EmbracingChaos

Thanks, you too! So you are regularly doing three whole day fasts each week? That's pretty intense. I did that last week but I have to admit that I was craving food pretty hard. I'm debating on doing a whole day fast today (I finished eating last night about 6 PM, 17 hours ago) since I'm going out to eat to Spaghetti Works tomorrow (all you can eat pasta) for my Dad's birthday and I'm not really craving today. If I do manage to fast all day, then I'm going to eat ridiculously awesome tomorrow at the restaurant. We'll see how the delayed gratification part of my brain holds up.

Nice. That's basically what I'm planning starting this week as well (tomorrow will be my first). Thursdays will be my fat kid day.

Yea I went from about 196 lbs. to 155 lbs. in about 4.5 months losing about 2 lbs. per week at about 1400 calories per day. I guess it all depends on how self-conscious you are about body fat. I personally hated the body fat and wanted it gone, preferring to build up from a lean base afterward. Different strokes and all of that...

Then you're both lean You look leaner than that to me in your Instagram photos, but I don't typically gauge women's body fat so my perceptions of it are probably off. Sorry for hijacking the thread OP, but now I'm curious. How fast was weight coming off for you on a weekly basis at 1900-2000 calories?

Day 24. Food: Big bowl of broccoli 6.5 oz. chicken breast 300g mixed vegetables 14 oz. chuck tender steak 80g oatmeal w/ 2 medium bananas Exercise .5 mile treadmill walk @3.0mph, 25 lb. weight Bench Press (warmup), 5x175, 3x195, 1x215, [10,9,7,5,5]x145 Overhead Press 4x115, 2x125, 2x125 .5 mile treadmill run @6.0mph .5 mile treadmill interval run (.1 mile @6.0mph / .1 mile @9.0mph)

Refeed day, eh? How often are you planning on doing them?

You definitely have a ton of activity so it's not surprising your maintenance would be that high. I would recommend the OP be much more cautious about taking in a calorie amount that high without also having the corresponding activity to justify it. I agree that she could add 100 calories per day each week up to 1800-2000, but if she's losing fat then I generally would lean towards the side of not messing with something that is working. If her goals shift to increasing weight on the bar, then certainly increasing calories would probably need to follow after noob gains have run through. In your case you're already lean, so you aren't prioritizing losing body fat in the way that someone else might be. Again, we are all special snowflakes (or sundaes ), so what works for one person might not work for someone else. Small changes is the name of the game before you find yourself elbows deep in ice cream cake in the name of lifting more weight.

Great advice so far. My personal experience is I need a ton of protein to not lose strength. Anecdotally, if I lift about as heavy as just prior to cutting (lowering volume when necessary), then I won't lose much strength as long as I'm getting at least 1g protein per lb. of LBM. If I drop below that 1g per day then I start seeing strength go quicker.

For what it's worth, I'm a 5'6" (167.5 cm) male at 144 pounds (10.3 stone). I lift with serious intent 4 times a week, do lots of walking, and have young kids (lots of miscellaneous activity). 2700 calories is my bulking calories. I would be quite shocked if you managed to lose any body fat whatsoever at 2500-3000 calories a day. This sounds like a case of someone at the gym sending you down a completely wrong path. If you've lost about 70 lbs., then you know how to lose fat and you just need to keep on going. If you stall, drop 100 calories for your daily allowance until things start moving again or add in more cardio. If you find that you still can't get things moving then it may be time to eat at maintenance for a few weeks to revamp your metabolism.

Damn. Nuff said. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Day 23. The constant deficit is starting to seriously impair my recovery. It's been quite a while since I've felt so beat-up. I was really hoping to reach a 15% trend before adding in cheat meals or refeed days, but I'm going to implement them early. This Thursday we are going out to celebrate my Dad's birthday anyway so it lines up pretty well. Food: Big bowl of green beans 5.75 oz. chicken breast 1 lb. 93% lean beef enchilada meat w/ 2 servings of rice & half a can of beans 1 medium banana Exercise Deadlifts (warmup), 5x255, 3x285, 1x315, [9, 9, 8, 8, 8]x205 Barbell Back Squats 5x165, 2x185, 1x205 Body Fat 16.5%: 144.4 lbs (prior) - 144.5 lbs. (current) - +0.1 lbs.

