Trying to drop the Fat Ass!

Well, after listening to the NPR Pop Culture from the Monkey See group, Stephen Thompson commented that he was happy 2010 was over and all the attachments to it. Well I have the same sentiment and I will be taking 2011 on with some vigor. What will my vigor be directed towards? Same as many others I would assume but here is my list:

1. improve my fitness
2. drop some weight
3. attain more climbing goals ice, rock, 14ers, alpine and skiing
4. be a better husband, friend, brother, son - person!
5. TRAVEL

The first two go hand in hand with dropping some pounds being the subject of this post and what steps I am taking to drop some bacon. The fitness part is purposefully vague. I like to climb (ice, alpine, rock), bicycle (road, cross, mountain), run, hike; basically anything outside. Being a 250lb body builder would be a detriment. I am a firefighter so being a 110lb marathoner would also have an impact on my life. Besides I do not have the frame to be a 110lb marathoner. With that said my goal is functional strength and flexibility.

The one activity that I have kept my whole life is cycling. 'Back in the day' this led me to centuries and then to triathlons and adventure racing. I had some pretty respectable finishes in tris and adventure races but I became pretty burned out on training. Our belief was more is better and my recreation turned into work.. Sorry, focus, needless to say I curbed my recreation and have not been 'out there' like I used to be. This caused my 175lb fit frame to balloon to my current state of 196lb..

A friend and his wife own Pikes Peak CrossFit and they have been very tolerant of all my questions related to diet and fitness. They have also introduced me into the world of the Paleo Diet and the Paleo Solution podcast. A recent guest on the Paleo podcast was Tim Ferris and he was discussing his book "The Four Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman". With a title like that how could I not become interested? I want to be slimmer and posses superhuman powers. The sex thing is optional because I am already incredible! Well maybe a some pointers could come in handy..

The book details all of the experiments that Tim performed on himself in trying to loose weight, become stronger and in recovering from injuries. I am not going to get into detail about the book but I will say that it hit just about all the areas I have been reading about in various other books, magazines and blogs i.e. barefoot running, stretching, diet and focused intense workouts. The book warns against reading from cover to cover and directs the reader to focus on their goals and read only those sections to reach those goals. Well I read the 549 page tomb cover to cover in 3 days and decided on my own 'experiment' taking the information from this book, "The Time Crunched Cyclist", and those other sources for guidance.

Here are the basics of the Slo-carb diet:

1. Start day with high protein (at least 30g) breakfast within the first hour of waking.
2. Meals should be lean protein (grass fed beef is preferred)
3. Augment meals with legumes for some caloric density
4. Each meal should also contain non-starchy vegetables
5. Eat 4 meals a day
6. NO BEER (ugh!) but red wine is ok..

You can look at my diet document in my fitness folder on google docs for a more detailed explanation or buy the book. This diet is not meat to be fun, it is meant to work. You follow this diet for 6 days then on the 7th day you get to binge, not cheat binge! This is also covered in my doc and book. If you go to the Paleo podcast you can also get a slo-carb cookbook in the show notes..

For my experiment I will be following the diet only for the first 3 weeks, add suppliments the next 3 weeks and then cold therapy the last 3 weeks. I suffered through 3+ months of trying to become a vegetarian so I should be able to survive a few months of eating meat and vegetables..

I have been on the diet for 2 weeks now and here are my results so far, I started weighing 196lb..

Wk1 Wk2

Weight 191.8 188.3

Weight Loss 4.2 3.5

Tot Inches 154.5 150.0

Inch Lost 3.25 1.5

My total weight loss for 2 weeks is 7.7lbs with 4.5 inches lost. I have done minimal exercising this past two weeks, only a couple of 30 min barefoot runs and walks. I had shoulder surgery last week and have been hopped up on percocet for pain. Needless to say all I did last week was basically lie on the couch and do rom exercises on CPM machine. The other side effect of the the percocet was slowing of my intestines. This means I have gone several days without a bm so my weight today may be a little full of shit!

In the coming weeks I will be adding some ab workouts, more runs and then kettleball workouts (when the surgeons oks it).. So I will be updating weekly on my progress and what I am up to. I am also going to post up some evaluations on some gear I have purchased this past year from GoLite, Black Diamond, Exped and many others... Please ask if you have any questions or want to join me in my quest(s)...