So a few months back I read about intermittent fasting as a fat burning strategy. I dismissed it at first, but it kept popping up on sites that I frequent (e.g. relativestrengthadvantage.com , dragondoor,com , leangains.com , fitnessblackbook.com , etc), so I started looking into it more closely. The closer I looked, the less dumb it sounded. Intermittent fasting has a wide definition. Some people fast every other day. Some do it in 24 hour cycles ranging from 20/4 to 16/8. The larger number is the number of hours fasting. I spent a long time on pubmed yesterday reading through various articles, and ultimately concluded that there is no scientific reason that IF would not work. This article in particular stood out to me: Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvatio... [Am J Clin Nutr. 2000] - PubMed result Yes, you read that correctly. Short term starvation INCREASES your metabolism. You do NOT go into starvation mode like I originally assumed. Once I convinced myself that I wasn't going to severely fuck up my life by trying this, I had to figure out how to do IF properly. Luckily, leangains.com is an amazing source of info on the subject. The author goes into great detail on the various methods he tried, so I will at least be able to avoid big initial mistakes. That being said, I know I'm going to have to tweak this to make it work. My motivation for trying this: 1. Curiosity. Despite the dearth of information I read yesterday, there really aren't that many examples people trying intermittent fasting. I don't mind guinea pigging myself to see what's good. 2. Stubborn fat. I am in pretty good shape. My diet is almost impeccable. I do intervals and other cardio on a regular basis. And yet that last little bit of fat on my gut and sides just doesn't want to get the fuck off. 3. Convenience. At the moment I'm cooking 5 or 6 meals a day, and it gets annoying as hell. I love cooking, but not when it takes over my life. 4. Hunger. 6 small meals a day means that each meal is only enough to just barely carry me over to the next meal. I basically spend the whole day just slightly hungry, which is really annoying and sometimes leads to overeating by the 4th or 5th meal. So here is the plan: I am going to go the safest route initially and start with a 16/8 cycle. I am not fasting on days that I lift or have intense activity (rugby practice, intervals, fartleks, etc). However on fasting days I may do light aerobic work i.e. long slow distance. I am starting with one day a week and adding an extra day a week each month, probably maxing out at 3. On fasting days, I still consume a full day's worth of calories (~2800 for my needs) with the same macronutrient profile as any other day. I think weed will help with this part immensely. Generally I think the full blown program will go something like this: Monday: Fasting day. LSD Tuesday: Practice, High Intensity Intervals Wednesday: Practice, Weightlifting Thursday: Fasting day, VO2Max Intervals Friday: Practice, Weightlifting Saturday: Fasting day, recovery- unless I have a game, in which case I will not be fasting Sunday: Fartleks, Weightlifting Every night before I go to bed I am going to drink 45g of casein protein so as to aid continued muscle recovery. One thing I am concerned about is whether IF is something that can be done spread out like this, or if it is necessary to be very consistent and frequent with the fasting. We'll see. Another concern is the effect on strength and gains in the gym. The author of leangains.com has an article in which he claims he put on about 20 pounds (not all muscle, but a great deal of it) , so I'm not too concerned). I guess a before pic is necessary. I'm sorry. Really, I truly am. Sorry for the crappy quality as well. Hope I can give you guys some results.
Day 1 of IF was actually Sunday. It went pretty well. I drank the night before, so I wasn't too hungry to begin with. I went on a 45 minute light run to kill the hangover (works every time) and burn some extra fat. Found this sick sand hill in some fields that I plan on using for training. It's only about 30 feet high, but it's almost impossible to run up on the first try. I think it will be great for speed training, as well as for balance and proprioception (body awareness). I plan on doing 4 sets of 3 with a 1:2 work to rest ratio before doing some long intervals on the fields. It's going to have to wait for a while though. I have a game this coming weekend, and I already have intervals to do during the week, so I can't really fit that big of a workout in. Next week. I am going to do a 16/8 IF day at least once a week for the next month. I should be able to do more on some weeks than others. For example, when I don't have a game I may do an extra day on Saturday. Today was a rest day. I hurt my hamstring a bit on Tuesday, but it's starting to feel better. I took today off to keep that healing up and keep myself from overtraining. I had to help my current housemates move into their new house today anyway (I'm dorming). I did something really fuckin dumb. We were at a friend's house high and bored and were trying to do precision jumps from the walkway to the bricks bordering the lawn. The bricks were about 10 feet away and 3 inches wide. It was really hard at first, especially because I was wearing sandals. I got the hang of it eventually and got 5 in a row. On the 6th, I landed on it going too fast and my sandals' straps broke, causing me to go flying forward feetfirst under the side of a car. My toenail snagged on some sharp thing and about a quarter of it got straight torn off. My toe was bleeding pretty bad for a while, but I peroxided the fuck out of it and bandaged it up and it feels fine now. Note to self: wear shoes for things involving jumping and hard surfaces. I want to take some pictures of sample meals to give you an idea of my diet. My camera is broken at the moment, so they may be crappy cell phone pics for a while. I'll post some recipes as well. Workouts will always be posted in detail. I currently weigh 155-160 pounds depending on hydration (158 being a median from the last week). The last time I got my body fat caliper tested was in May. It was at 10.9%. I think it is significantly lower now. I'd guess 9%. I will get it tested again when the school year starts. My three main goals are: 1. Getting to around 6% bodyfat. 2. Maintaining weight (slight increase is fine) while adding significant amounts of strength. 3. Adding significant amounts of speed (this will be a product of the first two, as well as plyometrics and proprioception).
