Rule #1 of Weight Loss (part 1)

I didn't get here on salads and kale smoothies alone!

I have been trying for a long, long time now to get to 165 lbs, and while I'm not there yet, my "plateau" has been set at a hard stop at 170 lbs.  Try as I might, I just couldn't seem to get below it.  The closest I've ever been in my adult life, aside from Marine Corps boot camp, was at the height of my P90X/INSANITY days.  On August 4th, 2011, I weighed in at 166 lbs.  I haven't been back since.

(Full disclosure - the 169.1 lbs was after a particularly cardio-heavy CrossFit workout.)


So what have I done different recently to change the direction of my weigh loss and break the plateau?  Start doing CrossFit every day?  Nope.  Fat burning supplements?  Nah.  Paleo?  Not even close!  I have one word that inspired me to lose weight and break the funk that I've been in for the last three-something years.

Twinkies.

Yes, Twinkies!  (Thank god they brought them back. ;-P)

Before I get there, allow me to take you on a quick trip to tell you how I arrived at Twinkies as an effective tool for weigh loss.

I'm currently working on my MBA.  I recently finished a business planning residency where the focus was exploring the feasibility of a startup.  I pitched an idea to my classmates that gained traction - we decided to explore the possibility of doing a P90X-specific meal delivery service.  I've done P90X a number of times now and have coached numerous people through it, and the thing I learned that is most difficult about P90X is not the actual workouts, and it's not even the time commitment (though both of those things are difficult).  The most difficult thing about P90X is the nutrition plan.  I have yet to meet a single person who could abide by it 100%.  Most people just "eat clean" or they do their best.  It is a rare and special individual who can devote an hour a day, six days a week to working out and then tack on the additional time to prep the meals prescribed by the P90X meal plan.  It's just not practical.

We quickly realized, sadly, that no one was interested in paying for a P90X meal delivery service.  So our team pivoted and decided to look at developing an app based on the sound principles of Precision Nutrition.  The app would help users to find "anytime" and "post-workout" meals.  However, after a conversation with an executive at Precision Nutrition, I was directed to an article on how nutrient timing, i.e. meals that are better suited for after working out than others, might not be as important as was once thought.  This principle has been a fundamental principle of good nutrition in my book for years, and now it's just, poof, gone!  (In all fairness, it's not completely gone, it's just not as important or as scientifically beneficial as was once thought.)  I was knocked on my butt.  My nutrition world was stood on its head.

Enter the "Twinkie Diet."

The Twinkie Diet was a self-experiment performed by a nutrition professor at Kansas State University.  The man went on essentially a junk food diet for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds.  What's more, he not only lost an impressive amount of weight, some of his blood chemistry markers improved.  His bad cholesterol went down, good cholesterol went up, and his triglycerides (blood-fat) decreased 39%!  How did he manage to accomplish this eating predominantly junk food?

Simple.  He ate about 1000 calories less per day than his daily requirement.

At the end of the day, it's not about low-carb meals, turkey burgers, and eating breakfast religiously.  To this day, it seems that all sound nutritional principles are up for debate.  Carbs are bad; no, high-protein, low-carb diets may be linked to cancer.  Egg yolks are bad; no, they're actually a source of good cholesterol.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Eh...maybe not so much.  It turns out, we might not know as much as we think we do about nutrition.  So, is there anything we can say for sure about nutrition.  Is there anything we do know about nutrition.  It turns out, we do.  As Twinkie Diet guy proved, theories about good nutrition come and go, but one thing holds constant:

Weight loss = calories in less than calories out

Frankly, I realized the power of calorie balance years ago.  That principle helped me to get to 166 pounds to begin with.  What changed recently to help me get back in the right direction?  Stay tuned and I'll tell you!

Shakeology Cleanse, Day 3

So the first and most obvious downside to finishing the cleanse on the last day of the work week--you're not motivated to do a write-up of it on the weekend!  I've gotta get my thoughts down before I forget the experience though, so here goes.

The hunger on Day 3 was comparable to Day 2, but for whatever reason I wasn't as hungry when I woke up the third day than I was the second.  Sticking to the diet for the third day wasn't significantly challenging, but the guys at work don't offer the best social support.  They opened a box of Girl Scout cookies and insisted that I eat some.  I left the office for a little bit only to find that they saved one for me.  I tucked it away in my desk.  I recognize that one cookie wouldn't make that much of a difference, but that's not the point.  The point is that I can always find a way to justify the things that are easy or instantly gratifying.  Finding reasons to do the hard thing and sticking to one's commitment is the defining characteristic of success.

However, I agreed to meet up with some of the fellas from the office in the evening to say goodbye to our outgoing boss.  Everyone had beers and bar snacks, so I thought a fruit juice would be an acceptable compromise since fruit is not entirely off-limits during the cleanse.  All-in-all, I would say that I had a successful three days.

