More updates on my progress with Intermittent Fasting here.
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Just recently, following the Wholehealthsource blog I found myself onto another blog (don’t remember) and the from there on a couple of blogs (Rippedbody and Leangains) that discussed Intermittent Fasting (IF). Then I remembered one of my two employees from the time I had Viitals asked me whether I’ve heard of IF before. I hadn’t at that time.
Reading trough the blogs I thought that the IF idea:
1) Is pretty close to a diet regimen that I’ve followed throughout my competitive career called – Ascending-Descending Calories. Basically, the idea was I started the week at maintenance calories, moderate-to-high protein and high carbs. Going further down the week I’d progressively increase the protein and decrease the carbs until I was on less than 20g carbs on Friday and Saturday. Then on Sunday I’d up the carbs significantly and bring the protein to average. At this point the total calories were above maintenance level.
This diet plan was what brought me and kept me in the best shape of my life. Too difficult to follow for a regular person, though. It eventually wore me down, too.
And,
2) A compilation of studies by someone I know on increasing lifespan via calorie restriction.
So, basically, this where I am today. I am not in the best shape of my life, but not the worst either. I’ve managed to keep relatively low BF percentage – 8-10 for a period of 4 years (since I last competed), but I’ve lost quite a few pounds of lean muscle mass.
That was achieved trough regularly undereating as far as total calories, irregular eating habits, relatively low-carb all along and lately higher fat in accordance with what I know about ancestral (paleo) nutrition. Oh, and a quick stint as a vegetarian (oh, well..)
So, any way, it seems like the Leangains type of IF is something that scientifically makes sense to me, not last in importance – easy to manage as I will have to eat twice (maximum 3 times) a day – easy. Plus, all these years of calorie counting and weighing my foods I am used to it and it won’t be a difficult switch.
So, I decided to give it a try for as long as I feel comfortable with it. Who knows – it may turn out to be for life… or may be a couple of months. Don’t know. We’ll see. The goal is to eventually shed a bid more fat and stay at around 8 percent while increasing the lean muscle mass 5-10 pounds.
Here is a pic I took this morning after 15 hours of fasting (started yesterday)… and flexing a bit (it comes from my competitive BB days)
Training (to get this out of the way)
I will train 3 days a week (like I have been doing for a while now) – compound exercises as much as I can (no dead lifts – back injury won’t let me) and free weights more isolated exercises. May insert some machines for major muscle groups if I don’t feel the past injuries will allow me to go more compound on a particular day.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) Diet Setup
There is still a whole lot left to read from the guys that are leading the IF movement, but from the reading I’ve done so far I decided to follow the IF diet set up instructions on the Andy Morgan’s blog on this page with a couple of twists.
Step 1. Calculate your BMR
Weight: 154 lb
BF%: Roughly 10%
I took BF% down this morning using an Omron manual fat analyzer. 8.2% in “normal” mode; 9.7% in “athlete” mode. So, I’m rounding this to 10% for simplicity reasons, and also because this will actually lower my BMR calories – not a bad thing, and much preferred over accidental overestimating.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): 1650 Calories
I determined the BMR using a revised-revised (yeah, twice revised) Harris-Benedict formula. I used a tool that I developed some years ago that I called FitNA – it’s on my oldest website and it uses the double-revised Harris-Benedict equation.
How is it double-revised? Well, they revised it once. And, I revised it once to account for the fat percentage. Basically, my thinking was if there is inaccuracy it comes from the fact that the equation uses total body mass and lean body mass (LBM). If fat is mostly a not very metabolically-active tissue why account for it and factor in calories in the BMR? So, I basically replaced the total body mass with LBM in the formula.
Step 2. Adjust for Activity
I’m always very careful with this step because this is where I’ve made a lot of mistakes estimating my total daily calories (TDEE) and those of clients when I was a trainer. I’d say based on my experience and observations about 90 percent of all folks qualify for the sedentary work multiplier regardless of what they do. So, I choose that for myself, too.
Activity multiplier: x 1.2
TDEE: approx. 2,000 Cal
Step 3. Choose to ‘Cut’, ‘Slow-Bulk’ or gradual ‘Body-Recomposition’
‘Body-Recomposition’. I think that’s what I need.
So, this is TDEE + 20% on workout (WO) days or 2400 Cal/day, and TDEE – 20% on rest days (RD) 0r 1600 Cal/day. If you do the math, since I workout 3 days a week and rest 4 days, the mean average will come slightly below my TDEE calories. In other words:
3 x 2400 = 7200; 4 x 1600 = 6400; (7200+6400)/7=1943 Cal/day, which is a totally welcome deficit of about 5o Cal.
Step 4. Calculate a Training-Day and Rest-Day Calorie Figure
I got a bit ahead of myself in the previous step, so again:
WO days – Mo, Wed, Fri: TDEE +20% or 2,400 Cal
Rest days- Tue, Thur, Sat, Sun: TDEE – 20% or 1,600 Cal
Mean average: 1,943 Cal/day
Step 5. Calculate your Macro Targets for Training-Days and Rest-Days
Protein (constant): LBM = 60kg (134 LB) x 2.5g = 150 g (x 4 = 600 Cal)
Fat – Rest days: 90g (x 9 = 810 Cal)
Fat – WO days: 60g (x 9 = 540 Cal)
The reason why my fats are higher than recommended on the Andy’s blog is I generally don’t do well on very high-carb diets. I just know myself. On a high-carb diet I turn from someone who loves food and eating and can’t wait to the next meal into someone who hates eating because he still feels stuffed from the previous meal when the time comes for the next one. I know the window between meals is higher, but still I can’t eat a lot of carbs in a single sitting.
Besides, I don’t eat gluten-containing foods and I generally stick to tuber starches for carbs. Don’t like grains in general (arrived to recently for our genetics to adjust to them) and the only one that I afford myself sometimes is white rice (something to do with the lectins and other antinutrients in brown rice). So, eating carbs from such sources most of the time makes for a very large meal.
Onto the carbs…
Carbs:
Rest day carbs = 1600 – (600 + 810) = 190 Cal or 45 g carbs (190/4=~45)
WO day carbs = 2400 – (600 + 540) = 800 Cal or 200g carbs (800/4=200)
There is something else that I’ve always believe, as far as macro nutrient ratios (macros) are concerned. In my practice as a competitive athlete for myself, and later for clients I awalys adjusted the macros based on the morphological body type (you know the ecto- meso- and endomorph and those in between). My logic was endomorphs should be more carb restricted than mesomorphs, who should be more carb-restricted than ectomorphs – the first group is the most sensitive to a possible negative impact of a high-carb diet, the second less.. and so on.
I’ve been fat before and I know that I qualify for the endo-mesomorph group, so there is one more reason I thrive better on a lower-carb diet in general. That’s one of the reasons I feel better on a low-carb, high-fat day – like the rest day of the Intermittent fast routine – than most people (or at least than those who are used to large amount of processed carbs any way..)
Macros:
Rest day total:
Calories – 1600
Protein – 150 g
Carbs ~ 45 g
Fat – 90 g
Meal 1 (around 1pm – post WO on some days):
Protein – 75 g
Carbs – 22 g
Fat – 45 g
Meal 2 (around 8.30 – 9pm – post WO on some days):
Protein – 75 g
Carbs – 22 g
Fat – 45 g
WO Day:
Calories – 2400
Protein – 150 g
Carbs – 200 g
Fat – 60 g
Meal 1 (around 1pm – post WO on some days):
Protein – 75 g
Carbs – 100 g
Fat – 30 g
Meal 2 (around 8.30 – 9pm – post WO on some days):
Protein – 75 g
Carbs – 100 g
Fat – 30 g
To determine how much of what food I will need in order to build my meals I will use 1) digital scales, and 2) the USDA national nutrient database. These two are all I need.
I don’t know.. It still seems a lot of food to me – especially the protein. But, what do you expect from I guy that’s always preached small, frequent meals throughout the day.. I still have to get my head around the concept that more than 30-40g of protein is ok in a single meal.. and let my body get used to it, too.
I am sure that there going to be changes made as I discover things that can be further customized/improved and based on progress or lack of such thereof.
I also know that I will try to figure out ways to make even these two meals more intuitive, so I may come up soon with some type of cooked/baked product that has exactly my macro nutrient ratios – something that I can eat without counting the calories before the meal. Something that I know it won’t set me behind on my goal because I want to make my life easier.
I will be posting progress/changes updates below this line in the near future. ~I.
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Update: 9/27/12 – 5 weeks later
A couple of days into IF I felt like relaxing the diet regimen from strictly conforming to the high-carb-low-fat-high-cal on training days, followed by low-carb-high-fat-low-cal on non-training day to low-cal-low-carb during any meal but the post-workout meal, which was high-carb-low-fat-high-cal.
I also went back to entimating grams of macros instead of strictly weighing them – I’ve been weighing my foods for so many years that just thinking of doing that before I put food in my body was making the whole process feel a lot more like a chore than it should have.
During these 5 weeks I never ate before 1pm and after 9.30pm (10pm on rare occasions).
Here are the results from this morning:
Weight: 153 lb
Body fat %: 7.9 (using my Omron hand-held fat analyzer, which I used for the prior measurements)
Photo:
So, body fat is about 2 % down and it seems that fat is all the weight I’ve lost, which is 1 lb.
I still need to read about the science behind all this, if I want to do it long-term. For now my impressions are:
- it’s easier to plan for 2 meals than 5 or 6
- it’s easier on the digestion
- I haven’t lost any muscle mass or strength from not eating breakfast