week 2

So I did not do to shabby overall, I did accidentally go over on carbs for 2 days so I am doing an additional 7 of 30 grams of usable carbs or less to ensure I am doing it by the book. I should note that I am hitting that 50:50 ratio of fats to protein pretty consistently at around 160 + each and around 2540 to 2600 cals a day, making sure the fiber intake is up there takes a bit of supplementation but I do manage to get most of it in there. I am not going to go into the daily breakdowns unless requested the first week was more for those whom are curious what the layout is. There is a significant increase in my memory though with the coconut oil and I know my body likes the stuff as I get a boost of energy from it as well.

week 1 log for those whom want to try the diet and my experience.

So I figured I would post up a log of my trip down carb nite lane and the results/experience along the way to my goal of a solid 6 pack. Now I am pretty low bodyfat to begin with (around 10%) I had started my fat loss journey about a year ago and I did shed about 40 lbs by counting cals at about a lb a week. Some weeks more some less but on average about that much. The problem I found with counting cals was that I never really got to that desired look, and then after a 1 month break from counting cals to do a bulk phase to regain some muscle I found that counting cals no longer really worked for me. I still count cals but I was in need of a better way, hence my attraction to cns. Anyhow long story short I will start with my experiences to date:
FYI Usable carbs is total carbs - fiber that is how you calculate it out.
Starting weight: 167.7 lbs current weight: 162.6

Day 1: Sunday
Pretty easy day energy was good, not really missing carbs 233 g protein / 157 grams fat / Usable carbs 30g

Day 2: Monday
Worked out energy was mediocre not great but not terrible. 225 g protein / 153 fat / Usable carbs 32g

Day 3: Tuesday
I wanted to sleep, had to work late, no energy, crabby, missing carbs pretty bad but I fought through it.
275 g protein / 161 grams fat / Usable carbs 24g

Day 4: Wednesday
Wow, woke before my alarm energy was wayyyy up, good mood, ready to go. Not really missing carbs but with both my wife and son eating carbs around me its a challenge.
259 g protein/188 g fat / Usable carbs 32g

Day 5: Thursday
Energy is really good today, feeling fantastic, noticed my skin and hair are looking better today and I am experiencing an energy rush nearly every time I eat now. Pretty sure its because I am tweaking my diet slowly to include more fat.
196 g protein / 177 g fat / Usable carbs 21g

Day 6:Friday
Today was freakin awesome, I tried the coconut oil in my coffee and wow, I experienced a rush of energy and it seems like the more fat I eat the more energetic I get. I am starting to enjoy the diet and it seems like the more dialed in I get the ratio the better it feels trying for a 50/50 split ideally.
207 g protein / 189 g fat / Usable carbs 53g oops

Day 7: Saturday
Today was deadly worked about 6 hours and got home to have a nice relaxing day, made some meals with the wife, had to really fight a craving for ice cream when my son had a cone from Mcdonalds lol but I managed to fight the urge and stick to the diet. I am not having any issues with energy at all and it seems like the more coconut oil I am using the better I feel.
178 g protein / 203 g fat / Usable carbs 31 g

Day 8: Sunday
Today was good, felt good got to spend some time with the family took my lil guy swimming he had a blast. I should have ate more though I fell a lil short on cals which I am trying to avoid like the plague lol. O well tomorrow is a new day.
166 g protein / 185 g fat / 18 g usable carbs

Day 9: Monday
Good day again, work was not to busy I am really loving the coconut oil in my coffee it kicks butt. I am pumped and looking forward to my carb nite, I may destroy a tub of my fav frozen yogurt lol, either way it is going to be epic. I am loving the results to date.
160 g protein / 181 g fat / 30 g usable carbs

Day 10: Tuesday/ First Carb Nite
Game plan today is work followed by a 5:30 pm workout and then a massive gorging post workout as per the carb backload method muwahahaaa. I have my leucine and pre/post workout shakes ready to go from the cbl book to maximize my gains from this all out full effort complete body workout. * evil smile * It is going to be epic.
Monster 1 hour total body workout I hit 4 personal bests, I am never eating before a workout again lol.
216 g protein / 186 grams fat / 364 g carbs, 324 usable carbs (total cal count 3956)

As a side note I was up to 164 wed morning a gain but minimal carb nite damage. Will reference this carb amount as safe for next round. 

change in diet trying a new plan

So I have been doing more research into fat loss and see what is out there for me to try. I love the science side of things and in my pursuit of shedding fat and gaining muscle I have gone to the books researching things and seeing what really works and what is bull crap. Much to my amazement I tried skipping breakfast as per John kiefer's suggestion from dangerouslyhardcore.com. Now why would I do so? Well to test the age old diet mantra of breakfast being detrimental to shedding fat and that we should eat first thing to get the metabolic fire stoked. I did try it and for the first few days I did see a drop in metabolic rate but I found that it was due to a drop in calories once I had readjusted them I was back to proper metabolic levels and further to that I saw a visual change in my bodyfat in 2 weeks. Further to that my energy increased, my mental sharpness was better in the mornings now and I was waking before my alarm went off. So it appeared that he was on the money for his recommendations. This deserved more investigating I thought to myself.

