Workout was outside at 35 deg F in shorts and short sleeve shirt:
-8 all out sprints on around 100 yrds each
-4 one minute sets of kettlebells. One arm swings, one arm snatches, 2 arm swings & 2 arm high swings. Shot baskets between sets.
Lunch was a salad with turkey chunks.
Before my workout today I had the skin fold measurements done. 4.5mm on chest, 8.5mm on abs, and 10.5mm on thigh. That puts me just under 7.9%. With my weight being up to around 180# now that means I have gained some 2# of lean mass in the last couple of months as the body fat % went down and weight went up. I am glad to see it isn't getting too low, however.
Fasting today until dinner. I was starving last night and had a snack of an apple and a spoonful of "natural" peanut butter around 9pm, so the fast won't be quite as long as a full day.
Great workout today. Paired up and did 5x5 style, this time with more weight on all exercises:
Fast movements all around on contractions. Slow on down movements. Cold shower.
Food last 24hrs:
Dinner last night was taco salad with grass fed beef and some chicken tenders. Was great with some avacado, salsa, and a touch of sour cream. No chips and I had no cheese yet my family had some. Snacked on some dark chocolate, peanut butter(one heaping teaspoon) and some trail mix. Breakfast was a chicken tender left over with onions and an omega 3 egg and 2 egg whites. Had 2 slices of cantelope and a handful of grapes with it and a dry cappuccino.
Did a mixed workout today(30 mins):
Cold shower then a walk up the hill. Probably a salad for lunch then wild salmon for dinner.
Belly Fat Diet:
While on the treadmill I watched some of the Today show. They had a fitness segment on "The Belly Fat Diet", which recommended mono-unsaturated fatty acids(MUFAs) as a way to burn the fat. They also suggesting lowering carb intake. Made me wonder whether it was the lower carbs doing it or the MUFAs. Either way, it seems like there is some traction for fat not being all bad and carbs not being the best for you or your abs, which is good. They also suggested 4 meals be day and never going for longer than 4 hours without food. I can go there with them. Saturated fat is also still out, which I can't go with them there either. Interesting story nonetheless. Maybe fats are making a comeback.
Magazine Cover:
Another intersting thing I noted was the study in contrasts on the cover of a magazine I saw while taking my Nike Frees off at the gym. The cover shows halloween colored cupcakes on the cover and a story to show how to make them. Right next to it was something diet realted like "lose 5 pounds of fat in the next week". The cupcake diet will be coming next? This was really silly to me. No one seems to get that one causes the other or maybe they just don't care. They must care somewhat since they put diet stories on magazine covers all the time.
Did another paired 5x5 workout today. These are really hard. I moved up in weights on almost every exercise and was pretty exhausted. No food since dinner last night and will be fasting through dinner tonight.
Workout(~45 minutes):
Weight movements were as fast as possible up then slower down. Very little rest in between sets and I was winded quite a bit of the workout.
This style workout is very challenging as there is only heavy weights and almost no rest due to the alternating/pariring of exercises. I was totally sore yesterday and when I woke up today as a result of Saturday's workout. I sense this will really be adding some muscle. It might already be working as I was almost 182# on the scale today. I think I will do this twice a week for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.
Went to the Y for some lifting with my family. I did 5 sets of 5 reps per set for 9 exercises. To maximize lifting versus rest I paired them up:
-Dips and Close grip pull ups: no assist
-DB dead lifts(90# each arm) and DB Incline Bench Press(50#)
-One arm overhead presses with DB(35#). I didn't need a paired up exercise since alternating arms was enough.
-Bent Over Rows(90#) and DB Bench Press(60#)
-Back Squats(185#) and Cable crunches('8'). After taking off the 25# plates I finished with 29 jump squats. All squats were full depth.
I also did a set of five isolation curl negatives for each arm with a dumb bell. Shot baskets for 10 minutes. Total workout time was around an hour.
This type of lifting was very grueling. All heavier weights and many more reps. Alternating exercise pairs really makes for little rest and lots of work in a sort period of time. It is kind of like doing only the last set of 15/8/4 for the entire time. I will be doing it again soon.
Lunch was a green salad with a couple of cans of tuna.
The idea was that food is plentiful during the spring and animals will eat quite a bit to refill the coffers from winter and the result will be an insulin increase as it directs the excess to storage. Since this coincides with when food is plentiful, why not reproduce and insulin may provide a convenient marker for this. If there is a drought then the food is more scarce and therefore insulin levels might be lower, providing less of a sex drive since children might be less likely to survive. Either was I can see how we evolved to where insulin and libido are coupled in some way. This brings us to modern times.
In modern America there is no mating period, that is to say that every day is mating time and I wonder if diet is in some way related. We never go hungry, so it is always like spring. Also, our diet has caused the insulin levels to rise due to our reliance on agricultual food higher in refined carbhydrate than ever experienced before. I suspect that this has had an effect on libido and contributed to an oversexed culture. Anecdotally, the sexual nature of our society seems to be increasing over the years (or possibly I am getting older and it just seems that way). Is it possible that this, in part, diet related?
