Bravo for Ben and Jerry's, Burritos, Burgers, and Beer

No accompanying article this time. Just a log update of the last week, with more photos.

Plans for next 3 days:

Today, Tuesday (8/31): Heavy training day + 1200-1500 kcal

Wednesday (9/1): Depletion session + 1200-1500 kcal

Thursday (9/2): Fast

Friday (9/3): Daytime fast + huge dinner

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My Previous Week's Diet (8/24 - 8/30)

Highlight meals:

1. Grocery shopping

NEAT, Exercise, and Appetite

NEAT - non-exercise activity thermogenesis, "the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. It ranges from the energy expended walking to work, typing, performing yard work, undertaking agricultural tasks and fidgeting. Even trivial physical activities increase metabolic rate substantially and it is the cumulative impact of a multitude of exothermic actions that culminate in an individual's daily NEAT."

How much does NEAT add to daily calorie burn? The academic consensus: much more than exercise does. Lyle McDonald's own research leads him to the same conclusion:

"The amount of exercise that is or can usually be done is actually fairly trivial compared to the rest of the day.

"That is, the hour someone might spend engaged in exercise is still pretty small compared to what's happening the other 23 hours of the day."

Lyle has covered NEAT at length.

This brings us to a question we should ask ourselves when fat loss is the goal: which is arguably more important, NEAT or exercise?

The Fourfold Problem of Stubborn Fat

Stubborn fat is an issue I used to write off as myth.

4 things made me change my mind:

1. Too many people complain about it for it to be ignored

2. If Lyle McDonald and Martin Berkhan worry about it, it has to be a big deal; Lyle devoted a whole book to the topic

3. Strategies professional bodybuilders used to lower overall body fat happened to effectively target this stubborn fat

4. I realized I was probably struggling with it myself

In this post, I'll add my own input to what Lyle and Martin have already shed a lot of light on: getting around the problem of stubborn fat through changes in

1. diet

2. exercise

3. (legal) drug use

4. environment (namely, cold exposure, my own theoretical approach to the problem)

A Little Background

I've been training on and off since 13. Like Martin Berkhan, I was born with fat boy genes and continue my fight against them to this day. Although I've tried many different ways to diet (like the popular 6-meals-every-3-hours approach), I've found Martin's method the easiest to adhere to, hands down. Tons of other people swear by it as well.

My goal is simply to achieve a six pack. Sounds superficial, but it goes deeper than that. Anyone who's read Bill Phillips' monumental book Body-for-Life can appreciate how much character it takes not to overcome being fat, but to overcome the problems that often accompany it: no motivation, a tendency to get discouraged easily, and the need for instant results, among others.