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I’ve been keeping the volume of my workouts down this week and doing anything that strikes me as fun.  Today I thought I’d max out on bench press, just to see how much, if any, strength I’ve lost during this diet.  I worked up to a pretty easy 195 single, but failed miserably at 201 (200 is my previous best, and I was 12 pounds heavier at the time).  All in all, not bad — 5 lbs is a small enough difference that it could be chalked up to random fluctuations.  

After the workout, I had a big burrito meal which left me stuffed (mmm, solid food). As I had hoped when I originally started this diet, I think my newfound leanness is making it easier for me to eat carbs; this morning, even after that big meal, I only gained a pound, and according to the calipers, I actually lost bodyfat (I’m at 154 lbs at 12.3% bodyfat with a 31.5" maximum stomach circumference measurement). 

Quick update after last night’s long posting –

This morning I’m down to 153.5 (11 lbs in exactly 3 weeks).  The exciting thing is for the first time, the calipers say I’m below 13% bodyfat (12.7% to be exact).  Now, I’m still learning how to use the calipers, so any of my reading might be a millimeter off here or there, so take that exact number with a grain of salt — but still, it’s pretty cool, and the trend continues to be positive.

First off, my current stats — this morning I weighed 154.5.  Calipers say I’m still in the 13,5% bodyfat range.  Based on my starting numbers, that means that I’ve lost exactly 10 pounds, and virtually none of it has been muscle (estimating muscle gain is hard from the numbers, because I’d have to estimate exactly how much water weight I’ve lost — which I’ll presumably put back on — but I’d say it’s safe to say that I’ve lost about 10-11 pounds of fat, lost 1-2 pounds of water, and gained 1-2 pounds of muscle). Overall, I feel really good — my top 2 abs are as defined as they’ve ever been, I’ve maintained my shoulder width, my legs feel and look extremely muscular.  One of my big concerns with this diet is that I’d lose all my fat and then not really have much muscle left — while I definitely wish I had more upper body mass (particularly in my chest, shoulders, and arms), I definitely see the results of the work I’ve put into my back and legs.  One of my goals for the upcoming year will be to do some arm specialization, because I really think they look small compared to the rest of my body.
 
I had a great workout earlier today; my previous 2 workouts kind of sucked, so I decided to back off, change things up, and just do whatever was "fun" in the gym.  I also really felt like some overhead pressing, so I did some heavy sets of 3 military style, and then some doubles/singles push style (I also have this mental idea that with all the weighted walks, I need to particularly focus on providing my upper body with a lot of limit strength stimulus so that my body doesn’t think that it’d be optimal to cut muscle mass there — thinking back to when I was doing the most walking, I was at my leanest, but I also had the toughest time gaining upper body mass).  Then I did weighted chinups and worked up to a double with 43 pounds attached to me (38 pounds in the xvest and a 2.5 plate in each of my pockets).  Then I did a single with 48 pounds attached to me, and then finally a single with 53 pounds attached to me.  By far a personal record (haven’t ever really done singles on chinups before), so I definitely feel good.  Given that I’m only ~155 pounds, it’s a cool accomplishment to be chinning with an additional 1/3 of my bodyweight (one of my very far off goals is to do a 1 armed pullup). 
 
And now a question from the gallery — my good friend Omp asks, "What are the metrics to measure long term good and ill effects of this experiment?"
 
This question would be fairly easy if it wasn’t for the "long term" inserted in there.  I think it’s really difficult to directly say that what I’m doing will directly cause good or ill effects for me long term.  But that said, I think it’s really difficult to directly quanify the good and ill effects of anything anyone does in 28 days (to a reasonable approximation for a reasonable set of anything — obviously, 28 days of shooting yourself in the head will may have bad effects).  I think the best we can do is look at what sort of effects this experiment will have in the next 28 days, and figure out if those effects are good things.  And in that regard, this diet has proven itself even after only 3 weeks.  See above — I’ve lost at least 8 pounds of fat, which certainly weren’t doing me any good (here’s where we start getting into certain axiomatic beliefs — if you don’t believe that less bodyfat is optimal from a longterm health perspective, again, within a reasonable numerical range — this diet probably isn’t for you).  More importantly, I believe that the majority of the fat I lost was in my midsection, and there’s a lot of research out there suggesting that that’s the most dangerous sort of fat at all (the mirror, skinfold, and tape measure bear this out — I’ve lost 9 mm from my abdomen skinfold, kept the same skinfold in my legs — I’ve never really stored much fat in my legs — and lost 4 mm from my chest skinfold).  In addition, my "girth" measurement (measuring my stomach’s circumference at its fattest point, right around my bellybutton) has decreased 2 inches.  Now, if I was losing all this weight, and the skin fold measurement were going down, but my strength was going down and I was losing a lot of muscle as well — well, I think that’d be incredibly stupid and dangerous (and let’s face it — that’s what a lot of people do).  But by maintaining my muscle, I’m keeping my metabolism primed for when I start reintroducing calories and carbs at the end of this experiment (and yes, that will be done very slowly and very cautiously, with a close eye kept on the same set of metrics I’ve been tracking the last 3 weeks — if I undo the work of the experiment, I’m an idiot playing with fire).
 
