Hypocaloric Ketogenic Diet and Protein Sparing

For the purpose of this post I am going to take it that you have already read the previous posts about Ketosis as I cannot describe ketosis every post or you and I would go a bit crazy.

Starting out a hypo caloric diet is a diet that is low in calories and typically used in the fitness community as a diet that will induce weightloss. Ketogenic diet is a diet that induces ketosis, and carbs must be limited to less than 100g in order for this metabolic change to occur. This approximate number comes from how many carbs the brain needs in order to function in a day. So in this hypo caloric ketogenic diet we will take it to an extreme and say we will be consuming zero dietary carbs, just know that you can consume carbs but try to keep it low and from mainly fibrous vegetables. Before we are able to set a caloric number for our diet we should go a bit off track and delve into what we will need to spare protein.

In the first 3 weeks of ketosis, before the protein sparing adaptations occur the brain will need ~100g of carbs roughly. So with a diet completely void of carbs the body needs to create the carbs. The body does this several ways. The first way is going to be from glycerol in the blood will be converted to glucose ~18g throughout the day. The second way is through the conversion of protein into glucose ~82g. So this is important to know so that we are able to understand what must be accomplished by our protein intake so that we can spare muscle protein. In an absence of dietary protein, the body will take protein from muscle and break it down into glucose. Something a performance minded or even vain individual might want to avoid. So protein is said to have a 58% anti-ketogenic factor meaning that 58% of protein consumed will be converted into glucose in the blood. So in order to cover the 82g of glucose we need for the brain we will need an intake of ~150g protein, in order to spare body proteins from being broken down into glucose. This number will change by week three as the body will have adapted and the brain will only need 40g while 18 still come from glycerol you will only need 25g glucose from protein, so you will need about 50g protein to spare muscle.

So thats it right? Not quite. Protein requirements are modified by two factors. The two factors are CHO(carb, glucose) intake and activity level. We roughly covered CHO intake, but now we must cover activity level. Activity level is very important as it increases our need for protein. If you are a sedentary person than the minimal protein you need is 0.8g protein per lb of LBM or your fat free mass. However if you are a strength or endurance athlete you will need a bit more, roughly 0.9g per lb of LBM or fat free mass. PROTEIN IS VERY IMPORTANT IN SPARING MUSCLE MASS. "Of all of the aspects of the PSMF or ketogenic diet, adequate dietary protein is absolutely critical to the success of the diet in maximizing fat loss and sparing body protein" (The Ketogenic Diet by Lyle McDonald).

Here is a chart to help (it is important to note that too much protein is just as bad as too little as it will take you out of ketosis so try to stick the this guideline somewhere around this number will be ideal)

Now that we know how much protein we need we can add in fats to whatever amount that will fill up to the desired hypo caloric level. you should have at least 150g Protein so 600cals from protein and the rest from fat ;)

Stress isn't only a negative.

So today on my way home I was contemplating things that I noticed throughout the day like I normally do. Only to realize a lot of the people I see seem run down, lethargic, and just plain ol' miserable. Now normally this really wouldn't compute, but today something was different. It got me thinking about how stress affects people and what effect it has on them. Then I began to think of a discussion we had in class, and how the professor asked if we thought stress was good? or if stress was bad? She quickly realized that I raised my hand twice. She walked over and said in the class that I was right. Then did a brief segment on both sides. However, I don't think a brief segment does eustress, good stress, justice.

Eustress, is the positive stress that helps to bring about positive change. Distress is the negative stress that typically brings about negative change.

In exercise physiology we would classify eustress as a workout that brings about positive adaptations or changes to make similar exercise bouts closer to our metabolic homeostasis. In a similar vein, in exercise physiology we would classify distress as chronically raised cortisol levels. Im going to make a complex issue into a very simple way to understand it so just remember its not so black and white and there is a lot of grey area. We will classify acute stress as beneficial and classify chronic stress as not being beneficial.

What initially brought this thought process on was me looking through my Facebook feed and realizing how many people are misusing your and you're. I can understand why you wouldn't care while on Facebook from time to time, but the truth of the matter is that most people are not just on Facebook occasionally but tend to use the social media quite often, as its the ones who are on there most often that commit this unforgivable crimes against grammar. If you are consistently just going through the motions of writing or typing with no care of the grammar YOU'RE using, you will begin to consistently make these errors when writing a professional paper. I'll tell you what, when trying to get a job getting minute details may make it or break it for you. Some may make the argument that consistently stressing over the minutiae may add to YOUR stress level, which may be true but practicing will help you to get better and the daunting tasking of using correct grammar will become more second nature.

However, this post isn't meant to be me being obsessive over grammar errors, because frankly I make a great deal myself. This is meant to be looked then extrapolate the underlying message to YOUR overall lifestyle. I'll make the correlation to exercise because as a personal trainer and exercise physiologist I typically see more of it in the gym. People come in stressed out from work and let it affect what THEY'RE (another commonly misspelled word!) doing in the gym. As a human being stress is always going to be there in one form of another, and typically if YOU'RE not stressed I would make the argument YOU'RE not pressuring yourself enough. Im not talking about pulling-hair-out stressed but you should always feel a pressure to do something better.

While in the gym you need to manage YOUR stress. However, that manifests itself for you, do it. Whether thats listening to music, repeating a mantra, or just solely thinking about what it is YOU'RE doing, not thinking about how many essays are due tonight, or that finals are in a couple weeks. In the gym, heck with everything you do focus on that task. There have been plenty of studies that show you truly cannot multitask on two things at once but rather one at a time and just switching between to two at lightning speed. The more you multitask the less productive you get and the less quality is achieved while doing that task. MANAGEMENT OF STRESS IS KEY! Make a list of to do's in priority. Focus on the first finish it then move onto the next. This will help mainly with your chronic stress.

Now focusing on eustress or the acute stressors of our lives. It is important that that we manage our chronic stressors first because adding stress even acute or beneficial stressors may turn to negative stressors (heres the grey area I was telling you about). Say that we managed to get our distress under control. We need to add some beneficial stressors to our lives. Exercise is probably the first one most people think of. I would concur, that is a very beneficial stressor. If you take a sedentary person and a person who SMOKES and exercises, you might imagine the non-smoker has a lower risk factor. Wrong, exercise is a potent eustressor that will even lower the risk factor more than smoking increases it. (STILL DONT SMOKE, BAD IDEA). Back on point, exercise is a good idea. However, if you don't have time to exercise (you really do but thats for another discussion) there are other ways to cause beneficial stressors. If you've read some of my other posts you can probably guess my next proposition. DIET, diet is another eustressor you can add, hypo caloric diet or a diet that will cause weightloss preferentially fat loss is what I would aim for. I mean eating less, if you say you can't afford that there might be something wrong with you mentally (hypo caloric diets can help with cognition as well). Im not suggesting take some time to learn about diets right now, because I can help you with that just email me brett@reinhards.us; but you don't even need to change what YOU'RE eating just eat less of it. Next is FASTING or if that word is too scary just skip a meal. Its basically the same thing.

