(Un)Official 2024 T-ransformation Challenge

Training
870

In this regard, I like to bring up that I AM human and I DO enjoy yummy things, which is why I feel this is worth engaging. Marty Gallagher has written on the concept of becoming a “super taster”. When we constantly lambast our taste buds with only the yummiest flavors on earth, we become numb to being able to appreciate the subtle and nuanced flavors that are naturally around us. Junk Food companies cracked this code a long time ago, and it’s why there are billion dollar R&D departments dedicated toward creating the next new flavor to get us hooked (typically a combination of salt, sweet via HFCS and fats via seed oils, a combination that never exists in nature). And as flavor tends to be something that triggers a dopamine response, we tend to weaken our ability to get the same high we get from yummy flavors due to constant exposure, we we keep “chasing the dragon” of flavor. It’s why they talk about how obese people tend to overeat simply because they need to eat MORE of the junk food to get the same dopamine response they used to get.

When you “get clean”, suddenly you can get that response from VERY basic flavors. Marty talked about POWs that went into a state of euphoric shock from drinking a glass of milk: the sweetness of it was overpowering. I’ll have a bite of a cupcake and go to the moon: it’s incredibly sweet. Meanwhile, eggs, butter, the fat from meat, simple cheeses: they’re delicious! I feel like we do ourselves a favor by coming down from the high for a bit, reprogramming ourselves, and being able to really ENJOY these foods. And I constantly say: if these foods DON’T sound delicious, it means I’m not hungry: I’m bored.

Really appreciate the shout out from you and @TrainForPain And as he said: I’m not saying everyone needs to go carnivore or carb free or anything like that. Just wanting to relay my experiences. From someone that ONLY knew hunger for 37 years and was eating something every 30 minutes to someone that can now effortlessly fast all day, this is what has changed things for me.

871

Forgot to update, but I managed to adjust and stay within calorie budget yesterday

This is a huge win

872

Exactly why I mentioned no sides and only meal I ate that day. I can jump straight into work and not need to eat until 1 or 2pm, eat 1.5lbs of brisket with soda water and I’m good for rest of day.

Edit: Just caught up on other posts. As @T3hPwnisher said, I only mentioned this because in response to feeling satiated. Not as a general diet advice for everyone. Eating 1,300 calories of a 2,800 daily allotment in one meal, BUT you feel satiated for 90% of time awake is a good deal in my book.

I should mention, I drink a serving of Surge during workouts. Either BJJ or weights.

873

Wanted to weigh in on the nutrition discussion. My father is morbidly obese, Type II diabetic and I have watched him struggle to control his blood sugar for the last forty years. It freaked me out a bit and that has informed my eating habits.

I can’t cite any research journals or articles supporting my position but my opinions are informed by years of reading - some bad information as well as some good.

One thing I have learned is the importance of keeping blood sugar in range is more important than your “average” blood sugar. In other words, avoiding spikes and dips. Of course, avoiding foods with a high glycemic load is one way to achieve this.

However, you can also mitigate spikes by eating high fiber foods prior to high glycemic foods - veg, then protein, then potatoes (if you must carb).

I also wanted to address the high protein issue and suggest the importance of fat in achieving satiety. It is important to mix in some fat with your high protein diet - not just egg whites and protein shakes. I liken it to a carburetor mixing fuel and air to increase combustion.

Just my thoughts - no critique of anybody else’s program.

874

My turn to weigh in on the whole nutrition discussion…

So, I completely agree with @EmilyQ on the whole “quality of life” thing. Food is meant to be enjoyed and adding a few spices is not the same think as consuming processed, highly palatable foods loaded with shitty oils, HFCS, sugars, etc. We all need to decide if we’re going to be militant about our diet, to the extent that adding some Mrs. Dash becomes taboo, or if we’re going to throw caution to the wind and give things a little flavor. I am a firm believer that there’s something to be said for enjoyment. There is a fine line between being dedicated to your diet and an eating disorder - and I’m more than certain that there’s at least a few of us up in here that walk that line. Results are great, but at what cost? If having abs and looking magazine cover ready is paying your bills, that’s one thing - but if you’re just training for life and health, I don’t feel like we need to get all crazy. Sure, try different things, see how you feel - but don’t structure your life around your diet - structure your diet around your life. There is a happy balance.