Excellent! Keep up the good work, you had an excellent challenge.

Day 22. Picked up a used power cage for $500 from Craigslist. It retails new for about $2000 so that seemed to be a good deal. I hate spending so much on fitness equipment, but it's definitely an investment since up to this point I've been using a pretty cheap set of adjustable uprights for my weights that I picked up at Wal-Mart in February 2009. It had a good 6.5 year run and was due for an upgrade. This is Amazon's picture of the power cage (mine has a few scuffs from adjusting the safety bar catches, but that's it): Food: 1 spaghetti squash 8 oz. chicken breast 1 bowl of green beans 12 oz. smoked pulled pork 1 small banana 200g cherries Exercise ~ 1 hour walk with the dog

Welcome! Yes, eating yourself sick is an English idiom. Good luck with quitting the grains and swimming!

I struggle with social anxiety a lot, so I hear you. It's all irrational and in your head, but it is what it is. There is that quote about 10 percent of life is what happens to you and the other 90 percent is all how you perceive it. So in the end it is what is in your head that will affect you the most. That food sounds great, I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous.

Hmm.. I think I would lean toward the blitzkrieg approach since you've gone this far, but extend your cut out to 3 weeks. I just finished 3 weeks of hard-cutting after eating in a caloric excess since March (basically 4 months), and I've lost roughly 2% body fat since I started. The first week you don't really do much since your hard cut just counteracts the last week of big eating, so it ends up kind of being a wash, but the second and third weeks you can really cut some fat. That 2% body fat cut could really lean you out and leave just the results of your bulk behind and you could see how you ended up. That is just my personal experience and opinion though, I'm always up for watching someone else experiment. Don't worry too much about the vocational school stuff. When I went through basic training and vocational school training when I was 18 in the military there were all kinds of guys up to the age of 40 in there, and everyone got along just fine. Plus, with as athletic as you are you will be looked upon with admiration by those younger guys anyway. Not many people (young or not) can do handstands up against a wall and bust out pushups. I would be self-conscious too, but speaking as an outsider, you don't need to be.

Day 21. Broke my fast with delicious breakfast food. Tried to stay at roughly maintenance calories for the day and pretty sure I was in the vicinity. Food: 3 eggs, 6 slices of bacon, 2 pieces of toast, 1 small banana 2 servings of oatmeal w/ raisins 1 baked spaghetti squash 5 turkey brats w/ 4 slices of bread & condiments 2 servings of oatmeal Exercise Overhead Press (warmup), 5x115, 3x125, 1x135, [10, 6, 6, 6, 6]x95 Bench Press 5x165, 3x185, - x 205 (it sucks I've started missing these last heavy lifts each workout, but it's par for the course)

As in a 24-hour fast where you eat dinner, finish at say 6, and then fast until the next day's dinner? Or a wake up and sleepy time without any food at all? I personally (and probably most people) find going to bed hungry incredibly crappy. That is my biggest hold up with regularly scheduled 40 hour fasts. I simply dread the idea of going to bed hungry, though it's probably good for us first world folks that are spoiled enough to not have to worry about it. Having done three of them, I can attest that I get far less sleep on those nights (but I do wake up perfectly rested, it's weird, but other people have the same experience). If you are just beginning with fasting then I'd give the five stages of intermittent fasting a read. It's basically the transitions I followed naturally. I hadn't read that article until last week but I wish that I'd read it a year and half ago. I'd say just start at the top. Then if it seems easy or you start seeing benefits that you like, up the difficulty level. His #2 16:8 fast is described differently than most people apply it though, I personally found it much easier to fast from 8 PM after my post-dinner snack until noon the next day (8-hour eating window from lunch -> post-dinner snack). All of that being said, a 1 day fast of any type per week would definitely boost your insulin sensitivity and incur other fasting benefits, so if you want to jump in the deep end I say go for it. It's funny how things change, too. I actually read The Warrior Diet first before ever hearing of Leangains and tried to apply it. It was incredibly hard for me and I couldn't stick with it. Now it's easier for me than Leangains 16:8 fasting because my body just doesn't prefer to eat lunch anymore and when I do I'm less productive.

