Intermittent Fasting

So..... two weeks into the 2012 Fat Dad's six pack challenge and I've gone from leading week 1 to trailing third in week 2. It's been an interesting week. Last weekend I stumbled across a website (http://rippedbody.jp/) that in turn lead me to another (http://www.leangains.com/) and an introduction to the concept of intermittent fasting. See above sites for more details as they can explain it far better than I.

Aside from the potential results (gaining muscle whilst losing fat and only training weights three times a week), what appealed to me was that the idea of an 8 hour eating window wasn't a million miles off of my current eating habits. I've never been one for breakfast so the idea of fasting for a 16 hour period then getting all of my food in in between the hours of 1pm and 9pm seemed do-able. Likewise the idea of training compound lifts 3 times a week suits me down to the ground.

I've always been anti-dieting and always viewed it as simply starving or depriving oneself of food but this approach seems more accommodating. However, I have been taken aback this week. In short the idea is I over-eat on training days with increased protein, high carbs and low fat. Then the next day, a rest day, I deficit my intake and go for protein but with low carbs and a more normal levels of fat. Seems straight forward enough.

In the past a normal work day eating pattern for me would be something like. Lots of coffee for breakfast, soup and a slice of bread for lunch, family dinner and then settle into the sofa with alcohol and crisps. Doesn't seem much but given that I've been gaining weight suggests that I have been eating more than my share of daily calories (approx. 2000).

So what soon hit me is that if you try and eat the appropriate levels of macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, fat) in the targeted proportions it equates to a lot of food. Most days I struggled to eat 1600 calories worth let alone my training day target of 2000+. They say 1g of protein or carbs = 4 calories, whereas 1g of fat = 9. So when you start watching your fat and lowering it you have to eat twice as much protein or carbs to replace it.

Case in point, I am struggling to come up with a 1000 calorie post-workout meal. A Burger King double whopper with cheese is 976 calories but has 61g of fat which accounts for 549 of its calories. On a training day I am only allowed about 30g of fat for the day. To put some perspective on it - 2 slices of rye bread toast, a large can of light choice baked beans, 2 turkey breast steaks, a four egg white omelette with low fat mature cheddar cheese, mushrooms, and tomatoes comes to 936 calories and only 11g of fat.

Seems the main problem I'm going to have dieting is eating so much!

The last word

It has to be said, some of the best conversations and some of the best ideas are the ones at the end of an evening on the drink. lol

Onward Christian soldiers

My wife, like many others, has fallen for the "mommy porn" 50 Shades of Grey trilogy and like many husbands and boyfriends there have been positive side effects. For example, on her first night of reading I had been down the pub with friends. Now under normal circumstances when I creep in from the pub late, with all of the subtleness of a hippopotamus ninja,s he would always be asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep, but no not that night ;o)

But here we are once again with a sense of frustration. One friend was moaning on Facebook how despite his wife reading 50 shades he was yet to reap him any rewards. One female friend responded to the thread that "if you want your wife to act a bit more like Ana, try acting a bit more like Mr Grey". 

Now, despite already benefiting from positive side effects, this sounded like good advice coming straight from the horses mouth. So with this idea in mind I send my wife a text, nothing brash (Mr Grey is too sophisticated for that). Far from a hot lustful reply the response I get was along the lines of  "Lol, so anyway ...".

There you go, dismissed in an instant. It's all very well you ladies rattling on about what you want from us men but first you're going to have to learn to recognise it when your presented with it!

WTF! I'm Stiffler!!

Ok, so hopefully I'm not that bad but I could certainly empathise with him in American Reunion. Looking back it wasn't so much the high school years that give me the fondest memories but the ten years that followed them. I had the best friendships and the best times. It's perhaps not then strange that I was the last one to to buy a property, the last one to get married, and the last one to start a family. 

Perhaps one of the hardest things is the way friends behaviour changed towards me. One day I'm the life and soul of the party, the guy people have the best times with. Then, without me changing, they started to move on and in some ways I got left behind or became surplus to requirement. Before long I realised I was the only one at the party. Like Stiffler, deep down I didn't want the party to end but as the saying goes 'all good things come to an end'. 

