Post by baubosboy on Oct 12, 2007 17:36:08 GMT -5
Howdy all,
Psoted this on the yahoo LW group, though I would post it here also...
So, I’ve passed the six-month mark on my IF/lifestyle experiment. Made the following changes:
Late March: started IF, also tried to clean up my diet a little--less sweets, fast food, cereals, and processed meat; more paleo-type meals. My IF plan was the 6-to-6, and I ate as much as I wanted on those days, whenever I wanted. I was adaptive, but tried to be fairly ruthless; if I knew ahead of time that I was going to eat at, say, 12pm on a fast day, I would start my fast at 12pm instead of 6. If it was something unforeseen, I would add fast time later: for example, I might fast from 6pm to12pm, then run into an old friend; I’d have a guilt-free lunch, catch up on old times; my feast interval would then run from 12pm to 12pm, then I’d fast from 12pm to 6pm the next day. So, while my first fast period would only be 18 hours, and the following feast period would be 24 hours, and the next fast would be 30 hours. I wanted to be adaptive, and I figured that a certain degree of spontaneity and randomness would actually be beneficial. Also, I didn’t want to be a fanatic, and I wanted to keep in mind that one’s social life is at least as important, health-wise, as one’s diet. (Also, threw out my scales at the beginning of this; lost 8 pounds in the first two weeks, gained it back in the next two weeks, realized that this would just be a distraction, and that weight was the least relevant of all the health and fitness markers I was using.)
Late June: revamped my exercise regimen, going from strictly strength-oriented to strength/general fitness/general health. Went from heavy weight workouts, usually 3 or 4 per week, heavy weight, low sets, low reps, and pretty much zero cardio, to a combination of heavy weight and low reps (2-3 reps per set), and lighter weights and high reps (20-30 reps), and tried to do some kind of cardio every day. The cardio was of three basic types: low-intensity, but lasting 1 to 3 hours; moderate intensity, lasting about 30 - 40 minutes, and sprint workouts (4 or 5 different types of those.) Sometimes the cardio was done separately from weights, sometimes as part of the same workout, and sometimes I combined different types of cardio. I aimed for some type of sustained, deliberate movement every day; I averaged about 6 days per week. But I did average 30+ separate sessions per month, thanks to multiple workouts on particular days. Also, I tried to fit more exercise into my normal daily routine: parking as far away from where I’m going as possible, driving less in general, etc.
Results: Began sleeping better immediately. Nagging cough went away immediately. Lost about 5 inches from my waist. Snoring diminished drastically. Heartburn and acid reflux, both of which were occurring with increasing frequency, became a thing of the past; have not had either since March. Weigh-ins at the doctor’s office showed a weight loss of about 30 lbs from January through October (40 lbs from my heaviest of a couple of years ago.) Cholesterol--which runs high in my family--decreased slightly, but not a great deal, about 5%. HDL went up a little, about 9%. Total cholesterol to HDL ratio improved by about 14%. Fasting glucose--Type 2 also runs in the family--decreased markedly, going from worrisome to acceptable, a drop of almost 15%. This was the best result. Triglycerides decreased slightly, about 4%. The test also showed a significant elevation in creatinine, which isn’t good, but isn’t necessarily bad, and could be caused by just not drinking enough water in the fast period before the blood test, which I definitely had not done. That is definitely something I find I neglect with IF: drinking enough water. The creatinine is something I’m going to have to watch; going to drink lots of water, get another test done in a couple of months.
Aerobic performance has improved considerably. I went from 3 20-second Tabata-style sprints on the exercise bike, to 8. A hiking trail through some steep hills that, last year, took me about 3 hours and left me exhausted, now takes me about 1.5 hours and leaves me feeling energized. I have more range of motion. Strength has diminished somewhat, as I expected, but not too drastically, and muscular endurance and lactic acid threshold have improved considerably. Not too much muscle loss, as far as I can tell, and I actually look like I have more muscle, thanks to improved definition. The loss of gut seems to be adversely affecting my squat performance; when I push out my gut for the squat, there’s less there to push, and I feel less stable; my lower spine feels less protected/supported. Whether that’s physiological or psychological, I have no idea. Fat powerlifters tend to say that a big gut is helpful; lean powerlifters tend to say it’s not, but they also tend to lift less. But they also tend to be smaller anyway, so I dunno.
Now, obviously, all this can’t be taken as a strict test of IF, as I changed other important variables--eating a little healthier, and doing more cardio, and more exercise generally--but I can’t see that IF has hurt, and I think it has helped. I don’t think the cardio alone can account for the waist-shrinkage, as I have done this same type of regimen in the past, without these drastic results. Seriously: if I notch my belt where it was in January, my pants fall down.
