My first experience of fasting, and Back in Training.

As mentioned on Wednesday my little daughter, Lydia, wasn't able to go to nursery because of a sickness bug. So Thursday was a stay at home day. That added to the fact that the TT hardcore fat loss program totally tires you, and my foot injury meant that I completely rested yesterday.

As you all well know, despite my fitness, I do enjoy wine more than I should (taking me away from what I want to achieve), and I have found Craig's ultimate nutrition plan really tough to follow. So I have therefore been forced to think outside the box. In Craig's, and other writers such as Mike Geary and Vince Delmonte, have discussed Brad Pilon's "Eat Stop Eat" e-book on intermitent fasting.

I had my doubts about whether fasting is for me, but in the interests of experimentation, and given that my discipline has wavered, I have decided that Brad's e-book is well worth investigating. I have really found what Brad has said to be particularly interesting. I have fasted from about 5:30pm yesterday to about the same time today. From then on I am eating "normally", which for me is pretty healthily in any event.

It wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, and I will go into a little something that might be of interest. I took Lydia to MacDonalds today as a little treat to cheer her up. Not long after we sat down with her "Happy Meal" and my bottle of Buxton Spring Water (only, no "food"), a rather obese couple sat down with their large maccy meals. It was interesting to watch this couple of slobs. Lydia ate about 2 1/2 chicken mcnuggets,about a dozen french fries and drank a very small amount of her chocolate shake in roughly 15 minutes. The male member of the "couple" wolfed his nuggets and fries chewing them about 5 or 6 times, then shovelling the next load into his mouth as fast as his "hunger" made him. He then went and ordered a mcflurry or whatever they call it. What's more astonishing is that they couldn't have even taken a total 5 minutes to consume all those calories. No wonder they were shockingly overweight, and I was very sad to see people choose to be in such a state.

This experience, however, makes me feel much better about my own little vice. But it also makes me feel more commited to eating healthily and to intermittent fasting. That way I can feel much less guilty about my passion for wine. A couple of days fasting for me would represent a caloric defit of about 5,500 calories (which would represent a 1.5 lb fat loss) so personally, it would be very worthwhile using the East Stop Eat lifestyle.

Another product that I have seen that is launching today is Joel Marion's "Cheat Yourself Thin". Joel is an advocate of using "Cheat Days" where if you are on a restricted diet, you eat massive calories of whatever you like, so that your body is fooled into thinking that food is in abundance after having calories restricted. I'm not going to dismiss Joel's system, as I'm sure it will work for many people and (despite being in pre-launch) already has many testamonials from people that he has helped with this system before publishing it. However, Brad Pilon explains this phenomenon in Eat Stop Eat, and is referred to as diet edema. I'm not going to claim I know anything about what they are talking about, but it seems that normal eating after some form of calorie restriction, whether total intermittent fasting, or a reduced calorie controlled diet, increases fat loss rates for many participants.

Moving back to resuming Turbulence Training today, I was unable to complete the week's TT hardcore fat loss program for the week as I do not have any equipment at home to do chin ups or dips. So I did a nice TT program from this year's "March Madness". Craig demonstrates it in the video below:


It was nice to workout at home, and in fact I worked out in the back yard (except for the stability ball part of the circuit). I don't have a kettlebell so I used my adjustable dumbbells. I started off at 10kg for the first circuit, moved up to 13kg for the second, and 16kg for the third and final circuit. I've done this routine before, last month (links on my facebook page!!!). All I can say is that I was completely whacked out, despite being used to doing circuit training on a regular basis at my gym.

Lydi goes back to her mum's tomorrow afternoon so I will be back to the gym afterwards to do circuits and body attack at 4pm. I'm looking forward to seeing what delights Sophie has in store for us after an interesting class last week. I've got a suspicion that it will be the strength supersets again.

The Transformation contest starts on Monday. I am launching a new blog specifically to cover my transformation progress, but I will still continue to write to this blog too.

Keep motivated, eat healthily, enjoy your life.

Neil