Intermittent Fasting - Thoughts
By Samir | January 22, 2012
So I’ve finally settled on a 14-hour mini-fast during each work day (Monday to Friday). I never liked having breakfast anyway, and usually only felt the first inkling of hunger around 10:30 AM. Eating the “bodybuilder” style 6-7 meals a day, though, meant I had been forcing myself to eat breakfast for the last 18 months.
The over-eating I did really helped my gains at the gym. I estimate I put on about 20 pounds of muslce. Unfortunately I put on 15 pounds of fat. Also unfortunately, I had trained my capacity to eat and trained my body to expect food every 2-3 hours. I found that intermittent fasting helped this area of my health more than anything else.
Starting with 20-hour fasts, and slowly working my way down to 14 hours, my stomach naturally stopped expecting food all the time. At first it was quite difficult to break it of its habit, and adversely impacted my mood and my disposition, but after 3 weeks I was pretty much able to go 14 hours without eating and not feel tired nor grumpy.
Also, I gained some versatility in that I can now train either fed or fasted. Neither seems to impact my strength, and there’s a slight endurance drop-off if I train fasted. This affords me great flexibility, I no longer had to “go home to eat” before I hit the gym after work, for example. In addition, I don’t feel so bad if I miss a meal.
My appetite has decreased by about 20% since I’ve started this excercise, which I think is a good thing. That I put on 15 pounds of fat over the last 18 months (I trained 17 out of those 18 months, at least 4 times a week, each week) is surely a sign I was eating too much.
In conclusion, my experience has shown me that intermittent fasting is a great tool for the health-minded individual. Whether the benefits are felt in fat reduction, appetite control, flexibility on a day-to-day basis regarding eating, our to just give your “gut” a break for 14 hours, everyone should look into it.
I may try full-on 24-hour fasts eventually, but for now I’m happy with intermittent fasts.
(My last meal is usually around 10 PM and I try not to eat until noon of the next day. I may take 15g of lean protein around 10:30 AM but that’s about it).
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Bones to pick with the would-be Buddhas among us
By Samir | January 20, 2012
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on spirituality. From what I’ve seen, it’s no wonder that most people don’t get “there” (the “wholeness”, the space of “deeper wisdom”, whatever you want to call it). I would say 95% of what I read on spirituality is utter garbage at worst. At best, it may help to be exposed to some of it merely to start thinking about the concepts but the pitfalls and traps are many, and being ensnared and trapped is a real danger for wayward spirits.
Among my gripes:
Making “consciousness” out to be a fantastic experience- Honestly, what do you expect consciousness to be other than an abdication of all the needless, lack-based impulses and a sweet surrender to the ordinariness of life? There is no eternal harmony, our constantly-changing physical state assures us that we will spend at least 50% of our physical lives just tending to basic needs which cause us to suffer (like, you know, hunger). The make-up of the human mind also assures that even the masters spent at least 5% of their time in “somewhat resistant” states vis-à-vis their life streams. I say somewhat, because the masters don’t feel the effects of resistance as intensely, and are usually quick to identify it and “let go of resisting”. But they’re human too, just like the rest of us. Believing in an “eternal high” is nonsense.
Making “consciousness” out to be only positive- This is a corollary to the “eternal high”. I read so much about us becoming “free” from fear, hatred, anger, etc. The truth is, you are never going to be free of these dark states. The best you can do is to acknowledge them from a deeper state of awareness and not be beholden to them. Again, the natural make-up of your mind is designed to include some negative dimensions. If you look at a small baby, with minimal external conditioning, you can observe its emotions include anger and fear quite easily. It’s part of the experience, the contrasts which allows us to know “happier states” and is indivisible from us. Once you let go of trying to suppress this stuff with techniques, you’re going to be doing a lot better. And speaking of techniques…
Use of techniques- Every time I read “techniques” that bring us to enlightenment, I want to barf. “20 minutes to remove a limiting belief” is not a credible thing. It’s a suppression technique and it will come back eventually. The best way to remove limiting beliefs is to just be in alignment with your life stream. Then, you won’t have them because you’ll only be pulled towards things you can and should do, as you paint the tapestry of your life. Of course, “being in alignment with your life stream” is itself boring and, well kinda hard at the beginning, and it doesn’t make anyone any money. The only “techniques” of any value are actually activities : introspecting honestly, sitting in relaxed spaces and trying to observe the mind, and discussing things with other enlightened people to give perspective on various insights and concepts, and what not. If it takes a book to explain it, it’s a human construct that pulls you away from the natural wisdom and unexplained intelligence that is already within you.
