My NROL Experience

[Victoria]

Originally Posted by RacerBill

Another idea -- just to give you an idea what portions should be like and to get you used to things -- is Berardi's "One Size Fits All" diet. It's a boring plan to follow (six meals per day, but only four recipes, except you can swap around some veggies) but it helps get things on track.

Bill, where is this from? I don't remember seeing it in the PN binder.

[LWilson212]

Hi Tom-

One thing I noticed on the diet front for myself - with doing New Rules and eating enough to be satisfied and not counting calories, I am maintaining. The last month or so, I have been trying to match my calories to activity, based on the HELL parameters. I've been losing slowly and I can see progress, but I am hungry, especially in the late afternoon. At least for me, losing weight means periods of being uncomfortably hungry and then only eating until I'm not hungry anymore, but not full either. I have been trying to plan better, include lots of veggies, etc, but the bottom line seems to be that I have to be hungry sometimes.

I'm thinking that I will only try to diet aggressively for maybe two months at a time, hopefully see some progress and then maintain for a while, and then try again.

Leah

[UConnJulie]

Tom,
Many call that type of row a "Renegade Row" ... they're fun!! Looks like a good workout ... it will be interesting to see how it works for you.
Regarding the eating ... what have you come up with? What about tweaking TNT a bit ... reduce your saturated fats a bit, and up your veggies? You can have a large volume of fibrous veggies to trick yourself into seeing a large portion of food. I try to stick to a palm-sized portion of protein, and since I'm eating carbs now, a portion that I can fit in my cupped hand. The veggies I eat as much as I want/can, sometimes 2+ cups per meal!!

[Mahler]

Tom,
I feel your pain. I, too, went through the learning curve that taught me that I cannot eat more simply because I work out. Sad but true. Two things that seem to keep me on track, and I have no expert opinions to back this up. First, I try to limit my caloric intake after 6 pm. Second, I try to keep my percentage of protein, vs carbs and fats as the highest of the three.

[L'ilJ]

Originally Posted by LWilson212

Hi Tom-

One thing I noticed on the diet front for myself - with doing New Rules and eating enough to be satisfied and not counting calories, I am maintaining. The last month or so, I have been trying to match my calories to activity, based on the HELL parameters. I've been losing slowly and I can see progress, but I am hungry, especially in the late afternoon. At least for me, losing weight means periods of being uncomfortably hungry and then only eating until I'm not hungry anymore, but not full either. I have been trying to plan better, include lots of veggies, etc, but the bottom line seems to be that I have to be hungry sometimes.

I'm thinking that I will only try to diet aggressively for maybe two months at a time, hopefully see some progress and then maintain for a while, and then try again.

Leah

Leah is dead-on. I usually know my calories are low enough when I'm hungry. When I don't watch my calories and just eat to hunger, I maintain or sometimes gain a little bit. If you can put something together that's intuitive...maybe a little bit of hunger can be your guide. At any rate, it's not easy.

[stingo]

Yes, more planning and a return to making my own food on a regular basis will help. Also including more vegetables will help as well. That and quelling the rebellion against dieting lol. I'll make it through this but I think it's more a mental challenge than a physical one.

I'm also reviewing the new workout. Coming from NROL and being used to (and liking) A and B days, this will take some getting used to doing the same exercises each workout. (Does it make a difference?) From my limited knowledge (of what I've done in NROL), it looks like a fat loss oriented full body workout, with exercises requiring more technique it seems. Will see when I do it tomorrow.

[stingo]

Oct 4th, 2007

Arm 40
Chest 115
Waist 107.5
Abs 111.5
Hips 117.75
Mid-thigh 65.75

Dec 11th, 2007

Arm 40.4 (+0.4)
Chest 114 (-1.0)
Waist 108 (+0.5)
Abs 112 (+0.5)
Hips 115 (-2.75)
Mid-thigh 66 (+0.25)

Averaging between a caliper test and a bioimpedence test, my body fat % is 27.26%, which for my measured weight (241) would yield:

65.7 lbs fat wt
175.3 lbs lean wt (+3.3 from October)

Current Goal Pct of 25% @ target weight of 234.

