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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Training 270/P90X 38.

Back & biceps, Ab Ripper X

2.5L water

Diet today - 5 meals

Today was my first day back at work after the holidays... and as I did previously, in the morning I packed up my homemade protein shakes and nuts and snacks for the day in order to "graze" throughout day, as most modern dieting gurus advise, and a way that, honestly, has been working fairly well for me.

But, the thing is, in the last 2-2 1/2 weeks, when not tripping up to Hiroshima or appeasing grandmotherly providers of food, I'd gotten away from the "5-6 small meals a day" criteria. It was just, honestly, kind of a pain in the ass to try and make sure I get something to eat every few hours, and I never really felt that hungry.

I'd end up not really eating a whole hell of a lot through the day and then eating once or twice in the evenings. And I felt pretty good. I'd transitioned, without even intending it, to a dietary lifestyle called intermittent fasting. I'd heard about it, of course, what with all the net surfing I do on diet, fitness and nutrition, but I'd never really intended on adopting it. It just kind of happened naturally and without even really thinking about it. As I was on "vacation" I just tried to make sure I got my PT in without worrying about diet and nutrition too, too much.

The kicker is today, trying to eat those 5-6 small meals left me feeling kind of crappy. Bloated, lethargic, drained and stuffed... just not really very good at all.

And I'd actually read one book years ago that seems a variation on intermittent fasting called The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler... but again, it wasn't something I'd planned on really applying, it was just interesting reading. And honestly, I had read it at the time more interested in his ideas about controlled fatigue training.

But, it kind of seems to be the way my diet is naturally inclining to, so I'm going to try my own twist on an Intermittent Fasting/Warrior Diet comprised of, still, paleonutrition.

While always leaving myself and open day free to 'cheat' if I feel like it. Though, on the Warrior Diet specifically, it doesn't really need that as much, as you can eat some of the bad stuff if you want, you just need to make sure to eat your proteins, fats, veggies and complex carbohydrates first. Play that part by ear... see how it goes. I think, psychologically, it's probably better for me right now just to avoid junk food except in very controlled and planned circumstances.

Warrior Diet | Introduction:
"The Warrior Diet is based on a daily feeding cycle of "undereating" during the day and "overeating" at night. The "Undereating Phase" during the day maximizes the Sympathetic Nervous System's (SNS) fight or flight reaction to stress, thereby promoting alertness, generation of energy, fat burning and the capacity to endure stress.

The "Overeating Phase" at night maximizes the Parasympathetic Nervous System's (PNS) recuperation effect on the body, thereby promoting calming down, relaxation, digestion and the utilization of nutrients for repair and growth. This feeding cycle stimulates the production of cellular factors such as Cyclic AMP or GMP, which stimulate hormone synthesis and fat burning during the day, as well as protein synthesis and growth during the night, respectively."


Warrior Diet | FAQ:
"Q: What is undereating?

A: Minimize eating during the day to mostly raw fruits and veggies. Coffee, tea, soups and light protein such as poached eggs or yogurt are ok too.

Q: What is overeating?

A: Eat as much as you want from all food groups. Start with veggies, protein and fat. If still hungry, finish your meal with carbohydrates."

Is Intermittent Fasting Healthy? | Mark's Daily Apple:
"It’s called Intermittent Fasting – or IF.

Twenty years ago, as I was first forming my Primal Health point-of-view (based on a model of how humans evolved), I found it very easy to embrace the concept of “grazing” that seemed to represent the collective conscious of the weight-loss-and-health movement at the time. After all, eating several small meals a day – grazing to maintain even blood sugar and to avoid having your body go into starvation mode and start hoarding gobs of fat...

The truth is, many people have succeeded in losing weight and keeping most of it off using this simple grazing method, which consists of eating 5 or 6 small meals or snacks spread evenly throughout the day, with no single meal exceeding 600 calories and where each meal or snack contains a little protein...

But like many behaviors in the fitness and health world, there comes a point where the benefits decrease and we find ourselves on the dreaded plateau.

The first thing most people will tell you about their attempts at grazing is, while it usually works well if you are diligent, it’s pretty difficult to stick with, since you need to be near a source of quality food every few hours. If you work at home most days as I do, it’s not a problem, but it can make life difficult if you work in an office setting or happen to be a road warrior.

The next common issue is that after a few months of progress, you arrive at a frustrating point where the weight stops coming off, the initial high energy levels decline or you stop building muscle. That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since the body is so well-tuned to adapt to any situation – including a perfectly even flow of nutrients. In this case, the body’s reaction to this steady supply of nutrition is to actually decrease insulin sensitivity. It “knows” there will always be food, so it “down-regulates” insulin receptors, and probably down-regulates other metabolic systems as well.

...So when my 79-year-old buddy Sid at the gym started raving about his weekly 24-hour fast over a year ago, and my friend Art started writing about his own fasting experiences, I decided to look into it further.

The results were surprising and impressive.

Numerous animal and human studies done over the past 15 years suggest that periodic fasting can have dramatic results not only in areas of weight (fat) loss, but in overall health and longevity as well. A recent article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition gives a great overview of these benefits which include decreases in blood pressure, reduction in oxidative damage to lipids, protein and DNA, improvement in insulin sensitivity and glucose uptake, as well as decreases in fat mass.

How can you argue with results like these? And it all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because our predecessors almost certainly went through regular cycles where food was either abundant or very scarce. The body may have established protective mechanisms to adapt to these conditions by sensitizing insulin receptors when it was critical that every bit of food be efficiently used or stored (as in famine), or by desensitizing them when there was a surplus, so the body wouldn’t be overly-burdened by grossly excessive calorie intake.

Beyond insulin sensitivity, it appears that caloric restriction and intermittent fasting may “turn on” certain genes that repair specific tissues that would not otherwise be repaired in times of surplus. One could surmise that this adaptation serves to allow certain cells to live longer (as repaired cells) during famine since it’s energetically less expensive to repair a cell than to divide and create a new one. That might help explain some of the extended longevity seen in animal studies using caloric restriction and/or intermittent fasting (read about here, here, and here). Intermittent fasting has also been shown to reduce spontaneous cancers in animal studies, which could be due to a decrease in oxidative damage or an increase in immune response."

Free the Animal: Hunger:
"...there is a solution, and that solution is to eat a natural diet of plenty of meats, fish, natural fats (animal, coconut, olive), vegetables, fruits (moderation), and nuts (moderation too). I think that the reason so many Atkins dieters ultimately plateau, stall, fail and put weight back on is that they have the wrong focus: low carb. Now, a natural diet is almost always going to be low carb unless you opt to have starchy tubers play a big role in your diet. But so often I see those who focus on low carbohydrate eat way too much processed junk (just like many vegetarians, now), much of it chock full of anti-food like unfermented soy protein, soy oil, and other heavily processed and refined "vegetable" oils. And, because it's low carb, people eat in unrestricted amounts, they tend to eat a lot of favorite junk (like diet sodas and protein bars), and they are not getting the proper nutrition

What I and others have found is that over time on this sort of diet (paleo), keeping cheating to a minimum, your hunger alters radically. At this point in my progress, it's difficult to imagine failure and regression. Why? Because I simply have no hunger for crap, anymore. Yea, I might take in a slice of pizza, now and then (can't even remember the last time, however), or a burger, but I quickly realize that I'm satisfied after only a few bites. Moreover, it can have negatives effects that turn you back the other way. During the holidays, I partook of three cookies after an evening meal of real food. Where prior to that I felt wonderfully satisfied, the whatever in the cookies made me feel uncomfortably full (now an unfamiliar feeling) for a couple of hours. Yuk."

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