This is a whopper of a post... Sorry :D
I truly believe in divine intervention. And for anyone that chooses not to believe in a supreme being then you can think of it as the universe aligning itself so that I find the path I need to be on.
With that said, let me start the story by stating that I am NOT a book reader. I might read 2 books cover to cover in an entire year. Sure, I read, but it's usually on the computer and usually related to the latest tech. On December 13th I was on Amazon for a reason I don't remember and stumbled on a review for a book called the "4 Hour Body". The title got me... What could a book called the 4 hour body be all about? So I read the review which outlined that chapters and my jaw dropped as I saw something about losing 20lbs of fat in 30 days. I'm no stranger to weight loss or diets or, especially, the gym. I lost about 30 pounds over the course of about 60 days but I was hitting the gym harder than I ever had in my life. Is that what this book would suggest? What about the 4 hours part?
I was hooked. Then I noticed I couldn't order the book as it didn't come out until the 14th. I went home that night and thought about the book and the thoughts continued all the next day to an almost obsessive point and I decided that if my local book store had the book I would buy it. So I headed home from work early and went to the store and couldn't find a single copy. I asked the staff person stocking the shelves and she remembered seeing some copies of the book in a box in the back but they weren't to be released yet. After convincing her (thanks to her coworker) that this day was the release day and someone just forgot to put them out I got my copy and went home.
This is a big book, too. Over 500 pages. Yet it is more of a manual, a reference, than a novel. So I stayed up until 2:30 am reading. I couldn't put the book down. The 4 hour part of the book was about gaining 20 pounds of muscle in 30 days with only 4 hours of gym time total for the whole month. That sounds cool but at the risk of your liver and / or kidneys based on the amount of drugs you take with it I wouldn't be up for trying it. Besides, I wasn't interested in that; I was interested in the other chapter about losing 20 pounds of fat in 30 days. And did I mention that this feat is accomplished with zero gym time. Not 1 second of exercise. It sounded too good to be true and I was completely skeptical. But you can't knock it 'till you try it so I studied the book and made a shopping list and prepared to begin my journey on the slow carb diet.
The start day for my first week was Saturday December 18th. I ate a big protein rich breakfast and avoided all sugars all day. I went out to dinner at Outback and watched Mandy eat a giant ice cream sunday and at that point would have gladly eaten a packet of sugar. Mom has always admitted to being a sugar lover but I never thought I was... I was a meat and potatoes guy. You can keep your cup cakes and pie and pass me another serving of mashed potatoes and gravy. But I forgot one thing. I LOVE soda and soda is loaded in sugar. At this moment it had now been almost 24 hours with no sugar, no caffeine, no starches.
This might be TMI but it is important to the story... I withheld from the sugar and went on home and hit the bed early (amazing how my diet had immediately affected my sleep schedule). That night I got up and peed four times. This is noteworthy because I NEVER get up to go to the bath room. And these were bladder busting trips across the apartment. So the next morning I weighed in not really expecting to see much of a difference, maybe a pound higher since I ate a giant steak with a massive helping of broccoli but instead I found myself SIX pounds lighter. Over night.
I'm still skeptical at this point because that was obviously water weight (albeit a lot of water weight really fast). So I stuck out the diet for the rest of the week and lost an astonishing 11 pounds. Then it was time for Christmas and I completely left the diet. When I got back home I had put 8 pounds back on which shows how easy it is to rebound on this kind of diet. I accept that flaw and consider this a tool to get the weight off, not keep it off, so my end goal is to get 10-15 lbs under my target weight so the rebound normalizes me.
So I began the diet again on January 3rd and stuck to it... As of today, February 5th, I have lost 23 pounds since December 18th and if we want to ignore the rebound, 20 pounds since January 3rd. Oh, and I am tracking inches on my chest, belly, waist, hips/butt, biceps, forearm, and thighs. I have lost over 14 total inches since January 3rd.
So the diet works. With amazing success and no gym time. But I feel that now is the true test- Have I plateaued? Will the weight loss slow down? For every 6 days on the diet I take 1 day off and binge on all the foods I've cut out of my diet. I specifically set out to spike my calories to keep my body from going into starvation mode. After 2 months on the diet I will take a full week off. Cheating adds about 4-6 pounds back on but they come back off quick enough (evidenced in the little spikes in the chart below).
This week was also the first time I have started adding exercise. I will focus solely on kettle bells and rowing this month once or twice a week for not more than an hour at any given time (and probably not rowing for more than 30 minutes). March will see the addition of cycling to work again on moderate days.
Wish me luck and I'll post a check in next month.
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