As a physiologist specializing in exercise I am interested in anything that can give me or my clients an edge. Fasting or skipping a meal along with diet and exercise are simple ways of doing that. Even Bill Nye tells us, "we are what we eat or we are what we ate".

Heres a very basic understanding of why skipping a meal can help us. We all have cells in our body. All of our cells have built in mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms help to clean and purge the cells of nasty or bad portions of the cells. Especially due to our oh so wonderful western diet, some of our cells are just plain bad. Say we have several cells, some are healthy and others are unhealthy but we consistently feed all our cells a wonderful carb based meal (cells love carbs). Our meals consistently feed our sick and healthy cells to keep them alive. Me, I am mean to my sick cells and compassionate for my healthy cells. I simply don't want my sick cells taking food from my healthy cells. You would think you might want to feed YOUR sick cells more food to help them recover, but I propose a different option one far less likely to cause a negative gene expression causing some horrendous effect to occur. How can we protect against that? Well its simple really. Remember the built in mechanisms I was talking about, every cell in our body except for cancer cells have a mechanism which is often referred to as "survival mode", sounds pretty badass if you ask me. The actual process I'm talking about is called autophagy, its basically the house cleaning process and it cleans up your cells. There is a similar process called apoptosis, programmed cell death, where a neighboring cell actually destroys the cell. When you miss a meal or fast, these processes are induced, fasting will cause a greater effect. (www.leangains.com probably has one of the most substantial accumulation of fasting knowledge I can think of).

We can think of eating every 2-3 hours as pampering all of our cells (the healthy and the sick), giving them food, a blanket, and a pillow making sure they are nice and comfy. On the other hand we can think of skipping a meal as making our cells work for their keep. Health cells can undergo this stress and adapt and survive, while sick cells will typically die off or get killed. You may think that sounds bad but really thats a good thing, then YOUR body will create new healthy cells and you will become healthier as an effect. If YOU'RE an athlete and think YOUR muscles will fall off if you miss a meal, it won't. As you fast growth hormone (which is protein sparing in it of itself) increases and also helps to mobilize free fatty acids aka fat.

I tend to go off on tangents, mainly because I just feel obligated to share all this information with you, but I am also trying to write more so I can get a better hang of it and will eventually get better and saying what I want to say. Overall, I feel I made a good example of what the different stresses are and the importance of managing stress, along with additional good stressors we can add into our lives regardless of time.

if you are wondering why you don't hear to much about fasting in the media. I propose a question for you to ponder. If fasting consists of practically nothing but water for anywhere from 12-36 hours, where is the profit for suggesting this type of practice?

And with that I hope you learned something and I hope you try to keep a better eye on YOUR stress and YOUR spelling ;).

Brief and Partial Review of Ketosis Physiology

Ketosis Physiology not to be confused with Diabetic Ketoacidosis:

Interrelationship between Malonyl-CoA and Carnitine Palmityl Transferase 1 (CPT-1)



As Liver glycogen drops Malonyl-CoA levels drop, the enzyme CPT-1 becomes active which then transports Free Fatty Acids (FFA) into the mitochondria, which then causes rapid fat oxidation, the by product acetyl-CoA levels rise rapidly, which is typically used for energy production through the Kreb cycle when carbs are available. However, when carbs are unavailable acetyl-CoA accumulates in the liver. High levels of acetyl-CoA are then condensed in the liver, into acetoacetate, which can be further converted into beta-hydroxybutyrate and acetone, the final 2 of the ketone bodies.



As in Diabetic Ketoacidosis, there is a bit of difference in the onset of it. As in ketosis, one of the primary changes that occurs is a lack of insulin (ketosis there is a restriction in dietary carbohydrates that lowers the insulin) (DKA, specifically happens in type I diabetics, there is a lack of insulin possibly due to lack of injection of insulin. Thus causing glucagon levels to be higher, which then signals the liver to convert FFA into ketones, since this ketosis is induced by lack of insulin and not lack of carbs the body is still using carbs as the primary fuel source which in turn doesn't allow the body to adapt to using ketones as a viable fuel source causing the blood to be saturated by ketones and further increasing the acidity of the blood and depreciating the buffering ability of the blood. A non-diabetic persons body has built in feed-back loops that once ketone levels rise too high the body will secrete insulin which will decrease the produce of ketone bodies, then signaling the body to excrete excess ketone bodies through urine. In a type I diabetic this feed-back loop is not functional due to the pancreas' inability to produce insulin, further allowing the body to produce ketones and wreaking havoc on the person. It is typically treated with an insulin injection.

Body Weight, Body Fat, and Ketosis

Last Monday began the most recent of many low carb, particularly Ketogenic diet. Above I have attached a chart I have produced in excel to give a better picture of the weightloss that has occurred. I prefer charts to actual numbers, the picture helps to show a bit more of what may be going on inside what is a very intricate specimen, the human body. I would like to take a few moments to break this down and see if there is a specific reason the chart looks like it does.

Date Weight Body Fat %


4/16/2012 181.6 11.5%

4/17/2012 179.4 11.0%

4/18/2012 176.1 10.1%

4/19/2012 173.6 9.5%

4/20/2012 173.0 9.3%

4/21/2012 172.4 9.0%

4/22/2012 172.8 9.1%

4/23/2012 174.4 9.8%

4/24/2012 173.6 9.5%

4/25/2012 172.6 9.0%

 
Starting off from what I would call the "Easter Bulk". I have given it this name to give somewhat of an educated notion that I had a specific goal in mind. In all honesty, this bulk was driven by gluttony and an overabundance of Easter leftovers and candy. So knowing there was no way of this ending up well, I chose to have a workout everyday that my body would let me. I believe I only missed a workout one day within a 3 week period. Surprisingly, with the excessive calorie intake my body was able to handle this new workload quite well. Everyday was Reverse Pyramid Training, (RPT) after warming up I would start with the heaviest weight I could for 3-5 reps, then dropping the weight by 10% and adding two reps until I was performing around 13-17 reps for the last set. For those of you who havent ever done RPT, it is one of the most exhausting and draining exercise protocols I have ever done, typically you wake up the next morning completely drained independent of how much sleep you get. So with this caloric intake I was still exhausted but my mentality wouldnt let me miss a day. Even with my diet consisting of complete crap (ie. Peeps, snickers, sopes, weiner schnitzel, etc...) my lifts were consistently increasing. I recall during the 3 week period my bench press (I had jus previously fixed my bench for and changed my style to close grip index on inner ring) went from 225x3 to 255x5, extrapolate data for the same rep count would be something like 225x3 to 280x3. Although there was a whole week dedicated to bench press, this improvement is still quite impressive.

