Making progress

Just a quick post on here as I have done a post on the transformation blog.

I'm really pleased as I burnt off 2lb fat this week, so it just shows that following the turbulence training program and doing 2 24 hour fasts per week will help you burn off your belly. I'm now really excited about the remaining 11 weeks, and doing my best not to be distracted by wine and beer.

For me the Eat Stop Eat book has made a difference to my eating pattern. I would never have considered fasting as legit a way to control calories, but it does go to show that it does make a difference.

For anyone considering fasting as a method of calorie control, I would certainly recommend that you do your research and get a copy of Eat Stop Eat before you take the plunge, as the author, Brad Pilon, addresses the principle concerns of most people, such as "Will I lose muscle?", "Won't I go into starvation mode?", etc, etc.

For me, it does seem to be a complementary part of my fat loss program, and is helping me control calories that I may have consumed without even realising.

Anyway I will close up this little blog and post more later this week.

Keep working hard and smart

Neil

Trying something different.

As we all know, Turbulence Training is my primary workout program, with my current routine 2k8 being a day on day off, day on day off, day on 2 days off. So what to do in my off days like today?

Well, as an affiliate of, and newsletter subscriber to, Vince Del Monte, I thought I'd give one of his mini programs a whirl. It's imaginitively titled "The 16 week Razor Sharp Abdominal Cardio Workouts".

It goes like this. He gives 6 abs circuits, and 11 cardio routines. I chose workout 1 which was double leg raises (on a ball), and a cable cruch on a ball 3-4 sets, both to failure. I had a real problem with doing the double leg raises on the ball so i moved onto a bench. I was fine with the cable crunch but it took a little bit of experimenting to find the right level of weight, which was 11kg. The only thing is that you do those circuits between 2 rounds of 20 minutes minimum on the treadmill. And they aren't steady state either. My workout was a ladder of 1 minute easy followed by one minute hard, 1 minute easy 2 minutes hard, 1 min easy 3 hard and repeat 2 to 3 times. Well I hate the treadmill and I was going pretty well given my lack of experience on it so rather than repeat I just reversed the process so did 2/1 then 1/1.

As you can conclude, I didn't particularly enjoy the treadmill although the abs work was nice as it was different to what I would normally do, which is usually a circuit of things like planks on ball, side planks, ball jacknifes, etc. That said I think if I do continue with some ab work I will start incorporating cable crunches into my circuits.

I have been thinking about starting my swimming back up, as its been a long long while since I did it seriously, so I've scheduled some swimming in on Thursday.

Another thing I have decided to do for a short period is to drop the circuit training class on Saturday afternoon. Two reasons for this and they are both important to me. 1 I can spend a little bit more time Lydia before I take her back to her mum's, and 2 I can stay at the gym a bit longer after the body attack class, and perhaps do some abs or a little bit of steady state to build up my endurance. And, it will mean I go back home later, and start my Saturday treat (nice bottle of wine) a lot later so that I'm not tempted to over-consume.

That moves me on to the nutritional side of things. I'm waiting to hear about Joel Marion's "Cheat Yourself Thin" affiliate program. As I mentioned, I am experimenting with intermittent fasting, having finished my second fast at lunchtime this afternoon. Virtually every exercise/nutrition system is totally against it (apart from TT) for some reason. So lets see how things pan out.

Final thought for tonight. The TT Transformation contest. I weighed myself yesterday 78.5kg 23.8% BF. I have now started a separate blog specifically for that. Please take a look. I did get my composition done at the gym, which said 19.8% BF. I just dont know. Anyway, I will be using my scales for the sake of consistency.

Will now close it at that, as it looks like Arsenal are going to lose to Man U in the Champions League Semi Final :-(. My best mate will be gloating. So will get an early night and some rest ready for tomorrow's TT workout and body attack.

Neil

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