The fat loss strategy that he proposed was called Carb Nite, in essence you are eating 30 grams of usable carbs a day or less. Now let me elaborate here usable carbs is essentially carbs - fiber content. So you can exceed 30 grams of carbs a day so long as the fiber content is there. You do not cut calories, you just use fat as 50% of your calories or slightly more and the remainder being protein/carbs. Now I know it may sound crazy to you shed fat and not cut cals, well we should first establish that cals are not all created equal, our body can get x amount of usable calories from what we eat so the age old diet mantra of all calories are equal is really not true. We have to look at how the body uses said calories for energy. Once a week post orientation phase we have a carb nite which is 1 night where you can consume carbs ad nauseum if desired. The theory/science behind it is that keeping carbs so low for the orientation phase prevents the body from being able to digest carbs as fat, the enzymes are simply not there. The reason I have turned my attention towards this as a goal is simple, results. I want to shed more fat to push my body composition further than I have ever done before.

The reasoning behind not cutting calories is simple, muscle retention, cutting calories will allow for muscle loss which I do not want and had experienced while doing caloric cutting to get to around 10% bodyfat. I want to lean out, retain/build some muscle and not cut cals. According to conventional wisdom this would not be possible without cutting calories if it is as simple as cals in vs cals out. So I will be updating thing as I go along with recommendations for those whom want to try this out and follow in my footsteps as well as post results and answer questions from fellow fat loss seekers.

week 3 g2f check in

I had a bad week overall sustained a nasty tailbone injury which made me take it easy for 3 days total, on the plus side I seem to have fully recovered. I had to cut this last workout short due to my wife needing me home so it was only arms and forearms that I got in plus my pre workout warmup run. I was frustrated by it and the injury and the time between sets is what kills me the most I think, 3-4 mins between sets and each set lasting approx 1.5 mins it kind of sheds the gogo mentality of go hard or go home that I have grown accustomed to in the gym. Either way I have steeled my resolve to folllow the program to the letter. I am here monday night post workout and I feel pumped, I am seeing the differences more each week now and feeling that strength increase at each workout. On the weight side of things I hit 172 this morning so finally seeing it go up again when I had stalled at 169 for a bit. I think it was the rest that did it for me personally. Total gym time for the 3 weeks rings in at 4.5 hrs to date, yep that is right 4.5 hrs.
Cal burn wise I am up huge, from a max before the program of 3500 to an average busy day ringing in at 4000+ cals a day. So something is definately going on body wise, I am also hot nost of the time body temp wise. Sleeping in a cooler room has helped with that but it does not help the wife much when she says I am like a sauna when I am sleeping lol. So I will keep you updated and try to get some additional measurements this week. I am also planning to up my cals starting tomorrow for the 4th week to around 4500 to see if that aids in recovery more.