Soft voice/ugly sweater- Not that there’s anything wrong with having a soft voice, or wearing ugly sweaters, but it almost seems like all the gurus out there have picked a certain type of “aura” to project which is warm, soft, harmless, inoffensive, gentle, bland, and generally monotonous. Of course, this is just a play on the fears of people, who don’t want to be shocked with some unpleasant realities. Better to be as unthreatening and docile as possible. These are money-minded gurus, and they need to reach the fearful masses. In reality, there are some “answers” to this game which are tough to accept. In reality, some of the things we discover about ourselves will actually produce self-loathing and anger. This will go on until self-acceptance, but it’s not a fun process throughout. It’s fun sometimes, and at other times it isn’t.
For example, The dark night of the soul is more or less unavoidable for anyone who resists the pull of life but is running towards awakening at the same time. In that position, you’re not served by someone who gives wishy-washy encouragement, you’re served by someone who can tell you “it’s normal, it will get even harder, and you may even think of killing yourself. You’ll feel so disconnected from everything, you’ll have some intensely depressive thoughts. It has to be this way, your mind has to give you no choice but to stop identifying with it. If it lets up even for an instant, you’ll never reach enlightenment.” Then, you at least know what to expect.
Married to ideas- After a certain amount of time, many gurus become identified and married to their ideas. They get comfortable in the level of enlightenment they have attained. This is the height of egoism. Their teachings are unilateral and unidirectional. The second you cling to rocks found in the stream of your life, is the second you stop growing. Look, it’s OK to cling to a rock once in awhile, we all need a break from growth (fatigue is a negative, built-in aspect of our physicality and there’s no shame in admitting that). Eventually though, you’ll need to let go, of words and ideas, and if you’re listening to yourself, you’ll know when that time comes. Don’t marry your ideas or opinions and don’t blindly listen to anyone else’s (even the ones here - don’t worry I won’t be offended. I have no stake in what you are creating). Leave your interior comfort zone as often as is necessary to keep deepening your understanding.
Extremism- Extremism is so ridiculous. I see extremism being thought of as enlightenment all the time. “I only eat vegetables, I don’t harm animals” is a typical recurring theme. Of course, only eating plants when the body is designed to digest animal protein is extremist, regardless of morality. Physically, your body requires amino acids which are present abundantly in animal flesh. I’m not saying don’t do it, but if you start feeling like shit for doing so, you may want to consider divorcing yourself from the idea.
On the flip side, because of my other hobby of weight-lifting, I see protein-holics quite often too. It’s not uncommon for some lifters to ingest 300g of protein a day (the equivalent of 7.5 breasts of chicken). Look bro, I love you, but you have to understand that your body needs enzymes, vitamins, minerals and other compounds only available in fruits and vegetables. This “orange juice/protein shake” regimen is mostly just making you urinate more, while putting undue stress on your kidneys.
With these vanilla examples, it’s easy to see extremism is detrimental in physical life. Well, guess what - it’s detrimental in non-physical (spiritual) life also. Being extremely averse to one of the dimensions of your mind will forever halt your process of self-acceptance. To stress one dimension to the extent of others is extremist. You need balance. (By the way, many teachers are extremist about being in a positive state…)
You’ll never feel whole with the universe if you don’t feel whole “yourself” first.
Acting like awakening is a choice- The “choice” only really begins after awakening. Until that point, it has to be an intention of life itself for you to awaken. The correct circumstances and genetic programming must be in place, or else it’s just impossible. Not everyone is meant to be “aware”, “awake”, “conscious” or “enlightened”. Believe it or not, some people are just here to take out the trash. That doesn’t mean we should not appreciate them, they’re part of the same life as us. Any “guru” who is condescending to the “unconscious” is one who has invested himself in the idea of being conscious. That’s marriage to an idea if I ever saw it.
Concluding Thoughts- The only thing I’d point out is that, if you noticed, all of these things interact and point to the common theme of resistance. Any “guru” who is resisting truth in an undue way will be guilty of the above things on a regular basis. It’s OK if it happens once in awhile, but you’ll never get there by “following” someone with a superiority complex, an attachment to ideas, a polarized set of ideas or an endless need to be “at peace and happy”. And even that, itself is an idea. 
