Fitness Challenge!

[Joshua]

I loved DiPasquale's work, although much of his major success subjects (Palumbo, Duchaine) involved high steroid use.

I followed Lyle McDonald's RFL diet for awhile. After 3 months or so, although I had lost substantial weight, when I was sick of crapping lava and getting sick constantly so I gave it up. Lyle's response was "eat more fiber" which made matters worse for me, personally. Maybe my physiology was significantly different than others, but yeah... RFL is not a healthy diet, something I attribute to the major lack of fat. To Lyle's defense he has multiple diets he has authored, is very knowledgeable, and has staunchly defended that his RFL is not to be used long-term. Not to mention, unlike other protein-only fasting diets he advocates whole foods. However, the "PSMF" concept I feel is an invitation for yo-yo dieting... so unless you are already thin and just want to see those abs, avoid like the plague.

And now for some thread relevance.

Shortly after my last few posts last year on this thread, my family and I went through a fairly rough financial patch... a combination of poor management of personal funds, family member's untreated addictions going out of control, and a job transition that left me a month without pay, I had to cancel the gym membership, I had to sell off a ton of stuff, and I had to eat meager meals... additionally working 70+ hours a week, out of state, without a kitchen. Although I was eating less than 1500 calories a day (I recorded the intakes as an experiment), I was eating Appalachian-style peasant food... cheap, carb-heavy, etc... (corn, fatback, corn, beans, corn, cornbread, and corn) When starting in this thread, I was about 330lbs, down from 380 in late 2009, again down from 430 back in 2003 (from 2005-2007 I maintained 350lbs as I was competing at the top amateur levels in Florida for Strongman).

I had climbed back up 30lbs, to 362lbs as of late november last year. I'm down now to 345 as of this morning, I have 15 more pounds to go to be "back where I started", but probably won't start doing anything more physical than walking for another 25lbs, just to take it easy on my joints.

My iteration of the way I'm eating now is a hybrid of all that I have learned - some of it might sound like a fad, but it really works well for me.

1. At least 1lb of raw, fresh fruits/vegetables per day. No exceptions. My "shortcut" for this is to put 1/2lb of kale, cranberries, strawberries, blueberries, carrots, spirulina into a blender with water and chug it down in the morning with my bacon and eggs. I no longer cook my veggies eaten with meals... just wash and munch.

2. Achieve a 4:1 or better Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio in my daily diet. This generally helps my mood, joints, heart, and ensures I'm eating enough fatty fish.

3. No matter how many people are having success with a higher-starch "paleo diet", I simply cannot. Perhaps it's due to being obese since my mid-teens and having some insulin-dependance issues, but adding starch to a meal turns off my "I'm Full" signals in the brain and I'll literally eat until I sleep.

4. If generally sedentary, I must eat less than 2300cal/day to lose .5-1lb of weight a day. 45-60% of those calories should come from a balanced ratio of fat... meaning fatty fish, grassfed beef, coconut oil, avocados. If exercising frequently, I can either keep the calories the same and introduce considerably more fruit, or I can keep the intake ratios the same and bump the calories up by about 1000/day.

5. Fast every once in awhile. Conquering hunger is the biggest hurdle for a fatty. If you can say no to hunger for 48 hours, you are winning. Plus, it helps you to look at the whole picture, eating 2000 calories a day for 2 weeks, with 1 24-hour fast, equals an average deficit of 250 cals/day over the course of those 2 weeks. Long-term fasting can damage metabolism, however... so keep it under 1-2 days.

6. SLEEP COMES FIRST! Go to bed early enough, that you can wake without an alarm clock and still get to work on time. Black-out your bedroom, if you can see your hand in front of your face in the middle of the night, it isn't dark enough.

I've acclimated to this over the past 4 weeks, and by going to bed before 10pm I wake up at 5:30-6:00 AM every day, completely refreshed and not having my pulse spike with an alarm (I actually took my waking pulse and noticed a 15bpm difference in waking naturally vs. waking with an alarm clock).

7. Walk more! I'm walking dogs a couple of times a day, walking to the grocery store, and walking on my lunch breaks at work. This helps health, I get sunlight, and I get more time not staring at a glowing box.