Usually I do more of 21:3 and just eat a large dinner with a snack of oatmeal or something an hour or two later. I do have lunch sometimes, but only if I'm really in the mood, meeting a friend, or it's a work occasion. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Day 20. This was supposed to be an Overhead Press/Bench Press day but I swapped it with my Saturday fast day and did another fast. There were several reasons for this, but the most important reason was that I found myself dreading the fast on Saturday. I felt like I wanted to quit doing them and just go back to my stable and predictable Warrior Diet eating habits. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't trying to get out of the fast just because it was hard, so I made a deal with myself that I could quit doing the scheduled 40-hour fasts if I did one more and still felt the same way after it's all said and done and I'd broken the fast. I just finished my workout and my post-fast meal (eggs, bacon, toast and a banana). Yep, I'm going to leave the 40-hour fasts for special occasions (earning cheat meals, etc.). It's just too yo-yo for me to go back and forth between days of complete deprivation and days of eating normal, it's a little hard to get into a rhythm. I did three of them in one week though, so it was a cool experiment to try. I definitely see their benefit and will likely do them periodically when necessary. My daily body fat dropped down to 15.9% this morning, which is awesome. My trend is obviously still far behind and tomorrow my daily value could shoot back up in the 16s, but the fact that a 15 showed up on the scale motivates me. Food: <Fast day> Exercise <None>

With how cheap it is (bulksupplements on Amazon sells it reasonably) it is definitely worth a shot. I've been taking it for about 8 months but I think I'm a non responder. In the worst case you just don't see results, in the best case you will build more muscle and recover faster. It's definitely worth a shot for most people. Heck, I'll probably just keep taking it after I cycle off and flush it all from my system for a while, because why not?

We'll see how long that extra LBM stays around. I'd like to remain optimistic, even an extra pound seems like it's SOMETHING from all of this at least, but who knows. I'll probably never drop IF. I'm a huge eater, and if I went back to three squares a day I'd just end up getting horribly fat. Ideally I'm going to move away from the cutting/bulking cycle and just be able to slowly put on muscle over 2016. I hate dieting and I'd rather remain at lower body fat percentages now (12-13% is fine for me) and struggle to put on muscle than have to go through another round of calorie deprivation. Right now I have no intentions of trying a real "bulk" again. I'd like to get down to about 13% and never be above 15% again. It's just mentally depressing and crappy for me to be out of that band. So basically the plan is to get down to 13%, eat real big on training days, eat real small on non-training days, and see what happens. Hopefully I can strike a balance in there somewhere.

That does suck man, sorry to hear of the bad news. Usenet is another option other than torrenting, it's relatively cheap (I think around $10-$15 U.S. dollars per month depending on who you go with).

Day 19. The food dreams have kicked in. Wednesday night (my fast day) I had a dream that I went to an all you can eat buffet right before close and was loading up as much as I possibly could. Because of that, and the fact that my squats are my weak lift, I allowed myself to eat above maintenance (most likely) for a day and on some junk carbs. Hopefully the minor refeed type day will boost up some leptin, satisfy some mental cravings, and help my squat out. Probably not, but hey, it's how I'm justifying the two bowls of cereal to myself. Food: Big bowl of green beans * Big bowl of broccoli * 12 oz. chicken breast Big bowl of sausage spaghetti w/ wheat noodles * 1 bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch w/ skim milk 1 bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios w/ skim milk * When I say big/large bowl in my food notes it means a tupperware storage bowl, roughly the size of two normal eating bowls probably Exercise Barbell Back Squats (warmup), 5x165, 2x185, 1x205, [7, 7, 6, 6, 6]x135 Deadlifts 5x255, 3x285, 1x315 Handstand and tuck planche practice Body Fat 16.7%: 144.3 lbs (prior) - 145.6 lbs. (current) - +1.3 lbs.

Day 18 was another 40 hour fast day. This one went a little bit rougher than the first, but I made it through and broke my fast just now with a massive bowl of green beans, massive bowl of broccoli, and 12 oz. of chicken breasts. All after completing a heavy squat/deadlift workout at the 39 hour mark. That locks in my deficit for this week and my next 40 hour fast will be on Saturday. Food: <40-hour Fast Day> Exercise <Rest Day>