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You have what you need to be happy
By Samir | January 18, 2012
Very often I notice my friends treating happiness as some sort of long, faraway objective that can only be attained once a certain amount of beauty, accomplishments, financial wealth, material possessions and any combination thereof can be amassed. My reply is always the same: “You have what you need to be happy”.
Ask yourself if you think in this manner, as someone working towards happiness, as opposed to someone who revels in happy moments each and every day. If you find yourself saying things like “if only I had this thing” or “if only I could achieve this goal”, then you are one such person. Well, at least now you know.
The truth is, happiness is there all along in life. It follows us around quietly and waits for us to take enough lumps before we realize it and acknowledge it. It may seem crazy to you, but I’m nearly ecstatic at the idea of eating eggs for breakfast. To me, there is a world of pleasure in this simple meal. Not that I haven’t lived, or that I have not had a cornucopia of life experience - in fact, I’d venture to say that my propensity to leave my comfort zone has given me almost more in 31 years then most see in 81 years. However, our experiences are more shaped by our appreciation of them then of the experience itself.
One of the more typical excuses to be unhappy is looks. I hear a lot of friends say things like “if only I could be prettier” or “if only I could have more muscles”. This is patently stupid thinking, because inevitably, it’s rooted in a comparison towards someone else who is “prettier” (by whose standards?) or more muscular.
But the truth is, these comparisons are all made with incomplete information. Owing to my vast experience (not to brag), I can tell you that being pretty or being muscular, well, neither are free tickets to “happy magic land”. In some ways, each one is a trap. A pretty girl can easily be trapped by her physicality, and afraid to explore her personality for fear of losing the attention of men who like her for her looks. By the same token, a muscular young man can forego beneficial experiences in order to maintain his training regimen.
I’m using “looks” here because it’s an accessible example, but I could easily talk about other aspects of “yearning”. For example, many men feel inferior towards other men with professional careers (lawyers and accountants). These men don’t realize that those careers come with tremendous pressure, long hours, constant people management and a certain acceptance that one mistake can end a career instantly. Put that way, how many people are actually suited to be lawyers or accountants? How many people would be happy in that boiler room of a career?
If you’re finding that you yearn for something that you don’t have, and this yearning itself makes you feel bad, it’s a clear indication that you’re not in alignment with your true purpose. Not everyone is meant to be pretty, or muscular, or ugly, or tall, or short, or large-breasted or rich, or poor, or career-oriented, or have a huge house, or whatever.
It’s not really that difficult to find your purpose. Firstly, you must be honest with yourself. It may not be a purpose that you, in your current conditioned state, may even like. Perhaps you want to be a hotshot lawyer, but if that’s not your real purpose here, trying to force it is a sure ticket to depression, anxiety and self-loathing.
Many of these “wants” stem from our definition of success. I define success as merely doing what I’m supposed to do. Many others define it traditionally in terms of career, finding a “high status” mating partner, societal recognition and affluence. That’s putting undue pressure on yourself, if you think in the same way. I know plenty of unhappy lawyers who could confirm the above, but are too afraid of being honest about themselves… to themselves.
By the same token, I know many unhappy girls who are quite attractive.
So, my advice would be to avoid getting caught up in these comparisons made with incomplete information. Avoid the “grass is greener” syndrome and you will 95% of the way to happiness, and all of the ordinary glory that comes with it.
The mind will make the comparisons anyway, and it’s fine. Enjoy it for amusement, but observe the mind working from a space of deeper wisdom. Looks are fleeting. Wealth is hollow, and the acquisition of material goods only satiates the ego for brief periods anyway. Life itself is transient and none of our accomplishments follow us to our grave (or to the next life, depending on your point of view). The real competition is with oneself, and eventually, one realizes it’s not even a competition at all.
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Embrace the dark side.
By Samir | January 11, 2012
It’s not a reach to imagine that people exist along a dichotomy of types. The entire nature of the universe is such that, without contrast, there can be no experience. That principle itself has been expressed time and time again across cultures, whether it’s the Eastern Yin-yang, or the Western concepts of good and evil. People, being reflections of this universe are much the same.
