Diet

I hate the word "diet" and you may have seen me use the terminology Warrior method of eating, rather than diet. Diet itself is a good word meaning "way of life" and not necessarily associate with food but the word has been usurped by the quick fix weight loss programs.

One reason I hate it is that "diets" don't work. Anything promising you quick fixes is probably not going to work for you. You may try something and it becomes a catalyst to jump-start you on your way to a healthier lifestyle but chances are if you spend money on a specific diet, it won't work long-term for you.

I don't really consider the Warrior Diet a "diet" in a sense that I'm following something I couldn't do for the rest of my life. The major changes I've made in the food I eat is really only eat a good salad to kick-off the overeating phase and reducing garbage carbs. I'm not going to rail against carbs but I think I have been looking at foods in a calorie-conscious manner rather than quality calories. Like I'd choose eating crackers over almonds because the crackers had less calories and fat. Well, that's probably not the best choice if I want to lose stubborn fat.

Those are the little things that are important to learn. I've got two more weeks on the Warrior method of eating and if I don't continue to follow it completely I think I will definitely reduce my garbage carbs. I was so sleepy yesterday it was silly. I'm tired now but it was because of the good workout this morning and I don't think I could nap if I wanted to.

Question

THE NEW ME asks:

"what kind of diet did you before you started the warrior diet?"

The main change to my diet that allowed me to lose the weight, I believe, was learning and exercising portion control. I can eat a great amount of food. My appetizers used to be a bag of doritos and a can of cheese dip. I would often drink half a case of beer in a day along with a half a pizza. When I started journaling my calories (tracking calories is what I did, set a limit, and keep under it), it really hit home how many calories/bad fats/sugar was in the food and how small real portions were. I like trail mix and would often eat 1 or 2 cups worth. I figured that wasn't a problem, it's trail mix after all, healthy stuff. But a 1/4 cup of that stuff had 225 calories. If I eat two cups, I've got nearly my calories for the entire day. Not a good thing to snack on in front of the TV. My diet now isn't much different although I've made a point to cut out garbage sugars like corn syrup while on this diet. They seem to effect you more during the fast, making you crash hard. But I don't believe in cutting out foods you enjoy, learn how to enjoy them in moderation. When I first lost the weight, my macro-nutrient breakdown was something like 45% Carbs, 30% Fats, 25% proteins. It's been a lot like that this week. The only difference is that most of the carbs are fruits and veggies over grains and the fats are up a bit because of all the nuts/seeds I'm eating. Both are positive changes in my opinion. Like I said before, I don't have any great secrets to give about changing diet to lose weight. Figure out how many calories you need a day, keep under that and workout.

Day Five - Overeating Phase

I had the protein shake after my morning workout and that didn't seem to cause any sleepiness or drowsiness that would be associated with elevated glucose levels. That's good. Other than that I wasn't really hungry for anything. I had a couple of cups of tea and some water. I had my usual spinach salad when I got home. Then I finished up the rest of the burger patties and had a slice of pepperoni pizza. An apple and a banana, half a Fiber One bar, and some dried cranberries and some dark chocolate. I'll have some oats and fruit before I go to bed and that will make about 2000 calories for the day. A similar macro-nutrient breakdown as yesterday. Sodium was high, from the pizza no doubt. I'm not trying to eat to a certain ratio, just seems to turn out that way, about 40% Carbs, 35% fats, 25% proteins. If I go buy some chicken breast or tuna I'll likely flip the fats/protein ratio.

