Who you calling fat? Week 2

Well it's been an interesting and more importantly an enjoyable week. First let me start by saying that I didn't weigh myself Monday morning, instead I'm going to do a final weigh in at the end.
It's an odd feeling waking up knowing that you can have fatty foods for breakfast and not feel guilty. On a few occasions this week I've thought "this is so wrong" but I continued to fry my bacon and eggs in butter.

In regards to food this week it's been mainly bacon, eggs and pork sausage for breakfast and twice during the week I had the same in the evening, I did however find myself getting a cooked chicken mid week and totally destroyed it, pretty good value too considering it had 34g of fat and 166g of protein.

I’ve noticed that I've become stronger this week, not He-man strong but enough to notice. After doing some research (watching fat head again) it turns out that saturated fat helps produce more testosterone, so that could be the reason for my strength gains. My workouts still consist of hitting one muscle a day and I try to hit the muscle from every angle possible. Due to the drop in carbohydrates I can’t train to the intensity that I am used to, so instead I’m concentrating on lifting heavy to maintain muscle mass. It must be working well for me as I was asked if I was taking any steroids, so after I finished my 6th set of seated shoulder presses with 35kg dumbbells a side and after dropping the weights after 12 reps (good reps might I add) I say:

                                            “What makes you think that?”

My friend then says, “Well how are you so strong?” now some people might get offended by a question like that but not me, in my eyes that’s a massive compliment. I’ll be honest in my younger days I did experiment but I was foolish and I can assure you I’m never going down that road again!

So my response to my friends question; (you might want to get a pen and paper so you can write this down!)

“The mind will always fail before the body does.”

People will approach the weight thinking “there is no way I’m going to lift this”. To get past this mental hurdle you have to forget about what you think you can lift and just lift, you will be surprised what you can do when you’re mentally savvy. Pick a number in your head and lift, and if you don’t reach that number do it next time.

In terms of physical appearance I'm feeling slightly leaner and my stomach as become to some extent flatter. This could be water retention due to the drop in carbohydrates, but we will see in the oncoming weeks.

I must say that not once this week have I felt hungry, and that's having breakfast at 6:30 and not having anything else till around 1pm. You really do stay full and satisfied pretty much all day. I’m still taking my protein shakes after workouts and sometimes in the evening, but this time with full fat milk and they taste so good.

I almost forgot to mention that on the weekend my sister came home for a few days with her boyfriend so we did spend some time eating at restaurants I did eat somewhat healthy meals but I wasn’t going to be totally anal and ask how many carbs were in the meals. Life is about enjoying yourself, not putting red tape on everything!

That’s all for this week, but I’ll leave you with my daily nutrient details.

Who you calling fat?

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything but I have been rather busy over the past few weeks. Honestly I sat down on a number of occasions ready to knock something up but first I needed to figure out what my next mission would be. After my bout of intermittent fasting I needed to do something which wouldn’t involve too much planning as I can’t commit to eating at certain times every day.

When I did the IF diet I didn’t really restrict my carbohydrate intake, which was nice but I found out I’m very carb sensitive and would bloat and hold water when I consumed them, also I’ve found that I don’t ever crave carbs anymore and when I do have them I feel very lethargic.

A few months ago I watched a documentary called “Fat Head” it’s basically a follow up to “Super Size Me” but actually informative. In a nutshell it’s about a person who lives on fast food for a month and loses weight, roughly 12 pounds. I pulled this from the film website as it describes it better than I can;

“Have you seen the news stories about the obesity epidemic? Did you see Super Size Me? Then guess what? … You’ve been fed a load of bologna.

Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the blame-McDonald’s crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while demonstrating that nearly everything we’ve been told about obesity and healthy eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me, Naughton serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The obesity “epidemic” has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention). People the government classifies as “overweight” have longer lifespans than people classified as “normal weight.” Having low cholesterol is unhealthy. Lowfat diets can lead to depression and type II diabetes. Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease — but sugars, starches and processed vegetable oils do”

So I recently watched it again and thought this could be an interesting diet, everything you’ve been told about saturated fats has been lies. Now I have no issue with fat in my diet but I’ve never gone out of my way to consume more than I have to. Regarding carbohydrates I hope by now you know I’m not a fan and will avoid them like the plague, the documentary explains what happens when we consume carbs and how and why carbohydrates get converted to fat. I’m not going into great detail about the film as I urge you to watch it yourself, trust me when I say it will completely change your view on fats and why you should include them in your diet. For me personally now when I look around a supermarket I see it like this.................

Now for the rules of the diet:

Calories must not exceed 2000 a day and carbohydrates must be limited to 100g, it’s as easy as that!

Obviously sugar is off the menu but by now you should know better. I did plan on posting this yesterday but it actually worked out better as I can post my nutritional information so you get a better idea of how much I’m consuming.

As you can see my fat and protein intake pretty much take priority and the carbohydrates are trace calories, which come from protein shakes with full fat milk.

I’m looking forward to this diet, for the simple reason I get to wake up and have a cooked breakfast and not feel guilty and to be fair in the past when I’ve had a hearty fatty breakfast it keeps you full for longer and you hardly ever feel hungry. I checked my weight yesterday and I'm 12st 11, I'm only going to weigh myself once a week and someday this week I'll try and record my body fat percentage and post it on this page.

I think I’ll leave it there for this week but I must mention my one rule for this diet:


If it bleeds you can eat it!

Intermittent fasting - my thoughts!

I’ve been following the 16/8 fast now for around three weeks and it’s pretty easy to follow. I have my own personal issues with this way of eating which I’ll touch on later but first let’s move on to the positives.
The whole idea of not eating for 16 hours is a scary thought, I had visions of me being starving and worst of all, watching the clock and counting down the minutes before I can eat. There was none of that!

I started this when my schedule was pretty straight forward, meaning every day I trained at 12:30 so my meal timings were the same every day. So for me this was as follows;

1:30pm – first meal (biggest)*
4:30pm – second meal (medium)*
7:30-8pm – last meal (smallest)*

*amount of calories

I followed this for two weeks and I must say for the two weeks I never felt hungry once. Regards to what I ate, I kept away from junk as usual but I increased my carbohydrate intake a fair bit. My main source of carbs came from protein flapjacks which have 30g carbs and 20g protein per bar which I had straight after my workouts. Other carb sources came from oatmeal which I normally added the dry oats to my protein shakes. My post workout meal was fairly simple and easy, I relied on meal replacement shakes, not ideal or the best option but it was the easiest option for me at the time.

So I finish training and immediately have a protein flapjack, my meal replacement shake (which included BCAA, creatine and L-glutamine) and a 300g tub of cottage cheese.

My second meal which was a “real” meal would normally be sirloin steak with steamed vegetables. This did vary and I’m not sure if this has been done before but I did have some beef burgers but instead of the bread buns I used portobello mushrooms. I just grilled them for a few minutes per side added some mozzarella cheese to the burgers and ate it like a normal burger – DONE.

The last meal was simple; it was basically another protein shake which consisted of 40g protein and 2g carbs per serving which was perfect just before bed.

Regards to my training my strength has gone through the roof, this could be because my carb intake was higher than it normally is which means I have more fuel for my workouts. My workouts were split over five days where I focused on one body part per session, trying to spend at least an hour (around 20 sets) making sure I hit the muscle from every angle. After the weights I did some cardio, nothing too taxing but enough to break a sweat, cardio sessions lasted maximum 20 minutes.

I refrained from checking the scales the entire time, mainly because I was getting a bit tired of it if I’m honest. This time I just went of what I looked and felt like, I’m looking better in the mirror; my muscles seem fuller which is a bonus. I think the main indication of my progress is based on two key factors, if my waist line is the same and if my shirts are getting tighter.

Check and check!

I enjoyed the experience granted it was a short one but due to my schedule I couldn’t stick to training times and my meal timings were getting sloppy towards the end, so some days I’d have my first meal at 1pm and others it would be at 4pm. It was just a nightmare trying to keep within the 16 hours and working your meals around it. Don’t let that put you off though; if you can train at the same time on a daily basis then this would be good routine for. I originally planned to do this for a minimum of 4 weeks but I can’t do it due my time commitments, with work and me just starting a nutrition degree and not knowing when I can train it’s just not the best option for me. I do encourage you to give it a try though even if it’s only for a week, you have nothing to lose!