@simo74 if you’re miserable hungry all the time, then we need to rethink the plan a bit. Remember, you really can’t overdo the non-starchy veggies, so you can add some bulk like that in addition to the hydration piece. If none of that helps - give me a shout and we can talk about finding a happy place for you that’s more sustainable.

I’m not in here to sell results wrapped in suffering but instead, results wrapped in SANITY and there is an awful lot to be said for that.

875

I love this! A way of eating predicated around “suffer” is simply not going to be sustainable. It’s one of the reasons people talk about why IIFYM/portion control tends to fail. Trying to just eat LESS of the things that got you fat in the first place isn’t going to succeed for the majority of people: there is a REASON they eat that much. Find out the reason and you’re well on the way to solving things.

I’ve seen the most success eating a way that means no suffering. I’ve certainly suffered before and achieved awesome things with it…but none of it lasted.

It’s legit like a superpower to be able to fast like that, haha. It can make you annoying when traveling with others, as you “forget” to stop and eat. “We’re having lunch? didn’t we have breakfast like 6 hours ago?”

876

lol… If we go on a roadtrip as a family, we leave after dinner and I drive through the night. There will be ZERO stops, unless it coincides with fuel (for the car).

877

I just wanna say, in case I appear heated, that I legit LOVE this round-table discussion we have going on here. THIS is what forums and social media in the fitness sphere SHOULD be. Folks coming together and sharing what has worked for them, what they’ve observed, there philosophies, etc.

It was something I dug about T-Nation when I first joined: one of their subforms was just called “strength sports”, and powerlifting, strongman and weightlifters all got together and exchanged ideas. It was SUCH an awesome space.

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This is all really complicated for something that basically boils down to calories-in, calories-out. (Mostly tongue-in-cheek.)

But I’m also noticing that we’re all talking about somewhat different things. It’s almost as if there’s even less familiar shared common ground when talking about nutrition than there is about training.

Our personal experiences seem to muddy things up. Like how any discussion of, say, “a 1 mile run” has very little common ground between a marathon runner, a sprinter, a weekend-warrior 5k runner, a Westside-era powerlifter, and a sedentary home-office worker. It’s a different experience with notably different physiological effects.

There’s probably some snobbery that comes across with this, but I do believe that spices and seasonings often serve to compensate for bad food selection and cooking technique. There is a historical truth to that. E.g., the sauces of French cuisine were used to cover up the off-flavors of spoiled meat. “We need the nutrition, how do we get it down?”

Ignoring seasonings altogether, there is a difference in how much people eat of a piece of meat if it’s undercooked, overcooked, or cooked “just right”. We’ve all had a dry chicken breast or pork chop. We’re generally going to eat less of it, even if we start out at the same level of initial hunger.

For me, I can eat as much dry meat as my body can handle, and get strong signals to stop eating it. But still be hungry and want more food… just not that.

Same goes with vegetables. Raw broccoli, steamed broccoli, over-boiled limp broccoli, and roasted-to-sweetness broccoli have different effects on palatability without actually changing the raw ingredients.

I’m certain that clarified nothing.

Maybe what I’m trying to get at is that there are many things that affect palatability (desire to eat and keep eating a single thing) and hunger (desire to keep eating something, but maybe not the same thing). And that those are two different things.

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I thought I would weigh in, though not part of the challenge, I am following and subscribed to the thread and have enjoyed following along.

I am in the camp that dieting to lose weight shouldn’t be an extreme change to your current diet. Unless you are eating crap. Fast food, processed nuke and serve, etc., then yes, you need a drastic change to your diet.

I have heard it said many times, we don’t have a problem losing weight, it’s the keeping it off that is the problem. If you can’t stick to your food choices that got you there, you won’t succeed in long term weight loss. Our food relationship can suffer when we demonize and exclude foods from our past diet that we used to enjoy.

I think we all pretty intuitively know what we should be eating. Start with protein, add in some veggies, fruits, nuts, and some dairy. Build 90 percent of your diet around this, and adjust your cals and macros to fit your current goals.