From my experience(being a bit brave here, might be too much information... ) I have noticed a normalization of libido since making major dietary changes in Feb. I see it as being more normal now where before it was too high. The difference was quite noticable to both my wife and myself, in a good way. It could be that I am just getting older, but this possibilty exists as well.
The cruel joke may be on older men if there is ever a link in diet on erectile disfunction. High libido and no way to do anything about it is a bad double whammy.
I have not stumbled upon any research in this area. Dudes don't talk about this, in general, so I would not be surprised to find little. If you know of anything I would be curious to learn more or if you have any experience with this, feel free to comment anonymously. :-)
At the airport was "sugar hour". Lots of breakfast baked good and fruit. No protein or fat on it's own. Pass.
The flight breakfast was more of the same. A small muffin, sweetened yogurt, fruit(melon and grapes) and a egg sandwich on a biscuit. Pass.
My wife was ravenous, so she ate her fruit, and egg sandwich without the top, the egg part of mine. There are a couple of possibilities as to why, since we eat nearly the same. She ate fairly light last night, so that doesn't help the hunger. Also, she takes toffee nut syrup in her coffee and had a small apple at one point. This might have caused a insulin response that caused the extreme hunger for her and not in me since I was fasting.
The masses were gobbling it down. Any wonder why at least half are overweight?
I had a feeling the food would be bad so I used it as a chance to fast intermittently. I think the very very low amount of carbs I eat makes this possible since the hunger, there for sure, isn't ravenous.
I am really annoyed that the M key on my Palm Centro is not working well...
I have been growing my hair longer and wonder whether it looks better or worse. I was asked yesterday whether I was getting a permanent treatment. Since people won't tell you to your face if they like it I wonder if there is an online way to solicit that info anonymously. I also wonder if I am getting more vain as I get older...
My cholesterol lowering changes have been going well. I now average less than 1 egg per day. I fill in with leaner meat and egg whites. I dropped cheese for the most part and drink very little milk. I am opting for more fish and leaner meats when I can, but I am not too anal about it. The triglycerides were up last time so I am eating less fruit(1 serving per day on average) and drinking less wine and beer. We will see in a couple of weeks the effect on the lipid profile...
The second batman movie is on. Governator Arnold is Mr Freeze and looks silly. Also. If he likes the cold so much why is he wearing a heavy coat?...
I see relatives of mine on EF still drinking sweetened drinks and a few thoughts come to mind.
-Do they think it is OK? Since the "white stuff" is dissolved it makes it allright?
-Do they think "at least it isn't high fructose corn syrup"?
-Fruit juice comes from fruit so it must be fine? Don't they know fruit juice has as much sugar as several fruits combined without the other good stuff?
-Is the sweet nectar too addicting and hard to give up?
Can't complain too much since they are still losing weight, but it is a missed opportunity to be healthier...
I have been watching "Blaine's Low Carb Kitchen" on FitTV. Good show that I have gotten some good ideas from, but it has it's problems with sweeteners. Each show he uses splenda or some other low carb sweetener. I think this is a mistake. If the sweet taste fools the body into releasing insulin then the result will still be bad. Best to just cut this stuff out, but his audience may loose interest as they want the sweet stuff...
I am going to be starting on a new project soon and I am really looking forward to it. I will be back writing code again rather than leading projects all the time. Project leadership will drop to 50 percent and I will get to do my own work and learn C++ and Tcl/Tkl. Can't wait...
I still get tons of comments on my Vibram FiveFingers barefoot "shoes". I catch people looking at my feet all the time and at least one person has the nerve to ask about them whenever I go out wearing them...
It has been almost 8 years since I had LASIC surgery to correct my vision. It was money well spent. Vision still 20/20 and no problems...
Enough thoughts for one post.
The main takeaway for me was his debunking of calorie balance, or at least the interpretation of it. The conventional wisdom is that we get fat because we eat too much and exercise too little. While it is true that there is an association between excess eating and being a couch potato, it doesn't mean that is the cause. He suggests that there is compelling evidence to suggest the causation is backwards and overeating and sloth are instead caused by being overweight and having a metabolic imbalance due to carbohydrates. The screwed up metabolism channels nutrients to fat, thus "starving" people internally. Like all starvation this leads to lower energy expenditure and severe hunger. They eat, but it isn't usable by their bodies since insulin pushes it into fat storage and they are hungry afterward, deepening the vicious cycle. Eating less doesn't work since it just makes the hunger worse. The way out is to drop the carbs down to a minimum so the insulin won't continue
messing things up. The hunger then subsides and the body's natural energy balance mechanisms can work as they evolved to.
