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Monday, December 20, 2010

Occam's Protocol

Dec 17-60,dec18-6
total push ups /chins 341,472
weight 196.2 bf% 22.0
I lost 60 pounds doing Stew Smith's Navy Seals workout- in about a years time (before I started this blog). I started this blog almost three years ago- February of 2007. Now when I started this blog my intention wasn't to lose weight-it was to track how many push ups and chins ups I was doing with a goal to get up to one million. When I started I weighed 206 lbs, today I weight 196 pounds. So in essence I went from losing 60 pounds a year to an average of around 3 pounds a year. My weight has gone up and down, and as I said my goal has not been really to lose weight. Although the thing that puzzles me most is my percentage of bodyfat seems to always hover around 20 percent- today I went back up to 22 percent. You would think in all this time I would have at least dropped a few percentage points. It feels like it is time to try a new experiment. I am still interested in reaching my goal of one million push ups/chin ups-but I think I can manage a bit of a break from this goal.
I have a couple of theories: 1)Consistentantly I only seem to get between 50 and 80 grams if protein a day- this probably is part of the reason I haven't significantly gained a lot of muscle or lost a signicant percentage of bodyfat.
2) I am doing hundreds of push ups or chins, sometimes thousands most days a week. Overall most weeks I am working out 4 to 10 hours a week. Most weeks it is closer to 10 hours a week. I thought at this point I would have built a tolerance up for this workload-but maybe I am over training. I suppose that could be an understatement.
So -here's the plan. I had been thinking about how my bodyfat percentage never seems to move significantly downward. I started to think-maybe it is time to adjust the type of workouts I am doing . At first I was thinking this might require increasing the amount of time I was spending working out. You know adding a little more cardio to the push up/chins. Then it occured to me what if I did less work? Maybe I am just plan burned out. The stars kind of lined up for me;I found an excerpt from Tim Ferriss' book "The 4 Hour Body". Really to get where I am going next and the rationales behind it you should read the first two chapters of his book. You can find the official website here:
fourhourbody.com
So I had to buy the book, as a few of the chapters really echoed exactly what I had been thinking about my lack of progress in seeing a lot of change in my BF percentage. I read the book this weekend. As Tim himself admitts the book is big enough to club baby seals with, however it is a really interesting book- so I finished it over the weekend. I am going to to try Occam's Protocol. The short version of this routine is: only about two workouts per week. Two to three exercises per workout and one set per exercise. I figure these workouts should take less than ten minutes each to perform, or less than 20 minutes a week of working out. I might go into withdrawl, but nonetheless I am giving it a 30 day trial. The hardest part of this plan ( if you don't count getting an exercise addict to reduce thier training time to 20 minutes a week), will likely be the "feedings". The sample eating plan is guarenteed to help me up my protein intake. I am going to aim for 200 grams a day. The plan outlines eating about every two hours during waking hours.
Okay here is the summary: two ten minute workouts a week and 200 grams of protein a day. Tomorrow night is the first workout -wish me luck.

6 comments:

makecashsellingporn said...

I read the book too, and I would love to hear how you do with the occams protocol.
I am going to do it too, I just want to get stuff like measureong bodyfay, etc ready before I start.
I started to do the kettelbell routine though :)

LarryMat said...

Keep me posted how it is going for you. Only a few days in for me-so far surprisingly eating enough seems to be the hard part

Unknown said...

About losing bodyfat, the way to go would definitely be Primal. You can find all the information at www.marksdailyapple.com or buy the book the Primal Blueprint. Body composition is 80% determined by diet, 10% exercise, 5% stress levels and 5% genetic and environmental factors. This tends to break down the more overweight a person is and is more about exercise, but once you get to a certain point, diet is everything if you want to continue to lower your body fat. There are biological explanations involving insulin, leptin, metabolism and systemic inflammation that are behind the processes described on the website (basically as natural and primitive hunter/gather-like you are the healthier you are)

Just give it a shot, like 2 months. There are no gimmicks, everything is free (except the book, haha) There's even a free fitness eBook. Mark legitimately just wants to help people: one of his life goals is to change the lives of millions for the better.

LarryMat said...

thanks I will check it out.

Unknown said...

I'm trying Occam's Protocol too. I'm tracking my program on my blog: 30 Days with Occam's Protocol.

LarryMat said...

good luck -I will be following your progress