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I seem to be stalled with weight loss right now. I’m getting leaner but not losing mass – people are commenting on how ripped I’m looking (well, compared to how I looked a month ago, I guess) but the scale just isn’t moving. I’m stuck right around 150 and I really need to be 140-ish in the next six weeks so I can cut water weight to 132. The “keep the lean mass” aspect of JB’s nutrition plan is working remarkably well – I’ve lost 90% fat and 10% lean mass.

Because I’m stalled, John, Mark and Geoff have tweaked my training program a bit, and we’ve increased the intensity of my grappling sessions so that there’s a lot more live drilling with multiple opponents. I haven’t weighed myself yet–I’ve decided to only do that every Saturday morning–but if I’m still not down in weight then we’re going to change my nutrition a bit, too. Right now I’m about 16% body fat (probably less, actually; I just haven’t measured), which means I have 126-ish lbs of lean mass. If I keep up my current proportion of LBM/fat loss (9:1), at 140 lbs I will be 10% bodyfat, which could be too low. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week or two.

Geoff’s dropped some strength work, replacing it with energy system training more targeted at fat loss, and changed the remaining strength work to be more for maintaining rather than increasing strength. I don’t pretend to know what goes on in that crazy head of his, so he can comment if he wants to provide more info. I know he’s reading. :)

This morning Krista and I did one of her conditioning workouts because nobody showed up to the morning conditioning class I’m teaching. By the way, if you’re in Toronto and want me to kick your ass on Monday and Thursday mornings at 7:30am, go to the Bang Fitness site and sign up for a pass. You can use PayPal and everything!) I then spent a few hours at the Starbucks doing some programming for my job, and met up with Mark to work my takedowns and takedown defense. After that, I did 15 rounds of hard, intense grappling with Geoff and Lachlan, another of my training partners. We did one minute on, one minute off, and they alternated with each other: I’d roll with Lachlan for one minute, get a minute rest, roll with Geoff for a minute, get a rest, roll with Lachlan for a minute, etc. It was intended to be more of a conditioning workout, but it did give me the opportunity to play with some stuff that Mark and I had worked on. I got heel hooked by Lachlan twice. Booya.

I’m exhausted and wanted to take a nap when I got home, but I’m still wound up from training and so–apart from writing this entry–I’m going to try to get some more work done before Mark and I have to get on the road for the UFC and Scott Epstein’s seminar at 10th Planet Montreal.

1. We will eat.
2. We will train.
3. We will talk about eating and training.

I got to work out with my boss and coworkers. How cool is that?

With his mad new editing skillz, John made a video of a conditioning workout that Krista, Amanda and I did at their gym. You can see it on the Precision Nutrition site, or you can just watch it here:

…and my second match (also by armbar) against my friend Nicole in about 1:50.

I hate competing in the gi but I am glad that I did the tournament, because it helped me test my mental preparation. This time, when I got to the venue, I wasn’t overly social even though I knew a lot of the people there. I went in with the express intent to fuck people up, and that’s what I did.

The mental part of the game is the one I have struggled with most, so it’s good to be testing new approaches. I think this one works for me.

Don't I look scary? Grr!

John came into town today to speak at an event, and Geoff met us at Bang Fitness so we could train together. I saw John bust out some pretty impressive lifts, and Geoff spent his time helping another of John’s athletes learn to love his serratus anterior.

That’s Geoff on your left (yes, in a Mario Bros t-shirt), John in the middle and me on the right. Oh, and Geoff’s expert profile went up on the Precision Nutrition site today. Go read it and you will see why I adore the man.

Tonight I spent a bunch of time rolling, plus got a tune up from Mark on my passing. I’m feeling really good about my game – I’m so much stronger and more athletic than I was at the Worlds, and a far more evolved technical grappler. It’ll be nice to fight this weekend – I just hope I get a match. If there is nobody in my division then I’ll fight up a weight class or two… or up an experience class if they’ll let me. I’ll have to be at my most charming with Mark and Felicia….

I start my fast right now and go until 10pm tomorrow night with just water, BCAAs, fish oil and Greens+. In this last cycle, the morning after the fast was where I saw the most precipitous drop in weight. I’m 153 right now, down from a high of 156 due to water retention that could only come from three straight days of eating salt right out of the container. Not that I’d know anything about that. Anyway, I expect to be 149 or so on Thursday morning, which is about where I need to be to weigh in at 152 this weekend.

