Subject: My bodyopus experience.week 4 Copyright Lyle McDonald 1996 Date: 1996/05/27 Ok, it's week four and here's the score so far. Three site measurement: Here's how it worked out: Date: 5-13-96 5-20-96 Change Pec (mm) 7 6 -1 Abs (mm) 27 27 NC Thigh (mm) 8 9 +1 Supra iliac (mm)* 18 17.5 -.5 Total of 3 (mm) 42 42 NC Bodyweight: 154 151 -3 BF%: 12.2% 12.2% NC Fat mass: 18.8 18.4 -.4 lbs Fat free mass: 135.2 132.6 -2.8 lbs My week at a glance: ------------------- Sunday: Did something a bit different this Sunday. Some friends wanted to go riding so we put in about 25 miles cycling Sunday morning. I did this ride on an empty stomach and a dose of ECA. Later that evening, I also went skating for about 30' with some other friends. Now, Dan says not to exercise during recomposition as it will affect the carb-up (not surprisingly) so the question is how will this affect overall results. From above, you can see that fat free mass was down from last Monday but there's no way to tell whether it was water/glycogen or actual muscle. Finished carbing at 6pm with Ultra Fuel and Designer. Took 50 mg vanadyl at bedtime. Monday: About an hour or so of weights. Squats stalled a bit from last week. But, my legs were tired from Sunday. Upper body lifts (chins and dips) both improved as did leg curls. Diet: Ate my standard 1700 calories or so (recall bodyweight is 153 and my body temp isn't all it should be.) My diet is pretty repetitive throughout the week. It is roughly: Post workout: 1 scoop Designer with 1 T flax and a packet of Equal Breakfast: 4 eggs scrambled Lunch 1: canned tuna with 2 T mayo Lunch 2: same as lunch 1 Dinner: 3-4 oz of ground beef with some mustard for flavor Before bedtime: 1 scoop Designer with 1 T flax and Equal Supplements: took 50 mg Vanadyl with 200 mcg chromium and 250 mg magnesium with my first and last shake in addition to my normal vitamins (one a day, extra A, C, and E, and calcium). Also took ECA twice. Tuesday: Went ahead and did another weight workout (delts, bis, tris) this morning. Followed it up with interval training on the stairmaster. Did 10X60" with 60" rest alternating between level 10 for the hard parts and level 5 for the recovery. Here's my thinking. For ketosis to occur, you need both to deplete liver glycogen and get blood glucose down. Interval training burns tons of carbs. So, if there are any carbs left at this point, this *may* be the best way to get rid of them. Diet: same as Monday. supplements: same as Monday but not vanadyl, mag, or chromium before bed as I'm already in ketosis. Notes: I hit ketosis early this afternoon which was earlier than last week. It could be any one of several things: 1. The bike ride on Sunday 2. Lifting 2 days this week 3. The intervals My guess is that 1 and 3 are the greater determinants in this case. Wednesday: In fairly deep ketosis this morning. Put in 45' on the Lifecycle to burn some of them off. Not as butt numbing as a full hour but damn close. Reading "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson helped. Great book. I highly recommend it as well as his first "Snow Crash" for those who like cutting edge sci-fi. Diet: same. Supplements: same. Other notes: none come to mind. Thursday: Ok, woke up this morning to bad news. Been monitoring morning temp (an indicator of thyroid levels and metabolic rate) and it's dropped (not that it started off great anyway). Normally, I run about 97.4-97.8 (borderline low) but this morning I was at 96.8 (very low). Dan has written that this will occur about the 4 week mark with most diets, especially if you are taking ephedrine and the like (which inhibit conversion of T4 to active T3). Subjectively, fat loss seems to have slowed (I'll measure again tomorrow morning). The question is now what? Now, I'm not using Bodyopus to get into shape for a contest so I'm not under any major time constraint here. Also, I'm hesitant to use thyroid medications. So, some time off from dieting is in order to allow T3 to upregulate and then I can begin dieting again. The question is what to do to allow for upregulation without gaining back much fat. So far, I plan to: 1. Discontinue ephedrine. I began tapering today taking two doses of 25 mg ephedrine, 200 mg caffeine, an aspirin and 1 gram of L-tyrosine. Tomorrow, I'll drop to one dose and then I'll stop for at least two weeks. 