Diet

I had a bad cold for 7 days and it made me miserable. It morphed from blocked nose, to runny nose and sneezing, to dry cough, to hacking cough etc.

On the 7th day I’d had enough and decided to ‘go herbal’ in a last-ditch effort to kill the thing. I made two separate batches of this god-awful witch’s brew and drank it throughout the day, and now on day 8 the cold is basically gone.

I’m at the beginning of a weight-loss cycle but I’m going to approach it a little differently this time - I’m going to do it gradually.

I got the idea from Layne Norton, a coach, bodybuilder, powerlifter, with a PhD in nutrition, and I think he mentions his diet strategy in his Metabolic Damage video.

I typically go straight into a fairly extreme low-carb diet which produces great results in a short period of time, but Layne got me thinking that it might not be the most efficient way to lose fat because I’m probably losing more muscle than I need to and wrecking my metabolism too.

I recently read Man 2.0: Engineering the Alpha by Adam Bornstein and John Romaniello.

It’s more than just another diet and exercise book - it covers the whole spectrum of manliness from behaviours and attitudes to diet and exercise, with a distinct focus on hormones.

The premise is that men aren’t manly any more because they’re hormones are all out-of-whack. I agree up to a point, but I find it hard to believe that it’s the source of all the obesity and disease in the world. I feel that “eat food, not too much, mostly plants, and exercise more” would be better advice for the majority of men.

This week was much tougher than last week. It was going ok until Thursday when I started to feel really run down and tired, and I actually thought I might be coming down with something. In fact, I went to bed at 8:30pm on Thursday night.

I also had some niggling muscular pain in my right hip so on Friday, considering the way I was feeling on Thursday, I decided to drive to the gym instead of running and I was feeling a bit better for most of the day, but then I was struck with a pretty serious case of The Grumpies on Saturday.

I just heard about the Whole 30 program, and love the approach that this diet recommends. I particularly love its zero-tolerance for cheating in any form.

It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard.

This is awesome. Man up and get some perspective on your diet.

Don’t even consider the possibility of a “slip”. Unless you physically tripped and your face landed in a box of doughnuts, there is no “slip”. You make a choice to eat something unhealthy. It is always a choice, so do not phrase it as if you had an accident…

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I started a growth cycle on Oct 1st, three weeks after my epigastric hernia surgery on Sept 13. The plan was to bulk up for 7 weeks and then do a short 4 week fat-loss cycle before heading home to Australia for Christmas. I want to be beach-ready when I get there.

Most of the excess calories during the growth cycle came from steel-cut oats. I was eating about a cup (measured raw) per day, in addition to my regular meals. I was also fasting on Sundays to minimize fat gain and to reset my insulin sensitivity.

A while ago I saw a video clip of an Olympic coach preparing “super” oatmeal - a recipe he invented for his athletes. I find oatmeal can be a little hard to digest, so I substituted quinoa and the result was a gluten-free delicacy.

This makes 4-5 servings

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups almond milk
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of ground flax seeds
• 2 tablespoons of chia seeds
• 2 tablespoons of almond butter
• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon

Method: