Well, I have my next 28 days of workouts set up and ready to go. I'm going to try to not post every day this go around, though. If I start slackin, I'll start posting frequently again.
Since I actually started weighing myself [first week=oopsies], I've lost 7 pounds in 2 weeks on
this diet and I basically eat as much as I want. Go to whole foods food bar and just stack roast turkey and veggies and pig out for lunches. Breakfasts with 4-6 eggs and 3 strips of bacon. Dinners with chicken, beans, and veggies. Saturdays I gorge on dunkin donuts and burgers and milkshakes. Repeat. I work out maybe 3 hours a week. Don't have to fool around with measuring amounts of things or making silly lists. Just pure bodyhacking. I don't know if any of the mechanics he touts are true or not, but it works.
Congrats! And actually, that diet sounds pretty interesting. I'm currently at my 250 pound curse. Ever since at least 2006 (when I started writing down my weights), I always stall when I hit below 255, and I'm never able to break 250.
I'm seriously thinking about doing this to break the 250 mark and lose a quicker 15 pounds or so. It's not something I'd do for much more than that, though, because diets like this don't teach us long-term maintenance, which is necessary to keep the weight off.
However, as a quick 10-20 pound weight loss tool? Yeah, I don't have an issue with it.
And Jock - to reply to the article:
Eating more frequently than four times per day might be helpful on higher-carb diets to prevent gorging, but it's not necessary with the ingredients we're using. Eating more frequent meals also appears to have no enhancing effect on resting metabolic rate, despite claims to the contrary.
Frequent meals can increase the calories burned from the "thermic effect of food", or the energy used to digest food, but not the metabolic rate per se. Other benefits of 4 or more meals include balancing of blood sugar, controlling cravings, mood enhancement, and a steady supply of amino acids which can improve the growth of muscle mass. I consider compromising with 4 meals a day to be perfectly sound. Just make sure they are small enough that you are hungry at the next meal for maximum effect.
Otherwise, just say no to fruit and its principal sugar, fructose, which is converted to glycerol phosphate more efï¬ciently than almost all other carbohydrates. Glycerol phosphate p triglycerides (via the liver) p fat storage. There are a few biochemical exceptions to this, but avoiding fruit six days per week is the most reliable policy.
Fruits have fructose, but they also have high levels of soluble fiber as well as sucrose and glucose. It seems like this argument is trying to piggy back on the nastiness of high fructose corn syrup, and I ain't buying that. I'm not sure what the issue with glycerol phospate is, either. How many human-blobs of fat got that way from their horrible strawberry addiction, anyway?
Having said that, limiting fruits is actually a smart idea, and I'm not going to argue for their necessity. They are a perfect addition to a post-workout snack or smoothie, but beyond that
moderation is important or they will limit your fat-loss.
I make myself a little sick each Saturday and don't want to look at any junk for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat-loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function and conversion of T4 to T3, etc.) doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction.
Okay, I admit that I don't know if the mechanics here are correct, and I'm too lazy to look this one up. (I don't feel like filling in the gaps by researching metabolic pathways.) However... the concept is actually right. An unlimited cheat day will throw the body off, and almost certainly makes the diet a bit more effective.
More importantly in my opinion, is that the cheat day provides a mental incentive for good behavior. It's much easier to work for 6 days knowing that on day 7 you can reward yourself with all sorts of goodies.