In truth, everyone is born with both a “light” and a “dark” side. “Lights” are often called “people persons”, “extroverts”, “cheery people”, “center of the party” and whatnot. “Darks” are often called “introverts”, “grumps”, “Mr. Shy”. Each person will come with a dominant nature emergent at birth, but the truth is that within us, there is no dominance. There is just everything. We begin to stress a certain “side” of things because of conditioning and because of circumstance.
For extroverted, “light” folks, the difficulty most face is squaring up to the dark side within each. I myself was like this, too over-emphasized in joy, social life, attention of others, laughter and whatnot. I was a merry man if there ever was one. Except each time I felt a bad mood, I would compound it with guilt (for feeling a bad mood, when, I was supposed to be a cheery person!).
Firstly, life itself does not know you are a “cheery” person or an “extrovert”. Like I said, this is an invention of your own. Life knows what you are and that’s a set of genetic instructions expressed as a mortal coil, able to experience things because of contrast.
Secondly, you would not know the joy of light were it not for having spent a few days in the darkness. If everyone were always happy, then “less happy” would begin to be called “sad”. That’s how much we need contrast to flavour the experience.
The real trick is not to avoid the bad moods, but to let them come and experience them in the same way you experience good moods: you don’t feel negative or guilty about it. Each of those moods is part of the human experience, and to be honest, none of them are going to kill you.
In the inevitable way in which life is intertwined with itself, you should probably realize that nascent within each bad mood is the impetus for change, and thus, the transition to another good mood. This is why the Yin-yang expresses itself as two complementary sides, each with a dot of the other side within itself.
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The grip of empathy
By Samir | January 5, 2012
The human experience is such that we’re all unique and yet the same in so many ways. One thing that I’ve always found absurd is the labelling of traits as “good” and “bad”. For example, it’s often thought of that being “assertive” is good. Yet paradoxically, when this same trait is expressed negatively, we call it being “pushy”. There’s even a whole gender-role debate about it - but aren’t these two traits just two sides to the same coin?
Empathy (and its corollary, sympathy) is another trait, and it’s often seen as “good”. But like any trait, it’s got another side. This side is what I would call “over-sympathization”. Left unchecked, the downside to empathy is that it can produce an endless spiral of suffering in the sensing being. And from a place of suffering, that being’s actions are not necessarily the good ones.
Doesn’t the suffering we experience due to empathy call us to action, to save others? Surely, this is noble?
Absolutely. This is normal, and this is the positive side of empathy. It was empathy, I suspect, that motivated Nelson Mandela to change South Africa. He could not abide the idea of his people being subjugated. To this extent, it’s noble. Same goes for Mother Theresa.
Mandela, on the other hand, never made their suffering his own. He was always deeply aware of it, but never controlled by it. I’m theorizing of course, since I was not in his mind, but I doubt he could have been as cold, calculating and ruthless towards his political opponents if he were swept up in emotion.
But haven’t you seen those who are so busy trying to save everyone in the world, they end up saving none and burning themselves in the process? For example, the man who can’t pass a suffering beggar on the street without giving money. He gives money out of sympathy and to assuage his own guilt for not doing more; and the beggar can do anything with it. Of course, since he is a beggar, that’s all he knows how to perpetrate so he is not really helped; he just enabled by the money to continue.
If he were truly honest, he would ignore the beggar. If he were truly moved by empathy, rather than guilt, he might take the beggar in, and encourage him to change his life, and set him out when he’s able to stand on his own two feet. He is not moved by empathy, but rather guilt.
From a positive context, empathy can bring about change. From a negative one, it only enables the suffering to continue.
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Burn the fat project - 2012
By Samir | December 29, 2011
January 1, 2012 is like any other day. We’d never know it were special without calendars. And even then, any other day of the year could have easily been called January 1. At the same time, it’s a great opportunity to set the tempo for days to come. The mind itself loves conventions like this; it takes comfort in them. That’s why people resolve to change things starting January 1st.
I don’t really have resolutions for 2012. Resolutions are useless. If you wanted to do something, you wouldn’t need a resolution; you’d just do it. In 2012, I want to burn the fat. But not from my body; although that will be part of the idea. I want to burn it from my soul, and from all other aspects of life.
The idea comes from an Ernest Hemingway novel, The Snows of Kilimanjaro:
“There was no hardship; but there was no luxury and he had thought that he could get back into training that way. That in some way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his body.”
