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Four-Hour Body week one: binge day!

Jun 12th, 2011 Leave a comment

Four-Hour Body week one: binge day!

Four-Hour Body: Alpha Lipoic Acid

Four-Hour Body: Alpha Lipoic Acid

Binge day is Tim Ferriss’ one day off per week. I have really been looking forward to this, as you might imagine if you’d seen my average day’s eating: zero refined carbs, small quantities of “slow” carbs like legumes, lots of protein, and no fruit.

I love berries and plain yoghurt with Quebec maple syrup, and used to eat them every night before bed, so that was a big loss for me, and an apple was a regular snack — not allowed.

Today’s going to be a big day — we have guests coming for supper and we’re planning a big meal with an amazing dessert. Home made Dulce de Leche Flan (based on Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk, boiled in the can for two hours to create dulce de leche, caramel of milk), wine, snacks…

With that kind of schedule lined up, I need to take precautions.

Four-Hour Body: Policonsanol

Four-Hour Body: Policonsanol

This morning, binge day, started off with a fairly normal breakfast:

  • protein shake (whey powder + 1% milk)
  • “Chocolate Rocket” mate tea
  • With the addition of 1cup steamed spinach, as fiber to help my body process the bad stuff to come!

I also took the PAGG supplements of Policosanol, alpha-lipoic acid, green tea extract and garlic extract. This is optional on the morning of a binge day — normally PAGG is at night, AGG (all minus the policosanol) three times per day.

Four-Hour Body: Green Tea Extract

Four-Hour Body: Green Tea Extract

A few quick exercises: 2 mins standing squats, 2 mins wall presses, 1 min pushups. This opens the pathways to my muscles, so most of the sugar will go there instead of spiking my blood sugar level.

In the meantime, I’m off to have a coffee and cinnamon, along with lime juice in water, and a big bowl of Carolina’s homemade granola, that I’ve had to suffer the rest of the family eating for the last six days. Also a small bacon sandwich (ahh! Bread. Remember that?)

Four-Hour Body: Garlic extract

Four-Hour Body: Garlic extract

I’ll report back later with the rest of my daily menu!

4 Hour Body: Eat Yourself Thinner

Jun 9th, 2011 7 Comments

The 4-Hour Body: Eat Yourself Thinner

The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss

If you’ve not yet heard of Tim Ferriss, where have you BEEN?! He’s the genius behind the Four-Hour Work Week, a business concept which I am still planning to attempt later this year.

But closer to hand is the fact that I am 40 years old and weigh 218.4lbs.

The good old BMI chart (body-mass index) puts me in the “obese” category, which is a bit ridiculous really. I am definitely NOT obese. I stand 5ft11 and have a large frame, which yes, is kind of fat person’s excuse speak for “big boned” — but it also happens to be true in my case!

Still, I would like to get my weight under 200lbs, permanently, and not feel like crap while doing it. So I am attempting to follow Ferriss’ plan of eating mostly protein and “slow carbs” (beans, legumes) and no white, refined starches such as flour, rice, wheat. So no cake, chips, cookies, ice cream etc.

The interesting part is that this only applies for six days per week. One day per week, you can eat as much as you like, provided you take a few precautions (squats five minutes before binge-eating and 90 minutes afterwards, for example).

While I’m at it, I’m implementing a technique from the The Shangri-La Diet, which includes a “zero taste calorie intake” theory. This means you consume twice your weight in pounds x calories per day that are tasteless.

The idea behind THIS is that your body craves tastes it associates with high-calorie foods. So, by consuming a large number of tasteless calories with at least an hour’s gap from eating something flavorful, your body does not have any taste to associate with those calories, and your appetite is suppressed.

I drink a 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil before bed. With my nose held.

How’s It Going?

It’s really a little too early to say to be honest. I seem to have lost a pound since I began this on Monday, but I know I shouldn’t be weighing myself so soon. I just “felt light” and wanted to see (or was it light-headed?!).

Here’s my notes:

So far, I DO feel a little hungry. But it’s the “lean burn” hunger I remember from the time I went fat-free for a while, and it’s not the “I gotta eat NOW, or everybody dies!” hunger I felt when I tried WeightWatchers.

The olive oil thing is very, very interesting. It makes me want to try reading the entire Shangri-La book, because this certainly made a difference to my hunger.

The hardest part is having to refuse my wife’s home-made pizza and fry myself beans and beef in the pan. Everything else has been fairly easy to pass up. I don’t really miss the “bad stuff”, and anyway, my day off will allow me to eat whatever I want, so I am not overly concerned about sticking to this diet.

The 4-Hour Body has lots of other great advice. I’m going to start doing the kettle bell lifts soon. But for me, the idea is not to go from “geek to freak” or run a marathon. I just want to lose my love handles. I’ll keep you posted in future on my progress.

Please post a comment if you’re doing the Ferriss diet too!

Tim’s blog

The 4-Hour Body: Eat Yourself Thinner

Sunday Bloody Sunday: this Sunday is my binge day!

Sunday Bloody Sunday: this Sunday is my binge day!

Update: four days passed with no “cheating”. Whether it’s the oil or psychosomatic, I do feel less hungry between meals.

Good snack that is ‘Ferriss-friendly’ is a carrot dipped in almond butter. Fills the holes between mealtimes.

I have a whey protein shake for breakfast, sometimes with a couple of boiled eggs. That does me for a good 3-4 hours.

Update: typical meal tonight, two and a half sausages, three eggs. Mmm… protein. Lunch was healthier, beet salad (endives, beets, goat cheese and toasted walnuts with olive oil) plus a regular salad with avocado dressing, can of tuna and 1/3 can of smoked mussels.

Before bed, I will have a protein shake (milk + whey concentrate) and then 90 minutes later, my nightly olive oil.

Tomorrow is my last day of the week of this kind of carbless existence, then I have my binge day on Sunday. Which is great timing, because we have friends coming for dinner and board games, wine and who knows what kind of bad stuff! (FOOD, people, where is your brain, in the gutter!)

Carolina just made organic homemade museli, and I am not allowed any until Sunday breakfast. Boo.