Free The Animal

A reader sent a link this morning to an interesting study of alternate day fasting for obese adults.

Even though the study participants ate whatever they wanted on their non-fasting days, they lost an average of 5.6 kilograms (about 12 pounds) after eight weeks, Dr. Krista A. Varady of the University of Illinois at Chicago and [...]

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I fist made mention of Brad Pilon’s excellent work, EatStopEat way back nearly two years ago. And since then, I have blogged a whole bunch about intermittent fasting in general and have mentioned Brad and ESE many, many times. And, because I was so pleased with the results, I even gave Brad a testimonial which [...]

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Yesterday I tweeted that I was 24 hours into a fast and had yet to experience any hunger. How did that happen? Well, I can’t be sure, due too many variables, but what’s interesting is that I began the fast about 11 AM day before yesterday, and with only one meal instead of a breakfast & lunch. Eggs & bacon it was. Then I decided to do something I’ve not done before. I did this high-volume workout at 4 PM, 5 hours into the fast. Then I did 6-7 minutes in the cold cold water. I had no problem with hunger before bed, slept for a good 6-7 hours, woke up refreshed and waited to get hungry. It just didn’t happen. The plan was to head over to the gym when the hunger came, and do a cold-water plunge again, as I’ve used that before to rid myself of hunger. But, I was fixing a big braised pot roast for family guests and I needed to get that started 4 hours ahead of time. So, I never did the second dip and broke the fast without really being hungry at about the 27 hour mark, munching on some nuts as…

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I don’t post a lot about the specifics of my workouts. Why? Well, whereas all the diet & fasting stuff was very accessible and could be put into practice quickly — with quick results to verify, repeat, verify, and so on — workouts never struck me like that. I’m a neophyte (still) but that’s changing. Also, I have a trainer and he’s proven himself to be unconventional and actually willing to listen to me. Right off the bat, he said all I need is two 30-minute session per week of high intensity. That told me he had a lot right. Now, he often sports my Free the Animal T-shirt. That’s pretty cool. There’s a new book out there I may have mentioned. It’s by reader and sometimes commenter Dr. Doug McGuff, Body by Science, which is soon coming up in my reading stack. In the meantime, workout guru extraordinaire, Keith Norris, has reviewed it in multiple parts here, here, and here. [Added later: Chris Highcock interviewed Dr. McGuff here, and here's another interview on video.] There’s a bit of a coincidence. When I first began this journey two years ago, I went to the bookstore to pick up a book…

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I actually gave you a hint in the title of my previous post, Cold, Wet, Hungry, and Running For Your Life. Also, this is not the first time, and since I wrote fairly extensively on it before, I’m going to cover what I did differently and what I did on ocassions when this didn’t work. In a nutshell, it’s the cold water, again. However, the gym has in the last few months managed to keep the water at a steady 40 degrees rather than the 50 it used to be. Let me tell you: huge difference and it took quite a while to adapt to spending minutes at that temperature. So, the fast began around 1:30 PM, after a pretty big breakfast and lunch. To the left is self explanatory. To the right is leftover sauerkraut, which was Alexander Valley fresh sauerkraut (not caned), which is simply awesome, even uncooked. I had made this in the crock pot a couple of days earlier, with about 3 pounds of pork sparerib, an onion, and lots of caraway seeds. All the pork was gone, but not all the kraut and broth, so I used it with some uncured, gluten free polish sausage….

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