Now, there is an upside to waiting a few days to write about the last day.  Now I get to write about my post-cleanse experience.  Unfortunately this wasn't as good.

Friday I kept my diet somewhat under control...until dinner.  I really didn't go ridiculously overboard with like a whole pizza and a pint of ice cream or anything, but I did have 1 cup of chicken tikka masala over 2 cups of basmati rice with a side of Na'an bread.  Not the worst possible meal, but certainly not the healthiest way I could have ended the day.  My immediate post-cleanse weight was 171.x, but my weigh-in following my Friday meals jumped back to 174.x.  I did pretty good Saturday too, but I did treat myself to some hot-fresh-now Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts, which I don't get to do very often.  Unfortunately as of Sunday morning's weigh-in, I'm back to my pre-cleanse weight.

So here are my take-aways from this round of the Shakeology 3-Day Cleanse:
--The "cleanse" is really more of a fast, which I will call it from now on.  I didn't have any more frequent trips to the bathroom, nor do I feel any differently than before starting the regimen.
--Speaking of which, I'm dealing with a huge bout of constipation now.  I can't say for sure it's due to the fast or if the fast was contributing to the condition in any way, but no matter how you look at it, the Shakeology fast didn't do me any favors.  One of the alleged benefits of Shakeology in general is that it's supposed to help keep you regular.  In all fairness I understand that fasts in general tend to result in some form of constipation, and suffice it to say that a Shakeology fast seems to be no different.
--The fast is significantly more beneficial the more weight you have to lose.  This might seem like a no-brainer, but I can now confirm it with my own experience.  Last time I started the cleanse at 181.x, got down to around 175, and the subsequent return to normal eating didn't send me right back to my original weight.  That was not my experience this time around.  True, I could have controlled my diet restoration a little more tightly, but I don't assess that I did anything significantly different from the last time I did the cleanse.
--The Shakeology fast doesn't seem to be significantly different from other fasting protocols, or from consistently healthy eating.  I didn't seem to lose significantly more weight from one day to the next on this fast compared from the 24 hour weekend fasts I've done, and the rate of weight loss was only moderately more noticeable than when I'm eating a normal, healthy diet.

Conclusion:  The Shakeology 3-day fast can be an effective tool for enhancing weight loss, especially during an initial weight-loss phase where someone is achieving new standards in body comp.  It is less effective in people who are otherwise eating healthy and are already close to their body comp goals.  Additionally, the Shakeology fast is reasonable to maintain in terms of dealing with hunger; however, recognize that there is nothing significantly different or uniquely beneficial to doing a Shakeology fast vice other fasting protocols.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this fast, fasting protocols, or any other questions about nutrition.

Shakeology Cleanse, Day 1

So I've decided to do the Shakeology 3-day cleanse...again.  This round was partly planned yet partly spontaneous.  I planned at the outset of this round of P90X to do a Shakeology cleanse between Phases 2 and 3, but when I finally made it to the Phase 2 recovery week, I was no longer sure.  Last time I did the cleanse I was in the low 180s and used the cleanse to effectively get myself below the 180# threshold, and it worked; I haven't been back to 180 since.  However, this time around I'm in the mid 170s and am still gradually losing weight on my diet, so I'm concerned that a cleanse now won't be as worthwhile.

So at the beginning of the week I was no longer sure that I was going to do a cleanse like I had planned, and that's where the spontaneous part comes into play.  I got on the scale this morning and weighed in at 174.x pounds, down from 176.x yesterday, and decided to go for it.  If my weight is on a downward trend, then now is the perfect time to ride that trend out.  Plus starting now gives me two days over the weekend to recover to more normal eating habits.  I learned last time that going straight off of the cleanse into Phase 3 is not a good idea.

At any rate, I'm 3 shakes down into Day 1 of the cleanse, and so far so good.  It's important when doing this regimen to effectively employ your meal timing.  After all, you only get four meals a day (three shakes and a salad), so the spacing of those meals becomes important.  For some reason I wasn't planning properly and was somehow adding in an extra meal.  It wasn't until I put it on paper that I realized what my meal timing needed to be: 7a, 11a, 3p, and 7p.  I'll get to eat my salad in a little less than two hours now, and I've got to say that I'm looking forward to eating some solid food.  I'm also curious to see how satiated that salad will leave me between 7p and when I go to bed three hours later.

I'm not feeling particularly hungry, but the thought of not being able to eat again till 7p is more annoying than anything.  For someone who has been fasting every weekend for 24h, this is not too bad, but again, it's the thought that I "can't" eat something that bothers me the most.  Not that it's hugely different from when I'm eating normally; after all, when I eat at 1p I tell myself I can't eat again until 5p.  Then again, I'm typically not hungry until 5p when eating normally.

I'm modifying from the strictest sense of the cleanse a little--I'm mixing my Shakeology with 1 cup of low-fat milk.  It ups the calorie content a little (though I'm still below 1200 cal/day), but more importantly, it ups the protein content of each meal to almost 30g.  One of the things I want to make sure of is that I don't neglect my daily protein needs.

Other than that, I was concerned about how low my carb intake would be every day--119 g/day.  It's really not that far off from the 130 g/day minimum recommended by the American Dietetic Association, but such a low carb intake might explain why I was feeling the way I was when I did this the first time.

Well, I'll log in tomorrow and write about my Day 2 experience, but so far so good!

Mmmmmmm....coal tar!

Have you had your coal tar today?  No?  If you took your multivitamin today, chances are you did!  Yay!!!

I'm starting to realize that I am pretty ignorant about my supplements.  I'd like to think I'm not alone.  Let's face it, it's almost cliché to think of a daily multivitamin as "insurance" against a sub-par diet, and of course, every American diet is sub-par, right?  Even if you think you eat a healthy diet, can you really be sure you're getting all of your Vitamin D3, zinc, or molybdenum?  And let's not forget coal tar!

How many of you knew that vitamins fall under one of six categories?  I didn't.  All vitamin supplements can be classified as "strictly synthetic," "nature-identical synthetic," "natural source," "food cultured," "food based," or "bacterial fermentation."  Not surprisingly, most vitamin supplements are either strictly synthetic or nature-identical synthetic, both of which are synonymous for "made in a lab."  The key difference between strictly synthetic and nature-identical synthetic is something called optical activity.  Optical activity is a technical term that refers to the shape of the molecular chain that comprises a particular vitamin.  While a synthetic vitamin might have the same chemical composition as the real deal, it's shape might not conform with a form that is compatible with the enzymes our bodies use to process it.  Therefore, since the optical activity of strictly synthetic vitamins differs from natural or even nature-identical synthetic vitamins, the bioavailability of strictly synthetic vitamins is lower than other forms.

But just because a vitamin is nature-identical doesn't mean it's all that great for us.  As you probably know, most Vitamin C supplements are comprised of ascorbic acid.  Guess where we get ascorbic acid from?  Oranges?  No.  Coal tar?  No, but I'm getting to that.  Corn!  That's right, ascorbic acid is typically derived chemically from corn/rice starch or corn sugar.

Coal tar is where we synthetically get Vitamin B-1 (thiamin).  Hydrochloric acid, the strongest of acids, is added to coal tar to cause it to precipitate.  The precipitant is collected and processed to create thiamin.  Yum!

The point here is that, just like I haven't given any thought to to my insurance coverages and deductibles (and probably should), I've never given any thought to my diet "insurance" until now.  We've always known that honest-to-goodness whole food is far superior to anything we can get out of a bottle, but maybe it's time we started to really look into the bottle.  Maybe we'll start to see that, not only are supplemental vitimans NOT a reasonable substitute for the vitamins and minerals we don't get due to our poor diets, but we'll start to see that they're light-years apart.

(BTW: if you're interested in reading about this topic in depth, check out the article All About Where Our Vitamin Supplements Come From.  I credit all of the information I wrote in this post to Ryan Andrews, who authored this article.  Any errors are my own.)

Now it's time to figure out if I should lower my deductibles!

Back to the Drawing Board

People who know me know that I love to make bread.  Like anything homemade, it's reassuring to know exactly what's going into the things you eat.  Plus, home cooking allows you to choose the quality of the ingredients rather than pre-made or restaurant meals, which at the very least usually means a LOT less sodium.

My bread maker had been virtually untouched for the entire three years that I was stationed in Hawaii.  Something about 100+ hour work weeks doesn't lend itself to a lot of home cooking.  Anyway, I finally broke out the bread maker, now that I have time to use it, and I realized that I've hardly made ANY of the recipes in the cookbook that came with the bread machine!  What better time to change that than the present?

So this was my attempt at "Mulit-Grain Cereal Wheat Bread," and it was a miserable fail.  The recipe called for 2 cups of 7-grain cereal, which is a lot of cereal for a 1.5 pound loaf.  I knew it as I was dumping in the cereal, but I figured that I'd trust the recipe, having never made it.  I also used less water than was required.  Here I was trying to outsmart the math first thing in the morning, so when it called for "3/4 cup and 3 tbsp lukewarm water," I tried to measure it all in the same measuring cup and added 3/4 cup + another 1/8 cup.  Wrong!  Note to self--don't try to outsmart the recipe first thing in the morning!

It would have been completely unrecoverable had I not cleaned out the residual cereal and reshaped the bread before the final rise cycle.  I'll probably chunk it and bring it into work tomorrow with a bottle of honey.

Fortunately I started my first attempt in the morning and had plenty of ingredients to make another.  This time I made sure to add the right amount of water and used 1 cup of cereal.  Let's see how this one comes out...