Gradually as friends got married and started families I saw less and less of them. As they acquired more responsibilities they became more sensible, and rightly so. In the meantime I was living life by one of my own ethics which was 'as long as I don't have a mortgage I'm not gonna take any sh!t from anyone'. Another movie quote that strikes a chord on this note is from Horrible Bosses:

"Quick story, my grandmother came to this country with twenty dollars in her pocket. She worked hard her whole life and never took sh!t from anyone. When she died, she had turned that twenty dollars into two thousand dollars. That sucks! You know why she didn't succeed? Because she didn't take sh!t from anyone. The key to success, and they will not teach you in business school, is taking sh!t."

This is probably a good reason why at almost thirty, like Stiffler, I was still doing jobs instead of laying the foundations of a career. Something which has cost me in later life. To many extents I am still just doing jobs and lack the financial security a career offers. So do I wish I had left the party earlier? Hell no! 

However, I do wish I'd started a career whilst partying, as I now realise growing up and having 'old skool fun' need not have been mutually exclusive. The things I miss from that time in my life is the tomfoolery, the lack of any pretence, not caring what anyone thought, making fun a priority. Sometimes things are best left as fond memories because things do change. I still don't want the party to end, there just isn't a party any more. 

Something to prove?

Ok, a bit off topic. I've often suspected that by and large what you see of people is driven more by insecurity than anything else. Of these insecurities I feel frustrated by peoples need to try and prove things to others. You can see it an so many aspects of their lives. Marketeers are of course are well aware this and successfully manipulate these insecurities to create markets (or victims of their will power).

Take for example clothing and the boom in brands to try help people pass themselves off as middle class or having some degree of income/wealth. Those with class/money don't wear labels (at least not in an emblazoned fashion). They do not need to, they are what or who they are and so do not feel the need to try and convince others of their status in life. It's only those that are not that try and convince us otherwise. Of course we do not see this just in clothing but all aspects of life where materials possessions are involved.

All possessions are but props in life. Take two people from opposite ends of the scale and strip them of all of their possessions (you're mentally picturing them naked now aren't you). In this scenario what marks one person out as being better than the other? What makes one persons love of his family better than the others? What allows you to measure one as more successful than the other? How is one persons happiness measured as being superior to the others?

I am not suggesting that possessions aren't important or have their place. Just that the choosing of them should be solely influenced by what you, whether as an individual/a couple/family, want not because of what others think of them. I wear what I wear because I like it, no other reason. My clothing is cheap but I like how it looks and feels and it means I don't get arrested for public nudity. I can afford the middle class labels but fail to see the value add. To me a t-shirt is a t-shirt regardless of the label. The sad thing is that the victims of the marketeers feel giving in to their insecurities makes them better than those who do not. Twisted huh?

Because you're worth it!

Or are you????

The media constantly seem to be telling us that we deserve more. Better sex, more money, fantastic holidays, nice cars, you name it. Of course in most cases it's because they want to sell us something. Almost instinctively we answer this question 'yes' because that's what we'd all like to believe and of course the marketeers know this.

Perhaps before answering this question we should ask ourselves the question, why? Why do we deserve more? What have we done that warrants all of these things? A common term used with regard to the current generation is that of entitlement. It's is the older generations that raise this criticism because it seems they were brought up with an entirely different ethos. They were brought up under the belief that 'you reap what you sow' or put more commonly, 'you get what you deserve' which in short translates to 'you've currently got what you currently deserve and if you deserved more you'd have it'.

Of course this doesn't sit well with our ideals and maybe it's not something we want to acknowledge but in 9 out of 10 cases it's probably spot on. It seems that somewhere along the lines we've been sold a dummy. Somewhere along the lines someone started to convince us that just doing the ordinary day to day things (working hard, raising a family, etc) that our elders did just to get by suddenly entitles us to 'more' than they ever got.  Where is the justification?

When children leave home it seems that they want to walk straight into what they've just walked out of. Perhaps not a house but the 'luxuries' with in it (nice furniture, tv's, computers, games consoles, media players, etc, etc). The parents home represented the rewards of years of work and effort. How can it be conceivable that someone starting out should have anywhere near the same?