This isn’t a resolution. I will do it. Everything in 2011 has prepared me to do it, in physical, mental and spiritual terms. That’s why I don’t want to frame it as specifics. I will burn fat at all 3 levels of existence:
Fat in the physical realm
Body Fat: I’m still carrying 20 pounds too many. The impetus for me to take better care of the only physical form I’ve been given is there. I want to do it to improve the quality of my life
Social Fat: I will probably stop associating with 10% of the people I associated with regularly in 2011. That’s OK. Not everyone is beneficial to keep around. Others will do the same with me. That’s also OK.
Possession Fat: The stuff we own, owns us. I will get rid of many things that do nothing for me but make it harder for me to exist (more things to clean, to organize, etc..) I am going to give away lots of clothes, DVDs and old books. Everything I buy will make my life easier.
Fat in the mind
Negative thought patterns: “I’m not good enough.” “I’m not smart enough.” These fear-based patterns served a purpose in our evolution - they kept us at home, in the cave, out of the way of predators. But they also stop us from flourishing. If I fail at something, it’s feedback that it’s time to adjust my approach or try something else. Maybe I’m not “good” at it, but who cares? I’m now free to see what I’m “good” at. I will try to never succumb to the idea of not doing something I want to do because I don’t feel good enough.
Needing approval: These days are over. This is me, take it or leave it.
Identification to roles: This is really something pervasive for us. We label each other and then struggle to fit our labels. “He’s a Red Sox fan/Republican/Democrat/Canadian, that’s how he is.” To me this is the height of hilarity. These are all conventions. Imagine telling a flower : “You are a dandelion, you must grow in this manner.” It’s absolutely absurd. And yet we do this to ourselves; we, who have a higher potential for uniqueness than a dandelion. Odd the world is. No more of it for me.
Feeling guilty about success/resting: It’s useful if you’re lazy and you REALLY need to get off your ass. Beyond that, it’ll drive you crazy. Drink to success, understanding that it’s fleeting. Enjoy your down time. In our early days we would spend 2-3 hours a day hunting, and the rest merely existing. For many of us this is not an option, which is why we really need to maximize our rest.
Fat in the spirit
Self-loathing: What’s the point? Life is beautiful.
Self-deception: Each time we betray ourselves, we move further from our own true path.
Identification to past: You’ve all met this guy who blames everything on his rough past, his childhood and his parents. Except he’s so busy doing that, he’s forgetting he hasn’t lived with them for a few years and he’s unconsciously just repeating the patterns they gave him on his own. At some point, your past can’t be your prison. That’s the beauty of saying “I’m free”.
This isn’t a resolution. I know exactly how much of the above “fats” I have on my soul as 2012 begins. All I can say that I’ll have less of each time when 2012 ends.
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The Iron Mind
By Samir | November 28, 2011
Henry Rollins’ seminal text, The Iron is a classic among bodybuilders, powerlifters, olympic lifters and general strength trainers. Indeed, anyone who has used the Iron becomes molded by it. Rollins’ text talks of a man who goes from weak, puny and fragile to a man who can take a punch to the chest and keep going. And while getting stronger is definitely the most interesting physical benefit of the Iron, I’ve always felt the real benefit it gives you is “The Iron Mind”, to which he only alludes briefly in the text.
In Rollins’ text, he mentions the Iron Mind in reference to people and how they live:
Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes down these days, it’s some kind of miracle if you’re not insane. People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole.
I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.
Let’s consider how Iron shapes the body, as it’s a useful parable for how Iron shapes the mind. Someone who has trained with weights, properly, for any of its benefits - strength, appearance, endurance, power and explosiveness -is naturally more resilient in “physical” life. Someone punches you in the shoulder? If you’re a softy who lives on the soft and thinks of domestic chores when you hear “Iron”, it’ll hurt. If you’re a hardcore iron warrior, you might barely feel it. Even if you do, you’ve pushed through bigger pain barriers on your worst day. You will probably recognize it for the inconsequential event that it is and move on.
How does this apply to our mental state? The truth is, as you progress further and further into the Iron game, you’ll see it hasn’t only shaped your body. To lift, in this day and age, is in and of itself a bizarre activity of non-conformism. To get results, you’ll have to actually sacrifice things most people won’t - social time, family time, perhaps career and occasionally even sleep. To get more results, you’ll have to eschew more and more “normal” foods. White bread? Forget it. Juice? History. I don’t know any bodybuilder that drinks juice with any kind of regularity except when having a post-workout shake, and even then, the juice is being used to trigger an insulin release to build muscle, not to assuage thirst.
