4 Hour Body: Starting a DIET

I thought it might be amusing to include a few entries from my food diary. I recently started the diet as outlined by Tim Ferriss in 'The Four Hour Body'. It's sorta working as far as I can tell. Anyway, enjoy :)

(Friday, Feb 15th) Day one of diet: this diet’s gonna ssssssssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. A lot. First, I was too full, then I was hungry, then my body didn’t know what to do with all the extra long lasting protein energy, then I got a headache because of lack of sugar, and now I’m going through withdrawals. Can’t wait for Sunday; get to eat all the sugar I want!!!!!!!! Oh, and I ate 2 fried eggs, one celery stick (full length) with hummus, and a small amount of black beans with some mixed veggies for breakfast, a spinach salad with steak strips, pico de gallo, beans, veggies, red peppers, sautéed onions, salsa, and lots of avocado for lunch. Same thing for dinner but I just picked around the spinach, didn’t really want that. Now I’m hungry and have a headache. Sunday is my wonderful, delicious cheat day, just gotta go one day more then I can have sugar!!!!! Gonna do something similar for diet tomorrow, probably steak and spinach and fried eggs for breakfast and maybe chicken for dinner with vegetables. Beans in there somewhere. Today’s Friday the 15^th, didn’t mention that earlier. Argh, sugar withdrawal…

Sunday, February 17th

And welcome to upset stomach today. In the book it indicates that your cheat day should be AFTER you go 5 days on the diet. Well, since Sunday was supposed to be my cheat day and I'd managed to get through 2 full days of the diet (yay me) I decided that (this was really late Saturday night) since it was 1am and I was out with friends and it was technically Sunday, that I could start my cheat day then. Argh, big mistake. One delicious milkshake at night resulted in nausea and general irritability in the AM. Blergh, I just got over the headaches.... Anyway, decided to continue the diet through to next Sunday and let that be my cheat day. Just can't manage to figure out what's going on with this, I usually have NO PROBLEM with sugar, or milk, or ice cream, LOVE the stuff. But today? Ack. 

Wednesday, February 20th. 

Okay, here's a rundown. Staying on the diet really really well, except for Monday night I cheated and ate some chocolate covered cookie dough bites. What can I say, I love it :) I am having no problems with headaches anymore, and my skin is starting to clear up. I have a chronic problem with adult acne (chronic to me, it's really just localized spots that seem to never really go away, but keep flaring up) but this diet has given me a reduction in new spots already, which is awesome. The hardest problem with this diet is OTHER PEOPLE, you tell them you're on a diet and they're all like, "Oh, so you can't eat juice, or milk, or bread, or starch? What CAN you eat?" I prefer to focus on everything I can eat, and if I get a really bad craving, I silence it with water or peanut butter. It's funny but I really don't want to eat the sugar anymore. Last night a friend handed me half a chocolate cookie that they made, which of course you can't refuse or you'd hurt their feelings, and so I ate it. 15 minutes later, mild headache that took an hour to go away. My body seems to be adapting, I am waking up earlier and less sluggish and happier too. There's a lot of good benefits, I'm just trying to dance around other people's expectations and what they're trying to make me eat. The worst is when people try to make you feel guilty for being on a diet. I mean, come one, I'm 2% bodyfat OVER what I should be, placing me at the low end of overweight. I have lost 5lbs though, and can't wait until Saturday, my measurement day! Sunday, I'm going to eat bread like there's no tomorrow, so far doing ok without it though. 

And the Culprit is: Food and Exercise!

I have discovered why I gain weight after working out. It is a combination of working out, drinking more water, being hungrier, and eating more. It sucks but after you work out really hard and are starving the next day, you can't proceed with larger portions and helpings to help get satisfied, otherwise you will undo all the hard work you just put in.
Being sick of watching the scale go up when I worked out, (I weighed myself this morning, 167lbs! That's the highest my weight has EVER been), I decided to do some research and kick this in the teeth before it finished getting started. (It being the fat monster) The general conclusion was that some weight gain could be due to muscle, but as I already have muscle and am not unused to working out. I have been upping workouts but that doesn't cause a lot of muscle gain if it's mostly running, yoga, and intensity strengthening. So, the only thing left is: I'm working out more, so I'm eating more.