Yesterday- 8/17/10 Lifting workout: Bench Press- 10x135, 8x140. I'm trying a linear training cycle where I just do two sets a day, but add 5 pounds each day. Hoping to get to a set of 10 at 185 by the end of the fall. It's going to be a kind of "two steps forward, one step back" thing. You'll see lol. Lat Pulldown- 10x105, 8x120, 6x135, 5x135 T-bar rows-12x45, 14x50, 11x55, 9x60 Swing presses- 12x50, 10x55, 8x60, These almost made me vomit. Basically, you shove one end of an Olympic bar into a corner and put weight on the free end. Then, you grip the end that you put the weight on and swing the bar from one shoulder to the other over your head. The end of the bar should make a parabola in its path from one shoulder to the other. These obviously work your shoulders, but even more so work the stabilizing muscles in your entire back and your obliques. They are really an excellent exercise. Renegade Rows- 3x10x50lbs. Renegade Rows – How to Get Ridiculously Hard Abs, Part I | Relative Strength Advantage Ab circuit- (decline medicine ball twists, flutterkicks, planks, side planks, floor sweepers)
Today I am going to do some HIIT and lifting a little later. I ate at 1pm today, and I'm going to have my last meal at 9pm until 1pm tomorrow. I'm planning on something huge for the last meal... probably around 100-120 grams of protein and 150-200 grams of carbs (gotta replenish glycogen). Tomorrow during the fasting phase I am going to do a light recovery run to help remove leftover lactid acid from the intervals. Here is today's preworkout meal: About 45 grams of protein, 85 grams of carbs, 3 grams fat.
Today's (8/18/10) workout was a hodgepodge of sorts. Bench Press- 8x145, 10x135 Squat- 10x225, 8x225, 6x225, 5x225, 5x225 Full Contact Twists- 10x45, 8x45, 10x45. These are similar to yesterday's Swing Press. It's the same motion, but you start at the hip instead of the shoulder and use lower weight. The last set almost made me puke. You have to clench your stomach really hard to keep from falling over. Burpee Pullups- 3x7. Ouch. Calf Raises- 2x25x165lbs Postworkout meal: 200g whole grain pasta. 150g carbohydrates (16g fiber), 4g fat, 35g protein 8 oz chicken breast. 4g fat, 45g protein 125g green beans. 10g carbohydrates (4g fiber), 2g protein. 2 cups plain nonfat yogurt. 30g carbohydrates, 25g protein. 2 scoops casein isolate protein powder. 10g carbohydrates, 50g protein. 1/2 cup cherries 4g carbohydrates, 1370% daily value of vitamin C. 1/2 cup blueberries 10g carbohydrates (2g fiber) 16oz skim milk. 24g carbohydrates, 18g protein. Total: 238g carbohydrates with at least 22g of fiber, 8g fat, 175g protein. This gives about 1724 calories. Sounds about right for my purposes. I ate two meals at just 500 calories each earlier, which puts me right on target for the day. I might actually be a little low because a good portion of those calories goes to chewing. 130 grams of the protein is "slow release" and will keep me sustained through the night and my fast tomorrow. I did not do HIIT today, so I am going to do it in the morning, taking some BCAA's first. It's going to be rough, but that's ok, as I will eat not too long after.