As far as body composition, I'm going to update that weekly but here's what I measured in at the day I started on the Warrior Diet and Intermittent Fasting:

Weight: 178.2
Body Fat: 18.1% (first thing in the morning, real body fat% was about 16.4%)
Waist (1" above navel): 32.50"
Waist (1" below navel): 34.50"
Hips: 38.25"
Bicep: 13.25" / 15.75" (at rest and flexed, a stupid vanity measure)
Chest: 41.50
Thigh: 22.00"

Complete Fast

I had no problems all day. I didn't eat a lick of anything. I had a couple cups of tea with a little bit of milk. There was no sleepiness or hunger pains at all. I felt a heightened state of awareness all day long. Taking a deep breath tasted good. I feel lean, and fast, and I would swear I can feel the fat leaving my midsection. I accomplished a lot of work today and the day flew by. I can understand why religions often incorporated fasting into part of the experience. It definitely transforms your perception. It seems like I focus intently on whatever task is at hand, save for that one craving for almonds earlier. Maybe we should put all our ADD kids on intermittent fasts. I had an idea yesterday that I was eating just because I hadn't eaten for a while and not because I felt like eating. I'm pretty sure that was the case. I had very few thoughts about food throughout the day and certainly wasn't struggling to get through the day. I am looking forward to the big evening meal though. However this turns out, there's definitely something to be said about actually being hungry when you eat and enjoying the experience of being hungry and the satiety that follows the big meal.

More on Intermittent Fasting

I was looking for more information on the Warrior Diet so I did some searching on the RossTraining forums (link added to sidebar). I found this thread that has a lot of useful information from people that actually tried it. That thread included this link to a Performance Menu forum discussing Intermittent Fasting (also about to be added to the sidebar). Apparently, people will completely fast (no calories) for most of the day rather than limiting themselves to low GI fruits and veggies. The consensus seems to be that the Warrior Diet is an easier to follow version of IF (Intermittent Fasting). Some go so far to speculate that you'd see more benefits from a total fast rather than the Warrior Diet fast. I'm on the fence. I can see both sides. If fasting regulates blood glucose and insulin and increases fat metabolism, and all studies show that it does, then eating throughout the day is going to raise those levels and effect fat metabolism to some degree. However, I believe that if you're strict about the fruits and vegetables you eat, i.e. make sure they are low GI foods, then you can minimize the increase in blood glucose and the benefits of the vitamins and nutrients of the fruits and veggies are worth the minor disruption to fat loss.

That being said I am going to try a complete fast today. Only coffee, tea and water. I've added a tiny amount of milk but I'm not counting this. If everything goes OK I think it might be good to throw in a couple of complete fasting days every now and then.

Day Three Meal

I was able to get about 1900 calories in my evening meal. The weight lifting must have made me extra hungry. I ate a total of about 2500 calories. I know it doesn't matter but I like to keep track of my approximate total number of calories. Eating that much at once is satisfying to say the least. I seem to reach a point were I can't even look at anymore food. One problem I need to fix is that I seem to be getting too much fat. I simply don't have that many lean protein choices in the house. At least I don't have any that aren't frozen solid. I should set out a few chicken breasts, or ham steaks, yeah, I'll set out some ham steaks for tomorrow night. They're less fatty than the two hamburger patties I ate last night.

Lean protein sources aren't cheap. Well, I guess cans of tuna are pretty cheap but it's pretty easy to get sick of tuna.

All cramped up...

I'm not trying to sell this diet, just relate my experiences while trying to follow its main tenets. Everything going well today until about 2:00 in the afternoon when I started feeling, eh, maybe sleepy? I wasn't tired although I felt like I could lie down for a while. Odd feeling, not carbo-sleepy, just uncomfortable. I started to get a hunger pains and drank some V8 juice and it got worse. Then, I kind of noticed it was on the outside of my stomach and now I think it was a cramp in my abdominals. I have been doing a lot of difficult core work lately but I never felt cramps like that. I got up and stretched and they seemed to go away. I ate some blueberries and now I'm feeling fantastic, like I could go for a run. Did the diet cause muscle cramps or was it over-exertion? maybe both? Just a coincidence that I experience cramps in my ab muscles for the first time in my life when I'm fasting during the day? Of course, it's my first week of incorporating floor-wipers into my core workout. Too many variables.