He discounts the value of exercise, and I can understand why. Burning calories will just make the starvation worse as well. You can't exercise your way to being thin and lean unless the insulin is lowered and you have access to your fat stores of energy. Typical cardio exercise is the worst since it blindly burns calories without the positive hormonal drive. In my mind, a shorter, intense activity pattern would be very beneficial, and possibly be essential to long term health, but this would be less optimal unless the main hormone, insulin, is back under control. Growth hormone, driven by intense exercise, mobilizes stored fat for example. Low level cardio won't help with this.
In short, it appears to mostly be about hormone balance, not energy balance. With the right hormone drive the energy balance sorts itself out and body composition improves. Perfect energy balance(calories in/out) won't help much if hormones are out of whack since it will starve you internally. It explains the belly fat on joggers too.
I see fat people in a different light after reading it. I also further buy into Evolutionary Fitness as a result since it will return you to the right hormone drive.
As an engineer I found the book interesting as well. Biases are everywhere and scientists ignore empirical evidence counter to their theories. Wrong ideas take on a life of it's own if repeated often enough. We all are guilty of this confirmation bias and need to be very skeptical of our own thoughts and experts opinions in this very complex, modern world. We are paying the price of the lack of real science in the nutrition research process.
I highly recommend the book. If this doesn't change your thinking about low fat high carb diets then nothing will.
Workout(around 50 minutes):
-incline bench
-one arm cable pulls on BOSU
-squats: long pyramid series. Sets at 135#, 155#, 175#, 195#, and 205#. All full squats with less reps as weight increased.
-standing curls: the usual pyramid with an alactic set at 85# at the end.
-one arm tricep extensions including an alactic set with both arms and machine maxed out.
-DB bench: another longer pyramid ending at 70#
-DB overhead press: pyramid plus alactic set at 90-110# with bar bell
-Bent rows: Alactic set with 125#
Good workout. I earned my vacation.
Fasting until lunch.
Fasting today after a 3 day weekend.
Lifted this morning earlier than usual(About 45 mins total). Was a mixture of lower weight, higher reps for some along with alactic on exercises:
Met my wife for lunch at a Mongolian BBQ. Meat and veggies in a bowl.
Made fish for dinner with a small salad and some broccoli rabe. The fish was "whiting" bought frozen at WAL MART. I see now there was a reason it was $2/pound. It was awful. We ended up heating up some leftover chicken and pork to go with the very good broccoli rabe. Had some nut/trail mix as a snack later with a few pieces of leftover fruit from this morning.
Sunday was a bit of an overindulgence day and I paid for it yesterday. Sunday I had a cider doughnut and a home made chocolate chip cookie for dessert. I felt sluggish and cranky all day yesterday. It almost felt like a cold was coming on, kind of run down. Monday was clean eating and I feel great now. I didn't exercise yesterday since I was in training all day. I got up early today to get some work in.
I drove to work with a T shirt on only with the windows open. It was 33 deg F outside. How's that for cold therapy. It actually felt great and invigorating. I am truly convinced that the cold therapy has toughened me to cold temperatures. The biggest problem was my hands, but that wasn't even too bad.
Today's Workout(About 45 mins total):
Recent meals:
I have a mouthful of fillings. My guess is that this is caused primarily by my diet growing up. Cereal, breads, pasta, potatoes and rice were eaten in multiple meals every day. My mother limited our sugar intake, but it wasn't enough for me.
A part of this has to be genetic. My wife and I eat almost identical in the past, but she has never had a cavity. Another blood relative has no cavities either, but is much heavier than I ever was. It appears the modern diet sucks, but it manifests itself in different ways for different people.
I think that the number of dentists is far more than needed due to the excess chronic tooth decay, etc. from our modern diet.
We ended up going out for Mexican last night and I had fajitas, hold the tortillas, rice, beans. I ate no chips either. The water tasted lousy, so I got a Corona Light. It was very good, but not enough food. We didn't have enough healthy snacks at home and I ended up having a granny smith and a couple of home made cookies and milk. Breakfast today was a large ham steak and 2 eggs over easy with a grilled tomato.
Skipping exercise today as we are out and about.
Did I Kettle Bell workout with a trainer at the fitness center at work. It was pretty brutal. 2 minutes on with 1 minute rest in between:
She made us wear heart rate monitors. Heart rate was up as high as 182 and didn't drop to below 160 for 40 minutes or so. By the last 2 minutes I was pretty fried.
Meals:
Meals:
Workout: A bit more chilly out than usual(55 deg F). Did a walk/run to a local park from work and back with 12 sprints. I didn't have my usual snap today. Top speed seemed ok, but hard to get off the blocks with any acceleration. Took my shoes off and walked the last 3/4 mile. Cold Shower afterward.
I have an all day training, so wen't in early to lift:
Took around 30 mins.
Meals after 23 hour fast:
181# on scale again today.
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