ought to be able to keep at least ONE bodypart on twice-a-week. So either those hammer curls or the cable press/rotators will get dropped off on Friday's routine. For now I'm not changing anything. It could just be an off workout.

Final Build

2011-04-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Alright, so last post I broke down my goals. #1 Fat loss / visible abs. #2,#3 chest and upper arm growth, #4 forearm growth, #5 HOLD strength in everything else to keep muscle mass.

I'm going to tell you what this means practically for my workout structure, but first I want to tell you the 2 awesome things I've learned in the gym. The first one I think I already mentioned, is that 20-rep sets are DYNAMITE for growth. I've never had better bicep growth than when I got into 20-rep sets a couple months back. 3X20, twice a week, grow, grow, grow.

I also learned I CAN grow, even on a very restrictive cut diet, as long as I don't try to grow too many areas at once and I'm not doing hard cardio.

The second thing I learned is if I just want to MAINTAIN my muscle mass and not lose strength I only have to train ONCE every OTHER week for 2 sets of 10. I already have deadlift down to 2X10 not 3X10. I just tried this 6 months ago to see if I could get away with it. I stopped doing the 3rd set and never lost any strength. Week after week, I kept coming in and getting my reps on the 2X10 sets, so I said great! That's good enough to hold my muscle mass.

The once every OTHER week frequency I discovered by accident. It was deadlift day and I was tired, or had a sore back or SOMETHING and decided after my warm up sets that I wasn't going to do it. I didn't want to hurt myself. I decided just to skip it and come back the next week and build back the lost reps over however long it would take to get that back, no rush. It's better than injuring myself. But when I came back the next week (so 2 solid weeks between deadlift sessions) I got all my reps, and did so EASILY.

Hmmm, that was odd. Maybe it's just every once in a while you can take 2 weeks off. Fuck it, lets push my luck and try again. So I took 2 more weeks off and came back and did the same damn thing and got all my reps again. I did it one more time.... and same thing again! So it's been 6 weeks now and I'm able to deadlift my 225 pounds for 2X10 no problem by training every OTHER week.

Lest some muscle-bound football player reading this think 2X10 @225 is my natural, untrained strength.... no way! First time I ever deadlifted, UNtrained, I couldn't get 3 sets of 10 at 115. I told you, I'm a lanky ectomorph by nature. I had to work HARD to build up to 225. And I put on muscle to go with that strength. In College I had a higher bodyfat than I do now but weighed 140 not 150. I'm heavier and leaner now. So probably 15 pounds more muscle. That's all from building that deadlift up... and maybe a couple ounces in biceps. ;-)

I think that's AWESOME. I can workout LESS, spend less time in the gym and still keep that muscle mass?? Freakin' sign me UP man! I think you can see from my body breakdown post, deadlift is the REASON I'm happy with many of my bodyparts. Neck and trap size, lat size, forearm size, ass and thighs, those parts were all REALLY skinny in college before I built up my DL to 225. Now I'm happy with all of them. Which is why I'm going to HOLD at 225.

So what does all this mean to my workout structure? Well knowing what I can do to grow -vs- to maintain... and what my goals are, I think this looks pretty good. This is a 2 week cycle:

Monday:
X-rotators 3X20
Chest 3X20
Biceps 3X20

Wednesday:
Deadlift 2X10
Grip strength bar hold: 1 set of up to 60 seconds

Friday:
X-rotators 3X20
Chest 3X20
Biceps 3X20

---------------------------------

Monday:
X-rotators 3X20
Chest 3X20
Biceps 3X20

Friday:
X-rotators 3X20
Chest 3X20
Biceps 3X20

That's it! Less is more. As a general rule, the more I train the LESS I grow. I want to grow chest (and triceps as part of the same compound movement) and biceps and I have to train x-rotators if I train chest. But that is IT! I'm not going to add 15 isolation exercises on top of that.

I spent some time looking over the past 16 months of workout logs today. First thing I noticed is I change my routine WAY too frequently... Second thing I noticed is any time I surfed hard, my workouts suffered... Well I KNEW that! But sometimes I would CHANGE my routine even when I wrote notes on how I'd surfed hard 3 days that week. Dumb!! It wasn't a flawed routine, it was too much surfing to make progress in the gym. ...but hey that's why I keep a log so I can step back to a bigger timeframe and look at the YEAR as a whole with some perspective and hindsight.

The other thing I noticed is sure enough whenever I put x-rotators or bis on a TWICE a week frequency with those 20 rep sets they'd grow. And when I put them on once a week I'd stagnate for months on end until I gave up and changed the exercise.

I've used 20-rep on biceps and x-rotators, but never chest. The highest rep scheme I used on chest was 3X15. So I don't KNOW if my chest will respond to 3X20 the way bis and rotators did... but I have no reason to believe it wouldn't. 3X20 and twice a week seems to be a MAGIC number for me. Which is funny because have you EVER read anywhere to use 20 rep sets?? I haven't. Every bodybuilding website and magazine and book I've ever read recommends low reps 3-5 or high reps 8-12. I've never seen someone push 20-reppers. But I'm telling you they work like freakin MAGIC on me.

The final thing I noticed is if I try to pile on too much, I'll systematically overtrain and fail at all of it. No matter how much I'm eating. You only want to lift enough for YOUR BODY (not your buddy's body with totally different genetics than you) to stimulate growth and that's it. It's not a more is better proposition. I hit a wall back in August even in the midst of a 4,000+ calorie a day "bulk" diet. It started out well, but by the second week I started regressing in everything.

THAT routine had me doing 13 exercises per week, this one has me doing 6.5. So much less volume. Also I think the fact that I'm only deadlifting once every OTHER week, and I'm not trying to grow in that area, just maintain, will prevent overtraining and hopefully free up resources for growth in chest, tris and bis. I realize how CLICHE' it is for a man to want to grow those area... but what do you want those are the areas that need some size.

I haven't gone on a good run of chest growth in 10 YEARS. So I am really excited to see what I can do in that area. I royally fucked my shoulder up (partial x-rotator tear) back in 2001 doing overhead press, and have basically had to avoid any decent heavy chest pressing since then. ...I didn't make the connection until 2 years ago that all the surfing I was doing was keeping my rotators chronically weak. And with weak rotators, shoulder joint pain would limit my growth potential on any chest movements.

My rotators are FINALLY healthy and strong now. So I'm excited to see what happens. I don't need a massive chest, but I'd like to put on some size. And I haven't been able to do that in 10 years.

I know the Deadlift reps/sets/frequency is f*cking PERFECT. I can do that for as long as I want and maintain my muscle mass indefinitely. Beautiful.

I love surfing. And I'm gonna' surf this summer. That can and will fuck up all my beautifully laid plans because hard cardio is a muscle killer. So be it. It's April, I still have 2 months of cold water to avoid cardio and see how this plan works. But then for 3 months out of the year when the water is warm, I surf damnit! ;-) I'm basically planning on taking the winters off from surfing from now on. Ice-cold winter surfing doesn't make me happy like trunking it in June. I think this is a good compromise. The ideal muscle build plan would involve zero surfing, but I just enjoy it too much. You gotta' live your life! ;-)

Clearly Defined.... Goals

2011-04-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

When I started this body transformation journey 2 years ago, I knew what I wanted to look like: Brad Pitt in Fight Club. That's an Ectomorph body type (like me) in PEAK physical condition. It's realistic for me - whereas "Vin Diesel" is not realistic without heavy steroid use. For ME. For a natural mesomorph, I think a Vin Diesel style body would be a a reasonable goal to hit. But my body won't carry that much muscle without drugs. Fine by me because BOTH those bodies have massive sex appeal to women. Girls love LEAN.

Let me pause here and say at this point I have fully achieved any health and fitness goals. I can run/jump as fast as I want (or I could if my knee was 100%). I'm lean and quick in the water when I surf. I can tear around town on my fixed gear bike. I can help a friend move a couch. I have great all around practical strength and cardio endurance. I don't regularly do hard cardio because it's a muscle killer, (and a boring waste of time the way most people do it). But I still have great cardio endurance. Last week the surf got good and I paddled out for an HOUR of hard cardio and was cruising around with ease. Want me to run a 5K tomorrow? Done! Do 10 pullups? No problem! Deadlift 250 pounds? You got it. I'm in the best shape of my life. Sure I could be bigger, stronger, faster, but since I don't make a living as an athlete I'm very happy with what I can do and how it allows me to enjoy LIFE.

So any muscle building/fat loss I do at this point is purely for aesthetics. I WANT TO LOOK GOOD. I want to look GREAT! I want to have the BEST looking body I possibly can. A great body gets respect from men and attraction from women. You may not LIKE that fact, but that's the way life works. I acknowledge it. Beyond that I want a great body FOR ME. I LOVE being lean, and looking good. It makes me happy. It boosts my confidence. I love being happy to take my shirt off.

Anyway... I'm not quite there yet. I'm close but I'm not there. And I wasn't 100% sure what I needed to do to get there. So in the interest of refocusing, I took a good picture of myself in the mirror, and put it up side-by-side with a male model that I thought had a pretty IDEAL body (like Brad Pitt in fight club) to see what I need to work on. I'm glad I did that because I really couldn't tell without analyzing. It's hard to be objective about YOURSELF when you look at you in a mirror. But by making it 2 bodies on my computer screen, I could pick it apart and be more objective and analytical about it.

So lets start at the top and work down. My FACE looks great! Best it ever has. Bone structure and features are what you're born with, but that's only half of it. 50% of a handsome male face is a LEAN face. Looks great and I don't think it will really change with the last bit of fat loss. What an improvement over fat, bloated 200 pound Matt!

My neck is good. Your neck? You're really worried about your neck?? No, not now. But when I was in College I had a really skinny, nerdy pencil-neck. I don't think anybody worries about their neck unless it's freaky-skinny. I credit once-a-week deadlifting to filling out this area.

Traps... actually a little big. I don't want to add any more muscle to this area. My traps are bigger than the male model guy and bigger than Brad Pitt in fight club body. Good luck convincing most guys that a muscle is "big enough", but mine are. IMHO when your traps are TOO big it takes away from that broad-shouldered look.

Shoulders, perfect! Great. I don't really want to go any bigger. I wish I had better underlying bone structure, so they were wider, but adding grapefruit size deltoids is not the way to compensate for that. I think my shoulders are perfect for my body. If they grow a little with chest press, fine, but if not, perfect the way they are.

Upper arms tris/bis. Too small. I want to add some mass here. Big time, like a solid INCH or TWO.

Chest. WTF happened to my chest?? Looks small. ...well I have been rehabbing my x-rotators for the past 2 years and unable to press any decent weight, so there you go. But even compared to last June it looks small. NOT horrible, but I'd definitely like to GROW this area.

Forearms. Big and strong! Finally. Before I started deadlifting my forearms looked pretty weak. They're normal now. I'm still an ectomorph, not a football player, but I think they're GREAT. I'd like them to be bigger and I'll keep adding to this by doing one set of gripwork after deadlift, but it's a very low priority.

Lats... great! I look great from behind, awesome V-shaped torso that I never had when I was younger. All my lat growth came from deadlift!

Abs. Awful. I'm almost the leanest I've ever been in my life, and I have come a LONG way baby! But it's a blurry 4 pack at best. There's still a good 10 pounds of fat between me and brad-pitt-in-fight-club lean. It's amazing just how lean you have to get to achieve that physique. This is priority #1. Everything else takes a backseat to this.

Upper legs/ass, great! Nice solid strong thighs that I never had when I was younger. Again, ALL from deadlift. I have a little of the white-guy-no-ass thing going, but it's really not about no ass, it's about fat on your lower back making it APPEAR as if I have no ass. Which will take care of itself with the last 10 pounds of fat loss. The reality is no one gives a shit about what a guy's lower body looks like.

Calves - ridiculous! Completely too skinny, way out of proportion, don't fit my body at all. But it's calves! Nobody fucking cares. When I have achieved a "perfect" body I can worry about wasting time doing calf-raises in the gym like a douchebag. Right now I'm not going to waste time and physical resources growing calves when I could be growing CHEST.

So that's my brutally honest analysis. What it means is, fat loss is still #1. The BEST thing I can do for my body is take those final 10 pounds off. You get EXPONENTIALLY hotter when you take that last little bit off. That last bit is the difference between "Matt, you're in shape" and "Wow, dude!" I look at it this way, I'm hotter now than I was as a 200 pound fat slob. But I'll be 10 times hotter at brad-pitt-in-fight-club leaness than I am now. It's not 1 more step, it's 10 more steps. I'm telling you it's that last little bit that makes ALL the difference. It's the difference between in-shape and an AMAZING body.

And I realize "amazing body" isn't the most important thing in life, and certainly isn't the best way to attract women. But this blog is about transforming my body. So suck it.

#2 and #3 priority is to grow chest and upper arms. #4 priority is to grow forearms. Everything else is perfect the way it is.

I'm gonna' tell you what all of this means for my workout design next post. ;)

I HAVE REACHED! ...the plateau.

2011-04-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

Holy plateau batman! I've pretty much been the same weight/body composition for the past 5 months! I've got a new plan.... so hopefully I can break through, but man it's tough. Whatever genius method I come up with to limit my calories, I seem to find a way to just keep hitting maintenance calories for the week. You know so like diet hard all week, then my willpower cracks on Saturday and I have a 1500 calorie meal, then feel defeated and blow it all weekend and end up about averaged out for the week. I'm certainly not giving up, but it's just interesting how I keep managing to eat just enough calories to not lose weight for the week, over and over again. It's not rocket science, I need to cut calories CONSISTENTLY, for the week, not just for a couple days.

Half the problem is I stopped writing everything down, thinking I could do it by feel... and I just ate WAY more than I should of. I've been through about 5 different plan-of-attacks since that last post, all good, all would work in theory, but the willpower (for the week) part has been tripping me up.

I shouldn't say I've made no progress, if you looked at me now VS 5 months ago, I am a LITTLE bit leaner and a LITTLE bit stronger, but not what you'd expect for 5 months of effort. It's the calorie total for the week! It's no mystery.

I have discovered Martin's website www.leangains.com I don't agree with everything he says, but I do like his style of Intermittent Fasting. It's VERY do-able. This is the basic schedule starting when you go to sleep: 8 hours fast (while sleeping), first 8 hours of your day fasted, next 8 hours fed. I've done a fast for up to 40 hours. That's more of a mental battle. And it's certainly doable, but 8 waking hours does seem to be about the magic number where you really don't even THINK about it. Right when you start thinking about food or feeling low on energy, the 8 hours is up and you can eat.

I've been following this schedule now for about 2 weeks and it's pretty damn easy. Relative to pigging out on fast food every 3 hours? No. But easier than other dieting methods I've tried. The KEY is to be a PRODUCTIVE mofo for those first 8 hours. Don't sit around thinking about food, WORK. Do something. I've got my struggling business to contend with so no problem finding something to do. Honestly, it makes me much more productive.

The thing I did wrong the first week is... I didn't write anything down in the "fed" window. And I'm pretty sure I just ate a full day's calories in a shorter timeframe and undid the fasted state. ...although, if you're burning fat in the fasted state and adding muscle in the fed state, I think you'll still make some progress this way.

THIS week, I seem to have gotten it "right". I started writing everything down and have kept calories to about 1,600 each day AFTER the fast. One day my willpower cracked and I had fast food, but even that day I stayed at 2,500 for the day (which is my maintenance cals). And then the fast the next day got me right back on plan. YOU HAVE TO WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN if you want to get really lean. Otherwise you'll just eat far more than you realize. There's something mentally really powerful about looking at your diet log, seeing the subtotal at 1200 cals and knowing you can cram in about 300 more, that keeps you from blowing it. If you DON'T write it down your mind plays tricks on you and you think "I'm hungry I probably need this."

The diet I'm following in the fed state is fruits, veggies and LEAN protein. It's low fat. So no nuts, no cheese, none of those high-fat ketogenic foods. I do have a 1 pound bag of almonds in the house. I've been doing a good job of metering them out 1 ounce a day until it's gone.

There are a couple ways to go with the diet portion of the fed state. I tried going very ketogenic high fat/ medium protein/ ultra low carbs... but there's just so LITTLE food you can eat before you hit 1,500 calories or so. I know fat is supposed to fill you up and ketogenic diets are supposed to suppress appetite. But I didn't find that to be true. I got into a bag of pistachios one night in the fed state and ate the WHOLE bag - about 1,200 calories.

