Without further ado, let me introduce you to enthusiastic reader and commenter, Patrik. He came to me a few weeks ago saying that he wanted to do something to contribute, but rather than another blog or forum, he had something far different in mind. I think it's a good idea and I hope you'll contribute to the effort with your knowledge.

~~~

I am Patrik, a long time Paleo enthusiast and commenter amongst the Paleo community. I remember when most of us were commenting mainly on Art de Vany's blog just a few years ago (seems like eons now) and Richard's blog was more varied in subject matter, and included commentary on politics and other subjects. And now, wow, things have changed very rapidly, Paleo is on the verge of being The Next Big Trendy Thing and Richard is in the spotlight of international media.

For me, eating/living Paleo has changed my life for the better (I won't go into it now). And I have long wanted to deepen my involvement in and give back to the Paleo community. At first thought I surmised I might start blogging, but I quickly realized that I would leave that to people that are more intelligent, more knowledgeable as well as better writers than myself.

But I always thought there might be a way to improve and facilitate (the tremendous and evolving) knowledge transfer within the Paleo community. And so I came up with www.PaleoHacks.com. PaleoHacks is using the StackExchange platform in attempt to do the following:

1) Answer the right questions by letting the community ask and answer them

These questions evolve dependent on where a person is in the Paleo lifestyle.

2) Organize and centralize the Paleo community knowledge

Blog authors don't have to spend time re-answering common questions, plus PaleoHacks is built on a platform to allow for the answers to change/evolve to those same common questions as more experience and information comes to light.

3) Empowering Paleo enthusiasts to help themselves

As Richard has often remarked: Paleo is about empowering yourself and NOT relying on a guru.

So, what is a hack? A hack can be thought of as a rule-of-thumb or quick fix. For example, the quick answers to common problems and experiments, things like what works in terms of IF-ing, Paleo recipes, Paleo lifestyles and Paleo-eque exercises (be it CrossFit or HIT) etc., etc.

In short, what people in the tech world call "hacks".

In sum, Paleohacks.com is an attempt to leverage technology for the Paleo community. I envision it as a site that complements, not competes with, the existing ecosystem of Paleo blogs such as FTA, Hyperlipid, PaleoNu, Robb Wolf, Theory to Practice, Whole Health Source and many other amazing resources out there.

You might be asking yourself, "How is this different from a forum?" Great question. I think the specific functionality and UI of the StackExchange changes user behavior to focus on questions and answers versus drawn out discussions (which certainly have their place in forums elsewhere and/or blog posts/comments).

I envision it serving as an easy-to-use crowdsourced question-and-answer site that evolves with current Paleo thinking, much like I have seen FTA evolve (to Richard's credit). But ultimately, it depends on whether or not the Paleo community finds it useful and helpful. So, check it out, I have seeded it a few questions so you can see how it works. I invite you to ask AND answer questions regarding Paleo. If you have a question regarding X, Y or Z - chances are that there are hundreds, if not thousands who have the same!

Let's have fun with this.

And, we're also on Twitter: @PaleoHacks

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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 her colleagues found. [...]

"People lost anywhere from about 7 pounds to about 30 pounds and that was in a very short amount of time," Varady said. And, she added, the program was pretty easy for the study participants to follow.

So, what did they do? Apparently oblivious to the underlying paleo principle at work, they've made the shocking discovery that if you simulate unavailability of food that people begin to revert to a normal [hunting] weight. News flash: wild animals including wild humans don't have pantries and refrigertors or local supermarkets & restaurants. They've got to hunt, gather and prepare their food, and they've also got to think and plan in case migration or other measures will be required for future food. That all adds up, and it's why HGs are typically lean.

To test alternate-day fasting in obese adults, Varady and her colleagues had 12 obese women and 4 obese men begin by eating normally for a two-week control period. Then, for eight weeks, they ate just 25 percent of the calories they needed to maintain their weight, between noon and 2 p.m., every other day.

So, they ate with no restrictions every over day, and on the "fasting" days they ate 25% baseline caloric intake in a 2-hr feeding window. So, not even a true fast in the way we typically do but still quite impressive in terms of results.

I'm fasting today until dinner and got in a pretty intense workout a couple of hours ago. This was my last meal, roasted chicken and a simple sauce. I had no chicken stock, but I do keep some of the Trader Joe's paste packets around for just such contingencies. No unpronounceable ingredients. So, two chicken and one vegetable in 1 1/2 cups of water, to a boil; add about 1/2 tsp of tarragon, 1/2 tsp of bay leaves, and a light shake of paprika.  Then, about 1/3 cube of sweet organic butter. Reduce, then just a 4-finger dash of potato flour to thicken, which is no more than about 5g of carb.

