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!