If you keep fat LOW on the other hand (and avoid grains obviously) you can eat literally POUNDS of fruits/veggies and still be under 1,500 cals. I make this huge salad in a big serving bowl with like 60 grams of protein from chicken breast, red peppers, cucumbers, carrots, romaine lettuce... the thing is MASSIVE. It FEELS like you're eating 3 whoppers from burger king. And it's like 450 calories. If that's not enough, I'll eat an apple. I can go back and have 3 more and that's still under 400 calories. Know what I'm saying?? In the absence of dressing/ dip/ mayo/ fatty condiments, you can consume mass quantities of fruits and veggies and still stay in a caloric deficit.

So that's the plan I'm on now. I can confirm what Martin says that on this fasted/fed schedule, you do BETTER in the gym. I have no problem maintaining and Gaining strength. ...when I'm not fucking around with my lifts and unnecessarily changing things.

Super restrictive diet WORKS! ..but with a catch

2011-01-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Alright, well I haven't made much progress since that last post. In the 2 months of Nov and Dec I dieted some weeks, but with Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc I blew it a lot of weeks as well. I'm basically in the same spot I was. I'm a bit stronger in a few lifts, but I'm essentially the same.

I decided the moderate approach wasn't working and I needed to go extreme (but still sane) go all in diet HARD and be done with it in a month or two. So I devised the following plan. First off I reduced my lifting workouts to the basics and was able to limit it to 2 days a week. I'm on MAINTAIN mode for deadlift and biceps, and attempting to grow/get more reps/ add weight for Shoulders and chest. So it's VERY brief.

Monday:
Decline dumbell chest press (which also covers triceps)
X-rotator specific exercise
Hammer curls - not trying to grow

Friday:
Deadlift - not trying to grow
Shoulder raises to the side

This is an often overlooked, but SUPER important consideration when dieting. It's a DIET, it's calorically restrictive, you don't have much to work with. It's important to not beat yourself up in the gym. You could even reduce this more by not trying to grow in any areas, and just be happy to maintain muscle while you lose fat. But I'm a freakin SCIENTIEST with the macronutrients and I'm confident I can lose fat AND grow muscle in a few select areas because I know what I'm doing.

The other majorly important consideration is, NO CARDIO. Zero. None. No surfing, no running, no biking hard. I do bike SLOWLY a mile each way to the post office, but slow cardio and hard long form cardio are two different animals. The former creates almost no glycogen demands while the latter demands so much, that on a restrictive diet you WILL lose muscle mass to meet those demands. So don't do cardio when you're dieting. I know it's counter to the conventional wisdom and complete nonsense you see on "The biggest loser"... but the conventional wisdom is WRONG.

So those are the activity/exercise considerations. Now for the actual diet, I went as extreme as possible, but in a sane, calculated manner. It's basically a fast, basically STARVING the fat off, with JUST ENOUGH protein to prevent muscle loss and just enough carbs to power through workouts on workout days.

So on non-lift days (Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat, Sun) I eat nothing all day long. I have 3 or 4 coffees with 35 calories in half and half to keep me going. Then about an hour before bed I have 2 cans of tuna with 1/2 tblsp of mayo and 3.5 ounces of chicken breast with just salt/spices. It works out to about 600 calories a day. And 80 grams of protein. More than enough to prevent muscle loss.

On lift days it's the exact same thing except BEFORE I work out I eat 5 pieces of fruit, for approximately 125 carbs.

I did this diet for a week. The end result? It worked even BETTER than I could have imagined. I lost 2 inches off my stomach measurement in 8 days! (understanding some of that is water weight) I could see a difference in the before and after pic even in just a week. Even on 600 calories a day 5 days a week, and 1100 calories a day on lift days (keep in mind my maintenance calories are 2500 a day!) I maintained my strength in everything even deadlift, and got NOTICEABLY stronger in chest and shoulders. In chest in particular I added weight AND got more reps. I shoulders I piled on more reps. The big test was deadlift. Before the diet I got my 2 work sets of 10 reps @225 pounds and after a week of it I still got the same reps. That's AMAZING when you consider how low the calories are.

So I think there was one factor at play I hadn't considered. This was definitely a ketogenic diet, my daily carbs where around... 10 grams. So my body was producing ketones like crazy. It HAD TO to make up for the calorie defecit... which is the whole point, I want to burn bodyfat for fuel. But a very nice side effect of that is that ketones are very muscle PROTECTIVE. Even on a paltry 80 grams of protein a day and extremely low calories I was able to maintain strength where I wanted to and GROW like crazy in some areas. I was expecting maybe 1-2 reps on chest and shoulders, I wasn't expecting to really LAY IT ON like that on such calorie restriction.

I had read that ketones were muscle sparing, but when I followed Atkins Induction back in 2002, I didn't see it. I lost fat AND muscle when all was said and done. Can you guess what the difference was? Freakin' CARDIO!! I was biking 2 HOURS a day, 5 days a week. So of course I lost muscle! All that cardio, creating HUGE demands for glycogen and I was eating <20 grams of carbs a day. I remember I couldn't add any strength in the gym. I blamed the lack of carbs, but that wasn't it... it was all the cardio.

This time, even lower carbs and calories, but without the cardio, and I was actually able to ADD muscle while tearing off fat. I wonder if I even needed the fruit on lift days??? Can you power workouts on ketones?? ...I don't think so. That's not something I want to test. I can't imagine deadlifting on eggs and coffee. I think you need that fruit.

It's also worth noting I supplemented with L-carnitine in the neighborhood of 5 grams a day. ...that's a lot 10 pills. But L-carnitine MOBILIZES bodyfat. That's exactly what I want. Now listen baby-birds, don't read this and think you can just pop L-carnitine and you'll lose weight. NO. It doesn't work that way. Only IF, your carbs are low enough to be running off fat and your calories are low enough that you tap BODYfat not just dietary fat. Those 2 conditions have to be satisfied FIRST, or L-carnitine supplementation is an utter waste of time and money.

Amazing. The results were BETTER than expected. In that regard I couldn't be happier. But..... the diet is just freakin' IMPOSSIBLE to stick to long term. It was a real test of willpower to make it through that week. And at the end of the week, my willpower broke and I ate candy and ice-cream and the worst things possible for 2 days. So what's the point if the deprivation is going to cause me to binge at the end?? I mean for a day or two?? Sure anyone can keep it to 600 calories for a day or two, but as days turned into a week... whew. Man it was tough! It looks great on paper and it works, but it's too extreme. If I can't stick to the diet... or I can but it ends in a binge that undoes all the progress... than it's not a good plan.

My energy was ALL OVER the place. I'd go from bouncing off the walls, to falling asleep at my keyboard. To mentally sharp and alert, to just STUPID, retarded slow, couldn't think straight. When I'd get slow, I'd pop L-carnitine to try to mobilize bodyfat for energy and ketones for brain fuel... but I honestly don't know if it made any difference or not. In theory it should have... but I have no way of knowing unless I took no carnitine one day as a control, and I didn't do that.

The other weird thing is I woke up with a RAGING hard-on most mornings. Like more than usual. ?? I'm not complaing, it's a good sign of sexual health. But I expected the calorie reduction to kill my libido if anything, maybe retard sexual function until I was back to eating a normal amount again. ?? Maybe it's somehow tied to the carnitine. SOMETHING increased bloodflow to that area. ;-)

So I'm not going to keep using this diet. It's just too difficult to adhere to and results in binging on junk food. ...which is the opposite of what I want. But I am going to take parts of it and use that going forward.

I'm still sitting right around 10% bodyfat. And I still badly want to get to 5-6% bodyfat. 10% bodyfat is great. That's really IN SHAPE. But 5-6%... that's RIPPED, that's Brad Pitt in Fight Club kinda' HOT. That's the body I want.

I've basically made ZERO progress since September. I AM stronger... When I got all the way down to 142 in August, my deadlift was at 185 on the work sets and now it's at 225. That's the benchmark of overall strength I want to stay at while I diet down. When I get to 5% bodyfat I want to still be doing those 2 work sets each week 10 reps @225. The fact that I added 40 pounds to my DL since August and kept it there is very good. So I have made progress, it's just been strength gains not the last bit of fat loss I really want. But that's necessary. The reason I stopped dieting in August is I was a BIT too low in muscle mass. Pulling 225 once a week will keep enough muscle mass to satisfy me.

So what to do now? What next step can I take to get to that elusive 5-6% bodyfat and finally reveal those lower abs? Well I think there are 2 choices for diet I can follow. With both choices some variables stay the same. Workout same as it is, very brief twice a week. No cardio. That doesn't change. And I'm going to bump calories up to more like 1,500 a day. The 600 day is too extreme. 1,500 a day is still a 7,000 calorie defecit each week. But at 1,500 I feel like I could go on like that for a MONTH without cheating. The extreme 600/day... I barely made it one week before I lost it. And no matter what plan I chose it's going to be all natural PRIMAL foods, no grains.

So here are my two choices. On the one hand I can get my calories from veggies, fruit, lean meat and stay very LOW fat. The advantage to this is you can eat literally POUNDS of veggies and still stay under 1500 calories.

On the other side I can go very LOW carb, stay in ketosis and get my calories from mainly meat and fat (except for those 5 pieces of fruit Mon and Fri morning). The advantage to this is you stay in ketosis most of the time which is SOOO good at muscle sparing, that I believe I can actually add more muscle while I diet down than I would on the low-fat, high veggie plan. The downside is you don't get to eat much. Fatty meats, eggs and cheese add up to 1500 calories really fast.

Because of the muscle sparing benefit of ketones, I think I'm going to go with the 5-day a week ketongenic plan. The other benefit of ketones I haven't even mentioned is ketosis is appetite supressing. So it will probably even be easier to stay under that 1,500 calorie limit by going the low-carb primal route than the higher carb, low fat primal diet route.

I won't get any veggies on this plan. But I gotta' think the 10 pieces of fruit is more vitamins/minerals than most Americans get anyway! I can take a multi-vitamin while I'm on this plan, to make up for any missing nutrients. I only plan on staying ketogenic until I hit 5% bodyfat... then it's back to more moderate primal diet with a lot more veggies. What do you guys think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

The Final Push!

2011-01-05T19:31:00.000-08:00

November 9th, 2010

Drrrrn-narr-narr-narr! Darrr-narr-narr-narrwt-narrrw! (That was the 80′s hit “The Final Countdown” FYI). Well I’ve been trapped between a rock and a fat place for the past 3 months, trying to add some muscle without getting fat, wanting to cut fat but not get to LIGHT on the scale. It’s madness I tell you! I finally decided, fuck it I’m too damn close to not go for it. I’m going to make the final push to 5-6% bodyfat and clearly defined abs. And whatever the number is on the scale, so be it. LEAN FIRST, mass second, has always been my mantra anyway. I don’t like being below 150 pounds, but if that’s what it takes, so be it. I didn’t start this to get to 9% bodyfat and ALMOST hit my goal. I’m getting as lean AS I WANT.

The other thing is… as I alluded to in the surfing post, my natural weight, my weight in College was 140 pounds. At 5’11″, 18-22 years old, no matter how much food I ate: 140 pounds. I mean I may not like that, I may not think it’s a “manly weight” but that’s ME. That’s my natural weight. Any muscle I can add to that is a bonus. But I’m certainly not unhealthy at 140 pounds. I may not want to admit it, but genetically speaking, I’m a lanky ectomorph. So if I end up weighing 140 pounds… well shit, that’s NORMAL for me.

To that end…. my scale broke, I threw it out and decided NOT to buy a new one. I think I’m obsessing with the NUMBER on the scale, instead of how I FEEL and look in the mirror and in pictures. I think you do need to use PICTURES, not just the mirror, because you can delude yourself looking in the mirror. But pictures don’t lie. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of whatever celebrity that was either a big fat whale or an anorexic stick but didn’t realize it until they saw a photograph of themself in US Weekly. The mirror can lie; photos don’t. I’m going to let photos be my guide and purposely NOT weigh myself. If I look freakin’ anorexic and sickly, I’ll stop dieting. But it’s going to be because of how it looks / how I feel, NOT some arbitrary number. Cave men didn’t have scales and weigh themselves in pounds of kilos or stones, they just lived their lives.

Similarly the 5-6% bodyfat is me trying to quantify my goal with a number. The goal is whenever I can clearly see my ab muscles without a pad of definition blurring fat over them. I don’t freakin CARE what “bodyfat percent number” that is, I just want to see the ab muscles God gave me. My guess is that’s about 5-6%, but who cares honestly. That’s useful for talking about it with similarly knowledgeable people… and I suppose for bragging rights, but the number doesn’t really matter. There’s no truly accurate way to get that number anyway…

A scale is a great tool if there is any question of whether you’re losing or gaining weight or not. But I KNOW what I’m doing, and when I’m on my fat-loss diet, I’m losing fat. No question. I don’t need to get on the scale everyday to prove that to myself. If I’m just dying to know, there’s a scale at the gym.

So what I’ve learned in the past 3 moths of back and forth, trapped between not lean enough and not HEAVY enough on the scale, switching between building muscle and dieting off fat is this: 20 rep sets are freakin DYNAMITE for building biceps. And triceps… probably any muscle, but I had the best success with those two. I mean dynamite. I’ve never had anything work so well for building biceps. I’ve had puny biceps my whole life and now they’re…. at least normal. BUT… you can’t just go do 20 rep sets on all your exercises or you will become systematically over-trained and REGRESS in your exercises (that means do LESS reps, get LESS strong each time – opposite of what you want). At least if you are an ecotmorph like me. But if you use the 20 reps sets on one or two bodyparts that you really want to target??? Look out! It’s freaking GOLD.

I also learned you absolutely can NOT keep doing 20 rep sets when you cut calories and protein and go on a fat loss mission. You’d think that’s obvious, but I tried it unsuccessfully. On a DIET, a specific CUT diet where your goal is to lose fat, particularly when you are already lean like me and trying to go leanER, you want a very BRIEF workout. Hit the muscle enough so that your body doesn’t decide to burn it off for fuel, but that’s IT. Don’t try to grow, just try to move the same weight once a week for 3 sets of 10 or so and then get OUT of the gym. Don’t beat yourself up on a restricted calorie diet, that’s a recipe for muscle loss.

…and obviously avoid cardio at all costs. That’s the opposite of what conventional wisdom tells you but cardio will destroy muscle, especially on a fat loss diet. I’m actually LESS active when I’m dieting fat off. As you should be! You can recover from hard cardio without major muscle loss if you’re eating a lot, but not when you’re dieting. Like I said in the last post, I’m not surfing for the duration of the “final push” fat loss phase I’m doing here.

The Plan:

So here’s the plan. Here’s exactly how I plan to go from about 10% bodyfat to about 5%. First, I have to keep lifting to PRESERVE and MAINTAIN the muscle mass I have. Not to build new muscle. So the workouts will be brief:

Monday:

    * Chest 3 sets of 10 reps
    * Biceps 3 sets of 10 reps
    * X-rotators 3 sets of 10-20 reps

Wednesday:

    * Deadlift 3 sets of 10 reps

Friday:

    * Shoulders 3 sets of 10 reps
    * Triceps 3 sets of 10 reps
    * X-rotators 3 sets of 10-20 reps

I do the same weight and same 3 sets of 10 on every exercise. The only area I try to work through the progression and gain muscle is external rotators. Rotators are tiny muscles, so even doing 20 rep sets twice a week isn’t much of a drain. I could just keep those at once a week 3×10 as well, but I figure just in case there is any protein surplus it’s nice to have one small area where I can put it to use building muscle. My rotators are a weak spot and hold me back in my chest workout, so I chose them as that one possible growth area. If I make NO progress in rotators, that’s FINE. This is a cut diet. It’s really just a bonus if I add any reps to anything during a cut DIET.

Food:

    * 1,500 calories a day
    * 100 grams protein
    * at least 150 carbs
    * as LOW fat as possible

Fat is low because something has to give in order to keep calories low. I need a certain amount of protein and carbs (for muscle glycogen) in order to prevent muscle loss. My normal daily caloric requirement is 2,500. If I hit my protein and carb requirements but skimp on the fat – A LOT, by 1,000 calories a day – where do you think my body will get those excess calories? That’s right, my own bodyfat.

I want at least 150 carbs. When I go below that amount my workouts suffer. My workouts in the gym will be my gauge of whether I’m keeping my muscle mass. If I start getting WEAKER, then obviously I’m losing muscle and will have to change something. If I can get 200 or 250 carbs and not go over 1500 calories, then I will. But the only way to get more carbs and still stay under 1500 calories, is to keep the fat super low.

The calorie ceiling is low… but if I go really low fat, it’s high enough to get my protein and carb requirements.

Understand I’m not pulling these numbers out of my ass, it’s from MONTHS of dieting and lifting and surfing hard sometimes and writing everything down and seeing how my body responds. It’s from trial and error. I KNOW, I need 100 grams of protein and 150 carbs a day to maintain my muscle mass. Your numbers will be different.