[stingo]

Of course - when you eat to true satiety it would only make sense that the body would maintain weight or maybe gain a little. And yes, it is difficult to do, but listening to my body will probably get me a lot further (and with less bookkeeping hassle) than other methods. I would distinguish though between mouth hunger and stomach hunger. I think the second is what I need to listen to and find a way of curbing the former, since the former can have me eating FAR more than the latter would support.

[kfisherx]

Originally Posted by stingo

Of course - when you eat to true satiety it would only make sense that the body would maintain weight or maybe gain a little. And yes, it is difficult to do, but listening to my body will probably get me a lot further (and with less bookkeeping hassle) than other methods. I would distinguish though between mouth hunger and stomach hunger. I think the second is what I need to listen to and find a way of curbing the former, since the former can have me eating FAR more than the latter would support.

Actually this doesn't make sense at all to me. If you habitually overeat (for example) you will find that if you listen to your body, it tells you to overeat. I am an under-eater by habit so I am currently having to reprogram my body to learn how to eat.

The only way I know to do this is to count calories and measure portions. Yes it is a pain but I found there is really no other good way to reprogram the body that is used to eating incorrectly. For me it required a complete lifestyle change and changing paradigms as well as getting educated about what food is and isn't. My trainer requires that I log all food and also helps me with this education. currently I am eating 6 or more times a day. I also spend about 2 hours every weekend cooking food and preparing meals for the week.

[RacerBill]

Originally Posted by Victoria

Bill, where is this from? I don't remember seeing it in the PN binder.

JB outlines it in the No Nonsense Nutrition DVD. He tweaked the plan later on, and now there are four menus posted on the PN forums, for fat loss or hypertrophy, one each for men and for women. Shoot me a PM if you want some help finding it.

Originally Posted by stingo

Of course - when you eat to true satiety it would only make sense that the body would maintain weight or maybe gain a little. And yes, it is difficult to do, but listening to my body will probably get me a lot further (and with less bookkeeping hassle) than other methods. I would distinguish though between mouth hunger and stomach hunger. I think the second is what I need to listen to and find a way of curbing the former, since the former can have me eating FAR more than the latter would support.

I think you've nailed the root of the problem. Learning to distinguish between the two is tough.

[Espi]

My 2 cents on dieting for fat loss. Eat (substantially) more on training days and (substantially) less on rest days. Eating more than 3 meals is really not necessary, unless you have (reactive) hypoglycemia issues, viz. get a too low blood sugar level soon after a meal.
Instead, eating 3 meals on rest days allowed me to eat little enough in 1 day, without really getting hungry or being disappointed by measly-sized meals. I've tried the 5-6 meals/day method for over 3 years and all it did was making me overeat at every meal. Heck, it's even easier to eat ZERO calories than to eat few calories in 4-5 meals!
Yet, 2 meals (which I've done for 2 months) made maintenance drop.. I still lost weight as calorie intake dropped even lower. With 3-4 meals/day maintenance shot back up again to expected levels.
On training days I'll be eating smaller meals, mostly 4-5 meals and then of course WO carbs. This has worked quite well for me.
Of course: carbs are low (near ketogenic) on rest days and higher (sometimes not much, sometimes a LOT) on training days.

[stingo]

You make some good points Espi - how many days in your week are training days? If I took the days I did any sort of a workout, I'd have 5 - 3 for weight training, 2 for cardio (spinning) - would all those days be 4-5 meals or 3 meals?

[Espi]

For my diet plan, working out every other day just works out best. 3x/wk wasn't enough, and I don't like working out 2 days in a row either as I tend to overtrain easily. Also, in reality I'm really a lazy person at heart and I tend to lose enthousiasm for lifting when I work out too often (either lifting and/or cardio).

When you're working out nearly every day, it makes things more complicated.
In some other forums where people tend to work out more often there's been a lot of variations posted for carb cycling, which is essentially the same thing, except that most of these people still believe in the 6 meals = best approach.

