One of my favorite views of the Chicago skyline.
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Last week was the first week in three months that I didnāt stay āin the greenā in my Lose It! app. Exceeded my weekly calorie allotment by about 1,500 calories.
Sharing ice cream with the family on vacation was definitely worth it, and it probably wasnāt a horrible idea to take a little diet break.
Back at it this week. I have some work travel lined up, so Iāll be relying on my flexible dieting/IIFYM skills, and lots of little bags of Good Beans to keep hitting my targets while Iām running around the midwest region.
Yesterday, I did 100% band-based workout for my arms, chest, and shoulders. I also did a 15-minute continuous swim while I was at the pool with the family. My arms felt lifeless today.
My morning workout was more of a dance routine with a few dumbbells thrown in. Definitely worthy of one of those āawkward gym momentsā Youtube videos.
I did learn that even with dead arms, I can still work on my hand stands and hand walking. Iām getting pretty good. I can do a perfectly still handstand into a reverse caterpillar. In slow motion. So basically, a negative handstand pushup where I come all the way down to my chest and then smoothly unroll the rest of my body down to the floor.
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Monday
2350 calories
30/30/40 C/P/F
Note: I am delayed at the airport. Strap in for some TLDR rantasticness.
I decided to see if I could re-establish some fat-loss momentum by starting the week with some low-ish carb days. Iāve been pushing carbs pretty high, so low right now is 200g or less. With a calorie target of about 2300, that leaves me with 1500 calories to split between protein and fat.
(By the way, I made this decision AFTER I had a big bowl of oatmeal with honey this morning, so the rest of the day kinda sucked in terms of having to really restrict the carbs.)
This is where most macrophiles might default to a protein target based on 1g/lb of body weight and then fill in the rest with fats. In fact, that is exactly where todayās macros ended up.
However, that was not my goal and wonāt be my goal tomorrow. All Iām doing is letting the chips fall where they may with those 1500 calories. I look at it as a sliding scale. On the very low-protein end, I might hit 120g, which means I could go as high as 115ish grams of fat. But I could also go higher-protein and hit 250g, which would cut the fat target to 60ish.
Today, I had leftover chicken breast in the fridge, and I met a colleague for lunch at a restaurant, where the best option was a double chicken-breast sandwich. I went fairly high on protein today. But tomorrow, Iāll be on the road and my best options are probably going to be some kind of egg-based breakfast and maybe a snack-based lunch. If Iām going eggs, then I might as well go bacon. And if Iām going eggs and bacon, I might as well make tomorrow a higher-fat day. I might even dig deeper into the carb drop if the day goes that way.
While I donāt think I can learn much about which specific macro ratio is optimal for me if Iām constantly tweaking things, Iām okay with that. Iām not sure I want to zero in on a perfect macro ratio. That would give me one less thing to tinker with.
If you zoom out a level, whatās really going on is that Iām cruising along and stringing long stretches of days together where Iām hitting my calorie goal, which is the most important thing here. The more I get caught up in the details as Iām racking up days and weeks and months, the better off I am.
What I can learn, though, is how different foods and food combinations effect me throughout the course of a day and maybe for 2-3 day periods. And that information can come in handy when Iām trying to dial things in for the pool on a Saturday in preparation for the big impromptu ābest dad bodyā contest that I am absolutely convinced is going to magically materialize at some point. Iāll get the email on a Thursday, so Iāll have less than two days to prepare and leverage everything Iāve learned from doing things like drinking enough Mag-10 to warrant an adult diaper and having Metamucil, Liquid Fish Oil, and raw honey for breakfast.
Regarding proteinā¦
Protein is the one macro I never dared mess with. Kudos to the protein marketers for so effectively accessing and fucking with my core belief circuitry as it relates to protein.
At some point, I started letting go. I quickly realized that even if I TRY to keep my protein low, it never drops all that low. My protein-based eating style is so firmly engrained, that protein just happens.