It’s really a BRILLIANT plan. Get the carbs (but not from insulin spiking grains, from fruits and veggies) get the protein, and skimp on the fat so the calories stay low. It’s PERFECT. My body has no choice but to burn bodyfat to make up the difference.

3 days a week I ride my bike to the gym. 5 mile round trip, 15 miles total for the week. Wait a minute, I thought you said no cardio! I did. No HARD cardio. I doubt I get my heartrate over 50% of max at any time on the bike. I go slow ON PURPOSE. Slow cardio burns fat, hard cardio burns muscle. Keep it slow and you’re ok. Really slow. Slower than you think, 50% of max HR is NOT much, you won’t be huffing and puffing at 50%. If you can FEEL your heart pounding slow down. Because going hard will create HUGE demands for glycogen – that I’m not eating – and my body will burn my own damn muscle to make it. SLOW, low intensity cardio is ok. It’s also BORING as f*ck on a treadmill, so if it didn’t actually accomplish something (i.e. getting me to the gym, without wasting gas and wearing out my car) I wouldn’t freaking do it. ;-)

It’s really interesting getting to a hill on my bike and MAKING myself just go slow. Your competitive drive makes you want to go fast and hard, even if you’re only competing with yourself – and especially if any other bikers are around – but hard cardio on a restrictive diet will DESTROY muscle. Don’t do it!

Surfing: The anti-muscle

2011-01-05T19:29:00.001-08:00

Monday, October 11, 2010

In that last 6 week muscle building phase, the ONLY time I didn’t add reps or weight to the bar in the gym, was the final week when the water got warm here in California and I surfed a bunch. I was in the water probably an hour a day for 4 or 5 days. A good amount, but certainly not extreme. And I just dropped reps on almost everything. It’s really depressing…. Especially since it’s where I want it most – all upper body. I dropped reps in hammer curls for biceps. And I mean BIG numbers like losing 6 reps off the first set from what I did the workout before. Prior to this week with the surfing, I was ADDING 3 or 4 reps to each set every workout.

I lost reps in tricep pushdowns, chest press. I didn’t even do my shoulder workout because I knew they were thrashed from all the paddling. But I did try to work my rotators and dropped reps there too. Really a bummer. I LOVE surfing. And it sucks to realize I have to chose for the next 6 months, 12 months, or however long it takes for me to put on some muscle, between surfing or making ANY gains in the gym.

I choose not to surf. As long as it’s a temporary thing, I’m ok with that. Sucks, but I’ll make that sacrifice. I mean there is ZERO question in my mind about what’s going on. It’s very obvious cause and effect – don’t surf, follow diet and workout = tons of progress. Surf hard a couple times a week = add no reps or weight to upper body exercises. And you simply can’t add muscle without getting stronger.

I think… I HOPE, once I reach a weight and bodyfat percent I want to MAINTAIN, where I’m not trying to grow muscle or cut fat, that I’ll be able to surf again without it just TEARING slabs of muscle off my body. It’s kind of ridiculous. Understand I’m not trying to be some GIANT dude. It’s just as a freakin MAN, I want to stay above 150.

That picture fyi, is pro surfer Rob Machado, who is most excellent! …but at my height weighs all of 140 pounds soaking wet. I use him to illustrate a point. That excessive cardio destroys muscle. That’s not what I want. That’s my natural body. If I didn’t lift at all that’s where I’d be, that’s what I weighed in college 140. And that’s fine if there was no way to change it, I’d accept it. But there IS a way to change it. Resistance training + protein + ample calories + NOT doing excessive cardio, which sadly includes surfing = gains. So surfing is out until I reach my goals. It’s simple really, I’d rather have the body I want and not surf for a while, then surf when I want but stay trapped in this “almost there” body. I’m too close to let a couple surf sessions hold me back.

Up 17 Pounds in 6 Weeks

2011-01-05T19:27:00.001-08:00

October 11, 2010

Dayam, that didn’t take long! I hit 159 on the scale Sunday night. Now this was at night where I typically weigh 3-4 pounds more than first thing in the morning. AND knowing on Friday I was gonna’ switch back to cutting fat for a week or two come Monday. So I ate a bunch of junk and sugar all weekend. Well not all day, but I definitely cheated at night. But it was planned, and freakin delicious. And totally worth it. So muscle glycogen and water weight is definitely at play. But still here’s 17 pounds up off the bottom in 6 weeks. I’m pretty stoked on that. So I don’t need to panic if I drop back down below 150 next time I cut fat since it’s pretty easy to put weight back on. I definitely put on SOME fat; I lost a little detail… but really for that amount of POUNDS on the scale, not too bad.

I’ll be down around 155 in the morning, and then it’s back to the cut diet for…… ??? I don’t know, that’s the thing. I want to keep dropping bodyfat but I don’t want to get below 150 pounds. I guess I’ll just play it by ear. You know cutting for a couple weeks at a time and then switching back to adding muscle is not a bad way to do it at all. You never get too sick of dieting.

How I Structure My Workout - Mad Scientist Method

2011-01-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

Friday, September 17, 2010

Well today is the end of week 4 since I made the switch to “muscle building”. Week 5 starts tomorrow. I like to say ‘muscle building’ not bulk, because I think it sends the right message subconsciously. “Bulk” implies I’m indiscriminately adding weight, when it’s MUSCLE I’m after not just “bulk”. I don’t want bulk. I don’t want to be bulkY. You know what I’m saying? I’m up 8 pounds and hitting 150 consistently first thing in the morning and I’m stronger across the board. So I’m doing SOME things right. But I still don’t have the workout plan dialed-IN. It’s been 4 weeks and I’ve had to make adjustments just about every week.

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know exactly what my body needs from a workout or nutrition standpoint for optimum muscle growth with minimal fat gain. So this is a learning experience. I’m totally ok with that. Lets start with what I have learned does NOT work:

    * Cardio destroys muscle. Period. No excessive cardio – including surfing.
    * Stuffing my face with calories at all costs, makes me far fatter than strong. Not worth it.
    * Grains, sugar, potatoes, beans… just make my fat. I can get all the carbs I need from fruit and veggies. Especially since I’m not doing excessive hard cardio.
    * Low reps. Low reps has never worked for me and in fact made me WEAKER over time.
    * Excessive protein. 200 grams of protein is great, but 300 grams doesn’t seem to make me any stronger any faster.

And now what HAS worked in the past:

    * Oddly enough the most muscle I ever added in the shortest amount of time was when I started surfing every day when I moved to Cali. I went from 140-155 pounds in about 3 months, all in my upper body. No weights, just paddling around. No noticeable fat gain. Go figure??
    * Back in college I spent 1 semester EATING like a pig, doing no cardio and doing nothing in the gym but decline bench press 3X/week sets of 14/12/10. I put on noticeable size in 1 semester… about 4 months.
    * Deadlift. Deadlift once a week builds muscle
    * 20 rep sets! Really! 20 reps sets make me strong and add size like crazy. With biceps it’s the ONLY way I’ll gain. 10 rep sets, 5×5…. works for some guys, doesn’t do shit for me.

I think in that list the explanation from surfing isn’t that cardio builds muscle, it’s that compared to a couch potato cardio builds muscle. I went from not moving to paddling every day, and just to drag my own bodyweight through the water, my body needed extra muscle. I didn’t get any bigger once I added those initial 15 pounds. That was it. A bodybuilder will always be bigger than that, but a surfer will have a bigger upper body than a couch potato. Make sense? It’s like the guys in College who rowed Crew had much bigger biceps than normal guys from all the rowing, but certainly not bigger than the football players or weight room guys.

So last post I broke down my priority list. What muscles I want to grow most. I’d love it if I could just lift and everything would grow as much as I want until I’m done, but reality dictates you need to pick and prioritize. My priority is arms. The whole arm, biceps, triceps and forearms. It would be nice if I can grow shoulders and chest too… but not at the expense of bis, tris, forearms. If I have to pick, it’s arms. Every time.

I had structured my workout to start with what I care about most bis and tris and then rotators and chest and shoulders after that. So Monday and Friday were as follows:

    * hammer curls 3 sets of 10-20
    * tricep push downs 3 sets of 10-20
    * external rotators 3 sets of 10-20
    * shoulder raises 3 sets of 10-20
    * chest, 3 sets of 10-20

And then deadlift gets it’s own day on Wednesday. I only do 8-12 reps on deadlifts. Because it seems to work. And I’m not a masochist. ;)   But when I did that I’d always hit a wall after the 3rd exercise. Whatever I did first I could add reps/weight but whatever I finished up with I couldn’t get any stronger. This was a couple weeks ago eating 200+ grams of protein and upwards of 4000 calories and visibly smoothing out a bit in the mirror, so DEFINITELY eating enough to grow and even getting a little fat. It’s not the diet…

Good time to bring this up. IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE DIET DIALED IN, DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE WORKOUT. You gotta have a solid eating plan for growth before you muck with ANY of the workout details. Same thing for cutting fat.

I thought, well I’m not throwing down carbs like a maniac, my glycogen reserves probably aren’t huge… maybe I should spread the workout over 5 days instead of 3. So I did that and broke Monday down over 2 days and Friday down to 2 days. Deadlift still doing it’s own thing on Wednesday. That didn’t work either. Whatever I did last late in the week would suffer.

I thought about how in College I lifted chest not twice a week but THREE TIMES a week! Every Monday, Wed, Friday and grew like crazy for a full semester. But…. that’s ALL I was doing. No shoulders, no tricep pushdowns. I did curls for a couple weeks, but couldn’t ever make progress so eventually gave up on them. No deadlift. No other stress on my body, no other area to build muscle except the decline bench muscles.

I realized after the first couple weeks mucking around with variables, that there is no magic order of exercises or no magic way to spread those exercises around the week so I can grow in all of them. I’ve hit my limit. My body will only add so much muscle so fast REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH I EAT. Even when I did the “stuff your face with carbs” diet 2 years back and threw down 5,000 calories and upwards of 300 grams of protein a day I remember the same problem. Yeah my deadlift took off, but chest wouldn’t grow at all, biceps wouldn’t grow.

So trying to do bis/tris/chest/shoulders and rotators twice a week and have deadlift thrown in too…. it’s too much. I won’t be able to grow like that. I could do JUST chest 2 or even 3 times a week, but not with everything else thrown in. Especially deadlift. You gotta’ realize just how taxing deadlift is.

Understand I’m not saying “I can’t do it.” I’m not talking about my ability to push the weight or my WILL at all. This isn’t about a willingness to do hard work or not. I could do twice this workout EASILY. …IF I thought it would work. What I’m talking about is my body’s maximum recuperative ability. I only have so much ability to repair and rebuild muscles that I micro-damage by lifting. If I lift hard across the board and hit my entire upper body twice a week and deadlift once a week… my body can’t keep up and eventually I start getting WEAKER, not stronger. That’s obviously not what I want.

And I fully understand there are guys who go in and do 5 different exercises for each bodypart every week. Well I would argue they’re doing that because they can do that AND GROW. If they hit a wall like I did and started dropping reps even though they were eating adequately, they’d probably change that workout. I will do as much as my body will put up with, but when it stops growing it’s time to pull back. For example, today I should have got 14 reps on my shoulder exercise. At least. That’s what I got on Tuesday, but I hit a freakin’ wall and only got 7. It’s NOT will. I wanted 14. My body wouldn’t do it. That’s classic over-training. I have surpassed the recuperative abilities of my body. Systematically I might add, it’s not one particular bodypart that is lagging, it’s whatever I do last or late in the week. Today it was shoulders… AND biceps damnit! Last week it was chest. It’s whatever I happen to put in the “sucks to be you” position on the workout bracket.

I was able to actually gain a little strength on my fat loss diet because I did far less work in the gym. I picked 2 small areas – biceps and x-rotators that I lifted twice a week and tried to get more reps each week. Everything else, deadlift, shoulders, abs and chest I did ONCE a week. And I didn’t try to add any more weight in anything else. Just get in do my 3 sets of 12 and get out. (no use doing 20 and demanding more glycogen if I’m just trying to maintain.)

That’s a huge difference from where I am now. Cut diet I was doing 8 total exercises. 6 exercises with 12 rep sets and not adding any weight, and 2 exercises with 20 rep sets going for more weight (on very SMALL muscles: biceps and external rotators). Now I’m doing 1 exercise at 12 rep sets and 10 exercises at 20 rep sets and going for more weight in all of them. Plus I use 4 hills for sprints every week on the bike. No wonder I’m hitting a wall.

This is actually a good thing. I had to push and see where the line was. I don’t know exactly where that line is but I have a better idea. I don’t particularly LIKE the outcome. What I’ve learned is… I have to pick a few areas to focus on, and it’s going to take TIME. I can’t speed it up with more food or protein. I can’t grow EVERY muscle at once. I can’t lift every muscle 2 x a week. There’s just like a maximum amount of muscle my body will add and that’s that. Unless I want to take steroids. Which I don’t. I’m not going to soapbox against that route, it’s just not for me.

So next week I’m going to drop out a couple things early in the week that have hit a wall to give them extra time to recover. Then my plan going forward is to keep hitting bis, tris and rotators twice a week at 3×20. Shoulders and chest I’m bumping down to once a week 3X12. That will pull back volume in reps and frequency of training each week.

Deadlift I’m keeping the same 3×12 on Wednesdays. But I’m already doing sets at 215 on deadlift. Once I get my 3×12 at 225, I’m just going to HOLD it there and not try to gain any more on that exercise. Save my recuperative abilitiy for where I want it, arms. Remember the lesson from that one semester in college…. If I want to grow one area in particular, than FOCUS on it. That means stop trying to set new personal bests in deadlift, when biceps and triceps are what you’re after.

I’ll actually have plenty of room to “grow” in deadlift. Exactly where I want it – grip. Right now using the over-over grip my grip fails at 195. So the first set of DL I do at 195 where I can’t quite get 12 reps yet. Then I switch to the over-under grip and do the last 2 sets at 215. In a couple weeks I’ll be able to get 12 reps on the last 2 sets at 225 using over-under grip. But that first set will probably still be at 195 (I’m on the low end of the rep range now). When I’m able to get all 12 on that first set, then the first set bumps up to 205 the next week. The last 2 sets stay the same. Eventually I’ll get all 12 reps on 205, then 215, then 225 on the first set, and then I can start going for over-over grip on the first 2 sets. Eventually I’ll be able to get all 3 sets at 225 with the over-over grip, weaned myself of the over-under grip and have developed big, strong forearms in the process. Without wasting my precious recuperative ability you know moving DL from 225 to 315 or something like that. That’s fine if a big DL is your goal. I’m not a professional powerlifter, or a guy who just wants big muscles all over. I’m a guy who’s happy with his body except for his 12 1/4″ arms. Yeah 12 and a quarter! What would YOU do? Keep pushing deadlift, or HOLD at 225 while you bang out some damn hammer curls. Weightlifting purists are cringing. I don’t care, I’m getting the arms I want. Errrrr’body has different goals yo! ;-)

So this is how the new week breaks down:

Monday:
Bis – 3 sets of 10-20
Tris – 3 sets of 10-20
x-rotators – 3 sets of 10-20
Shoulders – 3 sets of 8-12
Sprint – 2 sprints on hills on the bike

Wed:
Deadlift – 3 sets of 8-12 (grip progression listed above once I hit 225)
NO sprints! Slow and steady bike to the gym.

Friday:
Bis – 3 sets of 10-20
Tris – 3 sets of 10-20
x-rotators – 3 sets of 10-20
Chest – 3 sets of 8-12
Sprint – 2 sprints on hills on the bike

I’m still going to go for rep progression / added weight in chest and shoulders, I’m just knocking it down to once a week and knocking the max reps down to 12.

I don’t know WHAT the fark I’m going to do with all this when I’m back on the cut diet. Probably leave everything the same and just stop trying to make gains in chest/shoulders. I’ll worry about that later. Right now I’m trying to dial in the growth plan.

I HOPE this stays pretty solid, but if some area starts lagging BADLY I may have to make adjustments. The easiest thing I can see, is if progress lags on any of the Mon/Fri exercises I can eliminate the sprinting. What’s more important legs of steel or arms of steel?? You know?! Then fucking TRAIN for that. I’m leaving it in unless it becomes a problem. I did start out sprinting on deadlift day and it crippled me. I couldn’t make any progress. So maybe I’ll move away from sprinting at all. …I’ll leave it in for now.

This is the best I can come up with with 4 weeks of going at it and making changes as necessary. The more of a freakin’ SCIENTIST I am about it, the better my chances are for success. I hope this blog helps some guys out who are in a similar position as me…. but honestly if it doesn’t that’s totally ok, because it helps ME immensely, writing everything down and over-analyzing it. ;-)

I'm So Strong!