The thing I like best about IF: completely guilt-free eating. It’s also a highly adaptive program. I do have to watch my water intake more with this regimen, as apparently I’m used to taking in most of my water at meal-time. The feast days have been harder for me than the fast days, on the whole, specifically in terms of eating in the morning. The evening has been the hardest part of the fast days, even though that’s the first part of the fast, when I’m physically the least hungry. Used to those late-night cookies. Generally I enjoy the hunger. Generally I like fast days more than feast days, though I look forward to feast days more. Haven’t obsessed a lot about food--no food dreams, food fantasies, etc--when I do find myself thinking about it, I just remind myself that I can eat like a pig in a few hours, and then I’m able to move on. Haven’t seen any major difference in terms of workout performance between fast days and feast days--though it’s much, much, much easier to get off I disagree and get to the gym with an empty belly than a full one. I generally feel better--sharper, more awake--on fast days than feast days. But I tend to be more irritable on fast days, which I knew was going to happen, so I watch for it and adjust accordingly.
The thing is, none of these changes, diet or exercise, have involved any serious degree of suffering, or any serious sense of deprivation. I went for IF because it fit perfectly with my personality and lifestyle. (It’s been so easy for me that I keep wondering if I’m doing it wrong.) Likewise, the paleo diet that I’m gradually working toward: those are the foods I like best anyway, so it’s not really that much of a hardship. The weight-training changes all involve doing stuff I like doing anyway; the only hard part there is letting go of my desire to be the strongest primate ever. As for the cardio, though cardio has never been something I enjoy, this regimen works out well. I really like walking around outdoors, so that’s hardly a sacrifice, and as for the sprint sessions, well, I like pain more than boredom. The only ones I really have to buckle down on are the moderate intensity, moderate duration ones, and I don’t do those every day, only two or three times a week, so that’s doable.
The only serious psychological obstacle I’ve encountered is the aforementioned one, letting go of my lifelong ambition to be the Strongest. But I’ve replaced that with the ambition to be the strongest 90-yr-old, so that should do the trick. My plan for the last decade has been that I would focus on strength until I peaked, then bring everything else up to that level; I finally realized that by the time I admitted that I had peaked, I would be a 70-yr-old 500-lb diabetic going in for my third bypass. Really would’ve liked to have hit a 600lb bench, but would ultimately rather lift less, for another 40 years.
I think the important thing with all this is figuring out who you are. I think most diet plans and most exercise routines can be beneficial; the trick is persistence, and that mostly has to do with what you like. If you love bread and pasta, going without is going to be hard for you, and you need to plan accordingly; maybe the low-carb or paleo diet isn’t your best bet. If you’re a grazer, the IF plan might be pretty hard. If you’re a fast-or-feast person, eating small meals throughout the day might be hard for you. And so on. Both IF and eating many small meals throughout the day can be healthy, I think; you just have to stick with them; whether you stick with them depends to a great extent on your personality and circumstances. Will-power only takes you so far.
Likewise exercise: as I said, I don’t mind/kind of like pain, and I hate tedium, so sprints suit me just fine. I like thinking, walking, enjoying nature, so hiking in the park suits me just fine. I love lifting weights, so weight-lifting is always going to be a big part of my exercise plan. Find stuff you like doing, and do away. Ideally, you want to think of exercise not as something you have to do, but as something you get to do.
I’ve been a little worried that, at the age of 44, I’d let it slide too long; I think--I hope, knock on wood--that I’ve made these changes in time, though I’m sure I wouldn’t have wanted to put it off too much longer. I think part of my worry might just be to have something to worry about; this all still is ringing my too-good-to-be-true alarm. But I hadn’t realized how many stupid nagging little health issues I had until I started getting over them; I hadn’t realized how low on energy I was until I started to recharge the batteries. I had let myself go, to a frightening extent. That’s the great danger with strength training, I think: when you’re in the gym, pulling a lot of weight off the floor, you really can’t believe you’re in poor health. How could you be so strong if you were on the verge of death? I almost always feel great when I’m lifting. Young, strong: great. Hence, I guess, strongmen keeling over in their thirties and forties.
Anyway, so far, so good, as the punchline goes. Really like IF, gonna work now on improving what I eat, gonna try to maintain my strength while bringing everything else back up to par. It’s been so easy--the old body is so eager to be healthy and alive--it makes me kind of ashamed of myself having taken so long to do it. Very little investment, for a whole lotta return.