Blergh, if I want to be in shape and be actually able to see all my slowly developing muscles, I'm going to have to eat about the same as I was before, maybe even less. I was originally on My Food Diary (myfooddiary.com) to help keep track of caloric intake and output, but left after 2 weeks when I foolishly decided I could monitor my own intake without the help of a machine. (And that was back in May) Truth is, I can't, my body wants to rest at the comfortable, soft 162-165lb level for some reason, and I know I can get into a better, healthier shape than that.

So here I go again, maintaining the workout but now I'm back to calorie counting. I don't have time or money to go purchase a whole bunch of organic fresh food, so my general terms are:
-Stick with fruits, veggies, and fresh stuff

-Avoid processed foods

-No sugary drinks or soda

-Don't overeat
-Rewards occasionally

And here it goes! This is probably the 20th time I've started a routine/fitness regimine, but it's the first time I've been actually watching what I eat at the SAME TIME I'm measuring how much I exercise. I'll keep ya'll updated.

That's This

To this!

Also I learned to tie a bowtie last night. It was a lot of fun!

Da SunDaY EdiTion: Workout Plannings

Today is Sunday and I'm at work. I really dislike having my day of rest being a day of work, but I needed this coming Saturday off for a tech rehearsal for my show so there you have it. I have tomorrow off ~ just in time for a dentist appointment! Yay me, I love the clean feeling after but actually going to the dentist is awful, and the last time I went there they drilled on my teeth and some of the fillings still hurt or twinge when I drink something hot or cold or too sweet.

I went running last night and viola, it was a lot easier than last time! I went running in my Vibram five-fingers though and every single time, I get enourmous blisters on the balls of my feet. The pain is kind of cathartic, I feel like I did something. I'm going out to run again tonight, this time I'm going to tape my feet to help reduce the friction from not wearing socks. You seriously can't not wear socks and expect not to get blisters. My training method is such, starting Monday I'm going to go on a short run/bike ride first thing in the AM, then a longer one in the evening. When I really got in shape that's what I was doing, and I only have a limited amount of time before my easy 3 miles needs to be an easy 6 miles. I can do 4 without dying, that's what I did yesterday but it's an endurance thing and the difference between 4 and 6 is huge when you have no energy left!

Okay, I'm going to put my weight on here, nobody laugh okay? I'm 165.4 lbs as of Friday June 20th at 6:23 am. I'm hoping to cut that down some, I'm just barely over the normal BMI to the overweight category, so I gotta get on that. I know I'm strong enough, just have to dedicate the time! Everyone, keep me on the right track will ya? (all you invisible non-readers I suppose). I can only bear to weigh myself once a week, otherwise I get depressed and say, "Screw this, I'm going to eat chocolate at midnight." So there's that.

I always gain weight when I start exercising but having been going at this seriously for 3 weeks, I know that now I should actually start losing weight instead of gaining it. I don't know why my body does this to me, but I suppose it's in reaction to thinking:
"Great, Charly's getting chased by zombies for about an hour every day. We better pack on the fat and muscle and everything else because who knows when she'll eat again!"
I don't know that my body says that for sure, I just imagine that's what my body says because it's much more interesting than:
"*synapse pulse*, exercise + healthy food = imminent starvation. *pulse* fat on lockdown".

Anyway, that's it for today. Cheer me on! And if you feel the burning urge to comment, how does your weight loss go when you try? I'm probably the only one that exercises and gains weight. It's pathetic.
Ah loves ya!

Thoughts of the day

So today I'm just going to ramble on for awhile. I have a lot of thoughts and it seems that they need to be put down on paper.

It's summer, and I'm working a lot and trying to fit vacation in. I have a lot of things I want to do like get in shape, learn to sing well, act, and write a book. I have come to the conclusion though that only rich people can do everything they want to do, because 90% of my time is at work or asleep, I don't really have a social life except for a few activities if I can manage to squeeze them in and people I talk to on the phone or Skype.