Putting on my cyber-sleuth hat, I did some digging around to possible causes of muscle cramps. I was looking for some kind of nutritional deficiency that I may be unknowingly experiencing. Guess what can cause muscle cramp? Hypoglycemia, or a relative drop in blood sugar (glucose).

As hypoglycemia progresses a variety of symptoms can occur including muscle twitching. Amongst 300 patients in one study (185 female, 115 male) found to have relative hypoglycemia (a drop of 20% or more below the fasting blood sugar level during a 6-hour glucose tolerance test), 23% had muscular twitching or cramps.

I'm not suggesting I have hypoglycemia or that you'll get it, but low blood glucose levels can apparently cause cramps. What confuses the topic is that there's a form of hypoglycemia that's called "fasting hypoglycemia" but it has nothing to do with the cause of the hypoglycemia, only when it occurs, i.e. in the morning before eating. I was thinking that maybe low glucose levels during the day brought this on, especially with the tough workout this morning.

I checked with Dr. Wikipedia and the good doctors mention that "As the duration of fasting is extended, plasma glucose levels can fall further, even in healthy people. In other words, many healthy people can occasionally have glucose levels in the hypoglycemic range without symptoms or disease."

So, intensely performing new exercises in the midst of a 20 hour fast increases the chance of muscle cramps. That's my hypothesis. My solution is to drink more water and have another banana.

Day Two Overeating Phase

Again, it looks like I'll be able to get about 1600 calories in during the overeating phase. I ate about 400 calories during the day and I ate a bunch of leftover taco meat with some cheese on top. This diet should be good for cleaning up the leftovers. I'm quite stuffed. I am still counting calories but only to get an idea of how many calories I'm eating every day during this experiment.

As far as changes, it's still too early to tell although there was an irregularity at the body fat scale this morning. Yesterday morning I measured 178.2 pounds and 18.1% body fat. Morning body fat readings are generally high as the body is often dehydrated. 18.1% in the morning means about 16.0 to 16.5% actually. Anyway, this mornings I weighed in at 174.8 and 17.5%. That's a pretty big one- day difference without any real change in total daily calories. Could be nothing but I haven't weighed in below 175 in weeks.

Homemade Juice?

Juice This

The Warrior Diet mentions drinking fresh juice throughout the day in the under-eating phase. I don't have a juicer so that's not something I'm going to be doing. I'm certainly not going to buy a juicer. I bought some V8 at the grocery store during lunch. That should cover the juice angle although I'm sure that Ori would find it blasphemous because it's not organic and fresh. Whatever, horse manure is organic and fresh but I wouldn't want to drink the juice. After the "apple fiasco" this morning, as it shall henceforth be known, I couldn't decide on any fruits that didn't have too much sugar in them like apples. Pears can be sweeter than apples sometimes, plums, peaches and nectarines too. Pineapple tastes like candy. Maybe it's the type of sugar in apples? I dunno, I didn't buy any fruit because I think bananas might be the perfect fruit for this method of eating and I love them have two big bunches of them. I bought some carrots, asparagus and green beans at the grocery store. I'm not feeling any hunger at all and am eating some asparagus and a parsnip right now just for the heck of it.

Day Two

One thing this diet will not do is cure you of your habit of finding it difficult to get up early on the first day back to work after a long weekend. I slept in so I didn't get a chance to do any cardio this morning. I'll do some after I get home, before my evening meal. I was able to get about 2000 quality calories in yesterday, but it was a struggle.

David has a website up to track his progress. You can follow his experiment on Wild at Heart. There's also a link in the sidebar. David asked me:

"did you finish the book? he has a pretty interesting workout plan, im thinking about trying it, since i like to box the high intensive short interval workout should be beneficial. how was your dinner? it was weird for me because even right before i ate i wasn't starving, even though i'd only had 3 or 4 hundred calories in my whole day...

and i have some trouble with stop when more thirsty thing, what if im eating something salty?"