Even when I was willing to entertain the idea that maybe I didnāt need so much protein, I was still convinced that if I didnāt construct my eating around protein, I would be missing out on the āsatietyā effect and might put myself in immediate danger of a binge eating disorder.
The more I realize that habituation to a certain energy intake has the power to trump whatever satiety magic might be contained in those extra 80 grams of protein, the looser the shackles become.
(I will say that if I need a quick course-correction to a diet that has been derailed, force-feeding myself chicken breasts until Iām ready to burn down the nearest Chick-fil-A always seems to do the trick.)
Hereās a general template for macro-cycling if the ultimate purpose is to utilize it as a tool to optimize long-term behaviors that support the appropriate energy intake:
- Restrict one out of the three macros. Set a goal that is way lower than normal, but not so low that itās impossible. Example: Fat under 45 grams, Carbs under 100 (or higher, depending on your baseline carb tolerance), Protein under 120.
- Crank up your intake of the other two macros by eating some things you donāt normall allow yourself to eat, but still trying to generally focus on whole, unprocessed foods that most informed meatheads would consider okay. Example: fats - whole eggs, butter, bacon, dark chocolate, peanut butter. Carbs: cereal, rice krispy treats, fruit, honey, jelly beans, bread, rice, potatoes, jelly/jam (this list can go on and on). Protein: protein powder, extra egg whites, big steak.
- When it feels like a struggle to get through a day, or when you start obsessing about the restricted macro, switch the macro you are restricting and repeat.
As long as you still hit your calorie number and donāt use every high-carb day as an excuse to drink seventeen Moscow mules, this approach can be an effective spin on macro cycling.
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I am a fan of Jade Tetaās articles.
Learning to let go of the need to burn a certain number of calories per day has helped me. I donāt do it in a structured way, but I do alternate between EMEM and ELEL days. The leaner I get, the more I can feel those EMEM days āfeedingā my muscles, and those ELEL days really make a difference in how I look the next day.
Interesting that he also mentions Carbolin-19 in this article. I have always been a fan. As I looked in the mirror this morning and saw some indicators of even more leanness, I recall this association between Carbolin and this feeling of my skin seeming to start getting thinner and shrink-wrapping my muscles. (Iām not THAT lean, itās just a feeling).
Iāve taken Carbolin-19 at higher bodyfat levels, and its effects arenāt as noticeable. Get lean and then get on Carbolin-19.
Or at least if youāre not lean, make sure you can consistently maintain a slight energy deficit. Youāll probably get the benefits, they might not just be as visually noticeable.
Quick observation on the difference between love handles and obliques.
The difference for me is a few pounds of fat. At about 12% body fat or higher, I have love handles. Between 10-12%, Iām in a transition phase.
At or below 10%, Iām seeing obliques.
Once that threshold into obliqueness is passed, there is a visual phenomenon that takes place. The appearance of the shoulder width to waist width ratio dramatically increases.
I think this is because when the mind sees width across the midsection being comprised of detailed muscle, the mind perceives that width as part of the torso musculature instead of assigning it to the āwaistā.
Boom, wider shoulders and a realization that maybe āshoulders every dayā pays off.
Things are looking really good with the leanness improvements, and the scale is not really moving very much.
Iām trying to execute a 40/40/20 day today, keeping the fat very low and trying to hit about 5 meals at 40g P and C each. Whether itās EMEM or ELEL will depend on whether or not I get an evening lift in.
Probably throw some pics up soon. The lighting in the studio is so boring now, though. I may need to rig up an overhead compact fluorescent light bulb and grab myself a shoe. Just for old-timeās sake.
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I love your log. Nothing really to contribute to it, but I am here reading and loving.
Iām a big fan of people scientifically getting shredded, so itās fun to live vicariously through you while I sit here fatter than Iād like to be.
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Yogi, thanks for dropping in. When I started coming back around, yours was one of the logs I tried to catch up on. Always entertaining and I always appreciate the honesty and humor in there.
Monday - 1850 calories
180g C, 180g P, 50g F
Scale weight dropped below 190 today for only the second time since I started getting serious about leaning out a few months ago.