I'm about to go work out high and fasting. I had to skip breakfast today to take care of some errands and school stuff, so I decided to just go another day fasting. I have to go to 6pm, so it's not much longer. That's already 3 days this week, so I'm not doing any more this weekend. I don't want this to turn into an eating disorder lol. Although after fasting all day I really had no problem consuming a full day's calories. Working out should be pretty brutal, but I will be taking those BCAA's again to make it less so. Part of the idea behind working out in a fasted state is that one would experience an extra anabolic rebound of sorts in trying to repair itself from fasting. I'm not going to lay this as a proper claim yet because I haven't found a study on it. However, there is experimental evidence for endurance training fasted. leangains.com cites a study that found that glycogen storage and VO2max increased in individuals performing calorie restriction by a larger factor than it did in individuals eating the same amount of food without fasting. So today I might do some kind of bodyweight or Crossfit type circuit, as well as those intervals that I didn't do yesterday. These are the intervals: Tuesday 4 x 220 yards (FAST) 3 x 110 yards (FAST) 3 x 110 yards (FULL) 5 x 85 yards (FAST) 5 x 85 yards (FULL) 1 x 440 yards (FAST) (2,830/1.61)
Well like a dumbass I did some heavy lifting today in addition to the intervals. I'm eating extra in hopes of avoiding muscle loss. my legs feel so shot. my hamstring has been bothering me for a while now. it feels like a strain. I'm going to take it easy on it for a while until it feels better. no need to literally hamstring myself before the season even starts. here was today's workout: Deadlifts- 12x135, 10x155, 10x165, 8x175, 6x185 Renegade Rows- 4x10x55. This almost made me puke on the last set. Floor Sweepers 30 Flutterkicks 1:30 Plank 1x1:00, 1x1:15 Side plank 45 sec each side, 1:00 each side Dips 14,12 Wide pullups 9, 10 Swinging plank 2x20 each side Swinging squat 2x25 each side Bench Press 145x10, 135x10 Captain's Chair runs 2x1:00 Pike-ups 15, 15 I did this all fasted by the way. I drank a bit of weight gainer before the intervals, which helped a lot I think. I'm still hungry right now and I've eaten two 1000 calorie meals already.
I can feel my metabolism revving up. I'm not fasting today, and after a pretty large omelette for breakfast I got hungry just 2 hours later. I ate a big lunch of chicken, vegetables, and whole wheat pasta, but I'm hungry again already. This is good as I have a fitness test tomorrow. I need to stockpile all the glycogen I can now to stand a chance. This is a rest day by the way. My hammy needs it, and I'm sore all over anyway.
Wow so all of my posts from yesterday got deleted, which is to be expected I supposed. Here's a summary: I am home from school for a week. I fasted till 6 on Monday. I worked out 3 hours after breaking my fast. I took Tuesday as a rest day. I don't know if I'm going to do any kind of workout today either. My body is still very sore and banged up overall, although my hamstring feels much better. Here is Monday's workout (8/23/10): Bench Press- 10x135, 8x145, 5x155, 4x155, 11x135. I'm not doing my daily benching program this week because I can't get into a gym consistently here at home. However, a set of 5x155 was my goal for the end of the summer, so I'm very happy about that. Full Contact Twist- 4x10x45 Renegade Rows- 4x10x55. Once again, these almost made me puke. It didn't help that I supersetted them with regular rows. Seated Rows-4x10x120 Ab medley I think we did some other stuff, but I don't really remember that well. I haven't been doing any dedicated body part days lately, but I don't think it's a huge issue because 90% of what I do is compound lifts that hit many muscle groups from many angles. I'm pretty sure no one is reading this, but I don't really care because having this thread serves as a nice reference/journal.
Thanks man. I pretty much ate some slight variation of that meal for 90% of my meals all summer; it was cheap, delicious, and helped me get in pretty solid shape. So I did end up doing a workout today, but it was very brief. However, the brevity does not convey how ridiculously hard it was. Tabata Sprints- 1 set. The Tabata protocol can be applied to almost anything, but I think it works best for running. Basically, a set is 4 minutes long, with 8 repetitions. The repetitions are 20 seconds of all out sprinting, 10 seconds of rest. So from 0:00 to 0:20 you sprint, then from 0:00 to 0:30 you rest, then from 0:30 to 0:50 you sprint, then rest till 1:00, etc etc. What I did was every time I stopped I turned around and tried to get back to where I started (if you aren't working hard enough you will reach your start point). I went about 150 meters the first time out, but by the last sprint I was only going 85 meters. Fartleks- ~16 minutes. I started at a corner (the 100m start on my local track), jogged the straightaway, sprinted half the curve, jogged the second half of the curve, then performed an exercise. Then the cycle repeats. They get pretty hard after a while, depending on what exercises you do. I did pushups, burpees, air squats, swinging planks, situps, mountain climbers, and a couple other things. I normally do fartleks for at least a half hour, which speaks to how hard the Tabatas were. I drank some endurox R4 to recover (it's a 4:1 carb to protein ratio with some glutamine thrown in) and I'm about to make a meal. I'll put up some pics of the meal when its ready. Edit: here is the meal There's a lot going on there. There's 125g of rice, 150g of chicken, 100g of lean pork, 150g of cabbage, 150g of cauliflower, and some ratatouille as well. I didn't bother looking up the stats on it. I only ate half of that plate as today is not a fasting day, so I don't need huge meals. For dessert: That's 125g of farmer's cheese with 75g of blueberries and 1 creme wafer roll broken up on top. You might know creme wafer rolls as "Pirouettes". 1 of those won't hurt my diet.
