I am going o move to weekly summaries of my 4HB experiment. This post is the first of those covering the first two weeks. Daily posts felt like a food diary and despite my intent to do a weekly video diary I have just not been able to get organized.
Overall the first two weeks have been surprisingly easy. I went from 223lbs to 215lbs so a drop of 8lbs in body weight. The most noticeable thing for me was actually surprising. I typically get very light headed if I haven’t eaten and have noticed that following the diet seems to normalize the food cravings and mood swings. Equally dramatic was the protein I was able to consume on the diet. While training for the last marathon the major dietary issue I had was the sheer amount of calories I needed to consume in order to meet my daily protein targets. I was taking protein bars and protein shakes but all provides around 20g of protein for around 200 calories. On the 4HB diet I can typically consume 1600 calories a day and get 180g’s of protein. It will of course be very interesting to see how the diet stacks up for me when I start running again; next week!
There are certainly a set of habits that it is worth breaking. For me not drinking enough water is one that I am working hard on but still not as effective as I know I should be. Reverting to drinking lots of tea (and yes with milk for a double whammy has been my downfall). I need to re-red the book as the fluctuations in my weight after the binge day seem to be excessive. I seem to remember a suggested normalization mid-week but this has been Thursday or Friday for me. I think I took the binge day too seriously. This week I plan to closely target a specific amount of food and watch the effects. I have also found it very tough to keep the amount of calories constant during the week. This is partly due to work (food choice and quality at Microsoft is really not great at all) and partly due to bad planning on my part. In the first week I took lunch to work. I need to start doing this again.
I will draft another summary on Sunday and then each Sunday moving on until I get to the magic 200lbs (23lb target loss) or resign !