Roasted Chicken & Sauce

No veggies. Instead, I had a few walnuts and then 5 frozen cherries in some full fat yogurt.

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Ensuring that people get proper credit for their work and contribution is a really big issue with me.

Moreover, if you read the posts on IF, you'll see that I have been very big into working out fasted, which will happen once again at 4:30 p.m., today, not having eaten since dinner.

So, guess what I see in my Google alerts this morning but links to articles by one Natalie Pyles of Scottsdale, AZ, who touts herself a "Fitness & Weight-loss Expert, Nutritionist, Wellness Coach, Author,& Speaker" (sic). I'll just call her a shameless thief. Her website: Fitness Elements & Associates.

Now, see this page, touting her "Eat Stop Exercise" regimen, clearly a title rip-off from Brad, and since so blatant, one may rest assured that the e-book will likely be a word-for-word robbery. Why do I assume so (click to enlarge)?

A word-for-word rip-off from Natalie Pyles of a testimonial I gave Brad Pilon

Now, in case she decides to get cute with me, here's the web archive file, in case anyone cares to download it for the record.

Well, any enterprise that operates by theft is a cheesy little endeavor, in my book. So, if you want to get the real info from the original source, then please do the right thing and get it from Brad.

Natalie Pyles: you should be ashamed of yourself.

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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 I was making preparations.

Here's what went down.

Clockwise from the top left, you've got the 6 lbs boneless chuck, browned on all sides (in leaf lard), then in the same pot I just added a bit more lard, a small yellow onion, a bit of pine nuts I had left, and a good handful of chopped raw Brazil nuts and almonds. Once that was well sautéed, I added in about 1 1/2 cup of my home made bone broth I had left, deglazed the pot, and added a half-handful each of frozen cranberries and blackberries.

Then I packed in the roast, and because it was such a good pack with 6 lbs (average recipe would be 4), even the small amount of liquid nearly covered the meat. In a normal braise, you usually get best results with your liquid to about half, then turn the meat every hour. In this case, I turned the meat halfway through the 3 1/2 hour cooking, covered, at 300 deg in the oven.

Continuing with the photos, you have the finished meat laid out on a cookie sheet where I placed it in the oven for warming as I boiled another onion, a few carrots, one large sweet potato, and one large parsnip in the broth, which you see at the bottom left. Took about 20 minutes or so for the veggies to get soft. Then I removed them with a slotted spoon to the serving dish.

I then dissolved 1 heaping teaspoon of brown sugar in a bit of water, dribbled it on the meat, and put it under the broiler for 2-3 minutes to glaze up. I also added two teaspoons of my Thai massaman curry paste to the broth -- just enough to create mystery; but this also alleviates the need totally for any other spices (there's no salt, pepper, or any other spice in this).

The meat went into the serving dish with the veggies and the well-thickened broth got poured all over. The finish line:

The meat was fall-apart fork tender, and the six of us present accounted for all but about a pound of leftovers. I think everyone had a couple of servings like this:

Next week I will do a post on the complete process of making the bone broths. It is pretty easy to do, just takes a couple of days with the work coming at the beginning and the end.

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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 on working out. I was already a bit familiar with Art DeVany's power law (endurance and intensity are inversely related, i.e., the more intense, the less you can endure, and it's the intensity that drive the gene expression you want). So, it was only natural that John Little's book appealed to me: Max Contraction Training : The Scientifically Proven Program for Building Muscle Mass in Minimum Time. I read it cover to cover. Essentially, it relies on the power law principle and takes it to the end point: the highest intensity would be muscle failure in under 1 second. How to do that? Well, that's the problem. You need one and possibly even two trainers and spotters to help get HUGE weight into a maximum contraction situation, where you then hold to muscle failure. You aim for enough weight to hold three seconds, then increase weight until you can do less than a second. John had some interesting photos, such as a normal woman on an old-style peck deck holding a contraction against a bunch of plates with two guys standing on them; so, hundreds of pounds.

The punch line: John Little collaborated with Doug McGuff on this new book.

At the same time, my trainer wanted to do pretty intense, but it was mostly isolation. I was making gains, so I just shut up. Fast forward to a couple of months ago where I broached the subject of moving to compound exercises and big volume. Man, what a difference. I just love it. Rather than three boring, often excruciating sets of 10, it's now 5, maybe 10 sets, and most are only 2-3 reps, because the weight is so much. On squats, my form has improved to where I can easily do several sets of 4-5 reps at my body weight: 185. Once I am very confident of form, I'll start increasing it.

