Saturday, December 31, 2011

On Body Changes...

This morning I woke up hungry.

This is a very strange situation for me, because for as long as I remember I usually wake up feeling mildly queasy and end up skipping breakfast. By mid-morning I would usually be found drinking a latte or two, but by 11am I'm ravenous.  I would end up eating huge lunch, often to the point of discomfort.

However, I recently made one little change.

Just under a month ago I found myself single, or on hiatus, whatever we are doing (who knows... I don't.) and thought that this three month break meant I was going to cook for myself and myself only.  This meant that my earlier attempts to try the 4-Hour-Body plan (henceforth 4HB) were not going be thwarted by someone else's refusal to eat legumes of any sort.

The Subtracting Fat portion of 4HB has a few simple rules.:

1: Avoid "white" carbohydrates.  (I.e. complex carbs.)
2: Eat the same few meals over and over
3: Don't drink calories.
4: Don't eat fruit.
5: Take one day off per week, and go nuts.
*6: Drink Lots of water. Cold water in particular, and first thing in the morning especially.
*7: 30g of Protein in the morning, within 30 minutes of waking

* These aren't one of his official rules, but they are under common mistakes of why people fail... and since I failing to do them... I was making them my rules.

So during the week: no 4 tbs of sugar in my coffee, no trips to the amazing pizza shop on the ground flour, no cookies, no cake, no ice cream, no Captain Cluckers's Breaded Chicken Sandwich or any other fast food.

What can I have? Let me show you my schedule for this week.

Wake up:  16oz of ice water.
Breakfast:  Two hard boiled eggs (if I'm in hurry) or a Mexican omelet with vegetables, re-fried beans and bacon.  Coffee with cinnamon powder.
Lunch: 8 oz of water plus Whatever was leftover from the night before, but typcally Stir-fried veggies, red beans, and lump of protien.
Second Lunch: 8 oz water: Celery stalk with Almond butter
Dinner:  8 oz water.  Stir Fry Vegetables, re-fried beans, and huge steak.

That's basically all I ate this week.  I plan on mixing it up with some salmon and tuna salad on spinach next week, but that's about it.

Starting next week there will also be the addition of kettle-bell swings and some basic body weight exercises, but even then want to guess how effective it is?

6lbs in 4 days.

Monday I was off from work,  I was still determining what I could and couldn't eat so I don't think I was 100% compliant, consequently I didn't weigh myself until Tuesday.

As far as body fat % goes... who knows.   When you are as large as I am induction scales are notoriously inaccurate and can be greatly affected by hydration.  I record it anyway, because even data with a large margin of error is still data.  But to give you an idea of how inaccurate it is, I was having swings of 3% taking multiple readings right after each other.  In one case I was doing isometric exercises in one leg while it was reading and it jumped 7%.  Soo...

Anyway, 6lbs in 4 days.  And for the obnoxious person who snarkily said that I probably had just lost "water weight"... I am drinking so much water I'm sloshing, and I'm drinking at least two more pounds of water a day then I was before.  So you are saying I've lost 14 lbs of water this week?  Without any exercise or standing the Mojave?  How likely is that?

Oh, about the waking up hungry which I started this post.  I woke up from a sound sleep and as I weighed myself I thought... "Hmm... I feel hungry, I need my morning eggs" went down stairs and happily munched my eggs while drinking my ice water and it hit me.

I wan't "choking" down eggs.  I wasn't the least bit queasy.  I was hungry, craving protein, and enjoying eating breakfast at 8am.

It felt weird and glorious at the same time.

*edit* And I just realized today is technically my cheat day... I have nothing planned... maybe I'll go hunting for a cinnamon roll...

*edit the second*  Out of curiosity I googled what other people typical weeks were like and saw someone complaining at having to eat 5 eggs in the morning.  Double checked... and yup.  30g of protien is about 5 eggs not two.  Gonna have to tweak that a bit.  Maybe drink an ice cold whey shake to kill two birds with one stone.   Hmmm....

*Edit the third*  I should point out that 4HB is huge book that covers a lot of topics including but not limited too weight loss, building muscle, better sleep, improved sex, repairing injures etc.  The portion I am presently exploring is just the fat loss portion.  Well a little built of building muscle with kettlebell swings, but more muscle burns fat which is good, yes?