Approaches I've seen is
low carb on rest and/or SS cardio days
moderate carb on lifting days or HIIT days
high carb on lifting plus HIIT/interval cardio days.
I'd rate spinning classes to be interval cardio.

In case you'd only have 1 real rest day (or 1 day with just SS cardio), I don't really think you can sustain all of your activities with a very low carb intake. You'd either lose energy or ... fall off the bandwagon and start cheating. And end up eating higher carbs anyway, but feel guilty about it.
This is one other reason to always combine more intense cardio with lifting so that the lower intensity day is a true rest day (with only SS cardio), so you can allow yourelf to take both carbs & calories lower.

Some people who do intermittent fasting, insist on raising calories/carbs on rest days and fast on training days, but I can't see a good reason why you'd want to. Though in the past I'd do exactly this. Workouts (without enough carbs to fuel them) would exhaust me so much that I'd lose my appetite completely and then overeat the next day. That makes you totally miss that 'window of opportunity' during/after exercise when you are most carb sensitive. Recovery is after all, much faster when you eat enough on lifting days.

As for reducing meal frequency: it's just a dieting tool. When you want to reduce calories , it's easier to just skip a meal and then have a normal amount of calories in the meals you do eat. Again, this is not so good when your blood sugar runs low, but most people who are in need of shedding more body fat, blood sugar mostly gets too high, rather than too low. Another reason to only increase carbs when exercising.

[stingo]

All rests 30 secs, all weights per hand (dumbbells) unless otherwise noted.

A: DB Clean & Jerk: 2x8@25

B: Stairs (2 at a time): 3 Flights x 4

C: Plank, 30 secs, 45 secs, 2 minutes (see below)

D: Renegade Row: 2x8@10

E: Lat Pull/Shoulder Press Combo 1x15@50/15, 1x15@60/15

F: Saxon Side Bend 2x10@10

G: Medicine Ball Lift (from Bosu) 2x10@12

Notes:

A: DB Clean and Jerk - this is one exercise I've wanted to learn how to do, so I'm glad it's in the program. I think I have to get lower for when I catch the weights in preparation for the press up. Still, I think I've improved from Monday, so yay.

B: Stairs - the Y has 6 flights of steps. The building I work in has 3. The original prescription was 2 times up the Y's steps, so I did 4 times up the steps here. Made me feel good to know that before I could barely get up them once, now I can make it 4 times. Still, I think a better measure of progress will be to time how long it takes me to do it.

C: Plank - I'm not sure why but this is proving one of the more difficult exercises in the routine. Particularly the 2 minute set. I was only able to complete that last set in 15 second spurts with rests, so clearly some work is needed here.

D: Renegade Row - These felt better today than Monday, so I think the left arm is starting to come around. Least I hope so. No pushup part yet but I did use dumbbells in both hands.

E: Lat Pull/Shoulder Press Combo - An odd combination, but I think I will be upping the weights on this next time.

F: Saxon Side Bend: Another new exercise to me - I will have to work on getting proper extension.

G: Medicine Ball Lift: Did this from the bosu ball as i'm not ready for the floor just yet. Progressed in this from Monday as balance was better, even if my left hamstring cramped a bit.

Overall: A good workout. Some encouraging signs my shoulder is healing and improvements in technique in most exercises requiring it. I'm concerned about only doing one workout (not an A routine and B routine) but I'll trust the trainer that he knows what he's doing.

[stingo]

Something for the holidays, from the American Diabetes Association Holiday Cookbook. I've been told it smells like potpurri, but the taste is excellent - perfect for those cold winter nights when a hot drink before the fire.

4 cups unsweetened apple juice
3 cups unsweetened pineapple juice
2 cups (unsweetened) cranberry juice cocktail or cranberry juice
1/4 teaspoon (fresh) ground nutmeg
1 cinnamon stick
4 lemon slices

Put all ingredients (adjust number of lemon slices to taste - I use 5 myself) in a suitably sized saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes. Best served hot.

If you want to make an adult version, dark rum plays well with it. For my taste I'd say 3/4 cup to a cup should do it. Just be careful, as the alcohol will be well hidden.