I actually started this about 10 days ago, but the flow was disturbed a few times due to
1) T & Z's wedding in Thailand (flowing alcohol and thai food!)
2) my craving for ice cream and frozen yoghurt and anything dairy
So i'll make today the OFFICIAL FIRST DAY!
Basically the gist of this thing is, for 6 consecutive days of the week I need to stay away from white refined carbs and replace them instead with high protein legumes, veges and meat. Too lazy to type out the basics, so below will be plagiarising from this guy (with my own fat stats of course)...
http://brokengod.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/raiseon-detre/
Greetings.
Now, the principal reason for the existance of this blog is to manage and track my own attempts at the 4-week challenge and in this I take my inspiration from
Tim Ferriss’ blog post entitled
How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise.
In his post, Tim (who has recently had success with his book
The 4-Hour Work Week)
lays out his experience and thoughts in relation to the “slow carb” diet, and provides a few rules which guided him to his claimed transformation from about 180 lbs. to 165 lbs., while adding about 10 lbs. of muscle.
Now, not surprisingly, Tim has generated a great deal of discussion on his blog with a count of 153 comments (as of 16 June 2007). These comments include the full range of scepticism, incredulity, support and excitement that you might expect from such bold claims and indeed has spawned several attempts to replicate his success. I would be lying if this blog wasn’t well and truly the latter.
Personally, I believe that regardless of the viability of the method advanced by Tim, his blog has been highly successful in getting dozens of people to consider that, they too may effect change in their lives. At this time I will defer any of the usual cynacism that I direct to those ideas that promise instant results and acknowledge that any plan or idea that can
motivate people to try to make a difference in their lives, particulary in an area of such frequent failure and significance (socially and healthwise) as weightloss.
So
kudos to Tim and I encourage any interested parties to take a look at his
blog where he discusses a range of ideas geared towards personal development, time & work management, health & fitness and most importanly, making your personal dreams reality.
Now on to my personal attempt at the 4-Week Challenge, initially incorporating the diet plan used by Tim to reduce his body fat and increase his lean muscle tissue. At this stage, I plan to follow reasonably faithfully the following guidelines, as inspired by Tim:
Rule 1
Avoid white carbohydrates. By this I mean to avoid any white bread, rice, pasta, potato etc and in fact I will be generally attempting to not eat any breads or cereals as much as possible.
Rule 2
Consistent meal plan. I will be eating the same few meals over and over, where possible, for the duration of the challenge, mostly including some meat in the form of lean grilled chicken, pork or beef; some legumes such as lentils, beans etc, and some microwaved or steamed vegetables. An example of such a meal…
Rule 3
Avoid liquid calories in the form of fruit juices, soft drinks, milk or other sweetened drink. I have to confess, I am pretty addicted to milk and yoghurt, so during the course of the challenge apart from attempting to get more fresh water into my system.
Rule 4
Cheat Day! Every Sunday I am going to crazy-town on the binge farm! Ice creams, cakes, chocolate, burgers. Whatever takes my fancy. This not only allows me a reward for a solid week’s healthy eating, it helps to avoid metabolic down-regulation which may occur as the result of calorie restriction and carbohydrate avoidance.
With these rules in place, all that is left is to make a record of my current weight and dimensions, whack up some suitable pathetic photos of my corpulent body and watch the pounds melt away! (Positive thinking has it’s place in any change process.) So…
Weight: 72.5kg
Height: 5′ 4″
Chest: 41″
Waist: 34″
Navel: 38"
Widest hips: 39″
Biceps (relaxed): 12″
Thigh: 21"
Okay I need to complement this w the p90x workout, see how this goes.
My own weaknesses are the sweet tooth - ice cream, chocolate, yoghurt, milk!! Even last night, I had to take a few sips of milk before I was willing to sleep..
I bought about 10 bags of different beans from dot dot green. I'm gonna be a beans freak. In a good (less gas-y) wa hopefully haha
Here's a look at my breakfast/lunch/dinner tonight. salmon fish head for breakfast, mainly pinto / black beans, cabbage, eggplants. Getting quite sick of beans to be honest.