Now, back on track. The first day starting off we see fat percentage and weight are relatively close together on the graph. Roughly 2lbs of fat loss would equate to 1% body fat change. The diet being used is a ketogenic diet, as little carbohydrates as possible on most days <20g were consumed.

The start of day 2 we see over 2 lbs of a weight drop but only .5% body fat drop. Day 3 we see an additional 3.3 lbs drop and a .9% body fat drop. So now were down 5.5 lbs and 1.4% body fat. So whats the deal? I thought we agreed that 2lbs lost equals 1% body fat. If you guessed it wasnt fat, you get a golden star ( I would pass out candy, but that would be counter productive). So what is the weight that is being lost? Well, there is more than one answer. Free fatty acids, Protein, Carbs, and mostly water.

Free fatty acids, is basically fat, its the mobilized form of all the attractive jiggly stuff we carry around our waist and darn near everywhere.
Protein, for our purposes is basically muscle breaking down.
Carbs, or more correctly glycogen, is stored in our muscles and liver and is stored 1g with 3g of water.

After reading the above of carbs we are able to connect why on this low carb diet we are losing lots of water. As we get to Day 4, it is safe to say that we are in Ketosis, a metabolic state that shifts the body from primarily using carbs as fuel to using mainly FFA and ketone bodies. To learn more on ketosis scroll to the bottom of this post. Day 4 it is also safe to assume that whatever weight we lose from here on is majorly a function of fat loss. As we can see for the continuing days until 4/23/12 there is a relatively linear loss of weight and bf%. On 4/22/12 we can see a slight increase in both which isnt concerning because the night before was a heavy meal and the effects of low fiber intake has started to show. Beginning on 4/23/12 we see the weight spike bringing along bf% with it. This increase was induced by diet, a carb refeed if you will. If you saw the large amount of what was consumed you would be quite pleased to only see that small of a gain. As in past keto diets with carb refeeds the weight rebounds were upwards of 17lbs. Although this refeed was designed with continued dieting and carb depletion in mind, so the carb load was far fewer in quantity to facilitate continued fat loss but also restore some sanity lost during the low carb portion. Interestingly enough, the weightloss since has seemed rather linear as well, which makes me speculate what might be going on. The weight loss shouldve been a little greater the first couple days back on the diet. So today I will be implementing a bit more water and fiber content to see if that will help to speed up the evacuation of foreign contaminants.

While protein/muscle loss is typically a concern in hypocaloric diets, I feel that due to the high intake of dietary protein in combination with a Intermittent fasting proctocol along with a ketogenic diet I am confidently discounting the loss of protein loss on this diet, as it does not seem logical that to any significant degree it is a factor of the weight loss.








ALL BODY FAT % MEASUREMENTS WERE TAKEN WITH A FOOTSCALE USING BIOELECTRIC IMPEDANCE. The actual values themselves may be off but the the downward and upward trends can be seen as accurate changes.









Ketosis Continued:

 The main predictor of ketosis is carbs in the diet. Since roughly 100g of carbs are needed to support brain function on a day to day basis, any diet lower in carbs than that will induce ketosis. Commonly you will hear people quote that the brain can only run on carbs, which is mostly right. In a mixed diet environment, there are carbs available and is the perferred fuel. In ketosis, there are minimal carbs and available and the body spares carbs every way it can. There are a number of tissues that can only use carbs as fuel, brain, nervous system, neurons, bone marrow. All of them but the brain create a byproduct called pyruvate which can be sent to the liver to create carbohydrates thus creating a net carb decrease of zero. So the brain is the only tissue that needs external (external from itself) sources for carbs. The brain in ketosis can run on ketone bodies as they can cross the blood brain barrier, in the first few days the ketones cross the bbb and are sent to cells in the brain that convert the ketones to ffa and then are used as fuel. After the first couple days the brain circumvents this step and uses ketones as fuel directly. However, the brain can never fully run just on ketones, it can use ketones for up to 75% of its fuel source but will still always need the remainder from carbs. Lets say the diet is completely void of any dietary carb, how will the brain function? Well the body is very well adapted for circumstances just like this (which is why Im so confused when people are deathly afraid of not eating carbs or missing a meal, fasting can produce these same changes its called fasting ketosis). The body has ways of making carbs from internal and external means. Primarily protein will be broken down either from muscles, or dietary protein and will create carbs though a process called gluconeogenesis (gluco= carb, neo= new, genesis= creating) supplying enough carbs for the brain to run day in and day out. The rest of the body is fueled by FFA and ketone bodies for the next few weeks until the body adapts and stops using ketones are a larger percentage of fuel and typically uses FFA for the majority, a mechanism probably induced to make sure that the body does not use all the ketones so there is enough for the brain. This is probably far more than you would ever care to know about ketosis, but is a very basic and short summation of ketosis

African Mango or IRVINGIA GABONENSIS

Ok so I may be a bit late to the party, but why stop the party. The reason I bring this up is because Karla sent me an email and in it was an article on this African Mango and how it can help weight loss, clearly it was a joke on her part. However, looking throughout the vast depths of the internet not many other websites are taking it as a joke, they see it as the next big thing, think Hoodia, or acai berry. There are a couple of things I have against this,
1. it was showed on Dr Oz's show, and for all of you who dont know, I cannot stand that show and his charlatan ways.
2. There are a few sites ive seen spouting off information about how the seeds can help with leptin production, well actually help to stop producing it.
3. It has been proven by a few studies, and yes that all and well, however, it was funded in Cameroon. Can you guess where the majority of African Mango's are? Ill give you a hint, its underlined, bolded, italicised, and rhymes with gameroon. I dont know about you, but that seems a little too convienient to me. Not to mention in the study they let the participants track their own calories. Why would they use such a HIGHLY INACCURATE account of the MOST IMPORTANT factor of weight loss.

To further explain #2 a little better for those of you who dont know how leptin works, Ill give a very very brief description of what it is and its role.

Leptin, is a hormone that is sort of like a thermostat for fat. It is produced by the cells but in a much larger amount from fat cells. So the more fat you have, the more leptin you have (under non diet circumstances). The reason for this is to let the leptin receptors in the brain pick up those signals in order to tell how much energy (aka fat) the body has stored, this was an adaptive component for survival during the days we didnt have easy access to tons of calories. So as you lose fat the less leptin your body will produce, interestingly enough when you first stop dieting your body will drop its leptin levels by 50% or so, showing how much you body loves your fat. So your brain begins to think it is losing fat so it wants you to eat more so making you hungrier, as well as making many many other hormones in the body fluctuate.