Now, if you accept the premise that lower bodyfat/less fat overall is good, you can simply say that it would have been more optimal to just do this over the course of 3 months or 6 months or however long it would take.  And that’s a reasonable thing to say — the problem is that a lot of people (including me) would never actually make progress that way.  The really interesting thing is that now that I’ve done this velocity diet and spent a month measuring out scoops of protein powder and tablespoons of flax seed and meticulously measuring skin folds and circumferences, I think I do have the strength to do a more long haul project of that sort — except now, instead of having that long haul be focused on dieting, I’m going to focus on cleanly bulking up for the next few years after I taper off of this diet. But now, instead of being an 18% bodyfat guy trying to bulk up (which is tough — the fact is, you don’t look very good, and there’s even some research to indicate that the ratio of muscle/fat gain is worse at those higher bodyfats), I’ll be a whatever bodyfat percentage I end up at guy trying to bulk up (which, certainly may have its own challenges — maybe it’ll be harder to bulk up when I’m that lean — but that’s something I’m at least prepared to face head on, and now I have a month of really understanding the level of dedication it takes measurement wise).

I have to admit, the last few days have been tough.  Partly because I’ve been hungrier and partly because my rate of fat loss has decreased a bit (I stayed at 155 yesterday and lost half a pound today — now at 154.5).  I suppose it shows how great the results are on the velocity diet that I can somehow be disappointed by something that, based on my bodyfat metrics, is a genuine half pound fat loss in 1 day.  To keep it all in perspective, I started this diet 17 days ago at 164.5.  I’m now 154.5.  10 pounds in 17 days.  More importantly, based on what I’ve been gaining back after my solid meals each week, I think about 2 pounds of that is water (i.e., once I get back to less extreme eating, I think I’ll gain that weight back).  Based on caliper readings, that means that I’ve lost approximately 8.5 pounds of fat while gaining about a pound of muscle (all estimates are fairly conservative — if you give or take a half percent to the starting or ending bodyfat calculations, you can add or subtract a pound of fatlost and subtract or add a pound of muscle gain).  Which is pretty impressive.

I wish I had done a better job of taking before pics, particularly side ones; my side profile progress is pretty dramatic.  My max stomach circumference measurement hasn’t decreased much lately, although I do think my top 2 abs are getting more and more defined.  My upper torso isn’t really much leaner than it was a couple of weeks ago (I guess I never really held that much fat there anyway).  I’m still hopeful that another week of the weighted walks, tough workouts, and staying the path will let me get down another couple of % of bodyfat.

I’m looking forward to the solid meal I’m going to have tomorrow (moved it up a day because I have a big 6×4 workout planned tomorrow — deadlifts, thick dumbbell bench press, chinups, and stepups).  Plus, after reading a lot of Berardi’s and others talk of refeedings (and remembering old stuff that I’ve read by Gironda or Fred Hatfield’s zig zag diet), I’m starting to think that refeedings are a really good idea.  Of course, maybe that’s just the hunger talking.

You can’t drink enough water on this diet.  Helps with the hunger, helps with the water loss (which comes from low carbing), helps with the hot rox.  And typically, I think that most people don’t get enough water.

I am taking Hot Rox extreme.  I’ve played around with it in the past, but I don’t think I was taking full advantage of it — what it’s really good at is preserving muscle when you’re in a caloric deficit (the whole purpose of this diet is to only strip off the fat — and most of the people who’ve had success point out that they didn’t really lose any muscle or strength, and sometimes actually gained some muscle).  I take 2 pills twice a day (the maximum suggested dose), the first on an empty stomach first thing after I wake up, and the second on as empty a stomach as I can have around 4 pm.  I definitely feel it after I take it — I really have to force myself to drink a massive amount of water when I’m taking this (if I don’t, I get really dehydrated — yesterday I made the mistake of taking some and then taking a nap right afterwards, without a lot of water, and when I woke up, I felt really dry).  Also, the first few days on the velocity diet were the worst in the morning — I was borderline nauseous (although now I feel great).  One really interesting thing that I’ve read about extreme fat loss diets is that part of the reason people feel horrible on them is because as the fat gets burned, it’s releasing very old toxins that were locked into the fat when the fat cells were created - no different than how salmon pick up toxins because of pollutions, which affects the health of the meat we get from them).  Which, in addition to getting rid of any ab fat (aka heart attack fat), is a big reason why I’m doing this (the other big reason being vanity, of course).

Other supplements I’m taking:

Down to 157.5 (from 164.5 10 days ago).  Bodyfat scale shows a loss of 2% of bodyfat, calipers show about a 3% loss in bodyfat.  Based on my strength numbers not really decreasing, I’d say that it’s safe to say that I’ve lost about 1-2 lbs of water, 4-6 lbs of fat, and gained 0-1 lbs of muscle in that time.  I definitely "look" leaner (using a tighter notch on belt, can see top 2 abs while relaxed).  I’d say I’m at about the same level of leanness I was during my last year at MIT before I left for Taiwan, which isn’t bad at all — I only weighed around 145 back then, so to gain 12 lbs in that time is an accomplishment (although I probably could have gained even more).

I definitely want to see this through to the end though, and see if I can start seeing my lower abs; one of the big reasons for this diet was to get rid of all gut fat (for health and vanity reasons of course, but also just to do it for the first time ever).  Workouts are going pretty well, was able to squat 8×3x240 lbs the other day, which is a first.  Today’s a 6×4 day for deadlifts, chinups, stepups, and dumbbell bench presses; hoping to use 270 on deadlifts, an extra 8 pounds on chinups, and 70 lb dumbbells.