The only movement I did yesterday was a 3.5-mile walk in the morning.
More travel today and tomorrow. I should have time to throw some deep thoughts in here.
Would like to share my thoughts on calorie counting and logging. I read a book by Georgie Fear yesterday.
āLean Habits for Lifelong Weight Lossā
Scott Abel, Jade Teta, Georgie Fear, and Dani Shugart: They all share some common beliefs relating to the psychological aspects of getting your mental shit together with food.
It makes me evaluate some of my own behaviors.
Gotta go dance around right now, but to capture my own thoughts here for later:
- re-establishing Mastery of Hunger - is it realistic, does it truly enhance happiness, enjoyment, and ease?
- habits are your most valuable weapon
- calorie spiking, cheat meals, metabolic slow-down: the barely-noticeable effects of buying into these concepts.
- low fat
- logging: where is the line between OCD behaviors that feel like they result in a NET gain in overall QOL, vs ones that might be insidiously undermining? NOTE: Also consider WWSSD? What would Serge Storms do?
- consistency, boredom
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haha, thanks mate. Itās just nonsense bro-talk but Iām glad you enjoyed it.
What would Serge Storms do if he was trying to get shredded?
First of all, the real Serge Storms, the character in Tim Dorseyās novels, already maintains an admirable level of year-round leanness, so diet and nutrition wouldnāt be something he needs to think about or address.
But if he did decide to take it up as a project, Iām sure he would take a very OCD-fueled approach to the entire process. He would probably also get his hands on some growth hormone, even if it meant that he had to murder some drug dealers in the process.
Letās contrast this to some of the more mindfulness-centered approaches shared by the authors I mentioned in my previous post.
They seem to contend that long-term, meticulous logging might at best be a useful temporary tool as part of a bridge to eventual freedom from all eating-related struggles. At worst, itās some kind of compensatory control mechanism aimed at putting a band-aid on underlying psychological issues that dooms the logger to imminent failure.
On a personal level, I will admit that even on vacation, there were times when I couldnāt let too much time pass before entering something I ate or knew I was about to eat in my Lose It app. And yes, I open the app often to see where I stand, even if nothing has changed since the last time I opened it.
But I donāt really feel a sense of anxiety associated with any of this. Itās not important for me to log because Iām afraid of some kind of consequence if I donāt. I feel more like Iām just a pilot checking the fuel gauges. Or a scientist dipping a thermometer into a beaker. I donāt really feel like Iām super wrapped up in the whole thing emotionally, and I donāt feel like it interferes with the rest of my life. Whatever insidious, beneath-the-surface damage this logging behavior is doing or whatever progress it is preventing seems to be more than countered by the positive outcomes. When I log, I tend to end up nice and ripped. And I donāt care what kind of manorexia the body image police want to diagnose me with, walking around lean and photo-shoot ready at all times is better than walking around slightly fatter than I want to be. Donāt knock it 'til youāve tried it. Itās awesome.
Regarding the use of logging as some kind of mechanism to ācontrolā things - ummm, yeah, Iām trying to CONTROL my calorie intake because I donāt trust my ability to āsit it my hungerā or āeat until satisfied but not full.ā
Apparently, there is some magic in regaining this control over oneās natural instinct to control intake, but I feel that NET NET, Iād rather control it externally than constantly struggle to become friends with a nagging appetite.
If you ask me, the only ānaturalā mechanism to control intake is to be faced with the reality that if you didnāt share enough of the kill or the harvest with your family, they would die and your genes wouldnāt get passed on.
We donāt have that problem anymore. At least not in my neighborhood.
How about meal frequency? Iām picking up a sense that the āfewer mealsā camp is starting to gain some traction with their message that fewer meals leads to less preoccupation with eating in-between meals and with better satisfaction from a meal.
Again, my common sense and experience seems to conflict with this advice.