So, last Saturday I ran into my trainer here at my condos. He was training another resident in our workout facility. I invited him up, then thought of lending him John Little's book. And, so, he had a big surprise for me today.

The first was lat pulldowns. Fortunately, he had the pulldown straps that go across your elbows. It's amazing how much more you can do when you don't have to hold a grip. So, whereas 120-130 is a lot, I was able to warm up at 150, then a couple of reps at 220, and then a whole bunch of negatives at 300 pounds -- where we would have to use both of our full body's weight to get into full contraction and hold. 300 is max on the machine, and I could hold a few seconds in a full contraction, ease to half and hold a couple of seconds. We did that about 4-5 times and it was simply awesome. I'll never do boring reps upon reps again.

Next was a sitting chest press that's configured in a way that makes it easy for Mike to help me press it into a full extension. First was a warm up at 150, then to 220 to test an extension, ease, and hold at half extension. No sweat, so we maxed out that machine at 300 as well. What a delight! There's something just really cool about holding against 300 pounds.

Next was off to do some free squats, mainly to warm up and practice form. Did 4-5 sets of 4-5 reps at 135 going to 185.

To round out the 30-minute workout, we went to a lay down leg press machine. Just went right to the max, which I think was 300, again, and pressed to half extension and hold. I did two or three of those, holding for about 10 seconds each time, quads quivering like crazy.

I've just gotta say that I'm really loving this. Whole New World. But, be careful out there. Frankly, I have no idea of when I'd have been ready both physically and mentally to take on this sort of thing, and I don't begrudge at all almost two years of isolation conditioning. There's a fear factor, too, and you should not be attempting anything like this without assistance from someone who knows what they're doing; but more importantly, until you're sure you're up to it. You'll know when you're up to it.

You'll feel strong.

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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. A great way to treat a leftover, making it a new meal entirely.

Around 7 PM or so, as I'm getting hungry, I head down to the gym. So, I'm about 6 hours or so into the fast at this point. The first thing I did differently was to do some intense intervals on the stationary bike under a bit of resistance. I only did 4, 15 seconds each, but I did them all out and I felt it. Amazing what just one minute of exercise can do.

Then I did the sauna, steam, hot tub routine and then hit the 40 degree water. It's really, really cold, but I mitigate by first tucking my fingers into my armpits. Then, I'm in a sqat, and I do leg kicks about as hard as I can, one leg at a time. Frequently and intense enough, I can actually become somewhat warm, and that's what I do until the cold finally has its way. On this night, I was in somewhere between 10-12 minutes. I was surprised. Longest ever in that cold of water. At 50 degrees, I can stay in far longer and don't have to kick or protect the fingers.

Cold shower, which on full cold feels warm, so I just rinse. I feel super invigorated. After a time, I get that feeling that's like you've been in cold but active for an extended period (such as skiing), and while you're cold to the core, you're warm on the surface. I find that a very pleasant feeling and it persits until I hit the sack a few hours later.

And sometime the next morning when I got around to weighing? 4-5 pounds lighter.

The last time I did that, everything was pretty much the same, except for the intervals. That's an idea that came from this post, the idea being to get a good jump on HG production. At any rate, here's what I know doesn't work, as I've tried it many times: eating anytime soon after the cold water.

Most of my workouts are toward the end of a fast, I always hit the cold plunge (sometimes only for 1-2 minutes), but then I typically eat within a couple of hours. I never get a weight drop like that, so, I speculate that even if there's something to this (which I fully admit is speculative in itself), then it must have something to do with performing it at the beginning of a fast, not the end.

And even in this instance, and the reason I delayed this post is that I had my workout the next day at 1:30, at the 24-hr fasted mark. I then did another 6 minuted in the cold plunge, waited until 3:30 and weighed in: no change.

There's quite a lot of stuff out there about the benefits of cold water therapy (it's a huge list). Mark Sisson did a work-up on it a while back, and here's Stephan's treatment. Both posts contain links to actual scientific studies proving a clear health benefit to episodic bouts with extreme cold. I'm sold on it, myself, and would be even without these curious and welcome rapid weight loss escapades.

I've searched in vain to come up with anything related to using cold water to lose fat. Anyone else?