I'm not just referring to material things either. It is already acknowledged that the standard of living or quality of life has been increasing with each generation. Perhaps we should be content with this fact and if we desire more, then maybe we should get off our arses and do something to deserve it.

Have your cake and eat it

So, ... what is the point of cake if you can't eat it? How do I live the life less ordinary without disrupting the status quo, without upsetting those I love and care about, without damaging what I already have? Why in so many cases does a mid life crisis seem to suggest me doing away what I already have? Why can it it not simply be a modification or an enhancement of what I already have? Why can I not have my cake and eat it?

I decided to go out on a limb last weekend and breach the subject of mid life ... reviews .. with my wife. I could see a look of concern in her eyes, but fortunately I also saw a glimmer of understanding. I talked for a while about though being happy with what we have, also feeling unfulfilled and my desire to do 'more' even though I'm not quite sure exactly what that is yet. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I feel as long as I am reasonable in my decision making then so will she in her understanding.

Living in a box

I think there has been a catalyst to my recent mental ramblings. I work from home. In principal its great. No wasting time and money or damaging the environment commuting. It allows me great flexibility in helping out with the kids. I don't need to wear a suit and tie, in fact I can work in my pants!

But it's not all happy pant wearing work schedules, there are some downsides. It can be hard to discipline yourself when you most need to. Work hours seem to go out of the window and because you're at home people sometimes call you when they're at home, like evenings and weekends. Also, when you leave for a place of work the kids know you have gone to work. When you're sitting in the next room it's not always an easy concept for them to grasp when you keep dismissing them and asking them to leave.

Perhaps one of the biggest negative parts is the isolation. In my previous job I was Mr Social and had a great social life around my work. Now I'm just a voice on the end of a phone, not even that most days, an email. I often do not leave the house, sometimes for days. Even then when I do it just for a local trip often less than a mile. I cannot help thinking this isolation is magnifying the problem. Some days the silence is deafening and that's when the mind start to wander ...

P.S. No that's not me pictured in the box.Yet.

Yes Man

I recently finished the book Yes Man by Danny Wallace. I enjoyed it. I have seen the film that was based upon the book but the link is tenuous and Hollywood didn't do it justice. It follows Danny's own experience when having slipped into a life not just ordinary but positively dull, he takes the advice of a man on a bus to 'say yes more'. The premise, which I tend to agree with, is that things only really happen in life when we say yes. No excludes us. No removes opportunities. No closes doors. No doesn't get us drunk, or laid for that matter.

I can't help but think he has a point which indeed he goes on to demonstrate. Opportunities to live a life less ordinary do present themselves, but it's just all to easy to dismiss them. Let's face it, easy is nice and a whole lot less effort. It's a bit like those invites that you agree to months in advance and as the day draws nearer you start questioning why you ever agreed and how much easier it would  be to just stay in and watch tv. 

When the night arrives you haul your carcass up out of the sofa, the lazier side of you having now realised that going may actually be easier than trying to worm your way out of it and guess what? Yep, you have a great time and you're glad you went! (Okay this doesn't have a 100% success record but you get the point). So I guess the yes idea is a discipline to counter our natural lazy tendency to think of reasons why we shouldn't do something when we should be thinking about all of the reasons why we should do something.

So where am I going with these inane ramblings. Well, firstly I think I need to say yes more, and not just to beer and sex.  Secondly, when I do have a random thought to do something less ordinary (more interesting) then I need to start telling myself all of the reasons why I SHOULD do it.

Be - Do - Have

Ok, so this one isn't mine but it's perfectly valid. In life we sometimes look at successful people and wish we were in a similar position. By successful, I don't necessarily mean rich or famous, just people who are at the top of their game in life and are exactly where they want to be.

We sometimes wish to have the things they have, do the things they do, and to a point be the type of person that they are. So the theory dictates, that this is why we do not. Truth is, to achieve this we must first BE the person we want to be, and DO the things that person would do, and only then can we HAVE what that person would have. To do otherwise would be putting the cart before the horse.

So if I want to HAVE a life less ordinary, I have to DO less ordinary things by first BEING the type of person who, as I have a quite ordinary life, is different to me.