Yesterday was the last day of my initial four-week training cycle. I ended my first cycle with an average of a little over 2 lbs of fat loss every week. I start my second four week program today with a moderate intensity week… moderate by my standards, pretty hard for most people’s, I think. I’m training about 11 hours total, but there are no conditioning or interval workouts, and minimal strength work.

Reasons this moderate week is well timed:

• I’m experiencing adrenal fatigue, which is pretty normal given my training volume. This has apparently led to an insane craving for salt, so bad that I took to eating Hawaiian Sea Salt straight from the little container.
• I started my new job today, which means my life is a-number-with-several-zeroes-behind-it less stressful than it has been.
• I am competing at the Copa Ontario this weekend. It’s a gi tournament, so I’m not particularly looking forward to it, but whatever. I don’t even know if I’m going to have somebody to fight. Anyhoo, if I compete then it’s good to take it easy in the week leading up to the tournament, so this relaxing week is just what I need.

Do you want to know what I’ve learned so far? Here are some details and observations, in no particular order.

• I have lost 10 lbs, John measured me last Tuesday at 15.7% bodyfat. When I started, Geoff measured me at at 21.7% bodyfat. I think both were relatively low, which means I think my absolute lean mass number is probably lower than it looks, but the proportion of fat vs LBM lost is still striking. People in the gym are already seeing a difference. The fat loss/LBM retention on this program is quite impressive.
• I am able to sustain a very high volume and intensity of training, as long as my training and nutrition is periodized well.
• The biggest reason for my success with this nutrition plan was that I always had food with me. If there are no other rules you follow in your diet, follow this one: prepare your food. Because I spent 20 minutes every morning building my meals for the day, I always had exactly the food I needed to have. I had my regular meals, my post-workout meals, my supplements, and written notes on anything else I was supposed to do (like how much water or tea I needed to have). I put all of this in containers and carried them with me when I left the house.
• I had almost no injuries. At the end of last week I had some swelling in my lower back and a tight psoas and rectus, but two acupuncture treatments and two ART treatments later I’m all better. This afternoon my doctor proclaimed my recovery “miraculous”.
• I experienced minimal increased hunger for the first three weeks; in fact, I rarely felt the need to eat more, and it never drove me crazy. This last week–the highest training volume week–was definitely worse than any of the other weeks, but still manageable. (I did go a bit medieval on some rutabaga and yam frites yesterday. By medieval I mean I ate most of a large yam and probably pretty much a whole rutabaga.)
• I am significantly stronger than I was when I started with Geoff. The guys I am rolling with have noticed it and started commenting on it. Oh, and last week I beat my previous barbell bench press record by one rep – 3 reps at 135 lbs!

Before I started this program, if you had asked me if you could get stronger, leaner and better conditioned all at the same time, without drugs, I would have said no. Now it’s obvious that you can, and even do it at a rate of weight loss that’s over 2 lbs/week.

How did this happen? Well, the details are for John and Geoff to explain, but here comes the lecture anyway.

This was not some innate skill or gift that I have for getting lean and fit. I was never an athlete at all. Two years ago I was over 200 lbs. I got the short ends of the genetic and personal history sticks, with my apple shape and my upbringing in the deep fried, high sugar, pre-packaged industrial food culture of the southern US. I had food habits that would make Ronald McDonald cringe.

My results so far are from a combination of science and enthusiasm. I got smart people to review my life and my goals, and to give me a plan to meet them. I reviewed that plan, asked clarifying questions, and listened to the answers that the smart people gave me.

Next… this is the super secret key to success that I’ll share with you…

I did exactly what they said.

I didn’t second guess them. I didn’t argue. I didn’t negotiate. I did exactly what they said. And you know what? It worked.

I followed the plan they gave me for a simple reason: it was clear that I couldn’t get to where I wanted to be by doing what I had been doing. How do I know that? Because what I was doing was not being a lean, incredibly strong 132 lbs. If I had known what to do, I would have done it. “I don’t know; will you help me?” is just about the most powerful and life-changing sentence I have ever uttered.

To celebrate my departure from the corporate world, I dyed my hair pink.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me.

“Pink”, I said. “I’ll trust you to decide what that means.”