2. Increase calorie level. Not sure how much here. I suppose if I continue with Bodyopus, it's not as critical but low carb diets do lower thyroid somewhat so adding some carbs back into my diet might be helpful. But, the lowered thyroid will lower insulin sensitivity allowing for more fat storage. Dan's isometric diet might be the best choice at maintenance calories and using chromium, magnesium, and vanadyl to keep insulin sensitivity up. Wish I had some glucophage right now. 3. Activity. Not sure on this one. On the one hand, too much aerobics will definitely lower T3. But, cutting my activity too much may allow for fat gain. I've been dicussing this with someone else in private email and he thinks that there may be some critical intensity/duration threshhold that will give you upregulation of T3 without burning too much muscle. 4. I seem to recall Dan mentioning yohimbe to treat low body temp but do I really want to be seen buying Twinlab Dick Fuel at GNC? And, seeing as I don't have a girlfriend right now, do I want raging hard-ons all day? Any ladies out there into modem email sex? Nah, never mind. I just can't see the appeal of my typing "I'm licking your butt" for some reason. Well, Dan suggests just adding some yohimbine to my stack (8mg 3X/day) to raise NE levels and hopefully body temp so I figure I'll try this before I try any of the other options above. Oh, you may find this interesting. I was called in to have a little talk with the director of the wellness center where I train (it's in a hospital). Usually, that is a bad thing. This week, one of my clients who's had all kinds of trouble losing weight told me that she was going to try Atkins as her sister's and mother found it to work for them. This led to a discussion of low-carb diets and Bodyopus in particular. Well, apparently, some *!$?# (4 letters, starts with 'c') RD at the hospital overheard me and wrote a complaint about it demanding to know what the center's stance on percent calories from pro,carb and fat was, blah, blah, blah. Thankfully, the director knows me well enough to realize I wouldn't tell anyone something deliberately dangerous. He is going to back me up and tell her how unprofessional she was acting by not addressing my personally and ask the dietetics department for their position stand on exercise (the implication being that if I'm not to discuss diet, they shouldn't be discussing exercis). He is so cool but I'll have to keep my voice down from now on. I would almost never suggest a Bodyopus diet to a client (which crosses the line of what personal trainers legally can and cannot say about eating. Basically, I'm allowed to say things like "Well, I've seen studies showing that chromium picolinate improves insulin sensitivity." But, as soon as I say "I want you to take chromium picolinate, I'm prescribing a diet and I'm in trouble." Yes, this is fucked but that's life.). But, if asked, I will tell someone what I feel is the 'truth' about those types of diets. And, considering that I've been on one myself, I feel more qualified to do this than some fucking RD who has only read a bunch of biased shit (like two recent articles condemning lowered carbs in the prestigious University California Berkeley Wellness Newlsetter and another called Environmental Nutrition) and is blowing smoke out of her ass. Just to be safe, I went down to the biomed library and dug up a bunch of research into ketogenic diets in case I have to defend myself to this stupid bitch. And, please don't take my comments as misogynistic or anything like that. Had it been a male RD, I would be calling him a stupid dickhead. I'm an equal opportunity hater. Anyway, this kind of has me pissed off today which takes a lot of doing (i.e. to get me pissed off). As I was much pissed off, I went down to the biomed to look up some of the research on ketogenic diets in case I have to defend myself to this RD. While there, I came across a couple of interesting studies but one stands out that I'm not sure what to make of. The researcher in question basically wondered why low calorie dieting leads to ketone body (KB) formation when it would be more beneficial for the fatty acids to be completely oxidized yielding more energy. He has found that supplementation of pantothenic acid (B-5) prevents the formation of KB's as the fatty acid undergo complete oxidation and yield more energy per gram leading to less