My workout plan is already very similar to the one in the book. My workouts are no longer than an hour and include a variety of heavy lifting, Crossfit, Simplefit workouts, Stronglifts 5x5, and High Intensity Interval Training, HIIT cardio. What’s more, I don’t like following prescribed routines. I often go into the gym in the morning without knowing exactly what I’m going to do. Most of the time, I put together my workout when I’m doing my 10-minute warm-up. I like it that way. It allows me to find exercises and try them out and incorporate them into my training without feeling that I’m getting behind on some program.

My meal yesterday was straight after my workout and I ate a ton, about 1600 of my 2000 calories for the day came after 5:30. I wasn’t hungry until the first bit of food hit my mouth, then I ate a bunch. I didn’t crave sugary foods though. After my first wave of eating, starting with a spinach salad and then fats and proteins with a little carbs, I got extremely thirsty even though I drank 32 ounces of water during my workout not too long ago. This is the point where the Warrior Diet recommends you quit eating. I did that and just drank another 20 some ounces of water. About two hours later I was feeling like having a little something so I cooked up some steel-cut oats and added some dried cranberries, my final carbs for the day. I had a whey protein shake before bed. I was still pretty stuffed which is unusual as I’m most often feeling a little hungry before I go to bed but had always heard it’s bad to eat so much in the evening. This morning I woke up, late, but wasn’t hungry. I’m still not hungry yet and it’s 9:00 A.M. I thought I’d miss the morning breakfast. I usually have a PB&J on the way to the gym in the morning. I must admit that I never got the whole “eating before a workout” down consistently. Sometimes I would eat and feel good working out, sometimes I felt tired and it never seemingly mattered what I ate, oatmeal or eggs. Rarely did I feel as good as I did yesterday during the workout though. This morning I took a muti-vitamin and had some coffee. I brought two apples, a banana, a parsnip and a carrot to snack on today. I will get home around 6:00 and probably do 30 minutes of HIIT cardio then start my meal.

UPDATE: Oh crap, I just read apples, grapes and oranges are to be minimized or avoided due to their high sugar content. I brought two today plus I have two bags at home. What am I supposed to eat if I can't have apples? I love apples. Although I did just eat one and I feel sluggish, not like the alertness I had yesterday. Maybe I'll save that second apple until later tonite. The banana I ate yesterday did not have the same effect, nor did the parsnips or carrots, as one would expect.

First Meal

After I finished my workout, I started with leafy greens, as recommended. I ate two huge bowls of spinach with a little onion and a carrot and olive oil and balsamic vineger dressing with a little kosher salt. The taste was intense. I could have eaten another bowl but I figured that's way too much spinach, I'd need diapers tomorrow. I then ate some walnut halves, and almonds. Then I had some ribs, chicken pieces (breaded, but that's all we had), turkey breast, and some cheese. I also fit my protein shake in their with the meats. That totals about 1300 calories so far for the day. I've been eating between 2000 and 2500, about 750 of which is pretty junky. I'm a bit stuffed right now so I'm going to get a shower an then stack up on some carbs. Steel-cut oats with dried cranberries is something I have in mind. I think I should probably be able to get another 600-700 calories in tonight. Protein wise I'm at about 95 grams, which is pretty good anyday. The Warrior Diet argues that people may go overboard with protein and that training the body to absorb most of the protein once a day (the evening meal) makes it do so more efficiently. We'll see.

Multiple Experiments

Follow two experiments for the price of one. A fellow Traineo member, David, also coincidentally started the Warrior Diet today. He's starting a website soon and I'll add a link to it once it's up. He has had a similar first-day experience saying:

"right now i feel lean, and alert, usually after lunch i can barely stay awake."

Me too.

David also asked me about morning workouts. Ori seems to assume you'll be working out in the afternoon, just before your big meal, but I workout in the morning too. My plan is to follow up the morning workout with my regular protein shake. I may eventually try and see what happens when I go without but I don't want to start that way. I'm afraid I'll pass out somewhere and it's winter and I don't want to get frostbite.