There are a lot of opinions on diets, which goes to show why diets are extremely personal on what works for the individual. I think the good parts of a lot of ways of eating, when combined, make the most sense for the majority of us.

880

Triggered, lol.

Two older brothers and a father with propensities to eat food off of my plate led me to salt my food heavily in defense. Years later, eating dinner in a white table cloth French restaurant, there was no salt or pepper on the table. When I asked for it, the waiter said, “The Chef has seasoned the food.”

I took the hint but resigned myself to what I was sure would be a bland dinner.

The waiter was correct.

881

Too few death threats now for my taste.

Nailed it, of course.

For me, preference has to drive training and nutrition. We accept it with training, that “optimal” is a range and you have to do what you enjoy, but we have a harder time seeing it with diet. Sometimes I actually like to suffer for a time period if I’m in the mindset. Lately, I have absolutely no desire for that and just want something I can live with (with which I can live, before one of the Brits gets on my case).

882

I feel that this speaks immensely to the difference between true hunger and “hunger”, and it’s one of the reasons I’m so big on running this experiment. Learning my TRUE hunger signals has been huge for me in learning when to eat and when to stop.

The “not hungry for X food” thing is a prime example of what I’d call not true hunger. I see it frequently. Folks open up the pantry or fridge and look for inspiration rather than food. People pack a lunch for work but decide they’re “not hungry for it” and order out, etc. Meanwhile, you deprive someone of food long enough, they’ll eat a raw potato.

There’s probably some snobbery that comes across with this, but I do believe that spices and seasonings often serve to compensate for bad food selection and cooking technique.

I’ve heard it argued that ketchup saved western civilization, haha. So many tricks we can employ to eat the things we don’t want.

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I mean this as a serious question, even if it seems facetious at first. I’m also not suggesting you do it, just a question.

Why do you even cook your meat? Why not just eat it raw?

Given the quality and cuts that you buy, there should be very few mold/bacteria/parasite concerns. If you want to understand your true hunger signals, and get the same nutritive value, it seems to be a valid next step.

884

Not to interject in the convo but I know a guy who does this. He basically goes to the Asian food store and gets odder cuts of meat. I went to his house and he was showing my his collection of liver and cow heart. I asked “How do you cook that?”. He replied “I just eat it raw”

It was also the same guy who I picked up to go to the gym and he had a to-go container of food. He pulled a whole raw egg out and said “Do you know egg shells are one of the best sources of calcium?”. At first I was like “oh cool” and then I saw him eat the whole thing raw. Just popped it in his mouth. Pretty surreal experience. I even told him “There’s no damn way you just ate a whole raw egg in my truck”.

Pretty cool guy who’s strong asf but he has an extremely interesting nutrition approach

885

Huh. That’s a new one.

886

I do…

But it’s a bit of a social taboo to do so, aside from the risk of illness.

I also drink uncooked eggs/egg whites.

EDIT: I will say, as an aside, you bring up a great point with this: these very techniques I’m speaking about regarding hunger signaling and satiety are OUTSTANDING to reverse engineer if the goal is weight GAIN. Even with my very simple approach to eating, if I want to eat MORE food, I’ll break out the smoker and make things taste absolutely delicious with smokey flavor. When I take the kiddo out to Texas de Brazil, I absolutely eat beyond my normal capacity. If someone is struggling with hunger in the OTHER direction, these little tricks can go a LONG way.

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I ended up eating a bunch of egg shells the last time I was at Denny’s. I requested some soft boiled eggs, not realizing they were going to make it a DIY project for me to peel them. It ended up being completely impossible to take the shells off without the eggs exploding, so down they went. It wasn’t awful honestly, but I don’t really trust Denny’s to have the cleanest egg shells, haha.

888

Sometimes I don’t “feel” hungry (e.g., stomach not growling) , but I just want to eat something high protein or fat (e.g., greek yoghurt, meat, egg, cheese)

Like I would be able to turn down a pastry or carby junk, but would impulsively eat a block of cheese

I don’t think it’s a protein or fat deficiency bc that’s most of what I eat

889

I’d be willing to believe a micronutrient deficiency, or, perhaps, deficiency in a specific amino/fatty acid.