2011-01-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

Holy crap man! Yeah the 200 grams or protein a day plan is the WAY TO GO. Fierce! Just every session last week, laying on reps or weight on almost every exercise. It’s awesome!

I’m looking at this from almost a purely aesthetic position. As far as FUNCTIONAL strength goes I’m happy. I can surf hard, bike hard. When my knee is healed, run hard. I can do 10+ pullups whenever I want. I can deadlift 200 pounds 10+ times whenever I want. Look I KNOW guys deadlift 500 and 600 pounds. Good for them… I don’t need to move mini-coopers around town, but I may occasionally need to move a couch. So functionally, I’ve got what I want. Aesthetically I want to be medium build, really lean. Right now I’m light build, moderately lean. So I need SOME additional muscle.

So first of all I took a look at my body and prioritized where I want to grow. When I did that grain-based typical bulk up plan that fattened me up to 200 pounds, I was indiscriminate with my lifting. I just lifted every bodypart and whatever grew, grew. Because of that I made far more progress in deadlift than anything else. DL is a great lift that will add SLABS of muscle to your body. But if what I really wanted was a bigger chest and biceps, then I should have focused on exercises for those bodyparts. DL is your entire posterior chain front and back of thighs, your ass, the errectors in your back, your lats, traps, forearms. Deadlift is fucking awesome! But it does very little for bis and chest. I’m just saying if that’s what I wanted – and at the time it was - then those exercises should have been given priority.

So looking at myself, even that 142 pound skinny ass body…. I gotta’ be honest I LIKE what I see. Yeah I’m light, but I’ve got great proportions. My chest and shoulder development are really good for 142 pounds. Traps are decent. My legs and ass are fine. Calves are way skinny and small. Abs obviously could SHOW more with less fat, but the ab muscle size is good.

The only area I really don’t like is my arms. And even then, I’m not like having body issues and miserable over it. It’s just if I’m going to pick an area to grow I’d like more size in my arms. Shoulders are GOOD. Shoulders POP. Chest could be bigger, but it’s good. Biceps and triceps and forearms, I’d like to be bigger. Although my forearms are much better now than a few years back when I didn’t deadlift.

After biceps and triceps, forearms. After that chest, then shoulders, then traps and all the deadlift poterior-chain stuff. Then I’d say calves… if I can do anything about them.

So what I want to do is hit bis, tris, shoulders, chest twice a week and deadlift once a week. external rotator exercises will take priority and be first on their day because I can’t develop my chest if my rotators go to shit. Rotators FIRST. Biceps before shoulders, Triceps before chest or shoulders or whatever.

Abs are LAST as far as anything I want to GROW. Abs are the holy grail of my ideal body. BUT… I don’t want the actual ab muscles TOO big. Most people don’t even consider this detail, because just seeing anything remotely resembling an ab muscle is pure fantasy to them. But assuming you can get lean enough to see your abs… how BIG do you want them to be?? Personally I think overdeveloped abs, like you see on 90% of bodybuilders are DISGUSTING. It looks like an alien trying to escape your guts. “Quaid! Start the reactor!” The 8-pack? too much. I don’t want that. I want SMOOTH muscle. I want to see the 6 pack, but not have it be overwhelming.

I suspect what I have under the fat is exactly what I want. But since I haven’t yet gotten lean enough to even SEE the whole 6 pack and see what I’m working with… I’ve decided to STOP doing my weighted ab crunch machine once a week like I was, until I know what I’m working with. First of all I only worked up to 15 pounds OVER what I started with and then just HELD my strength there. So when I get uber lean down to 6% bodyfat if I decide my abs are too underdeveloped… it’s not going to be too hard to start back on that machine and add 15 whole pounds to it.

But I don’t think that’s going to be necessary at all because of one oft overlooked fact. You can’t deadlift a decent amount of weight without a decent set of abs. I think the once a week deadlifting I do will be MORE than enough to stimulate adequate ab development.

Calves…. Uh where do I begin. My calves are puny and pathetic…. but do I really want to care too much about this?? It’s a fucking CALF muscle. It’s THE hardest muscle to grow if your genetically predisposed to skinny legs. While I actually LIKE doing hammer curls or deadlifting, It’s hard to think of anything more BORING than sitting at a machine doing calf raises. And why?? To have big calf muscles that do NOTHING for me functionally?? Just to look at?? You bet your ass I’ll do that for my chest or my arms. But calves?? Fuck em! Yeah, they’re skinnier than I’d like them to be, but I’m not going to do anything about it. I’m just not going to be that guy that CARES about stupid calf muscles. It’s lame.

I shouldn’t say I’ll do nothing. I’m not going to LIFT for calf development. As part of my muscle building routine, I’m going to incorporate sprinting (on my bike, because that’s all my knee will tolerate right now) twice a week. Maybe that sprinting will develop my calf muscles. If it does, great, if it doesn’t fine. It’s still great for releasing a flood of anabolic hormones, all of which promote muscle growth.

Next post I’ll break down how I took my body part priority list that I outlined here and turned it into a weekly workout.

The Muscle Building Plan Changes Again

2011-01-05T19:23:00.001-08:00

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Well I knew this would happen going into this. For fat loss, I know EXACTLY what to do now. I know just how low I can push it on protein and carbs and be able to maintain my muscle mass while losing fat. I know EXACTLY how low I can tolerate my calories each day and how many days in a row I can go low cal without my willpower cracking.

But muscle building…. I’m still figuring it out. And that’s fine, I didn’t just KNOW exactly what to do on the fat loss side. I spent the better part of a year figuring it out. Make no mistake about it, it’s KNOWLEDGE – specifically MISinformation that keeps half the people from achieving their body composition goals. The other half, even if they did know exactly what to do, wouldn’t do it. Don’t care, lack of willpower ect. I don’t feel bad for them, I feel badly for the people working HARD at the wrong things. But I digress.

So… I started on the 200 grams protein a day / 3800+ calories plan. I felt like I was getting too fat, too quickly, and switched it up to 175 grams of protein… and whatever that works out to on calories. I’ve been doing that for a week solid and can’t gain any weight at all. Not one pound. The scale is pegged at 149. I’m still getting a LITTLE stronger in everything… but not just LAYING IT ON, like I was. At 200g/protein and ample calories I was really getting strong – sometimes adding 10+ reps to the total for 3 sets in any given exercise. That’s AWESOME. That’s what is SUPPOSED to happen when you lift!

So I’m going BACK to that, back to making sure I get 200 grams of protein a day. And if I’m hungry at all – EAT. No questions about daily totals or worrying about getting fat, just eat. I’m still sticking to all primal foods: fruits, veggies, meat, eggs, nuts, seeds. No grains, no sugar. So there is NOTHING that will spike insulin. I THINK, that alone will keep fat gain to a minimum. But who knows.

The other thing I was thinking is this. Since I am so EXCELLENT at maintaining muscle mass while dieting down, maybe I won’t do this in big chunks, maybe I’ll scoot up to 155, and then keep the gym workout the same, but change up the diet to the fat loss plan, and chop fat until I get back down to 150, then let myself go back up again. I won’t make AS MUCH progress in the gym, but I bet I can maintain my strength and even gain a little bit during those fat loss weeks/month. In fact I know I can, because I just did during this last fat loss extravaganza. And I don’t have to watch my bodyfat % creep too far away from my ultimate goal of 6% that way. I mean I’m Ok, drifting up to 12% or so. But if I get up at 15% 16%…. that just seems MILES away from where I was at 9% and where I want to be at 6%. You know? 12 –> 6, not so tough to stomach. 16 –> 6? Uhhhh, that’s MONTHS of dieting. So I’d rather turn the ship back around at 155, and make a 5 pound run DOWN before I go back up again. LEAN FIRST, mass second. ….as long as I’m above 150 the whole time.

The one thing that really bums me out, is wondering how much mass I could have maintained if I hadn’t gotten f$%$#ing injured TWICE in the middle of my damn diet! In the 17 months I was dieting down I broke my wrist AND suffered a partial tear to my ACL. My deadlift was hanging tough doing my 3 sets of 12 at 245 every week until that. When my wrist came out of the cast, my grip was so weak all I could do was 75 pounds. Those 2 f*&king injuries are the REASON I wound up at 142 pounds in the first place. You can’t build or even maintain muscle mass if you’re injured. That’s why I think it’s better to go LEAN FIRST, mass second. You can still lean out when you’re hurt. And lean ALWAYS looks good, even if you get as low as 142. LIGHT? Yeah. But I still looked good.

The small steps approach is much more appealing to me, than doing big swings up to 175 and down to 150. Because then I’m not dieting down for months or YEARS – last time was 17 months! I’ll be dieting down for a couple weeks or months at most, then I get a break during the muscle building phase. Cutting calories excessively SUCKS. It works, but it’s not fun. If I do small chunks… I’m never dieting hard for TOO long. And I get to stay lean! Seems like a win-win to me. If you can’t lean out without loosing a good amount of muscle, then this will never work…. you’ll go up and down, get a little fat and strong and then a little lean and week and never get anywhere. But I’ve PROVED, I can maintain my strength and muscle mass on the way down. That’s awesome. That means I can turn the ship around for 5 pounds at a time and still make progress over the long run.

The other thing is I understand water weight and glycogen saturation/depletion, so I can make an accurate assessment of 5 LEGIT pounds of muscle or fat not just water and glycogen. I think that’s probably a big reason people bulk for 25+ pounds and then diet for 25+ pounds. Because 5 pounds is meaningless to them. I can put on 5 pounds TOMORROW if I want. Eat a ton of sugar, drink a lot of fluids, have a lot of salt, BAM 5 pounds. EASY. And I can take it off in 2 days, low salt, ketogenic super low carb diet, full body, glycogen depletion workout, cut water at 6pm. 5 pounds (or more) gone the next morning. So I’m not talking about that. Since I understand all that, I can get accurate measurements and work in legitimate 5 pound chunks.

I wish I was better at adding muscle without fat… but I know the 200 grams / protein a day method will work. I get VERY strong doing that. If I get fatter than I want… so what! I’ll be dieting it off (effectively while preserving muscle) soon enough anyway.

Alright kids, that’s it for today, I can’t talk about this anymore without my narcissism flaring up again. ;-)

The Primal Muscle Building Plan

2011-01-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Ok, let me preface all of this by saying – I don’t really KNOW how to add pounds of muscle to my body without pounds of fat. I have a pretty damn good theory… after my success with a primal diet for weight loss, but it’s just that right now, until I actually do it – theory. This is definitely my weak area. I am a MASTER of fat loss. But cleanly adding muscle… I haven’t succeeded yet.

But I know keeping this blog will help because it forces me to analyze everything and figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Let’s start with what I’ve learned will NOT work. I know from first hand experience, the advice to skinny guys the world over of “You gotta’ eat!” and eat indiscriminately is total rubbish. You’ll get a LITTLE strong… and fat as a whale. So grain-based, standard American diet is out. This is what happened to me last time I followed that horseshit advice. I decided I was tired of being a “skinny little shit” I didn’t care how fat I got, I was going to get up to 200 pounds. What an absolute disaster. The strength gains I made were SOOOOOO minor for the pounds and pounds of fat I laid down.

What a FAT BASTARD indeed. Now you know where the inspiration for the title of this blog came from. As you know I’ve since dieted down. WAY down. All the way down to where I decided to stop 58 pounds later at 142 pounds:

Not bad. If that’s the body I have to have the rest of my life I’ll take it. But dude…. 142 pounds! At 5’11″?? That’s awfully light.

My IDEAL body is really not THAT far from where I am now. And not unrealistic, or trying to be something I’m not. It’s me, just the BEST me. I want Brad Pitt in fight club. He’s about 155, my height, my age (in 1999 he was 35) and very, very lean. Probably 6% bodyfat in that movie. I’m probably 9% bf here. So I need to cut a little fat, and I’m 10+ pounds light in muscle. I don’t NEED to get there for any particular reason, except excellence. I just want to have the BEST body I can. Simply because I can.

I think with your body it’s probably a good idea to pick an ideal that is YOU. And not try to be something you’re not. If you’re naturally built like a linebacker, than maybe your ideal is a little more burly and less ripped. You know if I was a black man and naturally very muscular maybe I’d want to look like UFC fighter Rashad Evans. So I’m not saying Brad Pitt is the ideal for EVERYONE, but for me it’s a pretty good approximation of the BEST ME. We’re both ectomorphs, in that movie he’s just the BEST he can be. Know what I’m saying??

My bottomed-out weight of 142 isn’t totally accurate… that was after being awake for 8 hours running on one coffee, basically in a fasted, glycogen depleted state. The next morning I weighed in at 145. So that’s my real starting point. First thing in the morning, as light as I’ll be – 145. That’s the spot where I don’t ever want to go below 150. Even when I reach 6% bodyfat. So to be safe… I think I should aim for 165 pounds on the way UP so I have some room to work with on the way back DOWN. But I may change this, we’ll see what happens.

If all I do is add muscle AND fat… that’s no good. I’ll just be dieting up and down forever. I don’t expect a ZERO fat bulk, but I must add considerably MORE muscle than fat or this is a waste of time.

I’m writing this almost 3 weeks since the switch now and I’m up nearly FIVE pounds! I’m 149 or 150 most mornings. That’s way too much too quickly; you don’t add muscle that fast. So I’ve already had to make some adjustments. What I WAS doing was this:

    * All primal foods – fruits, veggies, nuts, meat, eggs
    * Aiming for 200grams protein/day, but averaging 215.
    * Eating till full, not really worrying about calories

I wrote everything down on a couple of the days and realized I was eating 3,800+ calories a day! Keep in mind my maintenance is about 2,500 and when I was dieting down I averaged about 1,700. So more than DOUBLE my fat loss plan.

I figured I wouldn’t get fat on all primal foods. …well it’s HARDER to get fat all primal, but not impossible. Especially if you cram that much food in every day. I’ve fattened up a little. I can tell in the mirror, things are smoothing out a little, the bicep vein isn’t as pronounced. No need for panic, but I do need to make adjustments.

When I was dieting down, I basically went to the gym 3X a week and PURPOSELY pushed the same weight the same number of times week in and week out just to maintain my muscle mass. But there were 2 areas I actually tried to get more reps / weight just to see if I could, in my external rotators and biecps. And I actually got STRONGER in both those areas. With my rotators in particular I more than tripled my strength in the midst of a 58 pounds weight loss. My biceps are certainly not huge… but they’re the biggest and strongest they’ve ever been. I got stronger while I was dropping fat.

If I could actually get a LITTLE bigger and stronger in some select areas while dieting DOWN, that tells me I probably didn’t need to increase my calories and protein all that much. I probably went way overboard. That old “You gotta’ eat!” brainwashing is hard to shake. Yeah I do have to eat. Intelligently. I just took a blunt force approach.

Good time to point out if you don’t keep a food journal and WRITE IT DOWN you’ll never know WHAT you need to change! Right??

So I was actually making small gains on the fat loss plan, 1,700 calories, 150g carbs, 100g protein. When my protein averaged 66g that one week, I lost strength, but at 100 I actually made a SMALL amount of progress. So 200g is probably overkill. It’s not a “more is better” proposition. Your body is only going to add so much muscle per week, if you give it way more calories then you need then….. you get FAT. Just like with fat loss, it’s not less calories is better with no limit. Eat 500 calories a day and see what happens to you.

So I overdid it. The new plan I decide to knock the protein target down to 150-175g / day. And have it be a RANGE not a set number. If I’ve hit 155 for the day and it’s getting late, that’s it, no more food. I want at least 150 and no more than 175 grams.

My fruit and veggie consumption has stayed about the same, maybe a little more. I usually eat fat with my protein, so by knocking protein down to 175 max, I effectively cut out a good chunk of fat and calories as well.

I’ve been pretty liberal with fat – mayo in tuna, dressing in salad since the switch. If I wasn’t losing definition I’d keep doing that, but I think I should tone it down a little. No hard fast numbers, just LESS overall. More like the cut diet I was on.

Other than that… I’ve gotten FIERCELY strong in everything in the gym. Man what a difference having calories and protein to work with makes! Just every time, more reps, LOTS more, or more weight. It will be interesting to see if that continues at 150-175 grams of protein. I think it will continue just fine, that’s still a huge step up from the 100g I was on, on fat-loss.

How I got from here to HERE

2011-01-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

August 21, 2010

Alright, first things first. I realize this picture is not super dramatic. To the casual observer, I probably just look the same in both pictures. This is not supposed to be dramatic. This isn’t the big before & after for the Jenny Craig commercial ;-) . What this is though, is what people want to know. How do you get leanER?
These pics only represent a drop of 3 pounds. But trust me once you’re already lean, 3 pounds is a LOT. Even for 2 months work, you’ll take it. If you look right around and BELOW my belly button, you can see where the fat came from. Of course, right? That’s the LAST place you’ll lose it on a man, that lower abs area. And, if you’re really paying attention, the LINE between the upper 2 abs is more defined on the right. That’s nitpicking, but I’m allowed to nitpick.

