A few months passed on the program and I gained weight.  In desperation and because I thought it was my weight lifting routine, I searched for a new program and ran across Visual Impact. I started this weight lifting program but continued to eat Leangains style. Months later and still not getting the results I wanted, I stopped doing Visual Impact and started doing a reverse pyramid routine.  But I continued to eat Leangains style. The muscle was starting to pile on but so was that unwanted fat.

Now here I am a year later and I have gained 24lbs over my lowest weight.  Could some of it be muscle? Well I suppose so. After all, my clothes are still fitting although a little snug at times.  But I notice a significant layer of fat as well. Gone is the defined area of my stomach that I had last year.

There is no doubt in my mind that Leangains works. I just know that it hasn’t work for me like I had hoped it would. My biggest issue with food is that if you give me an inch,  I will take a mile. Leangains gave me that inch. It allowed me to eat carbs after a workout. Lots of them. In my mind, this transformed into chips, rice, granola bars, etc.  Deep in my mind I knew that I shouldn’t eat this stuff but I did anyway. After all muscle building needs carbs right!? I would gorge on lifting days and low carb on non-lifting days. This may work for some people but it does not work for me. I need to be strict or I fall off of the wagon way too easily. I would fall off of the wagon several times a week.

I am not happy with the way I look or feel. Therefore I am doing an intervention on myself. A rewind of sorts. Starting today I am back to 100% primal with one relaxed “cheat” day a week.  No more counting carbs, calories, or fat. I will just eat what is on the allowed foods list and go with that. On days that I lift, I may up the amount of carbs a bit but nothing crazy like I have been doing.

I will continue to lift using the Reverse Pyramid routine. I have been very happy with the muscle and strength I have received from that program. I am also going to add in some more heavy HIIT days.

My goal is to lose 25lbs in the next 2 months. It’s an aggressive approach but obtainable if I stick to the plan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoE2X1_Kd0U

The biggest downside of refeeds days is the carb hangover I feel the next morning. I am feeling it today. Swollen eyes, fatigue, nausea, headache, etc. The list goes on and on. I am not really sure what causes these hangover symptoms but its obviously from the increase in carb intake from what the body is used to.

My advice to anyone that is going low carb and has yet to give themselves a “free” day to indulge, beware of the dreaded carb hangover!

Now I am off to do some sprints. I am hoping that a good sweat will get this body back to feeling itself again.

Everything else about my primal existence remained the same. I still ate low carb high fat and my exercise and workout routines remained great. However I noticed that the cut look that I once had, started to fade. I was going in the opposite direction that I had hoped to be going.

Taking a long hard look back, the big change in my life was the reintroduction of artificial sweeteners in the coffee creamers, waters, and sodas, juices, etc.  I truly believe that even though they are “calorie” free, they can still lead to weight gain. I feel I am living proof of that.

So now I am on a mission to wipe those things back out of my life.  It’s back to water for me. Pure, simple water.

A few other things I am going to try to reduce and/or eliminate: nuts, nut butters, nut flours, cheese, and sour cream.

In a few weeks I will let everyone know if my progress has started to go back in the direction that I had hoped it would.

The other day my oldest daughter asked me if I had a six thing under my shirt. I asked her if she meant six pack and she said yes. I told her unfortunately I do not but that I was working on it. She then asked me how many more years it was going to take. I laughed it off but deep down I knew she was right. I am 32 years old and have never had anything that could be considered even close to a six pack. If I haven’t had one yet, what makes me think I can do it now?

Truth is… I don’t know. I really don’t. But that has never stopped me from trying. I never thought I would be at 10 percent body fat but here I am. Now I just need to figure out a way to get down a few more percentage points and I will be set (I hope).
I have done P90x more times than I care to remember. It has been good to me but never great. This time around I am sticking to basic weight training combined with HIIT. For nutrition I am going to be doing some intermittent fasting. The program I am going to try is based on Martin Berkhan’s refeed approach from leangains.com. It’s basically a 16 hour fast followed by a 8 hour feed. Not being a stranger to IF, I don’t see this as being too hard for me to follow. Martin goes into further details on his website so I won’t bore you with the details here but if you are interested I suggest checking out leangains.com for yourself. It’s pretty impressive stuff.

So here is the challenge for myself. I am giving myself 6 weeks to do the leangains challenge. I will have weekly updates and progress photos as I see fit. At the end of the 6 weeks I will post my thoughts on the program.  I think it’s going to be a great challenge and I hope to debunk some of the common misconceptions about frequency and number of meals required to not only lose fat but to gain lean muscle.