Rough summary: Normal levels of Leptin good
Low levels bad.

thus getting back to topic, why would a site wanting to sell this product say the seeds do exactly the opposite of what they want it to do? I dont think they were meaning to deceive you but it certainly does speak on behalf of their credibility.

Moral of the story, dont go ahead and believe everything you hear and see. Just because it was proved in a study doesnt mean its true, you have to actually look at the details, sometimes details do matter.

Back to Exercise

Yesterday was the first day I checked out our new Student Recreation Center at CSUN. Damn that place is huge and awesome. The Gym i work at is a quarter of the size of one of their smaller weight sections. So luckily I can now just run to the gym between classes or if i get out early and yesterday I did just that. Had 3 separate gym sessions, all together yesterday I did a lot of exercise. Sets each consisting of 1 minutes of time under load (meaning my muscles had tension on them the whole time).

8 Sets of Chest Press
6 sets of latpull down
9 sets of rows
7 sets of leg press
4 sets of shoulders
2 sets of incline press.

Yesterday was also no where near what I should have eaten;

4 Scoops Whey Protein (480 calories 96 Protein)
3 oz of Mac's Chicharones (480 calories 54 Protein)
2oz Chicken (90 Calories 18 Protein)
3oz Steak (170 calories 27 Protein)
1 Cup Mushrooms
1/2 Green Pepper
5 Brussel Sprouts
2 Tbsp Peanut Butter (180 calories 7 Protein)

As you can see very low carbs and high protein and moderate fat. Still allowing for carb depletion especially with the type of exercise I had yesterday quite intensive. I sleep amazing, or as I told Austin this morning, I went in a coma for 8 hours.

Not quite as sore as I thought I might be this morning, but later tonight I will be feeling it.

Today I will be eating the same as yesterday, except for the possibility of cutting out the peanut butter, and some other type of fat and protein in place of the chicharones, something with a little more vitamin content.

As for today's exercise, I will be doing an idea marketed by Lyle McDonald and proven to be efficient by his forum and many experiments he has done with clients. It will consist of anywhere between 5-10 minutes of 1-1 minute intervals to cause some more fatigue and lactic acid build up. Then 5 minute rest, then 45 minutes of steady state cardio, preferably resting.

WARNING: this is only of some merit for those under 10% body fat and sometimes doesn't even help until lower than that roughly 7.5% and lower

The fatigue part isn't very important for dieting, and typically interval training would be a horrible idea, hence the short time. The lactic acid build up has some merit here, well not in it of its self, but the effects it has in the body once it is cleared. Once it is cleared the body releases a large amount of Free Fatty Acids or (FFA's) preferentially from 'stubborn fat' (just means there is not much blood flow and typically the body doesn't take much fat from here and only starts too once the other fat stores are low or depleted). Then to expedite the oxidation process I will be performing steady state cardio, but not too intense where I create lactic acid which will blunt the effects that we just tried to set.

Tangentially, just a tip for people trying to lose weight and stay motivated, who you surround yourself with will drastically change the difficulty of losing that weight. Hard to stick to diet, talk with your significant other or whoever you normally eat with and tell them your plans and how hard it is to stay on the bandwagon when you are confronted with tasty fatty food.
Hard to get up in the morning to gym, do the same. Also there is some merit, in having someone text you telling you every time they are at the gym, make it a texting battle, it will definitely help to fuel you

And with that I am done for today, hope something here helped to motivate you, helped you learn something, or even just helped you kill some time.

Observations of the World

The title may seem deep, but I don't know that it really is. Just a couple things I've noticed within the past day or two.

1. Time and what you spend your breaks on. (Especially important for diet veterans)
Being a diet veteran myself I find this especially important because at times I can lose focus on overall health while trying to lose weight or obtain the 'perfect' physique. I say 'perfect' because what you realized once you start achieving your goals you realize there will always be something you can change, just as a car enthusiast will tell you about their project car. Anyway, back to what I was saying about losing focus (that was a perfect example). So with the new semester I am taking a hodgepodge of health classes, with health science backgrounds and kinesiology backgrounds. So as the first few days of class, of course we go over the history of what we have described health as, back in the 50-60's it was just as long as nothing is wrong with you, you are healthy, then in the 80's it changed to the triangle of health, physical, environmental, and then mental. Then added a side to the triangle (so now a diamond?) which included spiritual and social, and If you were strong in all of those you had optimum health. And now today there aren't really levels of health but more a health continuum that you place somewhere on (hopefully high) 0 is dead and 10 is optimum. With that it got me thinking, especially because yesterday I got out of school early and I had enough time to make lunch for later. After that I was confronted with two choices 1. go to work early to actually get a workout today or 2. go to get coffee with my girl friend and throw away any chance at working out that day.
For me I chose number 2, naturally. But thinking about it maybe back two years ago if I had a girlfriend and thought of diet and exercise much differently (more of how the fitness community does) I would've chose number 1. This bothers me because of How i used to think and because of how the fitness industry expresses health and fitness. Health is a jumble of all of those sides I talked about not just about being active. So they expect you to throw out social and go with physical, anyone else ever feel amazingly health when you feel lonely? I don't.

2.Again in school we talked about two different kinds of professionals, typically is regular drs (can't think of the word) and the other is holistic (they think of the problem is a sum of multiple parts). My chiropractor Dr. Thomas Sawyer, is like the latter, one of the main reasons I keep going back, also he is very good. Many people tend to be confronted with a problem physically or mentally, so they go somewhere to fix that said problem and don't even take a second to look at what may have caused that problem.

For instance lets look at a circumstance, you have a constant nagging back injury. So you go to a regular chiropractor and he adjusts you and the pain goes away for maybe a day, a week, or maybe even a month. Only for it to return.
The second example you would go to a holistic chiropractor, he may adjust you as well and you start feeling better, however, he will also help you to assess which muscle are tight and which are causing your problems, then will help to loosen those muscles through stretches and exercises you may do to help expedite the process.

