Weight Loss

On Friday I paid $85 for my first Bod Pod assessment at Totum in Toronto.

The Bod Pod is one of several techniques for testing body composition (lean body mass and body fat), and is considered reasonably accurate compared with the more common tests like calipers and electronic impedance.

My appointment was at 8am, so I had to skip breakfast and drank 2 glasses of water about 2 hours prior to the test, and I stripped down to a pair of Speedos for the test.

I’ve been doing a lot of interval training during my current weight loss cycle. Initially I was doing 100m sprints but that became less appealing as the weather got colder.

I watched Dr Michael Mosley’s “The Truth about Exercise” and it reminded me that sprints can also be done indoors. The High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) plan that Dr Mosley examines in the documentary comprises of 3 x 20s sprints on an exercise bike with a minute of active rest between sets, so I decided to try it out on the spin bikes at my gym.

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.

Here’s a chart tracking my current weight. My starting weight is 166lb.

To kick-off my fat loss cycle I’ll be doing a 24h fast today (Saturday), and then my plan for the next 5 weeks will be as follows:

• Mon: Upper body workout
• Tues: 24h fasting day plus sprint workout
• Wed: Lower body workout
• Thurs: 24h fasting day plus sprint workout
• Fri: Upper body workout
• Sat: Rest
• Sun: Rest

On my fasting days, I’ll eat a light dinner around 6:30pm. If I get too hungry then I’ll have some raw celery and carrots on hand to snack on. Other than that it’ll just be green tea, water and black decaf coffee.

I’ve had great success on Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Body “Slow Carb” diet. I lost about 20lb in a little over a month and have come to really enjoy eating this way. What surprised me most was that I actually had 20lb to lose. I’m 5'10" and was 170lb at the start of the diet, and now I’m down to 150lb and can almost see my abs.

Being vegetarian presented some limitations but overall it was pretty easy. Here’s what my typical day looks like: