I just got back from the gym. Last Tuesday I weighed 205, 41 inches around the belly-button/love handles area. Today (Monday) I was at 202, 40.5 inches.
Those love handles are stubborn. I once starved myself down to 165 and still had them, but I was losing muscle. Not a good combination.
I can pretty much guarantee I’m not losing any muscle mass now and may have increased it a bit, because I was able to lift more weight or do more reps on every machine today compared to my workout on Friday. Maybe there’s a reason body-builders consume whey protein powders. I might continue having a protein shake on workout days when I’m done with The Cure.
Tomorrow, I’m going to post another recipe by Jason Sandeman, the Well Done Chef.
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I’m considering buying this book after reading all the reviews on it. Does the book explain why you are consuming shakes for two weeks though rather than start off with the foods that are in weeks 3 & 4?
Briefly, the idea is to consume a specific macronutrient ratio that takes the stress off your liver and encourages your body to start using up the visceral fat. I suppose in theory you could do the same thing with very specific food recipes, but the shakes do make it easy.
Good for you! I wish I was 205. I lost over 25 pounds so far thanks to your video inspiring me. Maybe by next year I’ll be lucky enough to get close to the 200 mark.
25 pounds is nothing to sneeze at. Glad to know the film gave you a bit of inspiration.
Oh, how I love those protein shakes. I lift heavy 3x per week and have for 2+ years now. I lift for an hour beginning at 6am. I have a shake before and after I lift. I have gained almost 15 lbs of muscle in the two years that I have been lifting, increasing my deadlift from 1.2x bodyweight to about 2.2x bodyweight. Your muscles can really use that protein coming into your system while it’s tearing down and then building up those muscles. Now that I am in week 3 of the Cure, I am just having a shake before I lift and then my eggs and bacon after I lift; I’m trying to limit my calorie intake while I’m trying to lose that VAT. We’ll see if it works. It’s been all good so far.
In any case, I encourage you to continue to take those shakes. They helped me transform my body.
I’m glad to hear from someone who’s a more dedicated lifter than I am that the protein shakes have an effect. I was pleasantly surprised today at the increase in my strength on a couple of the machines, especially since I’m 50 and don’t recover like a 20-year-old.
I’ll keep downing a shake on workout days. I don’t see what it can hurt.
Of course you should keep consuming whey protein after this diet plan! Especially after workouts, but they are great for breakfast too, to immediately put a stop to catabolism (we are in a catabolic state in the morning, from 10 hours of fasting).
My favourite breakfast shake is coconut milk + whole milk + 2 scoops protein powder + tbsp flax meal. It is incredibly filling, full if delicious, healthy fat and protein, and most importantly QUICK to make.
I’ve never had them before this week, but sounds like they’re good for workout days. May as well give it a shot.
Hmmmm can anyone recommend a good protein powder? Ideally nothing with Aspartame in it!
Good work Tom!
Andy
I’ve been using Body Fortress powder. It contains sucralose, which is Splenda.
My favorite shake during the first two weeks was when I added 1/3 cup of canned pumpkin and a little cinnamon to the book’s basic recipe. It was like drinking a pumpkin pie.
On an unrelated note, from one .NET guy to another… do you have any leads on some .NET work? I just lost my latest gig and am looking for another.
Mike
When I needed to scare up assignments in the past, I posted my resume on DICE. Have you given that a shot?
Like I said, there’s no reason you should only be limiting them to “workout days”. They are a cheap and easy way to significantly increase your protein intake. I know people generally have an aversion to “living off” food that comes in this kind of form, but remember – it’s just food! Avoid it because it is in powdered form makes about as much sense as avoiding food that is shaped like a circle.
If you know high protein diets are good, why not, right?
Further to Carl Nelson, Too much protein if you are not using it is not good, but if you are working out, you should have them every day. Theres a reason you should only peak with weights every so often, not every day. Its because your body needs the intervening time to rework the muscles. By starving them of protein on days your not working out, you don’t get the full effect.
My trainer told me that when you work out with heavy weights and get sore muscles, they have been damaged, and get rebuilt stronger. The soreness does go away more quickly on protein shakes.
The only time I have ever been able to gain weight is with the workout/whey protein combo. I tried gorging myself on eggs, meat, nuts etc, but I got too full and couldn’t get the calories in for good weight gain that I was burning. Satiety anyone? Also, in 2 months my single rep leg press went from about twice my body weight to about 4 times by body weight. Rapid muscle gain, though I had to do yoga and whatnot to keep my circulation from getting strangled from the sudden increase in body mass.