And so she did. With her kids screaming downtairs, Miranda went at  me with scizzors, a razor and a fantastic permanent hair colour. Two hours later I looked in the mirror and the drab gotta-grow-my-hair-long mane became a fabulous multi-toned, face-framing, bright pink celebration of freedom and joy. Booya.

Watch me relate this story to the rest of my post: Miranda is an expert. If I had sat in her chair with a definite idea of what I wanted my hair to look like, it would probably be yet another boring style, because I know even less about hair than I do about nutrition and strength training.

Now I have the kind of hair that makes people stop me on the street to ask me where I got my it done. I’m well ahead of my body composition goals, I’m happy, I’m strong, and I’m able to sustain a training intensity that would make baby Jesus cry. Why? Because I said, “I don’t know. Will you help me?”

So, yeah, I quit my job. In one week I will be working full time for Phil and John at Precision Nutrition as their IT gal. This is the life change I was talking about – I now have a situation that most people dream of.

I have to head to the gym, but I’ll talk more about the work at PN in another entry. I’ll leave you with this thought, though: don’t let what other people think you should do get in the way of what you want to do.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a few days. I have been busy quitting my job and changing my life.

Weighed in at 151.4. Less than 20 lbs to go.

Over the last two years–and especially the last few months–my relationship to food has changed considerably. I grew up in the southern US, home of one of the worst diets in the world: everything is deep fried, sugar filled or made of highly processed flour. The worst stuff is all three. For such an agriculturally based society, there is a seemingly paradoxical dependence on the industrial food supply, and a remarkable lack of connection with the natural world through food. I, like virtually everybody else my age or older, fell victim to the industrial/fast food attitude of the 20th century.

Since I started actually paying attention to Krista’s nutrition advice (sorry it took me so long), I’ve begun to see food as something different. Food is no longer fuel. It’s an experience to be enjoyed; a way to connect to my ecosystem; and a way to improve my health.

Pollan also wrote a book  called In Defense of Food, in which he set out three simple rules for eating:

1. Eat food.
2. Not too much.
3. Mostly plants.

As I have learned more about food, I have grown fonder of it, and along the way I figured out that my grandmother’s admonishment to eat my veggies… makes a lot of sense. I mean, I have known for a while that I should be following some version of Pollan’s rules (bless his heart for summing it up in seven words), but I’m just now starting to understand why. Precision Nutrition has helped a lot, too. I mean, they optimize eating for health and athletic performance, but at its core the Precision Nutrition system is simply a way of looking at food that says that it should be both tasty and good for you. You can just do what they tell you and you’ll be leaner and healthier, but John encourages people to learn about food, with the idea that once you understand WHY you’re doing something, it becomes easier to do it. My own experience has borne this out.

Tree hugging hippies at Fiesta Farms, my neighbourhood's dose of food awesomeness.

I think about food all of the time. I think about how to get more variety in my diet; where I can acquire game meats and organic veggies instead of extracting substances barely deserving of the “food” descriptor from the industrial food supply; what herbs will go well with the lamb stew that I put in the crockpot yesterday. I answered one of those Internet meme quizzes a few weeks ago. It asked for my favourite store, which I had to specify as Fiesta Farms, the independent, local-food-oriented grocery store three blocks from my house. (Which, by the way, now offers a variety of game meats thanks to their new butcher shop manager. Oh how I love Fiesta Farms.)

These days, as I walk through the store, I now look at where food comes from. Beef from the US? No thanks, I’ll pay $1.00 extra to get the organic grass-fed beef from Rowe Farms in Guelph. Ooh, these tomatoes are grown locally. How many varieties of cabbage can I get on this shopping trip? I’ll bet my salad would be even better with the red cabbage

And do you know why I do that? Because I now understand that the more varied my food choices are, and the more direct the path from the food chain to my tummy, the better the food tastes and the better it is for me. It’s awesome to finally have a great relationship with food.

Last spring we planted a vegetable garden in my postage stamp of a back yard. It wasn’t hugely successful, but to be fair it was my first attempt: I got my own tomatoes, kale, and a sprinkling of a few other veggies. We made some mistakes–such as not properly placing crops and having to move them just as they were taking hold–that affected the yields. I’m smarter now, and this year I’m going to be more careful about where things go. But you know, I’m just as excited about my 2009 garden as I am about competing in the ADCC trials in May.