Now typically the first is usually quicker and which is why people tend to gravitate more towards that way (instant gratification, this typically tends to screw us). However it is a dangerous mindset that I see more and more people fall into, its something we as a whole need to get out of. However, the government isn't a large proponent for things like this, they make far more money taxing antibiotic companies that help to treat problems. Where as if they were to help with prevention of these diseases or problems, there wouldn't be much money to be made. The sad truth is money controls pretty much anything, which is why you must be careful taking advice from others and you need to look at what the facts are and why might such an outcome occur.
My favorite example of correlation is about shoe size and math skills.
There was a study done and the correlation of bigger shoe size was tied to better math skills. Now if you looked at that blindly you would think you've got to increase you shoe size some how. But if you took a deeper look at the study you would find that the study was done at an elementary school. Now lets think at elementary schools what are the populations of people. Children usually kindergarten-6th grade. Now lets look at the Kindergarteners, they have poor math skills due to them being young and un practiced, they are also small and have small feet because they are young. Now looking at the 6th graders, the big kids on campus, they've had far more experience with math and years of practice, increasing their math skills, also they are older and have grown more increasing their foot size. Well look at that Bigger feet, better at math, that must be the correlation. Now we all know that is complete bogus, but thats how a lot of studies are setup with certain protocols especially in the fitness industry and is why its ever so important to look at why something may happen and not be so nieve and believe everything you see or read somewhere.

Swiss Cheese

Ok so my blogging has been like swiss cheese lately, so Ill give an update of what Ive been up to;

1. My diet has been pretty much the same, almost to the exact foods except, due to the low calories and low carbs and depletion workouts, I have been having crazy food cravings (crazy as in very strong and often). So the other day I whipped up some zucchini and mushrooms and steak, Ill have to write down the recipe next time I make it because they were bomb! (usually i can save half of my meal, not this time). Anyways, been on the same diet except for switching up the vegetables.

2. Haven't been doing much in the gym aside from 30-40 minutes of cardio maybe once or twice and lots of stretching, REMEMBER stretching will save you from a lot of pain later down the road trust me. Also treat stretching like exercise 3 sets of 30 seconds on each stretch. or for the more dedicated individuals for 60 seconds and still 3 sets.

3. School I have been increasing the rate at which I am balding (ok maybe stress making you bald is an old wives tale) but Im stressed nonetheless. However my stress is subsiding because there isn't anything else I can do other than what I already have this week so I can just put it aside and whatever happens, happens.

1/25/2012

Alright I know I keep missing days. However, school has just begun and yesterday I was at school from 9-6 and on my little breaks I had at school I was either breathing, or trying to find a way to add classes that I need, or cursing to an online site about how horrible our school has become. Anywho, yesterday we'll just say was all according to plan, diet wise, and even got a rep workout in, each set 30 reps and 60 seconds long, 6 sets each body part again. Totally sucked absolutely. However, it is paving the way for the rest of the diet.

The rest of the diet;
so for the next two days after the depletion workouts, you can either take the days off, or optimize the bodies ability to mobilize and utilize fat at an accelerated rate by doing some type of low intensity extended cardio, such as walking on an incline for 30-60 minutes. Then on the 3rd day, or technically the 5th day, mid day you want to do a tension workout, or a workout that will stimulate the muscles enough to increase carb storage in the muscles, so it will be less reps and more weight with only a couple of sets, more details later. Then you will begin the fun part of the diet. I would go into all this technical details but truthfully i don't think i have the time right now, so if you really want to know just let me know and I can give you details and help you out. However, you will be eating anywhere from 500-1200 grams of carbs depending on your body size, yes that is grams. 2000-4800 calories worth of carbs along with under 50 grams of fat over the next 24 hrs. This will allow your body to fully if not overcompensate your muscles with carb stores, priming your body for the next diet, which will be technically the 7th day, day 6 you will be eating the carbs, this is pretty awesome however, can be quite daunting. Then on day 7 you will do your strength workout, very heavy weight and very low reps to maximize muscular growth and increase your strength. and that will be the end of the diet.

So for me this is a very exciting time, however, I will extend this a bit further and do the refeed on sunday or so, where I can actually take the time and enjoy all these carbs.

Update 1/23/2012

Well as i sit waiting for class to begin I might as well just update you guys on the diet.
So far today, I have eaten about 5 oz of chicken that my cousin decided to cook up. Made with some parsley, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice. Was very tasty around 230 calories and 45 grams of protein. Brought an additional 6 oz of said chicken which will add 240 calories and 48 grams of protein. Totaling 93 grams of protein and 470 calories so far today. Later on depending when I get out of class and how much time I have I will try to get a workout in on break. Ill be sure to update fitocracy if I do and show a screen shot on the bottom of this post along with the rest of food and what Ill have for dinner.

Monday 1/23/2012

Well last night was a very thorough loading of carbs if I do say so myself. Had about 6 breadsticks, 4 servings of salad, and a serving a chicken parmigiana from olive garden. Then got home had about 3 pieces of some coffee cake Karla and I made from scratch then 2 pieces of another creation we found online 'tres leches' cake or how the iPhone constantly likes to call it 'tres leeches', admittedly the first sounds a bit more appetizing. 

Now we get to today, as of the last day of my diet my body fat was down to about 7% give or take .5%. So this week I will be taking fat loss much slower and by means of a different diet. The calories of said diet will be much higher and it will included higher amount of fat, and I will be ensuring the absorption of the fat soluble vitamins that the previous diet had neglected to absorb. (Vitamins A, D, E, K.)

This new diet is very similar however, the protein requirement is lowered due to the fact that the calories are higher, lowering the threshold of necessity for protein. It will be adding fat back into the diet, I would give you guys a percentage estimate on fat in the diet, but what good would that do? Does anyone really see the benefit of that? Especially for me I see things quite differently, first off math isn't necessarily my strong suit, even though I took calculus in high school, I didn't quite grasp much of it. When looking at a diet and a dieter, I look at how much fat they have, how much they weigh, and how many calories they will need to consume or not consume in order to see a beneficial amount of weight loss (beneficial in the sense of psychologically pleasing and motivating and beneficial for health markers). 

Anyways, back to the diet. For the protein instead of being 2 grams/ lbs of lean body mass. We will be going for 1 gram / lbs of LBM. Thus reducing the amount of protein greatly. Which for me is somewhere around 160-165 grams. So if we look at that for the protein that would come out to be 640-660 calories. So for me I roughly weight 170-175 so well say I roughly burn through 1700-1750 calories per day. So that will be the upper limit of what I can eat, now On a day I don't go to the gym I would suggest for myself to eat no more than 1300-1400 calories, but on a gym day I would eat 1500-1600 calories. This allows for weight loss but isn't too low where my body would feel lethargic and not be able to recover from the workout. So how am I going to reach that calorie limit, BY ADDING FAT! (few sticks of butter here and there). Ok maybe not sticks of butter, don't we wish. This allows for me to enjoy fattier cuts of meat, some peanut butter, nuts, and butter on whatever I so choose. However, I will not be consuming carbs for the same reason described in the primer on the previous diet.