Whey protein is a good relatively inexpensive whole protein.
“I know people generally have an aversion to “living off” food that comes in this kind of form”
Point 1: I would go nuts, I need variety and lots of it. But shakes were never more than 20% of my intake.
Point 2: So something that is removed via curdling (natural process) and dehydrated is in a less natural form than “natural, healthy and cholesterol free” tofu? Somebody call the logic police.
Consider them called.
http://www.agprofessional.com/show_story.php?id=61081 SOy and diabetes.
So this article sparks a few thoughts. The research sort of confirms a bad nutritional direction-‘ Confirmation Bias’. If you want diabetics to be able to keep eating sugar, starch and carbohydrates, then having them eat soy (in this research) will permit that because it damps down the effects of all the increased continuing incoming sugar!!! But the implication is that increasing ‘insulin tolerance’ is the goal. How about lowering insulin (by removing glucose from the diet) and then there is no longer a need to improve insulin tolerance by eating more soy. The implication is that diabetics can be helped by NOT addressing the original problem. The original problem is that incoming glucose is too high and thus has to be managed. But how about making there be zero incoming glucose FIRST. There is NO requirement in human nutrition for carbohydrate. Remove the carbohydrate from the diet, and it doesn’t have to be dealt with or managed or tolerated in the body AT ALL. ARGHH.
Their premise and conclusion are good and follow each other, but there is no consideration that both of these are beside the point and the wrong avenue to treat the disease. Does this make sense? I am just putting this in words. If you can get what I’m on about and help me with an analogy to better describe, please let me know. L
http://www.agprofessional.com/show_story.php?id=61081
I gave it a first look. If soy truly does make your cells more insulin-sensitive, which is what they seem to be saying, that would be a good thing. We become type II diabetics through insulin resistance, which forces the body to pump out more insulin to force glucose out of the blood and into the cells.
Prevention is still better than cure, of course. Don’t beat up on your insulin receptors with a high-carb diet, and you won’t need soy (if it does what they’re saying) to fix them.
http://www.agprofessional.com/show_story.php?id=61081
Laurie again….
No need to drink the soy chaser if you don’t drink the sugar-sweetened Kool-aid
Hiya,
Just a quick thank you for all the links. Will be reading up before the lecture on Monday, mind you my tongue will probably be bleeding by the end of the session – from biting it LOL
And have ordered the book from the local library, along with GCBC. Looking forward to picking them up.
Oh, just fyi, Lovely programme on TV here at the mo called ‘What’s in our food’ – latest episode was on beef. Now most NZ beef is grass fed, however not far from where I live is apparently a huge farm raising grain fed beef for the Asian market. Why? Because of the lovely fat-marbled steaks they produce. Why is it that ‘the masses’ don’t see the connection? Oh, programme is supported by the Heart tick (NZHF) naturally.
Another interesting programme on Sky (cable) recently was called “Why skinny people don’t get fat” where a university called for volunteers, picked those with the lowest BMIs, made them eat double their normal calorific intake for 4 weeks and registered the results (weight, girth, BMR and a fancy ‘pod’ where they analyse body comp) plus photos (front/back/side).
Most struggled to eat that much food, some physically couldn’t do it. Most weight gained was just over 5kg (just under 10% of body weight), however the most interesting was a chap who gained almost 10% of his body weight, but showed no difference in girth measurements. His muscle mass increased over the 4 weeks, as did his BMR – he also got really warm as his body literally burned the unneeded calories. And they had all returned to their start weight within 2 weeks of resuming their normal diets. Was really interesting, especially because we had just been told that only around 3%of obesity could be attributed to hereditary factors. Really? Maybe they are just looking in the wrong places.
Oh, and, anybody looking for a bit of light reading, check out “Fat” by Rob Grant. Fiction, but introduces many of the concepts we discuss here.
Sorry Tom, waffled a bit longer than intended…have you thought about adding a forum/message board to your site? 😀
Sounds similar to the experiment Taubes recounted, in which naturally lean prisoners were overfed by 1,000 calories per day for six months but barely gained any weight. According to the calories in/calories out equation, they should’ve gained 50 pounds each.
The comments section serves as the forum for now. I may add a more wide-open forum at some point.