Week 2 g2f check in

So here I am monday night, pre week 2 check in, weight has climed to 169, and bodyfat is currently at 10%, has remained stable from week 1 or so, I should note that the initial increase of 1" around the abdomen has dropped off so I am back at 35" now around the waist. I had dropped my cals this week to 4000ish and I am dealing much better at this number, I do struggle from time to time to eat that much but for the most part if spread out I can manage it. I will note that my strength does continue to climb. I have continually added between 5 to 10 lbs per exercise for a total of 9-10 reps. The one area I am finding lacking is my grip, it seems that it has not grown as much which is ok I can work on that. Measurement wise I have remained static except for my chest which has gained yet another 0.25". I am finding more vascularity in my forearms though, a new vein has shown in my upper forearm when working out that was not there before and it gets quite engorged when I am doing my drag curls.
This was workout number 4 and although I am not seeing the sudden burst in size that I did on week 1 I am still gaining strength and muscle mass. My lean mass according to my most recent bodyfat caliper measurements puts me around 153.8 lbs lean mass, the down side is that I do not really see the visual effect of that gain as much as I would like, there are more subtle differences than anything. I have no doubt that some of week 1 gains were water weight and I had factored that into my weigh in. On week 2 though much of that intial water weight gain should be offset by now. As time wears on into the program I am starting to believe that the claims are largely exaggerated of the huge increase in muscle mass that tim ferris made however the thing that I am taking away from this so far is that training to failure using multijoint movements does have a dramatic effect on the central nervous system and does indeed trigger rapid muscle growth, but to clarify here we need to define rapid. Rapid in my opinion to date means gaining around 2-3 lbs a month of true muscle, not water weight or imagined muscle. I am looking at this from purely a scientific point of view as I am following the program outlined in the book with military precision but how far you read ahead into the book tells you more. He outlined that he followed a simple supplement regimen which I copied almost enitrely to the letter. Diet wise I am following that almost to the letter. So given that I tend to add muscle fairly easily one would think that by now I should have added roughly 16 lbs of muscle according to his methodology. In truth I have gained closer to 7-8 pounds and much of this I believe is muscle memory from cutting back my cals and shedding the 42 lbs of fat that I had on my body.
Do not get me wrong, I am both happy and pleased that I have added the muscle to my frame but it is still a far cry from my desired outcome but as my knowledge base increases and my outlook on both the bodies ability to add fat and muscle become a little clearer as does my understanding of the processes involved in each I am finding that my goals are going to take some added time to achieve. Patience is a virtue they say and I am learning that as time wears on. I will not stop until I hit my desired look and my desired outcome, I am more determined than ever to make my body into the image I desire. I am forging ahead and completing the program as I am only 1/2 ways done it but I think my results are not going to be as dramatic as I had hoped for, which is ok

the geek to freak experiment and week 1 results

The idea and focus here is to build muscle with 2 workouts a week not lasting more than 45 mins to 1 hr each. The challenging part of this is that you need to eat and by eat I mean a lot. The tenants of the diet are simple, stable blood sugar, starchy carbs and loads of veggies and protein. If you follow the 4 hr body book by tim ferris you will see the complete outline and I will be happy to share the outline if asked but I am to lazy to outline it here. I started this program exactly 1 week ago and trusted in the program to deliver the claims, I had followed a similar program back when I was 22 and had added roughly 32 lbs in 5 weeks to my frame of muscle. I am not a genetic freak in case most are wondering, rather someone whom knows that to build muscle you need hormones, the key is to trigger the bodies hormonal responses. 
So here we are the end of week 1. How did my results go? Well here is the breakdown from my starting point to the end of week 1:
Measurements:
Weight: 166 LBS up 6 LBS.
Neck: 16" up 0.5"
Shoulders: 48.5" up 0.5"
Chest: 40.75" up  1.25"
Bicep unflexed: 13.5" up 0.5"
Forearm unflexed: 11.5" unchanged
Thigh: 23" up 1"
Calf: 15" up 0.5"
Now  onto bodyfat analysis, 4caliper measurements and here was the surprise I had expected to see these go up as well but only 1 went up which was the suprilliac measurement and not by much just 1 mm more. Overall bodyfat is down slight from around 11.5% ish to 10.5% ish, so this was good news meaning that the overall gain in lean bodymass is somewhere around 5 - 6 lbs allowing some water weight to factor into that as my weight was as low as 166 on sunday morning up to 172 just a few moments ago and that is post potein shake and a monster supper official weigh in will be tomorrow morning but I am using the sunday figure as my rough ballpark. So 5-6 lbs gain of lean bodymass in 1 week ppl. It can be done, not easy by any means but it is achieveable.

hitting the goal

So I did hit my goal of roughly 10% bodyfat, and although I am happy that I did do it I was not really happy with the end result. I was aware that this might happen to me and that it is not a big deal as this was just part 1 of a 3 part master plan to totally change how I look and do it in under a year total. The next part is the muscle building portion of my plan. The total time is approximately 6 weeks for this portion as per a training regimen known as "geek to freak" program compliments of Mr. Tim Ferris. It is a slightly tweaked version of the occam's protocol I had used years ago to quickly build muscle mass for amateur power lifting. I am looking forward to this portion and I am done my week 1 of maintenance lvl and it looks like I have stabilized around 159 pounds. My end weight was 158.8 I fluctuate anywhere between 160 and 158.5 depending on the day I weigh in. I am happy with anything under 160 for the maintenance lvl. More or less my diet is much the same with just a little treat every now and again. I still have the same foods just in a higher quantity.
The master plan now is 1 more week at maintenance lvl, I may have to put off the 2nd portion until after my vacation time but we will see what happens. I have been working a lot these days and am looking forward to a 1 week vacation. So stay tuned for part 2 as it is coming and I will be posting every weeks progress and exactly what I am doing so that if any of you want to follow in my steps you can do so easily.