Thinking about dying my hair pink again, I had pink streaks before and I think I want a few more after my show, Hello Dolly gets done. It will be fun to try again anyway!

My show, Hello Dolly as mentioned above (Hello, Dolly! to put in properly) is running July 30, 31st and August 1-4 at Woodland Park in Farmington UT. It's an outside show, so come prepared with a blanket or a lawn chair, I think entrance is $5 and it starts at 7pm or something like that. I don't really know, I just show up for the rehearsals :)

I have decided that my body solidly protests losing weight, and I will always be a mildly overweight slightly pretty girl. I have worked out for 2 weeks and eaten healthy and all I have succeeded in doing is gaining 3 lbs. I can do that when I'm sitting on my butt doing nothing so lets see, to work out or not to work out... Options here seem to be pointing on not working out. Life is unfair in that way, I'm going to keep running and stuff for another two weeks and see if I get any results.

The Aurora, CO theatre shooting just happened, and that's scary. I was at the midnight showing of the same movie in a theatre far away, and it's just surreal to me. I have friends that live in Denver and Aurora, so luckily no one I knew was there at that time.

I say theatre because that's the proper theatre way to say theatre. Don't mess with me on this.

Finally, if you love someone, is that enough? I mean, say you really really really loved someone, but there were certain differences in your belief and wants out of life that were keeping you apart. And say that other person broke promises to you. Is love enough to fix all of that? I don't know, I actually don't think so, it's like love taunts me saying, "Look, you were happy and sad and stressed all at the same time, want to be that way forever?" Not really. If this is about you, I'm rambling, it's nice to say something and have fictional people listen. (nobody reads this blog anyway)

So yeah, that's my thoughts for today. Sorry for anything depressing, comments on working out, how to create more hours in a day, hair, theatre shows, and love are all appreciated. Comments on politics not so much.  Thanks!

Look, a Crazy Runner Person!

When I was in high school I was a crazy runner person. You know the type, they dress for the weather with their headbands, gloves, and under-armor leggings, and they hit the pavement in the wee hours of the morning, afternoon, and sometimes late at night. You see them everywhere, running along step after step, and while you make fun of them you secretly wish that you could be them. My brother and I coined this term after watching a runner struggle through a snowstorm on one particularly forbidding day.

“Look, it’s a runner.”

“Yeah, a crazy runner.

 “Do you think they need a ride?”

“No, they’re probably like Calvin’s dad (from Calvin and Hobbes) they would say no and keep going even if their face froze off.”

 “Yep, that’s probably right... crazy runner person.”

And thus, ‘crazy runner person’ was born. Every time we saw someone running, it was “Look! A crazy runner person!” Both my brother and I did cross-country in high school, so we felt justified in calling them crazy runner persons, after all, weren’t we crazy runner persons ourselves?

But lately I’ve slacked off, and by lately I mean all throughout college. Sure, there’d be two or three weeks once or twice during the semesters that the urge to run would become strong enough that I’d lace up my shoes, pull out my headband, and take off. This would continue until my schedule would put a kink in the running plans, and somehow I’d just never get back around to it.

Today however, I decided to become a crazy runner person once more, and I took off on a 3 mile run. I’m not that out of shape and I only stopped to walk twice so I am quite proud of myself. But there’s something running does to me. For one, my body responds quite well to it and I get random bursts of energy throughout the day. Another effect I have discovered is that now I am unable to sleep, even though it is 1:33 in the morning. I tried for an hour, then got up and wrote a chapter of the book I’m working on, and decided to transform my experience into a blog. Danger, becoming a crazy runner person gives you insane amounts of energy and may make your day super productive. At 1:34 in the morning, I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Still, I think I’ll continue being a crazy runner person; I kind of enjoy the endorphin high it gives me, as well as being part of an elite group that we all stare out the window at and secretly wish to join. So next time you see a crazy runner person, nod and wave, they’ll be glad to wave back at the crazy driver person who decided to notice them after all. (Or you could try and run them down, giving them an extra boost to their workout! I don't believe that's sanctioned by the police though...)