I would have liked to lose fat from this area 20 pounds ago before I had ridiculous things happen like vascularity in my SHINS. ??? What the hell, mang?! It’s like an ab-hiding conspiracy that you’re whole body is in on, except your brain . And you’re the last one to find out! “Ohhhh, so apparently my retarded body thinks I need even MORE definition in my THIGH even though it looks like it’s sculpted out of marble already – before it will even THINK about taking that damn hot-water-bottle-sized PAD off of my stomach.” WHAT THE FARK!? But that’s the way it works. That’s why on a man, abs are so coveted… because they aren’t easy to get!

I digress. The other thing is I had a wedding / trip to NYC to contend with in July. And I fully went off the diet wagon on that wedding, and ate all manner of sugar and carb and whatever I could get my lean little, fully defined fingers on. (please tell me you got the sarcasm because I’m laying it on PRETTY thick…) I blew up 5 pounds on that trip (mostly glycogen and water) – but it still took 2 weeks of hard dieting just to get back where I was. But that’s LIFE. That’s the way it works. The trick to successfully getting as lean as you want, isn’t to make no mistakes – there is ALWAYS going to be some temptation that will take you off your diet – the trick is to GET RIGHT BACK ON as soon as you can. It’s the long haul and winning the war that matters. You can lose a couple battles along the way, that’s fine. It’s not perfection that gets you there, it’s 90% adherence and tenacity that gets you there.

So WHAT exactly did I do to go from LEAN to LEAN-ER? Well I used 2 different methods. The first version, I dieted extremely hard all week and then carbed-out on the weekend. We’re talking 900-1000 calories a day M-F, and then Sat/Sun I’d binge on crap. I was TRYING to make it 6 days on / one day off…. but my willpower would always crack Friday night and I’d go eat shit. So actually Sat, Sun and Fri night, off. I averaged 100 or so grams of carbs a day and 66 grams of protein, and just LOW on the fat. Whatever would keep calories down. 1000 calories a day is NOT much food at all. So what I would do is basically fast all day and just have dinner. I’d have coffees with 2-3 tblsp of half/half (measured of course) those worked out to 40 or 60 calories each depending. And I would have 3-4 of those a day. It was actually much easier than you think. Not eating until dinner is really not hard.

That plan was flawed because it didn’t have quite enough protein. I tried it for 2 weeks, and those 2 weeks were the ONLY time during this whole journey that I bonked in the gym and lost strength. (not counting strength loss from injury obviously)

It wasn’t just not enough protein, it was severely carb deficient. Not enough glycogen to power those workouts. THAT was the reason for the weekend carb binge – to power through Monday’s full-body lifting session including deadlift. That worked the first week, but the second week, I was even losing strength with 2 days carb-binging. That time it wasn’t glycogen, it was just plain not enough protein.

But you know what?? I had to find the limit! I had successfully held my strength in the gym, on the oft-touted “1 gram per pound of bodyweight” plan of 150 grams of protein a day. I held my strength at 100g/day. But 66 grams a day was too low. Why 66?? I was actually aiming for 50, but 66 was my average for the week. Thinks like “10 ounces of cantaloupe” have 2 grams of protein, and the half and half in 4 coffees has 8 grams, so all the little “pieces” added on another 16/day on average.

The lower you get your protein, obviously the lower you can get your overall calories. Protein almost always comes with a good chunk of FAT (I eat FOOD not powders) so if you eat 150 grams of protein, you’re probably also eating 100 grams of fat. Just that without any carbs and you’re already at 1,500 calories for the day. ….it adds up quickly. So logically, you want the LOWEST protein gram number you can hit, WITHOUT losing strength. I found the limit. For me 100 grams protein is the magic number. I can still lose bodyfat with that number, and maintain my strength, even GAIN a little bit. Below 100 grams… I’m asking for trouble. 150 I also won’t lose strength… but I won’t lose any fat either. It’s just too many calories by the end of the day.

So those 2 weeks helped me find the ideal protein gram number. That’s awesome. But the other problem with that plan is the sugar-binge part on the weekend, even though well intentioned and downright necessary for Monday’s full body workout is mentally unhealthy and setting you up for BAD eating habits in the future. Sugar is a freakin’ addictive DRUG. ….but I’ll save that for a separate post.

So that plan was a little too extreme. The next week I crafted what would become the ULTIMATE fat loss plan for me. This is why you’re reading this post so lets get to it.

First and foremost, you start with all primal foods. That’s a given. That’s where you START. If you’re pretty fat, just making that switch will bring you to “normal” but not to super lean. I now know where “too low” is on protein, and I’ve figured it out on carbs now from experimenting. TOO low on carbs and your energy goes to shit. The thought on this plan is this… Your body has ABUNDANT fat stores available. But it does not have a reliable carb or protein store except to EAT your own muscle! Which hopefully you want to avoid. So the rationale is to get the bare MINIMUM target on carbs and protein and no more. No “extra”. And then a certain minimum on calories so it’s not too extreme to stick to. The diet will be relatively low fat because it has to be. Once you hit the target for protein and carbs, there isn’t much left. Fat is simply “the difference”. There’s no fat target. You hit your protein, carb and calorie target and whatever is left shows you how much fat you can have.

For calories, I require roughly 2500 calories a day to maintain. 900-1000 the other week, was too severe. I was hungry all the time. But 1,500 I can do for days at a time without TOO much trouble and it gets me a 1,000 calorie a day / 7,000 calorie a WEEK defecit. That’s amazing.

So this is the diet. 100 grams of protien, 125 grams of carbs, 1,500 calories. If I go LOW on the fat, I can squeeze in more carbs and maybe have 150 for the day. But I want to get AT LEAST 125 on carbs. If I go below that I start to get weak.

This is what I did the final week of my fat loss before I got skinny enough at 142 pounds and decided to switch to muscle building for a while. And when I come BACK to fat loss, this is the plan I will use again. Because it is AMAZINGLY effective. You keep you strength, even GAIN a rep or two here and there, and drop fat at a great clip. If your willpower cracks – and it will. I couldn’t stick to 1500 calories 7 days a week – when it cracks, binge on PRIMAL foods. Go heavy on protein and fat one day. Hit 2800 calories, 3000, whatever. For ONE day, it’s not that big of a deal. Don’t PLAN it. TRY to stick to 1500 calories for 7 days… I’m just saying, you’r gonna’ crack eventually. The hardest part of dieting down here below 10% bodyfat is ADHERENCE. 1500 calories for one day? Pssssh!! Easy! But on day 5…. day 6….. You’ll know when you need to crack and eat a ton of calories one night. Just keep it primal and you’ll be right back on track the next day. If you eat sugar and crap, you’re f*cked. You’ll screw up your appetite for the next 3 days. But one day of primal binging is fine. You can do that and still clock in a 5,000-6,000 calorie deficit for the week. That’s still a 1.5 pound fat loss. A WEEK! That’s damn good.

The other thing is to adjust your workouts in the gym. With the starve-binge plan, I basically tried to cram a week’s workout into Monday. With the even-steven 1,500 calories a day, every day plan, you’re better off spreading out your workout over 3 or even 5 days a week. Go to the gym Mon and Tuesday and just do TWO exercises each day, instead of doing 4 on Monday like you normally would.. Give deadlift it’s own day, and maybe go extra low fat so you can have 150-175 carbs the night before. ;) It’s a balancing act between maintaining strength and losing fat. You’ll figure it out.

142 Pounds, as low as I'm willing to go

2011-01-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Today I had to take some “product pictures” of my t-shirts for my business. I set up the camera on a tripod outside, throw on my shirts one at a time, and use the 10 second timer to take pictures of myself. It doesn’t matter how goofy my facial expression is because I’m going to crop the pictures from my chin to about mid-thigh to just get the shirt.

So while I’m messing around with the settings on my camera trying to get the exposure right without a flash, I hopped in front and took a couple pics with no shirt on. I’m literally in the BEST shape of my life, so I thought it’d be good to have.

When I got back to my computer and checked them out I thought it was remarkable how good I looked. How I’ve never seen my body so DEFINED like that. Keep in mind I’ve never achieved success like this with my body in my life. So it’s pretty cool to not see the same skinny-fat guy staring back at me in photos like I’ve seen my entire life.

But I also thought – that’s it. That’s as skinny as I want to get. And I knew that was it, no wishy-washy, no wondering, I just knew. THAT’S IT. I didn’t think in horror, “Oh my God I’m too thin!” But I did think “That’s enough.” In particular in a couple of photos I thought my neck and traps looked a little gaunt for my taste.

I think my idea of my “ideal” body is pretty healthy. Loosely defined it’s a “medium” build and ultra low body fat, like maybe 6%. Not body-builder ultra-low, all veins 3%, but a really lean ‘beach muscles’ 6%. A ‘medium build’ on me would probably fall somewhere between 150-175 pounds. At 6% bodyfat that would look great. I’m really damn close to that! Not quite there, but super close.

After the t-shirt photoshoot I hopped on the scale and saw 142 looking back at me. Keep in mind this was before breakfast with just a coffee in me…. but still! I KNOW it’s just a number. But that number bothers me. It’s bothered me the entire time I’ve been under 150 pounds. I thought I could live with that… but I can’t. It’s just unacceptable to me. Seeing that number today, combined with seeing a LITTLE gauntness in some of those pictures, I reached the tipping point and decided to stop dieting. To temporarily put on hold my goal of having that six-pack. It basically boils down to this: I want to weigh more than 150 pounds MORE than I want 6-pack abs.

I think that’s a decision a reasonable man would make. 142 pounds for a 5’11″ man is AWFULLY light. Most men I think have a problem the other way, where they can’t ever be big enough and their goal in the gym is size, size, size. I think I have a pretty damn reasonable “ideal” body in mind. I don’t want to be huge. I want to be 150-175 and lean, that’s what I want. But 142 pounds is a FAR cry from huge. I could put on THIRTY-THREE solid pounds of muscle and not be huge. I’d still be a “medium build” 175 pounds.

It’s weird because the numbers aren’t THAT important to me. I don’t really care if I’m as lean as I want to be with a 6-pack at 155 pounds or 165 or 185. But one number that DOES matter to me is 150 pounds. I had a whole post about it before. I’m just really NOT ok being below 150 pounds.

So I’ve decided to stop dieting off body fat. After 17 months of this I’m finally gonna’ stop. TODAY is the day I decide that! Haaa-haaa, that’s funny to me. It’s a very weird feeling stopping without hitting my goal. I just always assumed eventually I would get there and get that 6-pack. But what am I supposed to do? Just do the math! I’m probably around 8% bodyfat right now, say I’m a little off and it’s actually 9%. If I want to get to 6%, that’s roughly 4.5 pounds. I’m already down to 142. So if I diet to my goal and don’t lose any muscle AT ALL, I’ll wind up weighing 137.5 pounds. That’s insane. I’m 5 foot 11, I’m not supposed to weigh 137 pounds! I’m not going to do that. 142 is already insane. one-forty-ANYTHING is insane.

Look at it this way, I don’t want 6-pack abs AT ALL COSTS. I want them as part of my “ideal” physique. And that ideal is OVER 150 pounds. I think if I were to keep dieting down and going for it AT ALL COSTS that wouldn’t be a good sign. That’s kind of unhealthy to go for it no matter what. 137.5 pounds?? Psssssh! No freakin’ WAY. Not gonna’ happen.

Now understand I’m not giving up on my goal. I’m just postponing it until I can lay down a little MEAT on my frame.

So I am going to be embarking on a muscle-building diet now. The plan right now is to add muscle as CLEANLY as possible (meaning without packing fat on – or what’s the point) until I hit 165 pounds. that’s 23 pounds. If I’m lucky that will take 6 months. If I’m unlucky that will take 2 years. I’ve got diet DIALED IN. I know more about how this shit works than 99% of the population. I KNOW what I’m doing. I know how carbs, protein, fat, calories work, I know how it all works. I don’t think I’m above reproach, I can definitely learn new things. But I’ve “got this”. You know what I mean? I know more than enough to succeed. Successfully getting my fat ass down to about 8% bodyfat at age 36 is proof of that. So I think I’ll do well with muscle building and put it on pretty quickly and leanly.

Once I reach 165 pounds, that should give me enough “breathing room” (165 gives me 15 pounds to work with) and I can go back to dieting fat off and once again, march towards my goal of those elusive 6-pack abs. Until then I’ll have to “settle” for the 4-pack I’ve got. Boo-hoo poor baby! ;-)

What do you guys think about all this? It’s bittersweet for me. On the one hand it’s sad, because I haven’t hit my goal…. YET. But on the other hand, even not at my goal where I am at 8-9%, I look GREAT. Yeah I want the 6-pack, but shit I’m VERY happy where I am. And I’m SO SICK OF DIETING DOWN. It will be nice to eat ample calories for a change. Still primal foods, this doesn’t mean pizza and ice-cream now, but just plain eating ENOUGH FOOD will be nice. Filling up on something, even vegetables will be nice. Anything different after 17 months will be nice for a change! And it will be nice to get strong again in the gym.

I’m really stoked that for the most part I didn’t get weak. I held my strength in everything that wasn’t affected by my knee injury (deadlift). But it will be nice to get strong. I’ve been pushing the exact sme weight +/- 10 pounds on my chest exercise for 1 1/2 YEARS!! That’s crazy willpower to go in and keep doing the SAME weight for over a year. I mean if I didn’t do that once a week, I would have lost my chest size, pushing the same weight once a week is how you MAINTAIN. I’m just saying it will be really nice to get strong again.

Anyway here’s another pic of what I look like at 142. What do you think? I don’t think I look bad at all… but I’m a little on the skinny side. I think it’s a good time to change it up. Would you GUESS this was 142 if I didn’t tell you?? I don’t think I would if that was somebody else, and I knew it was a 5’11″ man. I’d probably guess 160 or so…. weird.

The last bit of bodyfat is yielding to my will...

2011-01-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

Thursday, August 5, 2010

It won’t be long now…

The Bicep Vein

2011-01-05T19:05:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

I’m starting to see the bicep vein now.

Never in my LIFE have I had the bicep vein. The bicep vein is a little bit genetics and a little bit muscle mass, but more than anything else it’s low body fat. You won’t see that vein if it’s buried under fat. And you don’t have to be FAT-fat to cover it up. You can be in the “normal” healthy range and still see no vein. When I was around 15% bodyfat or so, I was healthy. But there was no bicep vein. When I was in College lifeguarding in the summers, I ran and swam and surfed every day. I was 140 pounds. I certainly wasn’t what anyone would call fat, but I never had the bicep vein. I wasn’t lean enough. All the surfing/running/swimming ensured I didn’t have much muscle mass, and crappy grain-based American diet ensured I never got too lean.

I know many people could care less about such a thing, but I’ve never even SEEN the bicep vein on my own body before so I think it’s pretty damn cool.

Keeping a Diet Journal

2011-01-05T19:03:00.000-08:00

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Well as enlightening as my experience with full day intermittent fasting has been…. I’m burnt out. It’s a real exercise in willpower. And one that’s frankly not worth it if there are other equally effective ways to drop bodyfat. If I could I.F. M-W-F one week and end up dropping 2 pounds of pure bodyfat, I’d do it. But it doesn’t work that way and I wind up with about 1/2 pound drop. Good…. but not great. Certainly not worth starving yourself for 3 days. If you’ve never tried, it’s brutally difficult.

It’s not unhealthy or unnatural. In fact I think it’s GOOD for you. In the same way that going from a well paying job to being unemployed teaches you to do more with less, and eliminate expenses you don’t need, I think fasting for a day, gets your body to be more frugal. Less protein turnover, less waste, less turning cells over, more cell repair. And in fact there are quite a few studies that support this. But you can google that on your own. So I may throw in a fast day here and there in the future, but not now.

So if I’m not going to do that, but I still want to drop the last couple pounds of fat, I need to cut calories every day so that at the end of the week I’m running a calorie deficit. To that end, I started keeping a diet journal. I didn’t want to be a “scientist” about it… but you know what it kind of suits me. It’s something I can geek out on for a while. I wouldn’t want to do this for the rest of my life – and to simply MAINTAIN my body weight I won’t have to. But to cut this last little bit of fat, I do have to get pretty detailed and anal-retentive about it.