Letās say I cut down to Georgieās recommended 3-4 meals/day with no snacking. At the intake level I am shooting for, 4 meals is going to break down to about 600 calories per meal. The difference between 400 and 600 in terms of immediate satisfaction is not much. Not because they are both satisfying, but really because if I havenāt eaten in four hours, neither of those are satisfying. If I really want to FEEL satisfied, itās gonna take a ton of food. And if I am eating 400 or 600, no matter what the immediate effect is, in two hours, Iām probably going to be ready to eat something, whether itās driven by physical hunger or emotional cues.
The approach that works better for me is to free myself from the notion that any style of eating is going to produce any kind of satiety magic. Instead, Iām convinced that if my body needs 2,000 calories a day to be in the perfect zone for optimal fat loss/muscle preservation, and I consistently give it what it needs, I shouldnāt have to deal with true hunger at all.
What am I left with? Psychological hunger, in all itās fucked up forms. Stressful phone calls, stressful sales reports, stressful conversations with my wife, boredom, etc.
If there is anything somewhat unique about the approach Iāve been developing, itās that I donāt try to avoid the ability of food to provide comfort or relief or solutions to those cues.
I just feed strawberries to my stress.
Seriously. Strawberries. If Iām spending a day at home (I have a field-based job where I travel, but when Iām not on the road, Iām in the home office), and I find myself mindlessly wandering to the fridge or pantry, which happens ALL the time, I just eat low-calorie, relatively healthy stuff and get back to my business.
Sometimes its fruitā¦I tend to go for the fibrous stuff with high water and fiber and low sugar. Strawberries are my go-to, but cherries, oranges, blackberries, and raspberries are among my other go-to items.
Sometimes, Iāll do one of my little protein bowls where I mix a scoop or two of protein powder with just enough milk to make a cookie-dough consistency (protein blends with egg/casein/why are best suited), and just eat 40 grams of protein. Sometimes it might just mean opening the fridge and taking a swig of liquid fish oil. Sometimes itās a cup of coffee. Maybe a small bowl of fiber one cereal mixed with PB2. Lately, Iāve been a big fan of Good Bean roasted chickpeas.
Bottom line is that I think you can have your good beans and eat them to. You can use food as a tool to get you through the ups and downs of the day if you are using the right foods in the right doses. If a stressful phone call lands you sitting in your car sifting through multiple Whopper wrappers, it doesnāt mean you need to hire a shrink. You might just need to wean yourself off such a high dose of the wrong medication. It probably isnāt going to be an overnight switch to strawberries, but the transition is possible and easier than you might think.
Whether this is a rant, rationalization, or Iām onto something (or on something) or not, Iād be curious to hear opinions and experiences from anyone who has an interest.
Oh, and by the way, this morning I had a small meal at about 9:30 and was already thinking about food by 10:30. But I decided to get a few work things done and write this post, and suddenly itās 11:45 and time to start throwing lunch together. So add āget up and do something else besides thinking about foodā to āstrawberriesā as my favorite ways of dealing with a broken relationship with food.
Iāll save āsitting in my hungerā for the day we actually run out of food.
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Interesting coincidence. Shugartās take on āthe next big thingā being AUTOREGULATION touches on some of the same areas I just rambled about in my most recent post.
Side note, I got to meet Chris and Dani and spend some time with them at Boot Camp 2. Autoregulation and macro logging aside, we threw down a tremendous meal together on our last night out there. Thanks Tim and the whole crew for an awesome experience! I still keep in touch with most of the guys who went. Good stuff.
Anyway, Chris describes how many people have lost the ability to auto regulate, and that we may see a trend in training & nutrition. I agree that weāve probably lost the ability and that there may be some merit in re-acquiring these skills, but none of it personally applies to me.
Even Chris agrees:
āSo, are you able to autoregulate? Well, if you have to count every calorie and every macronutrient every damn day, then you canāt. Not yet at least. Youāre externally regulating, which is okay if youāre trying to get unnaturally shredded, but it shouldnāt have to be a way of life. And if youāre always alternating periods of micromanagement and gluttonous binging then you have a problem.ā
I am trying to get unnaturally shredded. AND stay that way for life.