Exercise portion of this diet will be miserable and completely and utterly painful (not for the unmotivated lazy people) It will consist of 6 sets on each body part. Each set will be a timed set meaning you will perform the set for time not a number of reps. Bring some motivating music or picture of what you want to look like for motivation to the gym so you don't quit halfway through, because trust me you will not want to do more than 3 sets of this if that. This will be a full body day for 2 days in a row. For the crazy wanting to torture themselves you can do 12 sets in one day and be done with it. But plan for at least two days. What i tend to do is do 2 workouts in one day and 2 the nexts. So i can do 3 sets first gym session and 3 the next or more the first and whatever I didn't do first. 

Now the reason we do this type of torture is to deplete the carbs out of our muscles, aka depletion training. What this does is voids the body of most carbs, which sends signals to the brain, which sends signals everywhere else, to switch over to more fat oxidation due to the lack of carbs. Thus, increasing fat oxidation on a global scale. For the more vain people as the week goes on you will start to see your muscles deflate and you will absolutely hate how you look, but you must have faith and continue on. This is getting kinda long, so ill update a little later on how the diet is going and any workout I may complete and then Ill finish the diet details tomorrow.

Diet Summary;

1. Protein

2. Fat

3. No Carbs

4. Low Calories

Exercise Summary;

1. It sucks

2. 6 sets

3. 30-60 seconds each set (the more the better)

4. Full body

5.For two days

Final Day

So there was no update, kinda got a little busy with everything. Needless to say the diet finished and I went out drinking last night and the diet definitely got out of control, regardless I woke up this morning looking leaner than I had all week, which is probably due to a few factors.
1. Alcohol is an actual diuretic, unlike coffee, (study showed that caffeine doesn't make you pee out more than you normally would.)
2. Didn't really eat much in the morning or afternoon
3.had carbs

1 & 3. So the alcohol and carbs likely got rid of any subcutaneous water that was still residing from the likely phenomenon i explain when I saw a weight gain in day 3 or 4. Don't take this out of context either. Drinking has excess calories so its not good for weight loss. Also don't go out and buy a huge load of bread either just because I said I ate carbs and woke up leaner. This effect really will only happen when you are on a sustained low or no carb diet, or on DNP but thats a whole other subject.
2. Well, if you can't guess why this would help after reading through my blog, I'm sorry.

anyways the diet is over, however yesterday was my mothers bday so tonight we are celebrating it at, yep you guess it, Olive garden. Reading this you guys probably think I really like this place or something. Well after a week of no carbs, unlimited breadsticks sounds like something you would find in heaven, along with bottomless mimosa's.
However, monday Will start another diet, however it is going to be a low carb diet, not a no carb, just low, depending on how much i can exercise i may make it a no carb diet, and walk you through a carb de loading and carb 'super compensation' diet. Also monday is the start of school, so my ramblings may get a little more technical just to 1. help me study (since I'm an Exercise Physiology major) 2. show off my newly learned knowledge.
Anyways,
hope you all enjoy your weekend.

Day 5 (1/20/2012)

Woke up today looked at scale 168, if you remember thats a gain of 1 lb from yesterday. Now lets look at why that may be. If we remember I still had at least a 500-600 caloric deficit. Lets look back at possible reasons.
1. Weightloss is far from an exact science and is definitely not linear (boo :/  )
2. Last nights meal was quite large and now that extra weight is in my digestive tract (along with other food that this diet tends to not flush out quite well)
3. Last nights meal was very high in sodium
4. I didn't drink very much water yesterday.
Ok now lets look at each in some kind of detail

1. Well theres not much to number 1 its more of what happen and 2,3,4 are the reasons why
2. All that extra weight of the food tends to accumulate, I have been neglecting fiber and not supplementing it so as you can guess there is still some food in my GI tract
3. Sodium can cause bloating, one of the reasons that they say not to have diets in sodium during weight loss because it can stall weight loss and causes people to fall off the bandwagon, even though you may be losing fat. Sodium causes accumulation of water thus making you heavier and not complimenting your looks.
4. Not enough water contrary to what may seem logical, if you don't drink a lot of water, your body holds on to whatever water it can. Thus storing what it can, and making you bloated as well and heavier just like sodium does.
5. Not necessarily proven but quite possible, is that when losing fat your body mobilizes the triglyceride stored which is stored with water as well, giving it the fullness, so when the body mobilized the triglyceride the water was left behind still making your fat cell enlarged. This will eventually go away, also may be the mechanism of why when you add carbs or have a cheat day to your diet you can continue to lean up even though you ate more than you burned that day.

Anyways ill update more later enjoy guys, time to go have lunch with Karla

Day 4 (1/19/2012)

So Yesterday I didn't really get a chance to update, I was tired. Woke up at what was supposed to be 415 however my alarm clock didn't go off, or i turned it off when i was still asleep, another phenomenon I have noticed occurs when I am on a calorie restricted diet and lacking sleep or just having to get up early. Anyways Yesterday i woke up got rid of some water weight (if you catch my drift) then stepped on the scale. The scale read 167 woohoo, lightest I've been all year ;). Then got my morning coffee jumped in shower, then chugged it after my shower then took a quick pit stop at 7-11 got a low carb monster again, my ritual for early work mornings, which I'm going to stop so I can get back to trying to save money while making a car payment. Ran a morning bootcamp at work then sat down for breakfast. 4 slices of ham (20g, roughly 100 calories) 4 egg whites (18g 80 calories) 2 scoops of whey (48g 240 calories) also a scoop of bcaas. After work ate some chicken and duck at home. My lovely cousin is going to school at the cordon bleu so lucky me, its a protein semester and what she makes is just absolutely delightful all together (40g 200 calories). Dinner time rolled around and I shared my meal time with my girlfriend karla, such an amazing woman :). So for dinner I was responsible for the meat and she was responsible for the vegetables. I seasoned the steak and chicken with garlic salt and soy sauce. Very high sodium meal. For the the vegetables we had some portabello mushroom green beans and cucumbers. Well i had the mushrooms and green beans (she's not a fan of green beans and absolutely despises mushrooms, and yet she still prepared them for me, boy did I get lucky). mushrooms and vegetables are very negligible in caloric value especially for the amount that we consumed so I won't even list them but be mindful the more you eat the more calories you can add, even 5 calories if eaten often enough can add up.

