Self Experimentation: Ice Age

23 05 2012

Over the weekend I seriously cheated on my diet.  I went to SF to help my friend move back to Orange County and basically had a mini vacation of eating and drinking.  Anyway I’m back and the damage isn’t too bad, 177 pounds at last weigh in, up from about 175.

Although my weight loss is progressing, I decided to add a couple things from Tim Ferriss’s book “The Four Hour Body“, the chapter on “Ice Age.” The basic premise is that if your body is cold it must burn calories to heat back up.  There is some extra science in there, stuff about brown fat and how cold may stimulate it etc, but all that really matters is that introducing a little cold can catapult fat loss results results.  He has some crazy suggestions, but I am looking to add just a little extra “umph,” not to go crazy with it, so all I’m going to add is:

  • drinking 0.5 liters of ice cold water in the morning
  • switch to cold showers

I should note that I have taken cold showers before, but that was mainly to see if I could do it to save energy.  Once you get used to it, they’re not that bad.

To adjust, simply take normal showers, then at the end of each one add 30 seconds of as cold as you can take.  Once you can stay in for 30 seconds at the coldest setting, you’re ready to switch to a complete cold shower.  A small tip, when you first start, have the water hit your lower back, where your tramp stamp is.  I noticed that I don’t really feel the cold when it hits that spot and it helped me adjust.  If you really want to save the planet, switch to navy showers which are cold.  A step further would be to not shower every day.

The idea that cold can catapult weight loss shows a missing piece of the puzzle that is fat loss and human health.  People always talk about diet and exercise, but they don’t think about how most of the 1st world is temperature controlled and that this might play a roll.  There are some interesting implications.  A good observation is that morning cup of hot coffee you drink.  That cup of coffee helps warm your body up, which is the opposite of the ingesting ice cold water tactic.  Since I will be drinking 0.5 liters of ice cold water in the morning, I will not be drinking hot tea or coffee, at least not until a few hours later.

 

 


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Categories : Body, Experiment, Health, Lifehacking, Self Experimentation

Intermittent Fasting is kicking ass

15 05 2012

This morning I weighed myself in at about 175 pounds.  I don’t weigh myself religiously, but here’s a few of the weights that I did measure (note, I stopped doing GOMAD on 4-11-12):

4-10-12 182 pounds

4-25-12 180 pounds

5-2-12 178.5 pounds

5-15-12 175 pounds

In other words, in the past 5 weeks I’ve lost 7 pounds!  Taking into account water weight, bloat, and measuring error, saying I lost 5 pounds in 5 weeks is fair, and that would be mean about 1 pound per week.  Doesn’t sound like much?  If you lost 1 pound per week for a year, you’d have lost 52 pounds!

I have been following an intermittent fasting diet since 5-6-12, just over a week.  It’s important to mention that my diet has been far less than perfect in the past week, due to birthdays and mother’s day.  Yet, despite eating plenty of trash food, I have continued to lose weight!

Obviously I would lose weight in the first few weeks after I stopped drinking a gallon of milk a day; however, I believe that my progress would have stalled by now if I had not started intermittent fasting.  I still have a bit of a gut, so the next few weeks will show if I can continue losing weight stay tuned!

 


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Cutting calories is extremely stupid

12 05 2012

Just an FYI, cutting calories/eating less used to be known by a different name: “semi starvation diet.”  It was changed for obvious reasons, but the name is no less true.  I have recently started a new self experiment with intermittent fasting to help me cut fat added during a recent muscle building phase.  This is not the same as cutting calories because I still eat as much calories as I like, but I can only eat between noon and 8pm.  Although I am still eating plenty, I still experience a good amount of hunger at night before I go to sleep and in the morning before noon.

I have only been experimenting with IMF for a week and I can already tell that I’d be going INSANE if I was trying to lose weight by cutting calories.  When hungry it’s almost impossible to not think about food.  My stomach is constantly growling and calling for my attention.  Based on my experience with minor hunger for only the past week, I can’t believe:

  • A, that anyone tries to lose weight by cutting back calories
  • B, that (stupid) people and the mass media still tell overweight people to lose weight by eating less
  • C, how hungry I am just on intermittent fasting
I can definitely believe:
  • Anyone trying to lose weight with a semi starvation diet is going to be miserable
  • They will also cave after trying for a while and eat themselves silly, probably putting on more weight than before

If not cutting calories, what should be doing?

In my experience, eating the right food means you don’t have to count calories and your body will maintain a good weight.  Throw in strength training and you’ll be unstoppable.  To find out about both, read Stronglifts.com and Four Hour Body, which will tell you everything you need to know.

In the past month I’ve lost about 6 pounds without counting any calories.  Of course, this is after I stopped drinking a gallon of milk a day, so take it with a grain of salt.  At my current rate of weight loss, about one pound per week, I will be where I want to be in a month or two.  Pics/video to come.

-Russell

PS Remember you can follow along with my workouts/weight measurements here.

 


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Categories : Health, Recliner of Rage

A cool way to remember numbers

9 05 2012


I’ve been reading the above book on mnemonics recently and one of the cooler tricks I learned is how to remember numbers.  The system has been around for a long time and you can read more about it for free at this link.

The system is simple.  Convert each number into a phonetic sound.  Add in vowels/unused sounds to make words.  Remember those words, potentially using another mnemonic device such as “linking.”  Done.

The phonetic to number guide is below, along with simple ways to remember each.

1 – t or d, a typewritten “t” or “d” has just 1 downstroke
2 – n, a typewritten “n” has 2 downstrokes
3 – m, a typewritten “m” has 3 downstrokes
4 – r, the number 4 ends in the letter “r”
5 – l, hold out your left hand palm-outward and thumb out at a 90 degree angle – the five fingers form an “L” shape
6 – j or sh or ch or soft g, a “J” looks like a backward 6
7 – k or hard c or hard g, a “K”  can be made from two back-to-back 7’s
8 – f or v, a lower-case, written f  looks like an 8
9 – p or b, looks like a backward “p” or an upside-down “b”
0 – z or soft c (buzzing), the word “zero” begins with the letter “z”

It’s almost the 35th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope, so let’s do the date that the first Star Wars movie was released: May 25th, 1977, or 5251977.  The sounds we get are L, N, L, T/D, P/B, K, K.  I turned it into: Lan lit up kick.  I’m sure there’s better words, but I’m new, cut me some slack!

I will no longer forget my friend’s gatecode: share fun.  6582!

 


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Categories : Tips and Tricks

Self Experiment: Intermittent Fasting

6 05 2012

4-10-12 I weighed about 182 pounds

5-6-12 Today I weighed in at about 178 pounds, and this is after cheating the past two days.

Four pounds in 1 month isn’t bad at all, but just for fun I’m going to add a new experiment, intermittent fasting, specifically the leangains diet.

The basics:

  • Eat only between noon and 8 pm.
  • Stay on same general diet.  High protein, medium fat, s/low carb.
  • Keep off alcohol.  Besides yesterday, I haven’t been drinking alcohol at all.  May is the month when most of my friends have birthdays, so we’ll see, but I’ll probably minimize it to once per week at most.

And that’s it!

 

Hypothesis:  I really have none.  Even without intermittent fasting, I should continue to lose weight since I stopped drinking a gallon of milk a day and continue to workout intensely.  After I get where I want to be, I’ll continue IMF and see if I can bring my BF% even lower without much effort.

Follow up: Video to come when I feel I’m where I want to be.


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Categories : Body, Health, Self Experimentation

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