36 more

June 22-36

total push ups/chins 360,709

Logged another 36 chins. Well I hope this trial of StrongLifts works out well for me -cause it is driving me crazy to only do 36 chins every couple of days. If you want to check out how I am doing- as I said on the post below you can check out my other blog:

http://20poundsdifference.blogspot.com/

On a side note I was looking at the "hits" for this blog. I started doing this blog in 2009. My all time high for number of hit (and by a long shot) was when I was doing Occam's Protocol. Now I didn't get great results from The Four Hour Body approach but I sure did get a lot of hits on my blog as I was writing about it.

New Blog

total push ups/chins 342,250

Well I created a new blog. You can check it out at:

20 pounds difference

If you type something like " lose 20 pounds" or "lost 20 pounds" into a google search you will be amazed how many results come up. This new blog is not necessarily about losing 20 pounds. It is about 20 pounds of body re-composition ( or re-comp as Tim Ferris talks about in his book the 4 Hour Body). Check out the new blog and you will see what I mean

Occam's Protocol Again

total push ups/chins 341,674

weight 197.2 bbf% 21.0

Today the scale (and a little math) tells me my lean mass is 155.79 pounds. This is about 2 pounds of lean tissue more than when I started Occam's Protocol. If I gained 6-8 pounds of lean mass on Occam's protocol I have really lost ground on this progress. I started to think maybe I should go back to the Protocol, once a week weight training doesn't seem to be working all that well for me. I am sure hard core high intensity guru's would suggest working out less frequently ( maybe 3 exercises instead of five over every eight days instead of once a week). However I was making some progress on Occam's protocol. Tim Ferris gained 34 pounds in about a month, but it was on a slightly different rountine than the "protocol". He may have better genetics than I do, but it seems worthwhile to try the routine Tim Ferris himself used to gain 34 pounds. It is still somewhat abbreviated from the routine Casey Viator used in the Colorado experiment (also described in the 4 hour body). I think similiar to when I did Occam's Protocol I will subsitute Chins and Dips for the compound upperbody movements ( that way I will still make a little progress on my total chins and push  ups goal).

Law number three

total push ups/chins 341,674

weight  199.6 bf% 21.5

Law #3 in Primal Blueprint "Move Frequently at a slow Pace". Mark Sisson recommends easy cardio at 55 to 75 percent maximal heart rate for 2 to 5 hours a week.  Last night I walked on the treadmill for 50 minutes ,most of the time I was walking at a little over 5 miles per hour. About 5.3 miles per hour to be specific. I was trying to keep my heart rate closer to the 55% range most of the time. Fifty five percent to 75 percent of maximal heart rate ( using the 220 minus your age formula) is about 95-130 beats per minute. The first half hour it was pretty easy keeping my heart rate close to 95 beats walking at 5.3 miles per hour. After this point I noticed my heart rate started to drift up around 135,so I slowed the treadmill down to about 5 mph. The treadmill has a built in heart rate monitor on the handles. You put your hands on the sensors and it takes a reading. I am assuming the readings can be a little off as from time to time the reading will jump way up or down when there is no extra exertion that would justify a large fluctuation. Anyway I figured the Move Frequently at a slow pace rule would suggest-if in doubt go a little slower. So that is what I did.

I have discovered that simple carbohydrates are definitely not my friends.If I eat any type of pasta -it seems like the next day I go up about 4 pounds in weight or my body fat percentage goes up. We went to my in-laws for brunch today so I pushed the envelope a little bit today on the carbohydrates. One of the culprits was the cheesecake I had ( over 40 grams of carbs alone in this little mistake). I know -who eats cheesecake after a big brunch? Anyway this kind of threw my carb level out for the day. However I have read the entire book now (Primal Blueprint) and it suggests paying more attention to your average daily intake of carbs and protein. In other words don't get as wrapped up in your daily intake as much as how the numbers average out over the week. So far this week my average for protein is too low and carbs are too high, but the averages are moving in the right direction.So far my average for the week of Jan 31st( Lose It calculates your weekly average starting on Sunday) is 122.2 grams of carbs and 188.2 grams of protein. This is close to where I want to be (minus a piece of cheesecake or so) so I should be able to balance this out a bit over the coming days this week

Change of Plans

Jan21-133

Total Push up/Chins 341,658

weight 197.8 bf 21.70

Ok change of plans. I did 133 push ups a couple of days ago. Result I am still sore as hell and my lean mass dropped about 5 pounds in a couple of days. Fluctuations in mass have been the norm thru this experiment however Occam's Protocol was working for me. I am thinking that maybe I should keep working with something that has been producing some results and just "tweek' the protocol a bit and see what happens. It doesn't make sense to be this sore just to see regression in results. Tim Ferris talks about Doug McGuff;s book Body by Science. It is a simlar protocol to Occam's Protocol only slightly longer workout (5 exercises opposed to 2-3) less frequently (once a week resistance workouts instead of workouts spaced out by 2-3 rest days). I am going to try the Body by Science routine with a slight "tweek'. I have been reading up on the Primal Blueprint and Mark's Daily Apple (website and blog), This protocol suggests lifting once or twice a week ( this day I will do the Body by Science work out) , Sprinting once every 7 to 10 days and very low intensity cardio on the other days. I am going to try a combination f these two protocols. I will try to keep most of the low cardio days in the 55% maximal heart rate range to reduce the likelihood that these workouts have a huge impact on my recovery ability.

Re-Bound?

total push ups/chins 341,489

weight 198.8 bf% 22.6

I had expected my lean body mass reading on the scale to rebound a bit today. My bf% is down a little since last weigh in and my overall weight is down a bit. However I was expecting a little more drastic change. My Lose it app tells me over the last week I did 25 minutes of weight training, 90 minutes of walking on the treadmill and 15 minutes on the heavy bag. As of today's weigh in I am up about 1/2 pound of lean mass since my Dec 20th weigh in. The results according to my Tanita body fat scale have been up and down over the past two weeks. Although the truth be told I have made a little progress with a little over two hours of working out a week. Typically I have been trying to workout out 90 minutes a day. I suppose what this tells me is that I can make progress by working out less than a quarter of the time I had been working out. A typical day would have included about an hour of push ups and/or chins and maybe some weights. After this I would try to do another 30 minutes to an hour of cardio-some running, rowing ,heavy bag or skipping. So really I have spent about half the time over a whole week doing calisthenics or weights that I would have spent in a single day. I guess this is a much better ROI for my time. I threw in the walking and the heavy bag-mostly out of addiction to exercise -certainly the description in the 4 hour body suggests avoid adding anything. Maybe I should just stick to the plan. I have been getting 200 grams of protein religiously, most days it has been closer to 250 per day. Anyway up a half pound in two weeks-over a year this would work out to about 12 pounds of muscle. The geek to freak chapter in the book talks about a ten to 34 pound gain in 30 days. I was setting my sights a little higher, but tonight is a workout night.We will see what effect that has on tomorrows weigh in. I may still realize a bigger rebound. Last night I ate pasta. Pasta is my culinary nemesis. Whenever I eat some type of pasta my weight seems to go up by 3 to 5 pounds the next day.

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.