4 slices of ham (20g, roughly 100 calories)
 4 egg whites (18g 80 calories)
 4 scoops of whey (96g 4800 calories)
 also a scoop of bcaas.
Duck and chicken (40g 200 calories).
Chicken (35g 160calories)
Steak ( 20g 130 caories) steak was kinda fatty but It was going bad so we had to eat it :)

All together 229 grams protein (sufficient for no workout) roughly 1150 calories still quite a large deficit even with some decrease in calories burned due to the drastic deficit the past few days, still at least 500-600 calories all in all a good diet day

Little Primer of the Diet

So basically to better explain this diet I decided to make this post. This diet is not something I made up myself, however, is a diet from author Lyle McDonald, a gosh darn genius when it comes to anything fat loss or training specific. (www.bodyrecomposition.com)

The Basis of this 'crash' diet is to create a large caloric deficit for quick fat loss. This is not meant to be an extended diet. The idea behind this diet is to get all the necessary and essential nutrients and create a large caloric deficit. So first we need to look at what actually is essential of the macronutrients.
1. Carbs
2. Fat
3. Protein

1. Carbs are not essential for the average person. and most of you ARE average, not some special little butterfly or whatever analogy your mom may have told you (sorry). May many say its essential because your brain can only run on carbs. While this may be slightly true, your body can manufacture carbs by itself through gluconeogenesis, however it can't make very much. Also after a week or two of a no carb diet your body starts to produce ketones and can very likely go into a state of ketosis, don't worry this isn't the scary run to the doctor type ketosis, it is a diet enduced one. Once it produces ketones your brain can use that as an energy source. Hence why i said slightly true earlier, it can only use carbs until given proper circumstances and then can use ketones. Fun fact of the day; there is anecdotal evidence that if you are on a no carb diet long enough and remain on it long enough a few weeks to a month, that your brain may be able to easily switch between a carb and no carb diet quite easily, instead of going through the brain fog and negative side effects of that first week of switching. Sorry went off on quite a bit of a tangent, anyways Carbs are out.

2. Fat, ok lets get straight to the point. The fat that is essential is EPA and DHA both found in fish oils, so can you guess my next recommendation, start buying fish or invest in some fish oils

3. Protein, well you probably guessed by my first post, this is the essential part for maintaining muscle mass, repairing, pretty much anything going on its likely that protein plays a role in it.

So what are we looking at in the diet Lean protein and vegetables, high fiber low everything else vegetables, think broccoli , green beans, all the vegetables you carb lovers probably hate.

So a quick summary of what the diet consists of
1. 10 grams fish oil
2. No carbs!
3 depending on your body fat level anywhere from 1.5 grams of protein per lb of lean body mass  to up to 3 grams of protein per lb of lean body mass!. The leaner you are the more protein you need and the fatter you are the less food you need to have. Seems kinda backwards huh.
4. you can do exercise if you want, no necessary but if you do, don't do anywhere to the amount you would normally do.

clearly this is a very rough and short summary, I could write a book about all the details, well clearly since this is from a book, 'The Rapid Fatloss Handbook'. But there are even more things that could be added to the book since it came out but as the book stands, it works miraculous wonders if you stick to it. If you are truly interested please feel free to leave me a comment with your email and i could help you give it a go and stick to it. with all the proper details and all that fun stuff.

Day 3 (1/18/12

Alright so today is Day 3 and im actually feeling amazing. So besides getting up at 4:15 today, I have scheduled a physical for January 31st, its probably time Ive had some type of actual dr visit other than for a persistent swollen inguinal lymph node. So today was the first day I did some exercise i did about 30 minutes of inclined walking at 3 mph at 15% grade roughly a 140-150 (due to stimulant use). I felt I needed to do some type of exercise after yesterdays meal at Olive Garden and the homemade cheesecake which turned out to have macros of:
12 grams of fat
132 grams of carbs
100 grams of Protein
it would have been
6 fat
32 carb
and 92 protein if I hadnt used graham crackers for the crust but live and learn.

Turns out it was a success for the other that ate some, I seemed to be the only one displeased with the results, which may be from a phenomenon I have just recently discovered. It has to do with cooking and you being the chef, as you are cooking or atleast for me, I dont really stick to recipes but adjust them to how I would like them to taste, so as im going for a certain taste, if it turns out a little different than what I had hoped for its not very appetising. For now we'll call that Chef Taste Phenomenon (CTP).

Anyways back to the diet, last night I consumed about a 1/4 of the cheesecake so thats 3 grams of fat and 30 some odd carbs more than i should have consumed, hence why I did some morning cardio. However, later on break I will be doing some depletion type resistance training to get rid of the stored carbs in the muscles to help increase beta oxidation (fat burning). In addition today I used a preworkout supplement:
1.-10mg of Yohimbine HCl
2.-1g L-Tyrosine
3.-Half a no carb monster

1. Yohimbine is categorized as a stimulant however, doesnt work quite like one. Yohimbine is an alpha receptor inhibitor (i may be getting a little confused whether its alpha or beta but ill double check at home) and what that does is it inhibits the (parasympathetic nervous system- again not sure if its sympathetic or para getting my thoughts jumbled) which can cause the heart rate to be elevated (hence why its considered a stimulant) The reason I use it is because it increases blood flow to the "stubborn" fat areas, which on males is typically lower abs, and lower back. It basically mimics what a low carb diet would, so being on a low carb diet and using yohimbine in concert would create even better blood flow to those areas.

2. L-tyrosine is the amino acid that is majorly responsible for the creation of catecholamines aka adrenaline aka epinephrine also the nor counter parts (secreted locally rather than from the gland itself). Supplementation has been noted to create a larger release of such chemicals allowing for a greater lipolytic (or fat burning) effect.

3. Lo-carb monster contains stimulants such as caffeine and green tea extract, basically just caffeine to help synergize with the other two supplements to further help fat mobilization and oxidation.

Thats it for now, Ill have a further update of what Ill eat and what I do for exercise. Hope that was enough nerdy sciency stuff for you guys, maybe a little much for today but I had to make up for yesterday. Enjoy!

                                                                   The workout:

Update: Dinner is going to be 2 hard boiled eggs minus the yolk and 2 scoops of whey protein. Not the tastiest but have nothing at home to eat and not really motivated to go out shop, then come home and cook. Laziness can sometimes be beneficial during dieting. I come from the less is more mindset, hence eating less and doing less exercise to get the results I want to see. However, being too lazy can get you into trouble as well, So be mindful you don't always need to over exert yourself but don't fall to being overly lazy either.

Day 2 (1/17/12)

Update: So I'm feeling much better today, no where as sick as I was the day before, only problem is my sinus' are PLUGGED UP!,my ears are constantly popping, main reason I didn't go to the gym today also because I wasn't particularly feeling a lower body workout since thats the only workout I can do, but definitely Ill do some cardio tomorrow morning along with lifting on break from work.

