Saturday, August 3, 2013

When I first started ESE and calorie tracking, I discovered something: I was far more effective if I gave myself one day during which I did not track. There was a caveat, of course: I had to "watch myself" in terms of how much I ate. Most of the time, I felt like I did a pretty good job of monitoring myself. Sometimes, I knew I was glad that I didn't know what the total bill came to. So why do that? Well, hopefully anyone on a program has an end goal that reads something like this: get to a point at which I no longer have to monitor myself with a chart. I reasoned that if I waited until I was where I wanted to be to start practicing the "blind counting", I would probably have a relapse. And it worked. Way back in 2010, when I was 170, I stopped worrying and counting. Had I continued ESE and not gotten obsessed with "bulking" and trying to be part of the cutting edge, I would honestly probably have never topped 180 (and that would have been only after the holidays... if you haven't lived Thanksgiving through New Year's in the American South, you just don't know.)

So, on Saturdays, I do not track my calories. Again, I don't let that be a license to eat whatever I want to, although Saturdays are usually my "cheat days". Just as an example of what my day looked like:

• scrambled eggs with sliced mushrooms and peppers, skim milk (breakfast, 8 AM)
• spaghetti sauce... my wife makes homemade stuff, soooo good, not high calorie... without noodles (lunch, 1 PM)
• turkey sandwich (snack, 5 PM)
• homemade pizza (dinner, 9:30 PM)
• raw almonds, blueberries, half bar dark chocolate (dessert 11 PM)

If I did the math, what I ate MAY have accounted for 2000 calories. MAYBE. The pizza is lower calorie (think crust, less cheese, turkey pepperoni) than you think. On top of that, I was on my feet cleaning, scrubbing, vacuuming, etc. for six hours straight today. If I exceeded my TDEE, I will be shocked.

Things to Ponder

• Planning a Fast. When shall we three fast again? That's Me, Myself, and I. I started out with strict fasting schedules ("Honey, I'm fasting from noon this Wednesday until Thursday afternoon.") and that worked fine. It did cause problems when something unexpected came up. Of course, good ol' Brad had addressed this, but it wasn't until my read-through of his third edition that I realized what his advice was (there's a lot of information in that book...  you just have to read it to understand). I don't "plan" my fasts, now. I have some loose ideas (I'm thinking tomorrow after lunch until Monday night, but if we end up not having a family lunch, it may end up being tonight after dessert until Monday morning) but it doesn't stress me. I'm flexible as a limp noodle... and that's part of the beauty of this approach. If you've tried another diet program, you know of what I speak. 
• The Workout Program. I don't know if it's possible to give you a brief rundown of my workout history, but here goes:
• 96 - 98: high school, one muscle group per day (the pseudo-bodybuilder workout), probably poorly executed and inconsistent thanks to Cross Country, basketball and being young. I don't know that I understood the impact of food at the time. Probably 60-90 minutes in the gym, 30-45 minutes actual workout.
• 98-02: college, two muscle groups per day six days a week (true bodybuilder routines, each group twice a week), with creatine and protein and whatever-ine was said to work. Small meals mixed in with, uh, liquid calories. I was also running and swimming laps. Two hours a day working out, probably 80-110 minutes of actual exercise.
• 03-07: marriage, family, real career... between grad school and work and coaching, I was gone from 6 AM to 7 PM four nights a week, at a minimum. I went from 180 with abs to 215 with abs that you couldn't see... Sure, I tried diets (so many of them), but the bottom line is that they were too strict, acted as if I had a personal chef or lots of time to prepare and plan meals, and were just too vague for me. The worst was Men's Health, that beacon of false fitness. I'll do a page on why they suck for nutrition advice, but for now, suffice it to say they promote the doom-and-gloom of not eating (even though one of their editors promotes a 16/8 fasting diet he ripped off from Martin Berkhan).
• 07 - 10: resumed the mistaken belief that I needed to "eat more", somehow didn't think about the impact of, uh, liquid calories, and went through a maelstrom of workouts: P90X, Insanity, distance running (aka "steady-state" running), Crossfit, etc. Oh yeah I smoked from Spring 2001 until New Year's Day 2009 and quit and never went back. Don't do it kids... smoking bad. Lungs, good.
•  10 - 11: I decided it was time to put my brain to use to solve the problem with my body. I was exercising and in better shape than I had been since I had quit when I got married, but I was still fluctuating from 200-215 (side note: if you knew me then, you may be thinking this seems like an exaggeration, but truth: I carry my weight well- broad shoulders and chest can hide a lot.) I stumbled onto Turbulence Training by Craig Ballantyne via podcasts, and he interviewed this very friendly guy named Brad Pilon who wrote this book one time...
• 11 - July 13: having dropped to 170, uncovered the abs, read tons about training and nutrition, and won a weight loss contest, I made the mistake that seems pretty common the more I read message boards and talk to people... the mistake that sometimes (many times?) sends people back down into the pit from which they had only just climbed: I got fixed what wasn't broken, complicated what was working, and tried to improve on success. I don't blame LeanGains for the fluctuations bewteen 170 and 190 (God knows I knew what I was doing) and I added some considerable size to my frame. I also learned what kind of workouts I wanted to do (CB's TT workouts were great... I recommend them for anyone who just wants solid workouts, new each month, with years of older workouts to choose from... but I like the lift heavy, do compound movements). I also dabbled in Renegade Training, but it was tailored to the skinny guy who wants to gain (not me), as well as Starting Strength, the 20-squat protocol, and 5x5, all of which work.
• August 2013 - ??: I'm going back to my roots, sort of. I'm going to do one muscle group per day, once per week, with hill sprints whenever I can. I'm sticking to compound, heavy lifts, usually 9 - 12 sets (closer to 9), and I'm not supersetting for the first time in a long time. This is not to say that this method is "most" effective. I've been doing this and reading and listening for a long time now. And I've come to these conclusions:
• you can do pretty much any physical activity, it will shape your body in some way, but there isn't any magic that your normal guy (me, you, etc.) can tap into... run, sprint, lift, dance, whatever. It shouldn't be done to burn calories (that's a nice side effect) or to allow you to eat more. It should be done to promote health and make your body look the way you want to look.
• your calories over the course of the week matter, whether you shove them into a four hour window or do it over a 24-hour window, whether you low-carb yourself into a ketonic state or put yourself into carb heaven... just find a way to level those calories out in the simplest way possible and you'll drop weight.
• complexity is the enemy of success in fitness and nutrition (for the average person).