I alternate between periods of micromanagement and periods of half-assedly-executed micromanagement, but gluttonous binging has never been a big problem for me.
As to autoregulation being the next big thing, this is another area where I might not see it the same way Chris does. In my opinion, most people probably donāt have it in them to invest in the sort of disciplined behavior modification tactics that will be required to make a large change. So while the re acquisition of autoregulation skills might be a worthy endeavor, I just donāt think there will be a viable market for this. I donāt see people shifting away from the quick-fix mentality that continues to pervade.
Hereās my take on The Next Big Thing:
Huge advances in technology to enable more precise EXTERNAL REGULATION.
Band-aids that allow for transcutaneous measurement of various circulating or localized biological chemicals, signaling factors, hormones, etc.
My watch will tell me when my body starts to shift fuel sources. It will tell me when my ingested energy load was too high for current energy needs, and it will tell me how much time I need to wait until energy homeostasis is reached. It will integrate signals on a continuous basis to provide a real-time picture of my insulin sensitivity across various tissues.
It will compare the foods I input with the signals generated by the body to identify which foods create inflammatory cascades and which ones are pro-atherosclerotic.
It will be able to run predictive algorithms and tell me things like, āif you do what you did today for 17 consecutive days, you will decrease your body fat percentage by xx pointsā
I really donāt think this stuff is too far off.
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Thursday 1850 calories
CPF 45/35/20
Workout - 60 minutes
Todayās workout was mostly body-weight stuff, heavy and hard with the jump rope intervals. Lots of hand stand work, pushups, and various hand balancing and leverage tricks.
I burned 550 calories in 60 minutes, which indicates that I was working relatively hard without much stopping. It doesnāt sound like a lot, but consider that those rope intervals are pretty short and Iām not doing any other pure conditioning stuff, and itās a pretty good calorie burn for mostly just moving in place against resistance.
Meanwhile, Iām riding the high of feeling pretty damn lean for the first time in a while. Vascularity is no longer fleeting, itās always on. Seeing it in the delts quite a bit, along with some nice new separation between the front and lateral delt as a result of all the cumulative volume for shoulders. Not sure if itās age or training maturity or what, but I see more veins in more places than I did a few years ago at a similar level of leanness. Lower two abs are close to popping. Visible, but the true separation is still blurred by a layer of fat that doesnāt stand a fucking chance of hanging on much longer than a few more weeks. That transition will be a big one, because the difference between a 6 pack and an 8 pack is, well, as Yogiās girl would say, ātwo more packs.ā
Itās kind of entertaining to see the outside-in progression of leanness. The backs of my hands, for example, are about a week out from being stage ready. I caught a glimpse of them while typing earlier and they didnāt look like mine.
Glutes and quads, on the other hand, could still sustain a small family of cannibals or stranded hikers, should the unfortunate situation present itself.
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Friday - 1900 calories. CPF 30/30/40
Higher fat day because I saved room for ice cream with the family last night.
Friday workout - 30 minute bike ride at an easy pace. It was a travel day for me, and Iād say about 50% of the time, Iāll pair a rest day with a travel day just because it makes sense.
Time on airplanes gives me time to think, and I did some thinking yesterday. Mostly about how much I like the book I recently read by Georgie Fear, even though it actually pushed my thinking further into the opposite direction.
Georgie: eat 3-4 meals throughout the day to re-establish awareness of hunger and increase satisfaction from meals.
Me: install a subcutaneous pump to deliver a constant flow of nutrients throughout the day, including a cocktail of appetiite-supressing drugs that make you forget about hunger. Might as well throw in some micro-doses of LSD while weāre at it, just for fun.
Georgie: food should represent an opportunity to commune with those we love while we appreciate its ability to nourish and sustain us. We should slowly enjoy each mindful chew until a magical point where we are not full, but just perfectly satisfied.