Alright today is a birthday dinner night, thankfully we have already celebrated it with a large feast of pesto pasta (2 lbs) teriyaki chicken (1 lb) marinaded steak (1 lbs) and shrimp (2 lbs), and finished it off with 2 large pumpkin rolls home made. I ended up eating a good quarter lb of pasta, 1 chicken breast, 2-3 steak cuts, at least 30-35 shrimps, and 1/4 of one pumpkin roll, suffice to say i was stuffed. Sorry for going off on a tangent I had to relive that moment, I'm not necessarily hungry but I want other foods! Anyways luckily we have celebrated prior to today, however, we (being karla and myself) decided to make a cheesecake for tonight, so we went shopping for all the non fat ingredients we could get our hands on, some zero calorie sweetener and some protein powder, then while she was at work I created this filling that was large enough to fill two decent sized pie trays. (in the oven as we speak) I have yet to calculate the calories of this monster for two reasons, 1. i just finished making it, and 2. because I'm afraid of how many slices i can or can't have. Don't worry I will post pictures and macronutrient breakdown by nights end.

Anyways as for today I have had more food than I did by this time yesterday. So far;
2 scoops of 10 grams of BCAA's
2000 IU's of Vitamin D (cause I'm sick ill take half dose now, and half with dinner)
5 grams of fish oil pills EPA/DHA
2 scoop of whey protein (48 grams protein)
2 cups of coffee no cream
1/4 zero calories red powerade (so awesome)

So far I have yet to run into the problems i did last time I tried this diet, however I was exercising last time and eating a lot more lean turkey and ham so I was struggling to gobble (pardon the pun) down that much protein. So far it has been far easier to only eat 200ish grams as opposed to the 300ish grams. Due to my background of fasting usually 16 hours a day, more towards 20-24 hrs lately due to the holidays, it has been relatively easy for me in hunger sense, my body is only trained to eat once maybe twice a day so when I'm eating before then it fills me up quickly however, Im still feeling the clear headedness I would if i were fasting, I contribute this to the lack of carbs in my meal. So tonight has yet to be decided on and will depend on the macro's of the cheesecake. As for now Im going to take a nice break with my new addiction, Skyrim. I will update later with some details of the cake and some nerdy science stuff for those of you who actually care about that, other than me.


Update: Alright so cakes done turned out pretty good considering the lack of calories and carbs and fat. Also turns out we are going out for dinner and to the fattest and carbiest places, OLIVE GARDEN. No, this does mean the end of the diet or going off the bandwagon, however it does mean bending the rules a touch, and doing a little footwork into what foods are there. I did a little homework and looks like the lowest carb entree is the grilled herb salmon, however it does have 20+ grams of fat however its rich in EPA/DHA so i consider it more as a supplement. How i started the footwork was go to the site of the restaurant, opened all the tabs are first looked at carbs, since this is a low carb diet your body depletes the carb stores and the water it is stored with, so thats the reason there is an initial drop in weight on no carb or low carb diets. If i were to consume carbs now i would gain the weight i lost back in a single night. Next after I found the lowest carb entrees I looked at the lowest fat entrees from the low carb entrees I wrote down. And voila I found the best meal on the site, now at the restaurant there are also things you can do, in this instance it is brushed with herbs and olive oil so I could politely ask the waiter to have it only seasoned instead of also being brushed with olive oil. And that is how to avoid extra calories.

I have been forgetting to take weight right in the morning and will start tomorrow.

Today weighed : 171 mid afternoon after some protein shake and food.

The Protein Diet (Day 1)-----1/16/12

Today is day one of what we like to call the Protein Diet. What it truly is, is a PSMF, (Protein Sparing Modified Fast). Simply put, its a diet that tricks your body into putting itself into a state that mimics fasting, without truly fasting. The Diet consists of only fibrous vegetables and mounds of protein, oh and you can’t forget the lovely fiber supplements and fish oil pills. However other than that its pretty simple and straight forward. The exercise program is non existent for the lazy people but can be used with a workout plan as well. However when providing a workout plan concurrent with the diet you must be very careful not to do too much exercise because your body simply cannot recover enough on a strict caloric deficit void of any carbohydrates. 

So far today all I’ve had was a cup of coffee and a Cold-eeze because I’m still feeling a bit under the weather. So water medicine and a good ol’ dose of Skyrim and rest along with my food is all i will do today.

I am aiming for somewhere around 260-300 grams of protein today which i need to start eating if Im going to look on completing that amount of protein before bed.

A little background on my diet personality, is I’m a huge proponent of Intermittent fasting, specifically lean gains protocol, by the ‘Cult’ leader Martin Berkhan, I say this jokingly because the followers are starting to become quite like paleo and cross fit fans have become about their ‘institutions’. So for me typically i would eat within a 8-10 hour window, however for this diet i may expand that feeding window and bit and shorten the fasting window since the diet itself will mimic fasting.

Anyway, for those who will follow or who may get inspired I will try to write a quick log of the food I eat and when applicable I will provide a link to my fitocracy page for any workouts I may do, and when I do you will be able to see the vast differences in how much (or how little) I do in comparison to how much I was doing and the differences between rep ranges and sets.

Enjoy!


Edit:
So I finally decided to eat, instead of opting for fish oil pills i just ate 15-20 pieces of left over shrimp two scoops of bcaa's roughly 20grams of bcaa's. Which I look at more like 80 grams of regular protein. Ill explain after. Then went to my chiropractor appt looks like this diet will consist of only cardio and lower body exercise due to my upper back postural problems. Then cooked dinner with my love, in which we made some extra lean ground beef 96/4 egg whites green beans and cilantro along with some cucumbers on the side. I also had a chicken breast on the side as well. For dessert we had 1/2 cup greek yogurt a little more carbs than should be allowed but its all we had so we made due. All in all I ate roughly 200-220 grams of protein today, for not doing any exercise id say it was a decent day.

Reasoning: The reason I look at 20 grams of bcaa's to equal 80 grams of something such as whey protein is based on the amino acid profile of the proteins. When we look at whey protein the amino acid profile is typically 25% bcaa's and 75% are non essential amino acids (meaning they can be synthesized by the body). Now when we look at BCAA's the amino acid profile is naturally 100% bcaa's (duh!)
While the non essential amino acids are important for muscle retention, the bcaa's have a far larger effect on specific markers that increase protein synthesis.

Reasoning#2: After i said i ate 200 grams of protein today and mentioned not doing exercise and it being sufficient is because with more activity your body will need more protein to retain the muscle so for less activity i can get away with less protein and on a diet like this the less eating the better, due to the food being void of fat and carbs is just plain bland and more of a chore than anything else. If you try this diet you find yourself being ok with being hungry rather than having to eat another chicken breast or slice of ham.

Note: it is important to do your homework and look into vegetables with the essential vitamins and make sure you are salting (specifically with a mix of potassium and sodium salt) in order to get a good balance of minerals, or you will find yourself cramping in the middle of the night and really hating life. AND DONT FORGET YOUR FIBER, for reasons i trust you understand.

Edit: Weighed myself mid afternoon at drs office, 176 lbs roughly with clothes on. had shrimp few hours earlier.