The further into the Iron game you go, the harder the choices get. And the harder the choices get, the more guts and discipline come into play - guts to forge onward, and discipline to stick to the choices you’ve made. Eventually, making the choice that is hard now but pays off later becomes second nature.
Sometimes, your choices won’t yield results. You’ll have to be honest with yourself about what you’re doing and why it’s not working. Not leaning out? You’re eating too much. Not getting bigger? You’re not sleeping enough or eating too much crap. There is no way around it, the Iron always “kicks you the real deal”. You may even hate yourself for awhile; sorry, self-acceptance and seeing your limits is just another thing you’ll have to “get”. Start lying to yourself, and you’ll spin your wheels. As you become honest with yourself in the gym, you’ll do so in the rest of your life.
To have any kind of success, you will have to be consistent. Everyone talks about how you have to be “intense” to get bigger and stronger; it’s better to have excellent consistency and good intensity then excellent intensity and good consistency. Life will throw everything and the sink at you, you’ll have to find a way to keep going. This will be hard at first - your girl might goad you into a fight and “ruin your mood”. You might get divorced, fired, injured, and so on. Lift anyway. Eventually, you’ll realize what a Sisyphean journey life is, and how it’s best to just be calm, and carry on. And you’ll lift.
Eventually, you’ll no longer be swayed by fear of rejection (your “Iron” lifestyle made you a bit of an outcast a long, long time ago). Life’s blows will bounce off your hardened mind, and you’ll ignore them the same way you’d ignore a toddler punching you in the leg. You’ll stop comparing yourself to others; it’s a fool’s errand. You will know yourself and find a beautiful stillness in just being.
You will discard so much mental baggage, fears, needs for approval and “fitting in”, addictions, negative thought patterns and self-deception. Your mind will be freed to focus on only what makes you happy.
The truth about the iron mind is, it’s one of the sweetest gifts you can give yourself.
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Fasting Update - Day 12
By Samir | November 26, 2011
I can’t say it’s really Day 12. I’ve been on the road the last 3 days and owing to the fact that I didn’t always pick when I could eat, I didn’t fast for the last 3 days. I hope this doesn’t re-set my “10-day” adjustment period that most fasters say is necessary.
We drove from Montreal to Baltimore and back so I could see my favorite team. My best friend’s favorite team (The Ravens) only play my favorite team (the 49ers) every 4 years.
Before I left, I’d experienced the two hardest fasting days since I started thing whole thing. Shakes, cold extremities, more caffeine withdrawal and my weights were finally, after a week, starting to come down in the gym. I’m not sure if this was a transition or if it was my body saying “enough already!”. I was planning to either push through it, or get near a “crash” and try to scale back the fasts. I also realized I’d been doing 18/6 (10PM to 4PM), not a true 16/8 (10PM to 2PM), so I would have advanced my first big meal by about an hour. We’ll see if I get back to this point again soon.
However, I did not that the intermittent fasting has produces some results on non-fasting days. Firstly, I was able to go more than 5 hours without food many times during the course of the trip. I’d lost the ability to do that unless I was sleeping. Also, when I did eat, I tended to eat a lot less, and I chalk this up to the “micro-meals” I would eat during my fasts, which satiated me enough to last 16 hours. They got me used to eating for basic sustenance.
I came back from the trip at 216 pounds even. My only exercise in 3 days was a 45-minute jog through Baltimore on the morning of American thanksgiving. It seems that the new appetite control was beneficial.
I am back on the normal fasts as of this morning, having eaten only 2 eggs for breakfast and not planning a big meal until 3:30 PM (since I want to eat up until 11:30 PM).
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Fasting Update, Day 6
By Samir | November 21, 2011
So, the first “fasted” weekend. It was actually quite difficult, but not because of the reasons originally anticipated. I didn’t need to distract myself in the same way work does, in order to not think about eating. It turns out my life is pretty entertaining, as is.
Waiting until 4 PM was VERY difficult on both days, probably because I trained in a fasted state, in the morning, and only had 30g of protein (through powder) with water and half a fruit right after. By 2 PM, I was ready to eat my own hands. This didn’t happen during the work week, because I trained at night, after my first meal.
