Not Just a Man's World

I’ve just spent the last four weeks dedicatedly stripping excess fat after problems with stress and weights last December and then a non-Paleo experiment over Christmas caused me to gain enough excess fat to make me feel uncomfortable. 

My trigger for a cutting diet these days is when my inner thighs start to touch.  I’ve spent so much time without them touching that I now find the sensation of my thighs rubbing, even slightly, ruins the pleasures of a hot shower in the morning.  So when I noticed that unfamiliar sensation just before Christmas I knew that January would be spent clearing the fat again.

Changes needed to my previous method

Last time I stripped fat was last autumn.  That time I followed the advice of Chad Waterbury for my diet and for exercise I continued my heavy weights but included fasted high intensity intervals on five mornings a week. 

This time things had to change. 

Firstly, it’s been incredibly cold.  I swore that I would never again cut when it was cold.  I needed to strip fat as quickly as possible, without losing too much muscle, so that I could get back to eating warming quantities of calories again.  There was also no way I was going to do cardio in the below-freezing garage before breakfast!

Secondly, January is usually my most stressful month at work.  I needed to cut in a way that would stress me as little as possible and allow plenty of relaxation time to minimise the cortisol risks.

Over the next three posts I will outline the changes I made to my cutting diet and exercise plan and I’ll reveal the final results.

The diet – a new approach to cutting

I wanted to keep a few things from my last cutting diet:

• total calorie count;
• plenty of fish oil, since this is known to assist with fat burning;
• very low net carbs with the carbs focussed on my pre-workout nutrition, a principle I follow even when not cutting.

However, changes were also needed.  Last time I had suffered from frequent hunger pangs and progress had been slower than I wanted to achieve this time. 

I had also suffered from the most incredible and impractical thirst and couldn’t get enough water in.  Mark, a good friend of mine, pointed out that this was almost certainly due to the reduction in food quantity.  I wasn’t getting the “hidden” water that I would usually get from my food. 

The solutions

My solutions were simple.

• Hunger pangs and thirst:  Swap fat for protein and bulk with lettuce.  Lots of lettuce! 
• Slow progress:  Swap fat for protein and include caffeine.

Protein or fat?

Our bodies find carbs easiest to burn for energy.  They are easily converted and stored as glycogen for a quick energy source.  If there are insufficient carbs available we’ll burn fat for fuel.  If carbs, glycogen stores and recently ingested fat are all finished then the body will move onto “reserve” fat until you provide it with the next meal.  Common sense suggested that the more fat I ingested with meals the less time my body would spend burning the fat I want rid of.

Fat also carries a higher calorie count, gram for gram, than carbs or protein so a little can go a long way when you are on restricted calories.  While fat would usually leave me with a sense of being well-fed, the lower calories mean that I can’t convince my mind that I have eaten enough and hunger pangs ensue.

In contrast, research has shown that protein raises the metabolism as it is harder to digest.  The reality behind this is that traditional calorie measures give you a net calorie count after taking into account the energy that will be burned ingesting the protein.  You are therefore actually eating more calories if you eat protein and since many protein sources, such as chicken and tuna, are also very dense you get a great sense of having eaten well and get plenty of food-related water. 

The obvious answer was to swap some fat for protein, removing energy-fuel from my meals and leaving my body with no choice but to burn the fat it was carrying.  I mostly did this by replacing the eggs in my lunch and the yolks in my breakfast eggs with a serious quantity of chicken in my lunches.

Caffeine for a slimmer body

Something else that caught my eye when building this program was the news that caffeine could raise the metabolism.  A raised metabolism is good for burning fat. 

I don’t generally have much caffeine.  I drink coffee or tea once a month at the most and I dislike green tea.  If I want a hot drink at all (maybe once a week) my preference is fruit or herbal tea, such as camomile or hot ginger and lemon.

So I started drinking a mug of black tea each morning and another later in the day.  For the sake of relaxation, liquid intake and general body warmth I also drank plenty of camomile tea every evening.

A menu for a standard day

So this is a sample of what I’ve eaten every day:

• Breakfast:  2 egg whites (fried) and broccoli
• Snack:  Tuna coleslaw (1 can tuna, 1 cup raw cabbage and 7g liquid fish oil)
• Lunch:  Lettuce, celery, tomato, 75g chicken
• Dinner:  Spicy Bolognese (125g mince, ¼ can tomatoes, ¼ onion, ¼ bell pepper and 3 mushrooms) with broccoli and lettuce
• Supplementary pills:  6g fish oil, glucosamine condroitin, 2,000iu Vitamin D

Fitday analysis:

• Total calories: 968
• Total Protein: 108.0g
• Total net carbs: 18.2g
• Total fat: 46.0g

Pre-workout snack on weights days:  ½ pot yoghurt, 1.75 stewed apples and 1.5 stewed plums all mixed together.  (The quantities work out for preparation purposes over 4 sessions a week.)

Fitday analysis of pre-workout meal:

• Total calories: 219
• Total Protein: 7.0g
• Total net carbs: 39.8g
• Total fat: 2.0g

To summarise

• Eat lettuce.  With every meal if possible!
• Replace fats with protein – my main fat sources were the fish oil and minced beef.
• Take in some caffeine on a daily basis.
• Keep high levels of fish oil.
• Keep the net carbs low.

Simple but highly effective.  My usual quantities of drinking water didn’t increase very much and I rarely felt hungry despite the low calorie count.

 

On Wednesday I will outline the changes I made to my exercise plan for the month.

Related posts:

1. Fat strip January 2010: overcoming problems and the results
2. Fat strip January 2010: the exercise
3. Lessons learned this week: falling off the diet wagon
4. Top ten tips for writing a weight loss diet