The one big thing I learned from experimenting with intermittent fasting, is you don’t get hungry until your body runs out of GLYCOGEN. So it’s carbs that are the determining factor of when you’ll be hungry. If I had a big CHEAT the night before I fast and loaded up on shit like pizza or ham-n-cheese croissants, I can make it well into the evening the next day before I even start to get hungry or lose energy. It’s when your glycogen reserves are completely drained that you get hungry and drag ass. …which is also why the <20 grams / carbs a day Atkins diet was so BRUTALLY hard to stick to. Cause you were always in that state. <20 is too low. The typical American 300+ grams a day and mostly from grains is a recipe for fat gain. The sweet spot for weight loss is enough so you don’t completely run out of glycogen and get hungry/weak, but not so much that you jeopardize fat loss. From experimentation I’d say that’s about 75-100 grams of carbs a day for me. Carbs from primal foods like veggies and fruit. NOT carbs from bread or sugar or grains.

So I started keeping the journal and was floored by how quickly it added up! I’m 150 pound man, moderately active. I don’t do any cardio for cardio’s sake, but I do surf when it’s good, and I lift weights 3X a week. I don’t know what my calorie requirements are honestly. Is it 2,000 calories a day? 2,500? That’s a big difference over a week’s time. I figured I’d shoot for 1,500. That’s low. But as long as I hit my target 75 carbs I shouldn’t get too hungry. I want to get somewhere between 100-150 grams of protein so I can maintain muscle mass and maybe even SLOWLY add a little. And the rest will be fat.

The first day I quickly hit almost 1,900. By about 7:00pm I was already there and had to stop eating for the day. I only hit 100 grams on protein. Which is acceptable, but I’d like a bit more. I hit 122 on carbs without trying! Too high, I want to be around 75 unless I surf.

The second day I thought I had it all figured out for 1,500 but hit 1,700 by 8:00pm – and was done for the day again. Keep in mind I’m up until about 2:00am most nights.

I realized I need to go lower fat on certain things. Get rid of cheese (not really primal anyway) and nuts. They’re both higher fat than protein. Eggs have a good amount of fat, but they highER protein. I’m not trying to eliminate fat, just make wise choices.

Basically the theory is – give your body it’s daily carb requirement so it doesn’t resort to cannibalizing your precious muscle mass to make glycogen. And give it enough protein to maintain muscle mass, but just enough, don’t go overboard. And then go pretty low fat. Your body should get the extra calories it needs then from your bodyfat. So after you hit your targets for protein and carbs – something has to give. And that something is the amount of fat in your diet. If you just go by feel and eat until you’re satisfied, you’ll probably eat just enough to maintain everything and not gain or lose weight (on primal/paleo foods not standard American crap). So to make this work for bodyfat loss, you have to cut the amount of dietary fat that you eat. Things you normally wouldn’t cut to just MAINTAIN your weight.

All of this of course assumes a) you aren’t creating huge demand for carbs by doing mindless/pointless cardio. b) the carbs you ARE eating are from fruits and veggies that don’t spike insulin and promote fat storage.

So after MONTHS of not really worrying about fat content in foods at all, I’m now counting grams and calories. I cut the half/half in my coffee from 4 tablespoons to 2. I cut the amount of dressing on my salad from what had to be 8+ tablespoons to 2. I cut the nuts from 4-6 ounces to 1 ounce. And when they’re gone, I won’t buy anymore until I’m done dieting.

Nuts are great for you! …as long as you aren’t trying to LOSE weight. Then they’re just calorie-laden bombs. 3 small OUNCES of pistachios clocks in at an astounding 540 calories. My entire, HUGE “Big-ass salad” – and I mean huge, this thing is an entire big salad bowl checked in at 484. So no nuts if you’re trying to lose weight. Same holds true for cheese…. but that’s not really a primal/paleo food anyway. It’s more of a “you can get away with it if you’re just trying to MAINTAIN weight/health.”

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. Mad scientist, counting carbs, fat, protein and calories in everything. It’s a lot of work right now. But once I know what’s in something and I have it again… I don’t have to recalculate, I just write it down in the geeky little food journal.

8.7% Bodyfat

2011-01-05T19:00:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

As Ice-cube would say in the movie Friday, “Dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyam Smokey!” I hit a new low on my scale Sunday night with 8.7% bodyfat. Woot-woot! I’m really stoked on that. Sooooooooooo close to my goal. My goal has always been “to see my ab muscles” …for the first time in my adult life mind you. After googling WAY more images of male torsos than any straight man ever should, I threw a number on that goal and called it 7.5% bodyfat. So that’s what I’m gunning for. If I get to 7.5% and can’t clearly see my ab muscles, then I’ll go lower. It’s just a number. But having that clear number to aim for helps keep me focused.

I have a feeling I’m pretty SPOT-ON with my guesstimating. At 8.7% I can CLEARLY see the top 2 abs. I mean they are POPPING. The next 2 are there, but they’re not as clear. There is no line, no separation below them. The bottom 2 are lost in fat. Understand, I certainly don’t think I’m fat. I am lean, I am SUPER lean, I’m in the best shape of my life. And I love it! But… it’s still a matter of bodyfat that is covering those last 2 ab muscles. So the answer is still diet. DIET off the last bit of bodyfat and reveal those abs. It’s nitpicking; I look GREAT already. I know it’s nitpicking, but so what. I didn’t start this journey to get all the way down to “almost can clearly see ab muscles.” I want to CLEARLY see ab muscles, all of the ab muscles, the whole 6 pack, not a 4 pack and then a blur.

That’s the goal, defined muscles. The goal is not “ridiculous vascularity and striations”. I’m not going for the bodybuilder-lean 4% look, I’m going for the beach-muscles 7.5% look. 4% is still healthy for a man. It’s close to too low, but it’s not unsafe. If that’s what you want go for it. It’s simply a matter of aesthetics. I think SMOOTH muscle looks good, ripped-to-shreds, veiny striated muscle looks gross to me.

Anyway here’s a pic at 8.7% according to my scale, which I think is pretty accurate. It’s amazing just HOW freakin’ lean you have to get to see the whole 6-pack! Even this low – and this is outrageous to me, I’ve never looked like this in my life. I almost look like an underwear model. I’ve been just Joe Average, “skinny-fat” doughy white guy my whole life so this is insane. But even this lean I’m STILL not lean enough to see the whole 6 pack. Crazy! I have a new found respect for what it takes to get that lean.

9 Percent Bodyfat!

2011-01-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Well everything is working and I’ve made it down to 9% bodyfat! It’s just taking much, much longer than I imagined. I fasted EVERY Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the month of May with the exception of the Friday of memorial day weekend. I ate normal, primal foods every Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sunday. Basically unlimited quantities, but without purposely gorging myself. And it worked great! It got me from 11.7% bodyfat on the first of the month, down to 9.4% on the 28th. So I have nothing to complain about!

However, doing the math beforehand, I thought it would go much faster. If I don’t eat for 3 out of 7 days a week, assuming a 2,500 calorie a day requirement, that’s a 7,500 calorie a week defecit! 3,500 calories in a pound of bodyfat, so I SHOULD have been dropping 2 pounds of fat a week for 8 total pounds. I weigh 150 pounds so 1% of my bodyfat is 1.5 pounds of fat. So 8 pounds of fat therefore would be a 5% drop. By my numbers I should have gone from 11.7% to 6.7% I actually don’t even want to get that low. I would have stopped around 7.5%. But I should have made it easily. And yet I could only get as low as 9.4% in that timeframe. So what gives??

I think there are a number of reasons for this. 1) I’m a 150 pound man now, who sits in front of a computer all day except for three 45 minute sessions of lifting weights each week. Maybe 2,500 calories is a high estimate for daily requirement. Maybe it’s more like 2,000 calories. 2) I don’t have nothing on my fast days I have an average of 3 coffees WITH half-and-half. If the calories in that half/half = 150, then 3 of those equals 450 calories, round up and call it 500 for the day. So instead of 2,500 calorie defecit, if you use a lower daily requirement number and factor in the coffee calories, I’m really only running a 1,500 calorie defecit each day, or 4,500 for the week. That’s a far cry from 7,500.

Secondly, while I’m not purposely gorging myself I am probably overeating a bit on my “on” days. I keep it primal, but I don’t really limit the calories at all. I have noticed my fruit intake has gone up pretty dramatically. So for simplicity’s sake, let’s say I eat an extra 250 calories over my daily 2,000 on Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sunday. This is NOT difficult to do at all; you’re talking 2 extra apples a day! That’s an additional 1,000 calories. Take that AWAY from my 4,500 calorie deficit for the week, and my weekly deficit is now only 3,500 calories. That’s only 1 pound. So with this math, even NOT EATING 3 days a week, I may only drop a pound each week, or 4 pounds in the whole month. Which is roughly 2.5% of my bodyfat. Which matches up pretty close to the 11.7% – 9.4% drop I actually experienced.

And there is one more factor. Towards the end of a fast day, your body does slow your metabolism. I can tell because any time after 10:00pm or so I get cold easily. Haaa-haaaa, damn I am hardcore with this goal! I realize how absurd that sounds. But it’s true. Simple biology, your body isn’t going to run at 100% and keep the furnace stoked if you don’t feed it. It’s going to go into “conservation mode” and keep you warm, healthy, alive, but not running full throttle. So it follows logically that you don’t require 2,000 calories on a fast day, like you did the day before when you ate regularly. I don’t know exactly how many less calories this slowed metabolism needs, but it is a factor.

…and don’t worry about permanently ‘damaging’ your metabolism and slowing it down. That’s complete rubbish,that people who eat 6 meals a day and can’t figure out why they don’t lose weight believe. Yes, fasting for a day WILL slow your metabolism. But as soon as you finish breakfast the next day, it’s ROARING again.

So that was May. JUNE so far I’ve only dropped from 9.4% to 9.0%. So it kind of came to a screeching halt. But there are a couple reasons for that. 1) everything listed above. Particularly the amount of food I do eat on eating days. 2) I broke the diet memorial day weekend and ate crap all weekend long. Candy, ice cream, fast food. Whatever I wanted for the whole weekend. And it was awesome! But I basically spent the entire week after that making up for that weekend.

But beyond that, the last 2 weeks for social events, I broke the fast on Friday half way through the day and ate probably a full day’s worth of food the second half of the day. So I really only got TWO fast days in each week. With a little bit of overeating on eat days, calories from coffee and slowed metabolism on fast days, and taking into account that I’m already in the single digits, as insane as this sounds… 2 fast days out of 7 isn’t really enough! Don’t misunderstand I’m not obsessively thinking more fasting is better no matter what and I should do 7 days. That’s not true. I NEED those 4 eating days to take in enough protein and refill glycogen to preserve muscle mass. So 3 is the limit. But for someone at an already low 9.0% bodyfat, doing the final push to 7.5%, 3 isn’t just the limit, it’s also what is necessary to push through to 7.5% bodyfat.

The reason I only managed 2 days is fasting SUCKS! It’s not fun. It’s what you have to do to get to single digit bodyfat if you don’t want to count EVERY calorie and every carb. Some people love that way; I don’t. So fasting is the easier way. But it’s sheer willpower on those fast days. Not all morning and afternoon, that’s easy. But at night it’s HARD. I can keep busy working on my business and make it till bedtime. But I don’t want to go out and socialize. I’m kind of miserable mentally towards the end of a fast day. So when my friends invite me out for Friday night, the last 2 weeks I’ve chosen breaking the fast and going out socializing over sticking to my fast. That’s why I only moved from 9.4% to 9.0%. …it’s a tough call. How bad do I want it?? I’ll get to 7.5% faster if I stick to the plan and do 3 fast days in the week. But at the same time, how miserable do I want to be for the sake of this goal?? I have to somewhat enjoy the process. Do I want to keep giving up my Friday nights?? Easy in January/February…. but now that it’s June…. not so easy! :)

So to continue to lean out and march toward my goal of 7.5% bodyfat, I can do a couple different things. I can watch calories on my eating days, and be careful with the amount of half-n-half in my coffee on fast days. OR… I can just bring back the 3rd fast day on Friday, which will be enough to erase any calorie excess for the week. The key thing here is it’s the calorie deficit for the WEEK AS A WHOLE. Not just day-to-day.

I’m sooo close to my goal! I’m 1.5% bodyfat away! I gotta’ think some people read this and think it’s INSANE. WHY would anyone want to do that to themselves?? Why would you give up pizza and candy and ice cream and fast food and even things the uninformed THINK are healthy like brown rice and whole wheat bread? Why on earth would anyone NOT eat for a whole day?? Let alone 3 days a week!? Well here’s a picture I took this morning at 9.0% bodyfat. This is why. Totally worth it! I’m in the final push. Once I GET there, it’s 100 times easier to STAY there:

10% Bodyfat!

2011-01-05T18:56:00.001-08:00

Monday, April 19, 2010

I got below 11% bodyfat for the first time! (ok, 10.NINE percent but still) Now I realize these bodyfat scales aren’t totally accurate. I may in fact be anywhere from 9-13% bodyfat, you know +/- 2%. But there is some degree of RELATIVE accuracy. This is the same scale that told me I was 26% bodyfat in March 2009. The same scale that told me I was 13.1% before I got into intermittent fasting. And the same scale that has had me STUCK in the 11-point-something range for 2 and a half MONTHS! Seriously I first saw 11-point-something on that scale on February 1st. Now on April 19th I finally broke through to 10.9% It definitely gets 10X harder to drop bodyfat for a man once he goes below about 15%. Above 15% as long as I did MOST things right the weight just FELL off at 1-2 pounds a week. But below that….. much more difficult.

I’m actually 1/2 pound heavier now than I was February 1st. And I still have a lower bodyfat % reading. So I’m pretty happy about that. I didn’t have to shed 4 pounds of muscle or some nonsense to drop another % bodyfat. But…. why would I?? I’m not surfing and doing cardio, and I’m holding my strength in the gym or getting a TINY BIT stronger in everything. Cardio is THE #1 muscle destroyer. And I’m eating 150 grams of protein/ day. So I wouldn’t expect to tear through muscle mass. But…. this is all uncharted territory so who knows…

I am concerned about muscle mass, since this knee injury is keeping me from deadlifting. BUT… I did start doing pull-ups. I was only doing curls before and letting deadlift take care of my back and lats. Maybe… any muscle I lose in my legs and ass will be made up for by the pull-ups in my arms and back. Honestly what does it matter; I can’t control this unfortunately. I can’t do deadlift until my knee heals.

I actually seem to be doing a little bit BETTER in everything in the gym since I stopped deadlifting. All my upper body lifts are going well. Like ANY guy I’d rather have muscular arms, chest, back, traps over muscular legs, lower back and butt. So maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. I’m just going to relish this opportunity to focus on my upper body. It’s just too bad, because I had built NICE strong legs and an ass. Prior to the last couple years deadlifting, I had Eric-Foreman-from-that-70′s-show style skinny legs and no ass. Keep in mind as I write this I’m 5’11″ 152 pounds. And that is an IMPROVEMENT from my college weight of 140 pounds. I was THAT skinny and undermuscled. I have no desire to be a big meathead bodybuilder, I just want a “normal” man’s build. ….I think it will all work out with the pull-ups in place of deadlift, just a little different muscle-mass distribution. We’re probably talking like a total of 5-10 pounds of muscle… so it’s a pretty moot point. Not anything anyone but me would ever even be aware of!

I blew my knee out!

2011-01-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

Friday, April 16, 2010

Well 2 weeks ago, I blew my knee out playing kickball. Yes KICKball! As in with a big red rubber f*&king ball! As in – there’s nooooooooooo WAY I could get hurt playing freakin’ KICKBALL! But there was a way and I found it. ;) I was in a full sprint to home plate and saw a guy on the other team ready to throw the ball at me to get me out. With my left foot planted I essentially tried to decelerate my entire body. I JUST got brand new cleats after playing 8 games in regular sneakers and slipping on the wet grass every week. The cleats worked. TOO well. They dug in to the grass and that foot did NOT MOVE. So when I tried to decelerate rapidly, instea of just sliding a little bit on that foot, or maybe having it slip out from under me and falling on my ass cartoon-style, all that force traveled up to the next joint and my knee took all the torsion force.

I felt the knee joint STRETCH and get loose – still at a dead sprint now, my right leg comes around and goes down, slowing me a little more. The next time my left leg came around the knee buckled. The joint basically dislocated and my femur bone SLAMMED into my tibia. I limped off the field and was done for the game. It swelled up like a grapefruit within an hour. I could hobble around that night. But the next day I couldn’t put any weight on it. The next night I had to pop Vicodin TWICE just to sleep. Finally 3 days after I could put SOME weight on it. With a cane and a tightly wrapped brace I can get around. It’s been 11 days now and I can actually walk with just the brace and not the cane – albeit SLOWLY.