Me: we need to stop romancing this magical time in history where we all had some kind of perfect relationship with food. At one point, either we ate enough to survive and we figured out a way to split up the kill with our family, or they all died. Fast forward, and now the food industry is using humanityās collective adipose stores to launder its profits because food is so cheap to produce. People are having parts of their stomach removed and using plastic tubes to bypass their normal digestive process.
Georgie: We need to identify emotional triggers and fix our emotional eating problems.
Me: Fussy babies get a glorious milk-filled tittle shoved in their mouth. Iām not suggesting we all go back to breast feeding, that would be weird and gross. Just give me some strawberries.
Georgie: Eat vegetables with every meal to help create mechanical satiety reflexes in the stomach. Oh, and vegetables are nutritious!
Me: Eat small meals, shrink your stomach back to its normal size, and even your small meals will start producing mechanically-induced satiety signals. Vegetables are overrated.
Georgie: To regulate your weight, just take more or fewer bits of food at each meal.
Me: Why is it taking the scientists so long to come up with a portable bomb calorimeter so I can measure EXACTLY how much Iām eating.
Georgie: weigh yourself no more than once a week.
Me: Monitor your fatness by checking your fatness indicators every chance you get. You see a storefront window with a particularly reflective surface? Take off your shirt and check yourself out. Is the lady next to you on the bus taking a selfie? Grab her phone and snap a few quick pics of your abs. Hotel lighting making you look good? Snap snap. Looking a little wide in the waist? Stand sideways. Weigh yourself every morning. Check body fat every two weeks. And if progress is too slow, get a compact fluorescent lightbulb, hang it overhead, and watch those last few pounds of stubborn body fat disappear!
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He would absolutely take an OCD fueled approach but I think he would lean heavily on Coleman for pharmaceutical advice, if he were to go that route.
Personally, I think his adversity to meds may translate to a completely natural approach, incorporating carb timing and intermittent fasting.
Perhaps we should send Dorsey an email suggesting that he incorporate Sergeās attempt to get sub 10% in his next novel. But, I suspect Serge hovers around 8% anyway due to his metabolism.
Just sayinā!
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188 morning weight. First time Iāve been that low since March 2014. No end in sight in terms of near or long-term goals. Generally looking to keep strengthening my habits and grab any early signs of complacency or boredom by the roots and yank them out immediately.
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Another slight drop in bf%.
Not claiming sub-10% for real. Recent round of pics makes me guess I still have more to go before I need to grab a shoe and post a truly shredded picture.
That said, it still indicates that things are moving in the right direction. Lean mass holding steady at about 171 with body weight over the last few days averaging 189ish.
Calories last week averaged about 2150/day.
While macros ended up averaging out to Zone-like percentages of 40/30/30, I actually had mostly 40/40/20 ish days with two days that were lower in carbs and higher in fat.
As far as tweaks go, I think Iāll keep playing with timing and frequency. Iām finding that in general, grazing early and keeping fat low and saving space so I can have a dinner with more fat and calories still seems to be the most manageable and sustainable approach. I donāt know if I need to be playing with low carb days at all, though. I seem to get flat and hungry, but Iām not sure it does much for actual fat loss.
If Iām going to adjust at all, it might be better to pull out some carbs or spike up my carbs, but without adjusting fat or protein.
If Iām most proud of one habit change, itās how Iāve changed my alcohol intake. Iāve been damn good and getting better all the time.
I try to have zero drinks when Iām by myself or at home with nothing going on. I allow 1 if itās just me and my wife and we are out to dinner, or if itās a family event and Iām just keeping people off my case.
For now, I havenāt ruled out an allowance for a big night out for special occasions, but Iām sticking to light beers and Iām defining special occasion as something rare and big, bit just that my neighbor showed up with a six pack on a Friday night.
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Great news. Iāve done some vision architecture work that resulted in a re-crafting of my goal statement in Post One of this thread.
There will be some tactical changes to better position me for a successful pursuit of this goal.
I look forward to sharing those and more about what I consider āmind blowingā.
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