Workout v4.0 (HIIT) and Diet v5.0

In the Spring of 2013 I decided to focus solely on workouts and diets to promote additional fat loss until I reached a body fat percent that I was happy with. Over the last couple years I had been playing around with my diet enough to realize that for me there are two modes of dieting. One I can eat in manner to maintain strength and build muscle but I will not lose any body fat on this eating regiment. The other is to eat at a caloric deficit to lose body fat, however when I sustain this type of diet over an extended period of time I begin to lose some of my strength. If I had an outstanding genetic makeup like some people (Arnold Schwarzenegger for example) I could use my maintain diet to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously, however that isn't my body type so I have to use different eating methods to accomplish my goals.

At this point I had first decided to change my diet up. Ever since I had got back on track and had converted over to Intermittent Fasting (IF) I had been getting decent results and was steadily losing weight each week. I decided to add one more element to my diet, Low Carb. My goal was to keep my daily intake of carbs at around 50 grams or less and then on Saturday I could eat my fill of carbs to refill my muscles with glycogen. Glycogen is how carbs are stored as energy in your muscles. Glycogen is where your body pulls from first to burn energy, after you run out of glycogen it has to pull from other sources such as fat. This is why Low Carb is effective, because once you run out of glycogen you have to burn fat. However when doing exercise on a consistent basis it is important to have one or maybe even two days with carbs (preferably on a workout day) so that you aren't constantly exercising without glycogen stores in your muscles. Low Carb is an absolutely excellent way to lose fat but it can also cause muscle loss. If I was working out with depleted glycogen all the time due to the Low Carb it will hasten strength and muscle loss. This muscle loss occurs because of burning additional calories from the workouts and constantly eating at a caloric deficit and having no glycogen stores in your muscles causing your energy production from burning fat cells not to be able to keep up. When you get to this state of being energy starved from your fat not producing enough energy your body will start to "burn" muscle. This effect is the same as what happens to starving people and why their muscles are so atrophied. So to avoid my body losing muscle I made sure to have at least one day to refill my glycogen with carbs.

Along with this additional change up I decided to give HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts a try. I had been doing long 30min - 45min cardio sessions, these were the first exercises I changed over to HIIT style. Instead of running on the treadmill, or whatever machine I was on, for those extended durations I would run fast for 1 minute and then do a slow jog for 1 minute to catch my breath. I would repeat this process until I had done 8 sets of running with jogging at the start and finish for warm up and cooldown. This lowered my cardio routines down to 17 minutes. Not only does it save you a bunch of time, but I still got a superb workout because of how much energy I exerted while doing the fast running. If you want to try this make sure you build up your stamina first before just trying to jump straight into HIIT style cardio. Either do steady slow running or begin with shorter run intervals like 30 seconds running and 90 seconds jogging. I also went to a HIIT style of weight lifting called Hundreds. In hundreds You do 10 sets of 10 reps in quick succession with low weight (enough though that it is still a bit difficult to complete 100 reps) then you follow up with like 3 sets of 5 with a heavier weight.

With these combined efforts of low carb and HIIT workouts I felt that this was a good combination for me in being successful at burning fat. I lost quite a bit of additional fat and lowered my weight even more. With this combination of diet and exercise I got down to as low as 191 lbs. Just remember though if you want to plan out a  similar diet and exercise regiment make sure it will be something that is designed for you. You will want to make sure that it will be something catered to your nutritional needs and that the exercise routine will be something your current level of fitness can handle.

Plateau 3 and Changing to Diet v4.0

In October 2012 I had another run in with a plateau which was my third encounter with this hindrance. At this point in time I was now down to about 215 lbs from my original starting point of 270 lbs. I had been making excellent progress but yet again ran into an all too familiar roadblock. This particular plateau was my longest to date and was mostly due to my own fault. Since I had been making such good progress I got very lax with my diet and was cheating quite frequently. It all started with a trip to Las Vegas in October and continued on through the holidays into the new year. Granted this is a hard time of the year for anyone to stay true to their diet but I was most definitely not making my best effort. Even after the new year I had let my cheating continue on for quite some time afterward. I also slightly tried to justify my cheating by thinking that it was ok since I had gained some muscle and would burn more calories naturally, which is true but the excess I was eating was far too much for a successful diet. I really wasn't making any headway on my weight loss and had even gained a few pounds.

Another reason my cheating was in excess and that I wasn't keeping very good track of my diet was because at my job, during this time, I was provided a free lunch. I would usually try to mentally keep track of what I was eating but more often than not I'm positive that these meals only added to the excess in my diet since I wasn't 100% sure of the total calories I was consuming. At this point I had realized I needed to stop being lazy and get back to a regimented way of eating that would be easy for me to follow and keep track of my caloric intake. I had to remember that cheating happens (sometimes more frequently than we would like) and even if it does it doesn't mean that my success had ended I merely needed to buckle down and get back on track and my good progress would return.

At this point in time I had been looking into intermittent fasting as an option to help me better organize my eating habits and eating schedule at the time. Intermittent Fasting (IF for short) isn't a diet so much as a way of rescheduling your eating habits. While doing intermittent fasting it is still necessary to count calories and make sure you are getting appropriate amounts of protein, carbs, and fat for your nutritional goals in your particular diet. The basic idea behind IF is that you consolidate your eating to a certain window of time so that you put yourself into a "fasted" state for 16-20 hours per day. Being in a fasted state longer than 8 hours has many benefits such as lowering insulin levels, and increasing leptin and glucagon which all aids in fat burning as well as increases in natural growth hormone and testosterone (in men only) which helps build muscle. IF however isn't a miracle method to lose weight and build muscle but it will aid in weight loss and muscle gain with proper nutrition and exercise. The other benefit to IF is that it can give you more flexibility with your eating schedule and more time to do things other than cook or prepare food 3 or more times a day.  There are three methods to go about IF the first is a 16 hour fast with an eight hour eating window. This is probably the most popular method that people use because with the 8 hour eating window you can have two meals that are slightly larger than if you were eating 3 meals a day (still within your caloric limit though). The second is a 20 hour fast with a 4 hour eating window where you have 1 large meal with a few small snacks during your 4 hour window to meat your caloric goal.  The last method of IF is where you eat normally 3 meals a day and 1 or 2 days a week (max) you do a full 24 hour fast. So if you had dinner at 7pm on Thursday you wouldn't eat until 7pm Friday.

The method of  IF I chose to do is the 20-4 split. This provided me with lots of extra time not having to make breakfast and lunch, and since I was skipping my lunch at work I could more carefully monitor my nutrition at home where I was making everything. The other benefit for me in going to this method/schedule of eating is I like to eat a bunch of food and this provides me the ability to eat one big meal that leaves me feeling full. Eating three small meals a day was very difficult for me because it always felt like they would never fill me up and I would wind up snacking on things sometimes because I didn't feel full. It took me a little while to get used to the new schedule of eating once a day. After about a week I became accustomed to the new schedule, but that first week was a little bit hard when I still got my normal hunger cravings at the times when I used to eat. To get through the first week I made sure to drink lots of water to help keep my stomach full during the day. With this new schedule of eating I was able to get my food intake more under my control and it was a big help in getting back on track to weight loss. If these benefits look like they would help with your particular schedule or eating habits I would recommend looking into IF to see if it would be a good fit for you.