The day after, I really thought I was boned! I’ve torn an ACL before – in fact on that same leg. And I thought that’s what I did. But now I’m not so sure. I think there’s a very good chance I simply STRETCHED some ligaments, sprained the knee and didn’t tear anything. I didn’t hear a pop, I didn’t FEEL any tearing. I think I’ve got a good chance of recovering without surgery. My health care plan and finances are too shitty right now for me to see a doctor. It’s not life threatening so it has to wait. Honestly if money was no object and I did see a doc, and he said ‘you need surgery’, I’d just argue with him anyway. I’d tell him to suck it, I’m going to take a conservative approach for 6 months first and see how that works.

My plan is to continue to eat the diet I’m eating which is EXACTLY what your body needs to build and repair ligaments, cartilage and tendons. Ample fruits and veggies, and protein to create new collagen. Additionally I’m supplementing with Glucosamine chondroitin, which also helps with joint repair. The swelling is down and I’m working on range of motion. LIGHT work on an exercise bike, and LIGHT leg presses to get the strength back.

In the days after I thought the joint was effed. It didn’t feel stable at all. But in only 11 days it’s tightened up a lot. I still don’t trust walking without a brace, and I HOBBLE. No running. No stepping off curbs or down stairs recklessly. But I think it will get better with proper nutrition, supplementation, and physical therapy.

WHY am I writing about this on a diet blog? Because it impacts my weight loss plan. For the first 2 weeks I didn’t do any IF days. I want all the nutrients my body needs to repair itself. The timetable for ligament repair is probably 3-6 months. So given that, I will probably resume one IF day a week on Monday. I don’t think 1 fast day will impact my ligament repair enough to matter. But over 3-6 months it will impact my bodyfat percentage. I basically don’t WANT to put my fat loss plan on hold just because my knee is repairing itself. And I don’t think I have to. If I thought that one IF day a week, would jeopardize my knee repair, I wouldn’t do it.

The other thing is I can’t deadlift anymore – for the time being. Deadlift is a full body TAXING workout, that creates nutrional demands for protein to build and repair muscle. If I could do that while fasting 1 day a week, surely I can recover from a knee injury with 1 fast day a week.

Finally… the one silver lining in all this is – My plan isn’t shot now! Anyone who tries to CARDIO off the fat instead of DIET off the fat, would be absolutely DEVASTATED by a knee injury. Because it means no cardio. I can’t even walk normally. There’s no way I can run, or do the stairmaster, or even work hard on the bike. But since my plan does NOT require cardio, and I am indeed dieting the fat off, it’s business as usual. I can keep chopping off fat and proceed towards my goal of 7-8% bodyfat even in the midst of a pretty big injury. And if I was already at my goal weight it wouldn’t mean I’d have to get fat just because of injury. Using diet to control your weight really liberates you from being a slave to cardio. Here’s a picture of the jacked knee so you can feel good about your healthy knees. ;)

Progress Pic

2011-01-05T18:49:00.003-08:00

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I’m getting there! I caught a glimpse of what looked like at least a COUPLE abs in the mirror. So I grabbed my camera off the dresser and took a picture. (I KNOW, totally gay.) It’s really exciting to see though. I have NEVER in my life had anything even closely resembling an AB muscle before. I’ve been “skinny” but skinny-fat, never lean. This is literally the best shape I’ve ever been in. At 35 years old.

Reign in the Cheating

2011-01-05T18:49:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

So after the “fear of 150″ scare, I slid into a trap a lot of dieters fall into. I was cheating more than I realized. So sticking to my primal diet MOST of the time. Doing 1 1/2 days a week of fasting, but then having one or two cheat items throughout the week, and REALLY blowing it on Sunday nights. I didn’t lose or gain any weight for a couple weeks. Basically in a nutshell, the primal diet is very effective for maintaining my weight, the fast periods would shave a little off and the cheating would put it back on. Just treading water.

I realized what I was doing and put myself back ON what I labeled on my calendar “Primal 150 / I.F. / NO cheating” As in – primal foods that occur in nature with 150 grams of protein a day, a couple intermittent fasting days and of course NO cheating. That worked brilliantly and shaved a couple pounds off in 2 weeks. So where am I now? Right now I’m sitting at 152 pounds and 11% bodyfat on the button.

Afraid of 150 Pounds

2011-01-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

So what’s been happening in the month since I last posted? Well I went through a couple different phases. First I continued dropping weight until I hit 150 on the scale and then just absolutely PANICKED. I have a mental block with that number, like a man is not allowed to weigh less than 150 pounds. Well I’m skinny, there’s only so much muscle on my body. I’m not going to be able to add substantial muscle in the midst of a plan to DIET off fat. And I’m not as low bodyfat as I want to be yet. So the inevitable place I’m going to arrive if I want to be single-digit bodyfat is yes, BELOW 150 pounds.
I know all of that logically, but had what can only be described as an emotional reaction to that 150 number on the scale. No, I don’t mean I cried, I mean I got irrational like a woman. I decided I’d better “bulk up” and add some muscle so I don’t get below 150. I upped my calories a bit and upped my protein from 150 grams day to 200 grams a day. And I decided no more fast days right now. I did this for about 1 week.

But as I looked in the mirror, I realized I LIKE my body. I don’t think it’s too ‘puny’ or skinny. Sure it’d be NICE to have bigger arms, a little bit bigger chest, but I certainly didn’t see “Too skinny” staring back at me. If there is ANYTHING I want to change when I look in the mirror, it’s that I’d like to see more definition in my stomach. And that my friends, does not mean 200 grams of protein a day muscle building, that amounts to FAT LOSS dieting. So I came to my senses and put myself BACK on my diet. Even if it means weighing less than 150 pounds. No “if” about it! I WILL weigh under 150 as I keep dieting down to 7% bodyfat.

But wasn’t that my goal?? My goal wasn’t “to diet down and get as lean as possible, but don’t dare dip under 150 pounds”. No. My goal was to diet down to an ultra lean 7-8% bodyfat. No matter how “light” I get. And like I’ve pointed out, what I already KNOW to be true, if I’ve been walking around most of my adult life at a skinny-fat 155 pounds roughly 16% bodyfat, and I cut that up to 7% bodyfat…. well I’m going to land somewhere below 150. Man it’s like I don’t even want to say it! I may end up weighing 145. Or 140! Tough shit. I can always add muscle AFTER I lean out. I think it’s the NUMBER more than anything else. There’s really very little difference between being 30 years old and being 29, but people freak out on that number! I’m freaking out on the 150 pounds number.

Anyway….. I delt with all that and got back on plan. Incidentally, taking the primal diet I have, adding a few more calories and bumping the protein up to 200 g/day was MONEY for muscle building. I was super strong all week in the gym. So when I do hit 7% bodyfat, that’s the diet I’ll use to muscle up a bit. I don’t think I’ll add much if any fat on that plan. ….but one thing at a time. CUT to 7% now, worry about adding a little muscle after. And then maybe, just maybe, one day I can simply MAINTAIN my body. ;)

Great surf in February be damned!

2010-02-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

Well a monkey-wrench got thrown into my fat loss plan last week. The surf got REALLY good, and the weather got REALLLLLLLLLLLY good. We basically had a 5 day run of summer in mid-february. 75 degrees or so at the beach, NO wind, totally glassy. I couldn't help myself, I had to go surf. Conventional wisdom tells you that's fine, tells you cardio is good, tells you you'll burn fat. WRONG. I know better. The only thing you burn doing hard cardio is muscle glycogen. Walking burns fat, slow biking burns fat. Jogging, surfing, running - that burns glycogen, and if you do it excessively, without massive amounts of carbs (which I'm not eating because I'm on a fat LOSS diet) you'll break down MUSCLE to get that glycogen.

Try as I may to keep the surf session to quick sprints with rest, it quickly degraded into a 2 hour long session of almost constant paddling. AKA, chronic cardio. First I got trapped inside on a 12 wave set. You can't limit your heart rate paddling out surfing, any more than a 5k runner could limit their heart rate running a competitive race. It's not like I can keep it under 75% of maximum. Waves are coming in, you paddle against them as hard as you can and it takes as long as it takes to get out. Or you get pushed back in, or you die. I got stuck inside for 10 minutes on the worst-timed paddle out. After that I was near constantly fighting currents to hold my position for the entire session. And then of course bursts of 100% intensity to catch waves, and paddle back out. Surfing in decent sized surf IS chronic cardio.

It also happens to be really FUN! It's not primal though. No way cavemen would be surfing. Even if they figured out how, it would expend way too much energy. I'm sure they got enough thrills trying to hunt, and not be killed by predators.

The point is, surfing or any hard cardio is NOT what you want when you are doing a carb-controlled diet using intermittent fasting days to lose bodyfat. It's the OPPOSITE of what you want. It demands glycogen and your body will break down muscle to get it. Sure enough the surf was PERFECT after a fast day and both my roommates wanted to surf. I had 3 pieces of fruit and paddled out. 2 apples and a banana I think. Not NEARLY enough to fill glycogen stores for the 2 HOUR session that followed. ...and not enough time to digest it anyway. I ate high carb junk fast food after the surf, because at that one time you actually NEED it. White flour bun? Check! Normally, that would top off your already full glycogen stores and make you fat, but completely glycogen depleted after 2 hours in the water... totally necessary. I suppose you could do brown rice or whole wheat whatever, but I took advantage of the opportunity to eat junk.

I paddled out the next 2 days as well, and purposely ate one meal high in processed carbs right after each surf. Then right back to my normal primal eating style. I didn't even think about any IF days until the next week.

The net result of all this? Just as I suspected, I lost strength in the weight room..... but just in chest and triceps. Deadlift was fine, I just gave it an extra week off. Note that fasting, even up to 3 days a week, the 2 weeks prior didn't cause me to lose any strength in the weight room. But CARDIO did! Cardio is the ANTI-MUSCLE. This is the biggest lie of all from "conventional wisdom" that I fell for. For YEARS, I cardio'ed the fat off instead of dieting it off, and I couldn't figure out why I could never build and keep any muscle. It was the damn cardio!!! In this case, it was from the first surf more than the other two because I was VERY glycogen depleted going into the first surf right after an IF day. The second two my glycogen stores were more full, so while I didn't burn much fat, I doubt I tore into too much muscle that way.

Anyway, when all was said and done, it was a worthwhile decision to go surf and I would certainly do it again if presented with that choice again. I definitely want to reach my goal of a low enough body fat to clearly see my abs. But this was a worthwhile deviation from the plan. Quality of life is important. :) I had 2 roommates home in the middle of the day even though they both work - who wanted to surf, it was 75 degrees in February! (5 years in Boston gives me a FULL appreciation of that kind of warmth) and the surf was perfect. OF COURSE I'll put the fat-loss plan on hold to go enjoy that!

STRONGER.

2010-02-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Well today I got stronger in the 2 exercises I slid in last week. I added multiple reps to chest and tricep exercises. Enough so that I lifted MORE today than when I started the intermittent fasting 2 weeks ago! That's an impressive statement. I'm STRONGER now with 6 fasting days in the books in 2 weeks, then I was before I started this. We're not talking about massive gains, I'm still doing the same weight, jut a few more reps. But still! This is pretty much the exact opposite of what all my friends said would happen. The difference is this week I only worked those bodyparts ONCE a week, not twice.

The lesson is if you're going to embark on an aggressive alternate day intermittent fasting schedule like this with 3 fast days in a week, make sure you adjust your workout schedule. With chest in particular, if I'm eating for growth (and I'm healthy with no nagging rotator cuff injury....) I can lift chest 2-3 times a week and make progress. Fasting like this, twice a week was too much. But once a week has worked out fine. I'm not just HOLDING my strength I'm actually getting stronger!

This just blow my mind. Because everyone tells you it can't happen. That if you fast you'll lose muscle. That if you DARE skip a meal and don't eat six freakin' times a day you'll lose muscle! EVERYONE I know thinks that. Nobody understands the awesome power of intermittent fasting for FAT loss, and NOT losing muscle. It makes sense. It's EXACTLY what bodyfat is for. Surviving in times when there is no food. Is it any wonder Americans have such a hard time losing weight? They're CONSTANTLY EATING! I mean when you step back from what we've been brainwashed to believe your whole life and think about it.... it's RIDICULOUS. How can you POSSIBLY be expected to lose weight when you're being told to eat 3-6 times a DAY?? Bodyfat is an evolutionary survival mechanism. It gets burned off during lean times. If there are no lean times and you're always eating, you'll never burn it off. You know? It just logically makes sense. You want to burn bodyfat... then stop freakin eating!!

Now for the nerdy stuff. I did make some changes from week 1 to week 2 that made the fast more effective for holding, even BUILDING muscle. On the days I eat, I bumped up my protein slightly. I was at about 100-125 grams a day. This week I bumped it up to 150 grams a day. 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. I think that helped in the strength department. You do risk losing muscle in a fast IF....if your boy completely runs out of glycogen - which is why you should do ZERO hard cardio during a fast. And why your lifting in the gym should be hard enough to hit each bodypart once a week, but BRIEF. Do your 3 sets of 8-12 and get out. So the other adjustment I made is on my eating days I made sure to get enough carbs, from healthy non-insulin-spiking primal sources like vegetables, nuts and fruits. I didn't try to go Atkins-style super low carb. Yesterday for example, I had a BIG salad, a big plate of brocholli, a handful of nuts, part of a grapefruit and 3 apples. So I probably took in around 100 carbs or so. That's good, that tops of my glycogen reserves, so I can get through the next day fasted without running out. And therefore my body won't break down muscle tissue to make glycogen.

Every DAY I see a new definition line.

2010-02-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

Man this alternate day intermittent fasting is UNBELIEVABLE. It's not easy. Not becaue you're physically hungry, because you're mentally consumed with thinking about food. But man is it worth it! I think I even understated the situation in the last post. I said if I continued with my primal eating plan alone, it could take me 5-10 months to get as lean as I want since I was only losing fat at the rate of 1 pound a month. But that doesn't take into account at all the fact that the leaner you get the SLOWER it comes off. It may have taken me another year or TWO to get as lean as I want. Any male who's dieted to below 15% bodyfat or so can attest to how it starts to get extremely difficult right around that point.

Anyway, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror today while I was folding shirts and I saw for the first time in my life, a HINT of a definition line on the inside of what I can only assume must be my external oblique muscle. I don't know for sure what muscle it is since I'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE! I'm serious. My entire adult life I've never seen this new line that's coming in. That's pretty awesome.

The "Before" picture.

2010-02-01T21:03:00.000-08:00

So here's where I'm at just prior to last week's IF'ing. This is what you can accomplish JUST by eliminating grains, no longer fearing saturated fat, and switching to a paleo/primal diet. I recommend you follow the diet Mark advises at marksdailyapple.com. There was no cardio involved! I mean sure I surfed a lot in September when it got good, but I'm not pointlessly beating myself up on a bike or treadmill. I've surfed twice in the last 4 months, so essentiall ZERO cardio in that time. It's ALL diet baby! The pic on the left was taken in March 2009 at 200 pounds, probably about 27% bodyfat. It's hard to say exactly. FAT. I know that much. On the right January 2010, 155 pounds, probably about 13% bodyfat.

I've been saying that I've been at the same weight for months. But I went back and looked at the photos and numbers, and that's not accurate. Prior to the IF week, I was in fact still losing weight. But it had slowed to 1 pound a month. I don't expect instant results but.... people really have the patience for ONE pound a month? Are you freakin' kidding me?

To get the LEAN body I want, with clearly defined abs simply requires a little more fat loss. Even though I'm not what most people would call "fat" in the picture on the right, there is still a good 5-10 pounds of fat on my body which is blurring the lines of definition I want. It's definition-blurring fat, -vs- rolls or BULGES of fat, but it's still fat. So if I just kept eating primal, without intermittent fasting, I'd be looking at 5-10 MONTHS before I hit my goal. That's just way too long. I think it makes much more sense to get aggressive and do the IF'ing 3 days a week for as long as that takes. As long as I don't start dropping muscle, why not? My guess is it will take 3-6 weeks of IF'ing using the M-W-F schedule to get down to 7-8% bodyfat. That's a way better proposition than 10 MONTHS to drop that last little bit. Here's the pic:

Results of the first IF week.

2010-02-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

Well today I weighed in after last week's intermittent fasting experience. It consisted of primal eating Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sunday. And fasting M, W, F. The only cheat, non primal thing I had all week was one egg roll. ...that's probably not going to sink the ship. ;) Anyway, the results are in, since I've made Monday my weigh in day. And I'm down 4 pounds in one week! Pretty amazing. Even more amazing when you consider the strength gains I made in the gym last week.

4 pounds in a week would be impressive for a fat person. But also consider, I am not fat. My starting point is around 13% bodyfat. To lose weight rapidly from an already impressive 13% bodyfat is pretty sweet. I also did ZERO cardio. Despite what the misinformed conventional wisdom tells you, you don't cardio off the fat, you DIET it off.