Also, anyone brave enough to duplicate the experiment? If you don't have access to a gym with a cold plunge, perhaps you could find a cold swimming pool, bathtub, or something. However, I'd say that if it's over 50 deg (10 C) that you're going to have a tough time and would have to greatly extend time in water. It's probably some sort of geometric or exponential function with warmer water.

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That was really a good refresher for me, but I'm not going to tell you what I did yet. The reason is that I still have 9 hours to go on my 30-hr fast, a workout early this afternoon, followed by a "secret" technique, and I'm already down 5 full pounds from where I was when I began the fast.

I want to see where I end up. Then I'll post.

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Fasted Workouts and Fasted Cardio vs EPOC - For Fat Loss

For the longest time, I didn't understand why I had more energy after fasting. I have my most productive hardcore workouts after fasting for 5-18 hours. If I ate anything in that 4-5 hour window before training, the workouts just weren't as intense. Ori Hofmekler explained where this "hidden" energy source came from…the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS).

Go over and read more about the SNS.

As readers know, I have been working out fasted (18-30 hours) for a bit more than a year, now. I can't imagine doing it any other way. As an added benefit, take a cold plunge or sit in a totally cold bathtub after the workout, for as long as you can stand (in the summer, I somtimes remain in the 50ish degree water for 10 minutes). Then, don't eat until you're actually hungry, which, for me, is usually a couple of hours after the workout.

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Running on empty: the pros and cons of fasting

"There is something kind of magical about starvation," says Dr. Marc Hellerstein, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at UC Berkeley, who studies fasting.

Adds Mark P. Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging: "In normal health subjects, moderate fasting -- maybe one day a week or cutting back on calories a couple of days a week -- will have health benefits for most anybody." Mattson is among the leading researchers on the effects of calorie restriction and the brain. [...]

"We've been finding that putting an animal on a reduced-calorie diet for a couple of weeks dramatically slows cell proliferation rates," Hellerstein says. "This is the case in pretty much every tissue you look at: prostate, skin, colon, liver, lymphocytes."

Intermittent fasting and calorie restriction have also been shown in animals to reduce cognitive decline in diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, Mattson says. [...]

Among 448 people surveyed, intermittent fasting was associated with more than a 40% reduction in heart disease risk. Fasting was also linked to a lower incidence of diabetes. The study was published in October in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Pretty much substantiates everything I've been blogging about all this time with respect to IF. Of course, an article like that wouldn't be complete without a quote from a useful idiot.

Not all nutrition professionals see the merits of fasting. Some think of it as a recipe for disaster, setting up a person for binge eating and metabolic confusion.

Ruth Frechman, a registered dietitian in Burbank and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Assn., , says she frequently sees such extreme strategies backfire. "You're hungry, fatigued, irritable. Fasting is not very comfortable. People try to cut back one day and the next day they're starving and they overeat."

Credentialed gibberish from a certificate holding, know nothing. Literally: she knows nothing about fasting and its practices. She's just quoting a textbook she read and got tested on. These people are contemptible, at every level.

The second article has some anecdotes of people who've seen success with fasting. Fasting strategies and pitfalls. Of course, they had to haul out another useful idiot.

Many people find that cutting back on calories causes their metabolism to slow and weight loss becomes difficult, says Andrea Giancoli, a Los Angeles-based nutritionist and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Assn.

"The real danger of fasting when it comes to weight loss is you risk slowing down your metabolism, and that defeats the whole purpose," she says. "As soon as you start eating again, your body wants to store those calories."

Such ignorance, and they are the ones called on to render "expert" opinion. ...As America gets fatter and fatter.

Every dietician and nutritionist in America ought to be fired on the spot, and then be pelted in the town square with rotten tomatoes. (Those of you who shouldn't, know who you are, and why you shouldn't.)

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By the way, here was the braised short ribs. This one took a while. Initial prep was about 15 minutes to preheat the over to 300 and then brown the ribs nicely in the covered pot I'd be using (I used leaf lard). Once browned, I removed the meat, deglazed with some red wine, place the meat back in, then added enough beef stock to just cover the meat. I also tossed in a vegetable bullion cube and some garlic. Then it cooks for three whole hours in the oven. At the 2:15 mark, add your vegetables (onion, carrot and celery in this case) so they only cook for 45 minutes. Otherwise, they'll be mush. Once done, I put everything on a cookie sheet, covered with foil, and in the oven to warm (140) while I reduced the sauce. This took a whole hour because I was unwilling to use starch other than what was already there from the vegetables. I added some almond meal, which helped. Be patient. Braised short ribs should have a nice thick reduction.

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