hunger and weakness. What I can't decide is if this is a good thing on Bodyopus. I mean, yes, complete oxidation of fatty acids would be useful but don't we want KB's to form to prevent muscle catabolism and all that good shit. Any of you biochem guys out there have an answer before I add B-5 to my stack. Ref: Leung, L.H. "Pantothenic acid as a weight-reducing agent: fasting without hunger, weakness, and ketosis." Medical Hypotheses 44(5): 403-5, 1995 May. Friday: Ok, normal morning, decided to measure body-comp again so I can check for spillover on Monday. While it looked like I wasn't progressing, skinfolds show a different story. Which shows you how inaccurate looking in the mirror can be. The 3 site came out to: Date: Friday 5-24-96 Pec (mm) 5 (down from 6) Abs (mm) 24 (down from 27) Thigh (mm) 8 (no change from 8) Supra iliac (mm)* 19 (up from 18?) Total of 3 (mm) 37 Bodyweight: 144 (down from 144 last Friday) BF%: 10.4% (down from 12.2%) Fat mass: 15 lbs (down from 17.7) Fat free mass: 129 (no change from 129) *Supra-iliac was not used for determination of bodyfat but only for comparison purposes.* This makes me question my statement last time about hydration not supposedly affecting bodyfat numbers. We'll see what happens after the carb-up on Monday as far as total lbs of fat is concerned. Notes: Oh, for you scatologists out there (and, if you don't know what the word means, I'm not going to tell you as you really don't want to know), I had a real bowel movement this morning. It wasn't a bunch of little pellets. It wasn't off color. Just a regular, normal sized, brown turd. Aren't you glad I shared this tidbit with you? Well, although non-deliberately, I began carbing without doing the depletion workout. I had planned to do it but was simply exhausted from a hellish week at work. So, I just started without. We'll see if this backs my hunch that the muscles are already good and depleted glycogen wise and that the depletion workout isn't really critical as far as results are concerned on Monday when I redo body comp. If I get shitloads of fat spillover and have a crappy workout, I'll know that all the carbs weren't going into the muscles. Saturday: Pretty much ate all day. Thing is, I got really sick to my stomach and ended up not hungry later on. I have no idea how many calories I ate today. Again, we'll see what happens on Monday. Sunday: Going for a long bike ride today with some friends. While this may screw up tomorrow's workout, it won't matter as I can't lift anyway since it's Memorial day and the gym's are closed. This ride (about 30 miles) should get me back into ketosis very quickly. Started adding Twinlab Yohimbe Fuel to my diet at a dosage of 1 capsule (8mg) three times per day. Will see what happens to body temp with this addition. Finished carbing at 6pm and took my normal 50mg of VS before bed to start driving blood glucose down. Some other notes about this week: If anyone out there wants the most comprehensive look at thermogenesis and thermogenic agents (natural, synthetic, pharmacological), I suggest you pick up "Fat Management: The Thermogenic Factor" by Daniel Mowrey from Victory Press. I came across it at the Health Food Store. Over 1400 references and looks (in mind numbing detail) at all aspects of thermogenesis, Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT) stimulation, defects in thermogenesis which may lead to obesity, etc. A total bargain at $9.95. Although it's a bit redundant and could be summed up in about 10 pages, here's the gist: 1. ECA has been found to stimulate thermogenesis through various means including stimulation of BAT. No duh. 2. The best dosing schedule is to take 2-3 doses for 5 days and then take weekends off to allow the adrenals to recover. He suggests that the very obese may need to take ECA for some time to allow BAT to grow to the point where it can work optimally. This may explain why some individuals who I know that used ECA got no results after 3-4 weeks: they didn't take it long enough to allow BAT levels to get high enough to have an effect. 3. Adrenal support (primarily herbs) should be taken to avoid adrenal exhaustion. I may have to look into this. 4. ECA should be taken 30 minute before meals to have an impact on stored bodyfat or with meals to have an impact of dietary fat. An important distinction. Taking ECA with meals may lessen side effects though. 