Fast is going great this morning. I had to wake up early to get some cavities filled , but that went alright, and there was free coffee while I was waiting to get in haha. Caffeine is potentiated by fasting (as are other stimulants, although caffeine isn't really a stimulant in the strictest sense) and has thermogenic effects, so this was a big plus. Afterward I had to do a few errands, and just now I went on a run. I don't do very much aerobic running anymore, although marathons and half-marathons used to be my thing. However, aerobic running is very effective at burning fat, especially when combined with fasting and caffeine. The run was around 4.5 miles, but featured about 1.5 miles of hill. My feeding phase begins at 1pm, so I still have about an hour to go. I'm going to mow the lawn right now to get a little extra aerobic activity in, although the effects of lawnmowing on fat loss are probably negligible. I am a bit concerned with the timing of today's run. I like to do those aerobic runs in the very last hour of fasting so that I can refuel immediately and not lose muscle. However, I'm not even sure that "you NEED to feed immediately after workouts" is not a myth. Hopefully I can reach a conclusive result, at least for my body.
Some days I fast for 16 hours and eat for 8 hours. The 16 hour fast provides a temporary major caloric deficit and low insulin level and higher resting energy expenditure, which is good for burning fat. However, I still eat a fuckload in order to put on muscle. Think of this as a "lean bulk".
Fasted today. Just broke the fast with some jasmine rice, green beans, grape tomatoes, and chicken. In the morning I had a rugby practice which burned a ton of fat. I'm also going to lift in a while. As always, the workout will be posted once I do it. Edit: Here's today's workout. I wanted to do a leg day, but all the squat racks were in use when I got to the gym so I started off with some back stuff. Lat Pulldowns- Myoreps (It was something like 10, 9,7,6,5,5,4,4,4,3,3,3,3,3,2 with 20 seconds in between each) Standing Shoulder Press- Myoreps as well, in a similar format to that of the pulldowns. The idea behind Myoreps is that your muscles are "fully activated" after the first set, so you get more quality reps. Squats- 5x5x225. It's feeling easier, but still very difficult. I may need a few weeks to increase my reps and/or weight. Hamstring Curls- 4x6x110 Renegade Rows- 2x10x60, 3x8x60. Yet again I almost puked. One legged jump squats- People were looking at me like I was insane.
I got my body fat measured and came in at just under 12%. This was a bit of a surprise considering the amount of cardio I've been doing. Just looking at my body I'm pretty surprised at the figure. I was at 11% at the start of the summer and in much worse shape. Just looking at my body it would seem that I've lost fat, but I guess the calipers don't lie. It seems I may have to make a decision between gaining muscle and losing fat after all. However, I'm going to continue the experiment- this could just be an adjustment period thing as my body learns to regulate insulin better. We shall see. I've had 2 rugby practices a day all week in addition to lifting on my own. I'm about to do some HIIT before practice.
Sorry for the lack of detailed updates- I've been very busy this first week at school. I have been working out a ton though. We've had two practices a day for rugby and I'm lifting and doing intervals apart from that. I did a fasted practice in the morning yesterday, which was a first. It actually went very well. I was very apprehensive about the effects of fasting on my athletic performance, but if anything I had a clearer mind and felt lighter and faster. We did some stairs, which I was very happy about as that is one of the best fat burning exercises there is. I was thinking about fasting today, but we have a scrimmage later and I'm hungover, so that would maybe be a bad idea. I think that I can do a fasted workout just fine as long as it doesn't last too long. I don't want to take chances with a scrimmage though- I really need it to get myself some playing time. Perhaps in the future I'll trust fasted workouts more. I think I'll do well though considering how hard I've been training. I don't know of anyone that put in more work this summer than I did. Sorry that this turned into a little rant on rugby, but there's going to be a lot of it now that I'm in season.
That week of 2-a-days for rugby took a bit of a toll on me. I lost a couple of pounds, but I'll be getting them back real quick I think. Yesterday I did chest, although I think that's what I did the last time too. I definitely had at least 48 hours in between though. It was one of those things where my friend wanted to do a certain body part while I was walking into the gym without a real plan. Bench- 135x10, 145x10, 155x6, 155x3, 155x2. I had a lot of help on the 155 lifts. I definitely got at least 2/3 of each set on my own though. The last one I had my partner stand away from me on purpose. There is a big psychological advantage to not having a spotter right there and executing. High Cable Flies-10x30, 6x40 Cable Flies- 10x30, 4x40 Low Cable Flies- 9x30, 5x40 Incline Dumbbell Press- 10x40, 7x45, 8x40 Decline Arnold Dumbell Press- 8x40, 7x40,7x40. These are HARD. You start with the weight rotated so that the bar on the dumbbell is parallel to your body, then rotate inwards so that at the top of the lift you hold the weight as though you are preparing to bicep curl it. Finished up with some dips and some abs.