Take care,
Geoff
Psoted this on the yahoo LW group, though I would post it here also...
So, I’ve passed the six-month mark on my IF/lifestyle experiment. Made the following changes:
Late March: started IF, also tried to clean up my diet a little--less sweets, fast food, cereals, and processed meat; more paleo-type meals. My IF plan was the 6-to-6, and I ate as much as I wanted on those days, whenever I wanted. I was adaptive, but tried to be fairly ruthless; if I knew ahead of time that I was going to eat at, say, 12pm on a fast day, I would start my fast at 12pm instead of 6. If it was something unforeseen, I would add fast time later: for example, I might fast from 6pm to12pm, then run into an old friend; I’d have a guilt-free lunch, catch up on old times; my feast interval would then run from 12pm to 12pm, then I’d fast from 12pm to 6pm the next day. So, while my first fast period would only be 18 hours, and the following feast period would be 24 hours, and the next fast would be 30 hours. I wanted to be adaptive, and I figured that a certain degree of spontaneity and randomness would actually be beneficial. Also, I didn’t want to be a fanatic, and I wanted to keep in mind that one’s social life is at least as important, health-wise, as one’s diet. (Also, threw out my scales at the beginning of this; lost 8 pounds in the first two weeks, gained it back in the next two weeks, realized that this would just be a distraction, and that weight was the least relevant of all the health and fitness markers I was using.)
Late June: revamped my exercise regimen, going from strictly strength-oriented to strength/general fitness/general health. Went from heavy weight workouts, usually 3 or 4 per week, heavy weight, low sets, low reps, and pretty much zero cardio, to a combination of heavy weight and low reps (2-3 reps per set), and lighter weights and high reps (20-30 reps), and tried to do some kind of cardio every day. The cardio was of three basic types: low-intensity, but lasting 1 to 3 hours; moderate intensity, lasting about 30 - 40 minutes, and sprint workouts (4 or 5 different types of those.) Sometimes the cardio was done separately from weights, sometimes as part of the same workout, and sometimes I combined different types of cardio. I aimed for some type of sustained, deliberate movement every day; I averaged about 6 days per week. But I did average 30+ separate sessions per month, thanks to multiple workouts on particular days. Also, I tried to fit more exercise into my normal daily routine: parking as far away from where I’m going as possible, driving less in general, etc.
Results: Began sleeping better immediately. Nagging cough went away immediately. Lost about 5 inches from my waist. Snoring diminished drastically. Heartburn and acid reflux, both of which were occurring with increasing frequency, became a thing of the past; have not had either since March. Weigh-ins at the doctor’s office showed a weight loss of about 30 lbs from January through October (40 lbs from my heaviest of a couple of years ago.) Cholesterol--which runs high in my family--decreased slightly, but not a great deal, about 5%. HDL went up a little, about 9%. Total cholesterol to HDL ratio improved by about 14%. Fasting glucose--Type 2 also runs in the family--decreased markedly, going from worrisome to acceptable, a drop of almost 15%. This was the best result. Triglycerides decreased slightly, about 4%. The test also showed a significant elevation in creatinine, which isn’t good, but isn’t necessarily bad, and could be caused by just not drinking enough water in the fast period before the blood test, which I definitely had not done. That is definitely something I find I neglect with IF: drinking enough water. The creatinine is something I’m going to have to watch; going to drink lots of water, get another test done in a couple of months.
Aerobic performance has improved considerably. I went from 3 20-second Tabata-style sprints on the exercise bike, to 8. A hiking trail through some steep hills that, last year, took me about 3 hours and left me exhausted, now takes me about 1.5 hours and leaves me feeling energized. I have more range of motion. Strength has diminished somewhat, as I expected, but not too drastically, and muscular endurance and lactic acid threshold have improved considerably. Not too much muscle loss, as far as I can tell, and I actually look like I have more muscle, thanks to improved definition. The loss of gut seems to be adversely affecting my squat performance; when I push out my gut for the squat, there’s less there to push, and I feel less stable; my lower spine feels less protected/supported. Whether that’s physiological or psychological, I have no idea. Fat powerlifters tend to say that a big gut is helpful; lean powerlifters tend to say it’s not, but they also tend to lift less. But they also tend to be smaller anyway, so I dunno.
Now, obviously, all this can’t be taken as a strict test of IF, as I changed other important variables--eating a little healthier, and doing more cardio, and more exercise generally--but I can’t see that IF has hurt, and I think it has helped. I don’t think the cardio alone can account for the waist-shrinkage, as I have done this same type of regimen in the past, without these drastic results. Seriously: if I notch my belt where it was in January, my pants fall down.