If I'd made the mistake of doing cardio fasted, I would have put demands on my body for glycogen, and broke down my own MUSCLE to make that glycogen. That would have been an absolute disaster. That's why the anorexic hollwood actresses look so horrible. They don't eat - and not for a day at a time, chronically, and then they go do marathon cardio sessions. It's a recipe for disasterous muscle-loss. Intermittent fasting on the other hand without the chronic cardio is near magical in it's ability to burn fat and leave your muscle largely intact.

My lifting session today was a mixed bag. I dropped 1 rep out of 30 total reps in two of my exercises. That's not ideal, I want to hold or slowly improve. But I'm willing to trade ONE lousy rep, to drop 4 pounds of fat in a week! I can get that back pretty quickly when I'm done losing fat. In my 3rd exercise I actually got stronger. I don't expect to get stronger during this. If I can HOLD the muscle I have, or even only lose a tiny amount, I will be very happy. So far it seems like I am holding it. I got stronger the first week and a mixed bag this week. I'm totally happy with that.

ENJOY your fast!

2010-01-31T13:49:00.000-08:00

Before doing this 3 days a week IF schedule I was somewhat dreading it. Treating it as a "necessary evil" as the only way to get below 12% bodyfat. Wondering really if I'd make it, wondering if I wouldn't fall off the wagon half way thorough Wednesday and say it's too hard. I've never been below about 12% bodyfat or so in my life. It's always harder to BELIEVE in something you have yet to accomplish.

But as luck would have it I'm in the middle of reading this book on positive self-talk, and how you can use these affirmation statements said to yourself or out loud, to get your subconscious mind on board, so you BELIEVE in yourself. Believe you can do whatever it is you're setting out to do. The argument is if you don't BELIEVE you will subconsciously sabotage yourself. So if I don't BELIEVE I can get down to 7 or 8% bodyfat, I will inadvertantly do things that make sure I don't get there. I might have given up on the fast on Wedneday. Or stuck to it, but then had pizza over the weekend, or any number of things that sabotage my efforts. The compelling argument is all those actions are because your subconscious does not BELIEVE you can do it. So basically it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy.

Personally I'm convinced. I believe in the power of this positive self talk. So I started telling myself things like "I will get to 7% bodyfat" "I enjoy my fast, I enjoy being PRODUCTIVE and getting things done when I fast." "I am the leanest I've ever been in my life!" "I have six pack abs."

I know. I know how it sounds like hokey-pokey, hippy new age BS. I know. All I can say is it works! Prior to this week I wasn't able to manage more than 1 fast day a MONTH. And the last time I did, I undid all the good by cheating and having a PINT of ice cream 2 days after the fast. This week I haven't cheated at all and I did 3 full fast days. Because I BELIEVE I can succeed! It's not a trivial difference. It's the difference between success and failure. At ANYTHING in life, not just this. Plus..... as a huge bonus. Once you start believing and choose to ENJOY the fast, it becomes far less a matter of willpower and willing yourself to do something you don't like and instead just a little willpower to stick with something you DO like.

Not eating isn't fun. But it doesn't have to be horrible. Keeping busy helps. So I made that into an asset, a huge positive, not a liablity. Instead of wasting HOURS of my day on the couch socializing with my roommates and preparing and eating foods (healthy foods but it still takes hours from my day) I locked myself in my room and worked on my business. I made cold calls, emailed people I needed to, updated the website. I was extremely productive.

You've got to look at fasting differently and make up your mind to ENJOY it instead of white-knuckling yourself through it. I took it as a huge opportunity to be productive. Yeah you're not eating. GREAT! That means for the whole day your thoughts aren't consumed with where your next meal is coming from. Take that opportunity and be productive. Don't sit around thinking about how you want to eat.

3 days of fasting in one week.

2010-01-31T13:13:00.000-08:00

Well I made it through my first week of using intermittent fasting. And "made it through" isn't the best way to put it. Because it was NOT like this brutally difficult thing. Sure it required discipline, but it wasn't that hard. I did a pretty aggressive schedule of fasting Mon, Wed, Fri, and eating primal Tues, Sat, Sun. I didn't cheat at all on my off days. It's Sunday morning now, but I'm not going to cheat, I've committed to doing this right. ;)

I dropped a rep or two on my chest exercise in the gym on Friday, but gained in everything else. Not conincidentally chest was the only exercise I did TWICE during the week, Monday and Friday. While that's a perfectly fine schedule when you're eating ample calories and ample protein to GROW new muscle, it's too much for a substantially calorie restricted fat loss period. I don't want to stop lifting because my body needs to know it's going to be stressed and needs to hold on to the muscle it has. So for next week I've knocked chest workout down to once-a-week like every other bodypart. Once a week is enough "maintenance" that I don't think I'll lose muscle mass.

So on the first 2 fast days Monday and Wednesday, my energy level was SCREAMING in the morning, solid in the afternoon and then tapered off at the end of the day. I actually had MORE energy in the gym lifting heavy weights fasted than I ever have lifting normally. I lift lat morning / early afternoon. I also got COLD at the end of the day. My hands and feet got cold like a girl. I've heard other fasters say the same thing happened to them. I think your body is just going into survival mode and trying to conserve calories. Keeping your body hot at 98.6 all the way down to your fingertips requires a lot of calories.

On Friday I had a comedy show scheduled at 7:00pm and then "the boys" wanted to go out to the bars and party after that. I figured I'd do the comedy show first and see how I felt. M and W I went to bed around midnight when my energy level tapered off so.... we'll see. At the comedy show I had a coffee with probably 100 calories worth of half and half cream. At 10:00pm when the show was over I had another one. By the time I got back to the house around 11:00 I was amped up. I had a non-alcoholic beer for another 75 calories at the house. So unlike M and W, this wasn't a complete water fast; I did have about 275 calories in liquid later in the evening. It's amazing what an impact that had on my energy. I went out o the bars with the boys (had water all night) and was just ON and wide awake like all the drunks. You'd NEVER know I hadn't eaten all day. I was dancing and bouncing around talking to people. Of course an "afterparty" ends up at our house. First time that has happened in MONTHS. Right on the day I'm fasting. Now at 2:00Am I AM tired, but no chance of sleeping until people leave. People do finally leave and I end up going to bed at 4:00AM. I was up from 10:30am to 4:00am completely fasted (except for 275 liquid calories).

One thing I have noticed is you sleep LESS and it's interupted after a fast. My fasts start the night BEFORE. So if I'm fasting Friday for example, my last meal is Thursday night, 8 hours of sleep, fast all day, another night of sleep then start eating Saturday morning. All 3 nights I woke up often during the night. And I only slept like 4-6 hours. Tuesday morning I woke right up after 4 1/2 hours of sleep. I think it's your bodies survival mode kicking in. You know like "WAKE UP and get me some fuel so I don't die!" You ever notice how all you want to do after a big carb meal is sleep? This was the opposite of that. The AMAZING thing is I never crashed! All 3 days AFTER the fast, waking up on only 4-6 hours sleep, I never bonked, never hit the wall. I was fine all day long. So maybe something about fasting requires less daily sleep. It sure seems that way.

Something that really helped with fasting is to KEEP MOVING. If you keep moving, keep busy, keep doing stuff, you don't have time to think about your fast. I even found myself forgetting about it. Friday was a LONG, long day. And I made it through no problems. Going to do the comedy show, going out with friends at night. It kept me going all day.

Coffee with cream can be your friend if you are really having an energy crisis. I don't consider 100 liquid calories to really be breaking the fast. I'd go without as the first option, but if that's what you need to milk 4 more hours out of your day, go for it.

4 eggs never tasted so good.

2010-01-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Today the morning after intermittent fasting day #2 this week I had 4 eggs for breakfast. 4 eggs never tasted so good! Food sure tastes different after a fast. You really get a feel for the idea that you are NOURISHING your body, because it needs it, not just because you're eating from boredom.

Primal diet WITH intermittent fasting

2010-01-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

I'm down to 12% bodyfat now... where I have been for about 3 months. Weight won't budge at all, which makes sense, I'm basically eating at a level to maintain a healthy weight. If I want to get down to a "Mark Sisson lean" single digit bodyfat I need to lop off calories somewhere. I find the idea of simply not eating for a day at a time actually EASIER than trying to just eat less all the time. Does that make sense? I'd rather eat till I'm full on my primal eating days and eat nothing on my IF days, than try to eat "primal but also reduced calorie" all the time. PLUS, it's way faster! If I fast for one day, that's roughly a 2500 calorie defecit. You'd have to do a LOT of days of "eating less" to hit that. Even if you could manage a 400 calorie a day defecit and manage it CONSISTENTLY, it would still take you 6 days to equal the defecit you'd get by simply fasting for 1 day. 6 days of willpower or 1? You decide.

Some would argue that fasting is harder than eating less..... I don't know. I think mentally it is because every time you start to think about your next meal you have to catch yourself and say "Oh no that's right I'm not eating AT ALL today." But as far as actual hunger goes, I think consciously trying to cut calories and eat LESS is much harder. ....because the very act of eating makes you hungry! Really! People who haven't fasted will find this very difficult to believe, but you really don't get all that hungry fasting. I experienced MUCH stronger hunger going 6 hours without food while eating an insulin-spiking high carb standard American diet than I ever did doing a full 36 hour fast. (Eat a small cheeseburger and fries at noon and see how hungry you are by 6:00pm)

I've done 1 or 2 intermittent fasting days in the past, no more than 1 IF day a month - which while perfectly healthy doesn't do much towards dropping off bodyfat. This week I decided to IF on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with regular primal eating Tues, Thurs, Sat, and Sunday. That's 3 DAYS of 0 calories.

I've done 3 fasting days in my LIFE prior to this. So this is definitely new territory. 3 days in one week. I'm excited about the potential for fat loss based on just the sheer calorie reduction. 3 days... if I don't overeat on the non-fasting days - and I won't, I plan on success not failure - then for the week I will be down roughly 7,500 calories. You can't help but lose bodyfat on a plan like that.

Unless you lose muscle! And that was my biggest concern. But not so much of a concern that I won't give it a try.

Well how's this for mind-blowing. It's Wednesday night now. So I've done 2 of the fasting days and one of the primal eating days. It just so happens I lift weights in the gym every M-W-F. So my lifting falls on my fasting days. I've had 2 lifting sessions so far and here are the results:

Monday I was stronger in all my lifts (lifting completely fasted mind you!) Today Wednesday, also fasted I hit a lifetime personal best in 2 of my lifts! So much for conventional wisdom's dire warnings about "starvation mode" if you DARE to skip a meal. I'm not doing a 'condensed eating window' either, I'm doing a full 36 hour fast where the last meal I have is Sunday night, eat NOTHING all day Monday and my next meal would be Tuesday morning. So because you have 2 nights sleep around your one day of not eating, it works out to more than 24 hours, more like 36 hours fasting.... but in reality we all fast 8 hours every night normally. Make sense? Good.

I have a completely un-scientific explanation for this unexpected prowess in the weight room. Going in to this, I figured primal man went for extended periods without food and as long as it wasn't too long he didn't die. The entire REASON we store bodyfat in the first place after all is to use as a fuel when there is no food availabe. So that bunk about "starvation mode" seems kind of shortsighted. Wouldn't your body "want" to tap your fat reserves and use that? That's EXACTLY what they are there for! Why would it tear apart your muscle and not fat?? So I didn't expect a disaster and a ton of muscle loss. But I definitely didn't expect "lifetime personal bests!" I didn't expect to get STRONGER in everything.

I think if you tried to do extended cardio sessions fasted you'd be in deep trouble and would lose muscle. Because despite what the minions of idiots in the gym think, hard cardio burns glycogen NOT fat. If you aren't eating carbs AND you burn off all the glycogen you have, your body would then break down muscle to make more glycogen. But what I did, just sitting in front of a computer all day, and lifting weights, didn't demand that much glycogen. The weight lifting definitely required glycogen, but I'm only fasting for a day at a time, I eat fruit and veggies the day before and after so I have enough glycogen stores to work with.

My un-scientific theory for why I got SO much stronger (I mean I added 7 total reps to one exercise!) is this. I think - and like I said totally unscientific - I think that when you don't eat for a day, and then go back to eating, your body becomes MORE efficient at using the protein you give it. Something about that fast, makes you build and repair muscle more effectiently when you go back to eating. You could argue that your body would also want to store more fat when you go back to eating to prepare for the next perceived "famine". But if when you go back to eating, you eat a primal diet which doesn't spike insulin.... well then you give your body no opportunity to store fat! You don't store fat without spiking insulin.

I don't know man.... I think a primal diet with bouts of intermittent fasting is the best thing ever for body composition. I KNEW it would be a killer for fat loss, but I had no idea I'd do so well in the gym. I hoped to HOLD my strength or "not lose too much strength". I never thought I'd get STRONGER in everything! Unreal.

You have to get the Diet dialed in FIRST

2010-01-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

After 20 YEARS of doing different things that don't work I may finally have found something that works for bicep growth.

And that caused me to realize, before you can muck with workouts and number of sets and reps and frequency of training and volume and anything else, you have to have your diet dialed in. FIRST.

I spent YEARS - I mean literally more than a decade - thinking the workout was the problem. Maybe I should work this muscle once a week, maybe I should try twice a week, maybe 3 times a week. Maybe a 4-5 day split so Monday and Friday one week, then Wednesday the next, then - Maybe I should do 3 sets of 12 reps, maybe I should do 5X5. Maybe I should do 1 exercise per bodypart, maybe 4. Sound familiar?? Well NONE of those things matter if your diet is dialed-in FIRST! If you aren't eating appropriately to grow NONE of those variables matter. There comes a time when they do matter, but if you systematically aren't growing, if you look the same now as you did 6 months ago.... trust me it's NOT your workouts, it's your diet.

Now if you get to a point where I have, where for 7 months I've made progress on deadlift, but NOT on biceps. Then it's time to muck with the variables and find out why. I can't have gotten so strong in deadlift without solid diet to support growth. So if biceps aren't following suit on the same body, eating the same way, getting the same rest, THEN at that point it's the workout.

The other thing to look out for of course if cardio. If you're doing too much cardio, you'll never grow muscle. (Think marathon runners, and Tour de France Cyclist -vs- Olympic track sprinters) ...but that's a post for another time.

Down 1.5 more pounds!

2010-01-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

I weighed in at 155 yesterday! That's AWESOME considering it's been 2 weeks since I weighed in last and that time covered Christmas break. My diet wasn't perfect in New York city. I did have 2 slices of pizza and 2 Dunkin' Donuts English Muffins while I was there, and a few pieces of candy at my parents house, but over a week's time that's not much. And I also had plenty of fruit, veggies, meat and salads. I think I really helped myself out by bringing grapes, nuts and beef jerky on the plane and eating that instead of junk.

I got up this morning and walking around my room shirtless I caught a glimpse in the mirror a couple times of my top 4 abs. Certainly not a 6 pack by any means, and everything has to come together, the right lighting, the right angle, a full moon, on a Thursday. ;)

I'm still not there YET, I still don't have the abs I set out to get, but I'm making progress. I've NEVER in my entire adult life seen 4 abs show in a mirror like that at any angle. I'm the leanest I've been in my life. That's pretty awesome.

I'm wondering though how much LIGHTER am I gonna' get?? I'm already down to 155 pounds. I guess it doesn't matter since I'm getting leaner AND getting stronger in all my lifts in the gym. It's just as a man you have a certain idea in your head of what an appropriate "manly" weight is and you don't want to drop below that. At 5'11" I really don't want to drop below 150 pounds. But at the same time my entire adult life until 2007 when I purposely put on weight trying to "bulk up" I walked around at a very skinny-fat, DOUGHY 155. Not fat in clothes, but certainly not lean. So if you take a skinny-fat 155 and cut it up to single digit bodyfat numbers, you'll probably get about 140. Yikes!

I think I'm a little bit ahead of the game right now because I carry a BIT more muscle, but not much. I'm already decently lean at 155 this time around. I have to go from about 11% to 8% not the skinny-fat 16% to 8%. But still... I think in all liklihood I'll drop below 150 to get as lean as I want. I don't WANT to drop below 150 but I'll do it. I'm ok with that to have abs for the first time in my life. You don't want to get too hung up on the numbers. Honestly a RIPPED 148 is gonna' look so much better than a skinny-fat 155-160. Even if mentally I'd rather weigh 160 than 148. Once I hit my bodyfat goals, I can add more protein and FOOD to my diet and slowly add some muscle. I think ideally at 8% bodyfat I'd like to weigh about 170. On my small frame that would look pretty damn muscular.