You need to believe that you can change, which is equivalent to believing that your story is a quest, a metamorphosis. Get out of your normal world, and into the life-changing adventure.
Because the physical game is so controllable, it is a good entry point to the habit of winning games.
Behavioral decisions are affecting hormones in the population
- More cortisol
- Less testosterone
- More oestrogen
- Less growth hormone
- Less BDNF
Hormones are affecting behavior, making people indecisive, hysterical etc.
When you are in caloric deficit for a long time, leptin takes a nosedive, and fat loss stops.
Hormones have physical, social and cognitive effects.
Sugar and carbs are fine if you confine them to one day per week.
Lower hGH leads to faster aging. Autophagy goes screwy. Longer daily fasts means more autophagy.
Poor sleep (quality as well as quantity) associated with higher mortality, less muscle, more fat, irritability and cognitive problems.
Eating carbs late at night causes more hGH release during sleep. (?)
Eating carbs and protein before bed helps you sleep better.
Cheat days will boost leptin.
Overtraining leads to less T, less hGH, more cortisol.
Having more hGH makes sleep better.
hGH + good sleep reduces cortisol.
Less than 5 hours sleep can reduce testosterone 15%. Less sleep also produces ghrelin, making you hungrier.
Supplementing T and hGH together created three times as much fat loss as either alone.
The increased circulation following exercise improves cognition.
Irisin - A newly-discovered hormone. Promotes insulin sensitivity. Turns white fat into brown fat. Muscle contraxion > PDC1 > FNDC > irisin.
Thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) and leptin - Prolonged caloric restriction leads to these dropping, lowering basal metabolic rate.
Cortisol - Faster aging, worse sleep, lower sex drive, more belly fat. Endorphins inhibit cortisol.
A lot of cotisol releases gonadotropin-releasing hormone, lowering sperm count and sex drive, while at the same time increasing gonadotropin-inhibiting hormone.
Going on holiday a lot made people 30% less likely to die from heart disease in one study.
On a see-saw with hGH
Insulin - Makes you sleepy. When you eat a lot of carbs, each gram of carb comes to create a bigger insulin response. Eat enough carbs to enjoy them, including infrequent binges to create spikes, to result in overall better insulin sensitivity. Linked to prostate and pancreatic cancer.
Impairs vasodilation: weaker erections.
Don't drink fruit juice.
The more sensitive your insulin is, the more your nutrients will be directed into building muscle.
Supplements - Protein. Greens drinks (to give micronutrients as well). Fish oil. Vitamin D (connected to leanness, regulates leptin, regulates thyroid, lowers cortisol).
Some supplement companies have 'GMP' stamp. This means 'Good manufacturing practice'. Look for this.
Testosterone - Low testosterone makes you go with the crowd, not speak up, not take things on yourself. Men with high oestrogen and low T are 3 times more likely to be depressed.
Luteinizing hormone can lower T.
The more T you have, the more protein you can turn into muscle.
Lifting weights boosted T up to 49%
Eat fat. Fat is important to sex hormones. Polyunsaturates linked to sperm count. PUFAs also help circulation, and therefore erections.
30% lower on average than it was 20 years ago.
Eating frequency - Breakfast is not particularly important. Eating breakfast increases your eating window (i.e. shortens your fasting window). A longer fasting window downregulates your hunger-response - you can deal with hunger better.
So focus on having a fairly long fasting window; don't worry about the number of meals eaten during that time.
Eating fewer meals probably makes you feel less hungry (leptin and ghrelin) and is definitely more convenient. Allegedly, people reduce the amount of food they eat by 30% without feeling any hungrier.
Binging - If you get timing and quantity right, the rest doesn't matter. Leptin and ghrelin are influenced by the timing of eating. Restricting food causes leptin to drop, which causes thyroid hormones T3 and T4 to drop, which causes your metabolic rate to fall. By the same token, eating a lot of calories all at once will upregulate leptin, increasing you basal metabolic rate. This is the reasoning behind the once-a-week high-calorie day.
Fasting -
20-fold increase in growth hormone in men after a 24-hour fast.
Fasted training trains your muscles to recover quicker and use energy more efficiently. An exception to this is eating BCAAs before training.
Insulin sensitivity is highest when you've fasted for 8 hours or more, and highest when you've exercised. By this logic, if you train in the morning without having eaten, then eat afterwards, you're training your body to burn fat in the mornings.
When you're not eating, your body turns to its own cells for energy.
Research at the University of Utah suggested that people who fasted just 1 day per month were 40% less likely to have clogged arteries.
- Fast 16 hours a day (e.g. 7pm to 11am, 9pm to 1pm)
By feeding-up before the fast day, you hit the fast when leptin levels are high, i.e. when your body is likelier to burn fat.
Plan
Intermittent fasting every day, i.e. 16-hour overnight fast.
- Phase 1 - Insulin. Limit carbs, and time them for when they are most needed.
- The workout is density-focused circuit training to tire both wind and muscles. This is very good for insulin sensitivity.
- Eat carbs before bed, then fast for 16 hours. Do this every day.
- Eat slightly below maintenance level of calories.
At 74kg and 12% bodyfat, I'd eat 1800kcal on nonworkout days and 2000kcal on workout days.
- Eat about 80% of maintenance calories.
- First 2 weeks are designed to dramatically increase insulin sensitivity. The second two weeks are designed to reintroduce carbs into your diet while keeping good insulin sensitivity.
- Weeks 1 and 2: No carbohydrates (except vegetables) on the 3 non-training days per week. Only 30g of carbs on other days.
- Week 3: Up to 75g of carbs post-workout, 0g other days
- Week 4: 100g post-workout, 50g other days.
- In all weeks, consume all your carbs post-workout, which should be about 3-4 hours before sleeping
- Phase 2 - Testosterone.
- One feast day a week. This normalizes leptin, T3, T4 and insulin, and prevents metabolic slowdown.
- Don't eat at all the day after the feast day. 32-40 hours of fasting.
- 16-hour fast the other 5 days of the week.
- At 74kg and 12% bodyfat, I'd eat 107g of carbs on workout days, 43g on nonworkout days.
- Training is circuit training, more intense than the previous phase
- 5 minutes alternating an upper-body compound exercise and a lower-body one, as many total reps as you can manage. Then different exercises in a different circuit for 6 more minutes, a third circuit of different exercises for 4 more minutes.
- Phase 3 - Growth hormone.
- Lactic acid training. High reps (up to 20) and some static holds. High intensity.
- Apparently lactic acid is produced most during the concentric phase of an exercise, so that is exaggerated in this phase.
- Eat above maintenance any day you lift, below any other day. (You're in caloric deficit overall for the week, so you lose fat, but eating hard and lifting hard a few days, so you still gain muscle.)
- At 74kg and 12% bodyfat, I'd eat 143g of carbs on workout days, 72g on nonworkout days.
- Weeks 1-2, higher calories, higher carbs, heavy lifting followed by lactic acid training
- Week 3, below maintenance calories, maximal-strength training only.
- Week 4 +, cheat days, alternating the two types of workout
- Phase 4 - Integrated.