As for training fasted, I actually set two personal bests this weekend. I put up 235 on the bench (previous was 230) and I pulled 345 on the deadlift (previous was 340). My work-outs felt crummy initially, but once I got going, they were fine and just as intense was when I was on my 6-7-meals-a-day nutrition plan.
Monday morning, I weighed in at 216.2. Down 3.2 pounds in a week.
By far the hardest thing for me in the last 2 days has been the caffeine withdrawal. I drank 2 decafs this weekend and only 1 regular coffee and I honestly felt like life was not worth living. This morning, though, the gloominess seems to have departed.
As for what I ate, check this out for “breaking fast meals”.
Saturday
- One “double meat” mixed Shawarma plate, both beef and chicken, garnished with rice, potatos, garlic sauce, pita, and a green salad
- 5 slices of grilled egg plant
- A huge slice of chocolate cheesecake
- 1 decaf with two milks
Sunday
- 4 filets of haddock fried in garlic butter
- About a pound of steamed brussel sprouts, cauliflower and carrots
- 200g of dark chocolate
- 1 strip of bacon
- 2 eggs fried in canola oil
- 5 French fries
- 5 tablespoons of cottage cheese.
Keep in mind, I lost weight while eating this.
Training log is as follows…
Saturday:
- Lat raises, 12.5×10x3
- Incline DB bench 50×15, 60×10, 70×10, 80×8
- Flat bench 135×10, 185×8x2, 235×1
- Decline cable flyes 25×10x4
- 15 mins of moderate cardio
Sunday:
- Squats, 135×10, 185×10, 225×10, 275×6, 300×2
- Leg Press, 180×15, 270×15, 450×6x2
- Deadlifts…. did not log, ramped up from 225 to 345.
- 25 mins of moderate cardio
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Fasting Update
By Samir | November 18, 2011
I’ve managed to survive 3 days of 16/8 fasts. I’m starting to see a foe on the horizon, though: The ubiquitous business lunch. I flipped two invitations this week into a “coffee chat” instead (where I drank nothing), and flipped a third one into a 4 PM “food meeting”. The other party was a busy personal trainer who hadn’t eaten all day due to endless client sessions, so we both “broke our fasts” at 4:30 PM, about 18 hours after we’d both last eaten.
At some point, someone higher up in the hierarchy is going to force me to have an actual lunch at 12. If it happens, I’ll just consume protein and try to eat not more than what amounts to a 30g serving of protein. I know I might get some fat in there (if it’s at a steak joint), but I’ll live.
Day 2 was significantly easier than Day 1. Whereas Day 1 felt like a long, difficult haze, where I battled caffeine and sugar withdrawal, along with exceedingly low energy levels, Day 2 only was tough for about 2 hours. Day 3 was somewhat harder than Day 2, but nowhere near as hard as Day 1. I had a few spasms in my legs from 1 to 4:30 PM, but I surmise it’s because I skipped a 10 AM vegetable juice dose, and was lacking in electrolytes. Once I broke my fast at 4:30PM, they disappeared.
I trained on Day 2, but could not make it tonight due to work. I’ll try to train twice tomorrow, once fasted and once post-fast. Of my two fasted workouts, I noticed no appreciable loss of strength nor endurance, and both of them came after 12-hour days at the office.
So far, it basically looks like my training is unaffected by the fast, which was the biggest shock to me. When I was on the 6-7 meal/day program, skipping one meal used to MURDER my intensity in the gym. Skipping 5 of them had no effect!
Learning to train fasted will not be a difficult transition for me. The only hard part for me is the last 4 hours of my fast, where the hunger is strong. I drink water copiously now to cope with it, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t contemplated an 13/11 fast a few times!
I’ve lost an inch off my waist in 3 days, but I’m sure much of it is water. I’ll check back on it in a week.
The one thing I noticed was that, after Day 1, my ability to focus and concentrate was incredibly higher than it’s been in YEARS. I’m not sure if this is due to going from 6 to 1 cup of coffee per day, or some side-effect of adjusting to a fasted life, but it’s been great for work. I can do math more accurately, read reports more comprehensively, and even make less typos at work. I’m actually quite shocked.
In a larger context, the fast has been amazing for my time-use and my wallet. My food bill has dropped by 20% since I’ve started and I feel freed from the kitchen. I’ve been more productive in general, more focused and basically more efficient. The diet is a perfect fit in a professional’s lifestyle where time is a constraint.
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