The thing I like best about IF: completely guilt-free eating. It’s also a highly adaptive program. I do have to watch my water intake more with this regimen, as apparently I’m used to taking in most of my water at meal-time. The feast days have been harder for me than the fast days, on the whole, specifically in terms of eating in the morning. The evening has been the hardest part of the fast days, even though that’s the first part of the fast, when I’m physically the least hungry. Used to those late-night cookies. Generally I enjoy the hunger. Generally I like fast days more than feast days, though I look forward to feast days more. Haven’t obsessed a lot about food--no food dreams, food fantasies, etc--when I do find myself thinking about it, I just remind myself that I can eat like a pig in a few hours, and then I’m able to move on. Haven’t seen any major difference in terms of workout performance between fast days and feast days--though it’s much, much, much easier to get off I disagree and get to the gym with an empty belly than a full one. I generally feel better--sharper, more awake--on fast days than feast days. But I tend to be more irritable on fast days, which I knew was going to happen, so I watch for it and adjust accordingly.
The thing is, none of these changes, diet or exercise, have involved any serious degree of suffering, or any serious sense of deprivation. I went for IF because it fit perfectly with my personality and lifestyle. (It’s been so easy for me that I keep wondering if I’m doing it wrong.) Likewise, the paleo diet that I’m gradually working toward: those are the foods I like best anyway, so it’s not really that much of a hardship. The weight-training changes all involve doing stuff I like doing anyway; the only hard part there is letting go of my desire to be the strongest primate ever. As for the cardio, though cardio has never been something I enjoy, this regimen works out well. I really like walking around outdoors, so that’s hardly a sacrifice, and as for the sprint sessions, well, I like pain more than boredom. The only ones I really have to buckle down on are the moderate intensity, moderate duration ones, and I don’t do those every day, only two or three times a week, so that’s doable.
The only serious psychological obstacle I’ve encountered is the aforementioned one, letting go of my lifelong ambition to be the Strongest. But I’ve replaced that with the ambition to be the strongest 90-yr-old, so that should do the trick. My plan for the last decade has been that I would focus on strength until I peaked, then bring everything else up to that level; I finally realized that by the time I admitted that I had peaked, I would be a 70-yr-old 500-lb diabetic going in for my third bypass. Really would’ve liked to have hit a 600lb bench, but would ultimately rather lift less, for another 40 years.
I think the important thing with all this is figuring out who you are. I think most diet plans and most exercise routines can be beneficial; the trick is persistence, and that mostly has to do with what you like. If you love bread and pasta, going without is going to be hard for you, and you need to plan accordingly; maybe the low-carb or paleo diet isn’t your best bet. If you’re a grazer, the IF plan might be pretty hard. If you’re a fast-or-feast person, eating small meals throughout the day might be hard for you. And so on. Both IF and eating many small meals throughout the day can be healthy, I think; you just have to stick with them; whether you stick with them depends to a great extent on your personality and circumstances. Will-power only takes you so far.
Likewise exercise: as I said, I don’t mind/kind of like pain, and I hate tedium, so sprints suit me just fine. I like thinking, walking, enjoying nature, so hiking in the park suits me just fine. I love lifting weights, so weight-lifting is always going to be a big part of my exercise plan. Find stuff you like doing, and do away. Ideally, you want to think of exercise not as something you have to do, but as something you get to do.
I’ve been a little worried that, at the age of 44, I’d let it slide too long; I think--I hope, knock on wood--that I’ve made these changes in time, though I’m sure I wouldn’t have wanted to put it off too much longer. I think part of my worry might just be to have something to worry about; this all still is ringing my too-good-to-be-true alarm. But I hadn’t realized how many stupid nagging little health issues I had until I started getting over them; I hadn’t realized how low on energy I was until I started to recharge the batteries. I had let myself go, to a frightening extent. That’s the great danger with strength training, I think: when you’re in the gym, pulling a lot of weight off the floor, you really can’t believe you’re in poor health. How could you be so strong if you were on the verge of death? I almost always feel great when I’m lifting. Young, strong: great. Hence, I guess, strongmen keeling over in their thirties and forties.
Anyway, so far, so good, as the punchline goes. Really like IF, gonna work now on improving what I eat, gonna try to maintain my strength while bringing everything else back up to par. It’s been so easy--the old body is so eager to be healthy and alive--it makes me kind of ashamed of myself having taken so long to do it. Very little investment, for a whole lotta return.
Take care,
Geoff