5. White willow bark is not an acceptable substitute for aspirin in the stack although MaHuang and herbal caffeine sources are good substitutes for ephedrine and caffine. Like I said, the book gets into applied pharmacology of all these compounds in amazing detail. It also looks at the potential to use cold to stimulate BAT growth. Pick it up if you can find a copy. Still other notes: Dan pointed out to me in email that the Sliguide caliper has the same overall tension as the Lange (although the spring is twice as strong, the caliper tips are twice as big so that total tension/area is the same). Still, in repeated measurements of different subjects, I've always found the Slimguide (at least mine that is) to yield slightly smaller measurements than the Lange on the order of 2-2.5 mm per measurement. Again, it doesn't ultimately matter as long as you apply them consistently. That is, as long as I figure a 2mm difference, I can get comparative values from week to week, just not accurate values on the lookup charts (which, trust me, are total crap anyway for most of us). Go by changes in skinfold measurements, not by changes in bodyfat % by the charts. If the numbers are going down, you're losing fat. Time for the Monday morning body comop. I sure felt bloated this weekend but we'll see how much of that was water. Here's how it worked out: Date: 5-20-96 5-27-96 Change Pec (mm) 6 5 -1mm Abs (mm) 27 24 -3mm Thigh (mm) 9 8.5 -.5mm Supra iliac (mm)* 17.5 18 +.5mm Total of 3 (mm) 42 37.5 -4.5 mm Bodyweight: 151 154 +3 lbs BF%: 12.2% 10.4% -1.8% Fat mass: 18.4 16 -2.4 lbs Fat free mass: 132.6 138 +5.4 lbs Ok, observations: Pounds of fat came up .5 lbs from Friday, not surprising considering the amount of food I ate this weekend. Even though bloated to the point of bursting, I could not quit eating. Still, percent bodyfat and total pounds of bodyfat decreased yet again which is strange since subjectively I felt that I had plateaued. Morning body temp was still a bit low but I'm not sure how long it takes for the yohimbine to kick in. Since Dan didn't mention making changes to my diet or activity level via email, I'm going to forge ahead and try to get below 10% bodyfat for the first time in my life. And, don't take the increase in FFM as an increase in muscle. Number one, I'm holding water like you wouldn't believe. This also reflects undigested food which, I've been told, can comprise up to 7 (!) lbs of your total bodyweight at any given time. That plus glycogen is why my FFM is up 5 lbs from last Monday. Off to the gym (they did turn out to be open this morning) to see how my lifts faired. Ok, back from the workout and it was a killer. Since I'm about to start my speed skating season, I dropped squats back to maintenance so it's hard to say if there was progress there. Seeing as almost every activity I do outside of lifting works the quads anyway, I'm always in a state of localized overtraining for them anyhow. Went from sets of 8 on chins with 16 lbs help (on the Cybex assisted Dip/Chin machine) to one set of 7 full reps with bodyweight. The last rep was a near isometric and I held it for 6" at three positions on the final negative. I consider this major progress in this exercise. I haven't been able to do decent bodyweight chins (underhand narrow grip) since high school (when I used to be able to do 3 sets of 10 doing one set narrow undergrip, one set narrow overgrip, and one set wide grip behind the neck. Although it's quite cliche, if I only knew than what I know now about training maybe I wouldn't have been a fat little unmuscular weenie in high school. Now I'm just a lean unmuscular weenie.) Anyhow, I also went from dips with 25 lbs hanging for 8 reps to dips with 30 lbs hanging for 7 reps. Again, considering the jump in poundage (and bodyweight is up from last week as well), I would have expected a greater drop in reps than this so I can only conclude that I didn't lose any muscle and that missing the Friday depletion workout didn't make a bit of difference. Which is fine with me since it's so damn boring anyhow. I'll be skipping it from here on out. I did a couple of other exercises (cable row, incline bench) but, as this was the first week doing them, I have no numbers to compare. We'll see what happens next Monday on those exercises as well. Happy Bodyopusizing, Lyle McDonald, blah, blah, blah