Five Pounds in Five Days
As a personal trainer, I am always
interested in trying new things and seeing what works. Before the start of a recent vacation, nine
days to be exact; my wife proposed dieting as preemptive strike against the
weight gain she thought inevitable while taking a trip to visit my
parents. Five pounds in nine days, which
for her is doable. My wife can be an
incredibly determined and disciplined person.
That got me thinking, and since I agreed to join her in the effort for
moral support, I wonder if I can do five pounds in five days: no thermogenic
fat burning supplements, no shedding water weight; no sitting in saunas or
those reflective, space-suit -looking ‘sweat’ suits. Challenge accepted.
I
train like an athlete, not a body builder so I have little experience with
these crazy crash diets. I prefer to
take a slower approach which leads to permanent changes. Another reason that I have never tried this
before is that eating nothing but chicken and broccoli for several days is
incredibly unappealing. To avoid this I
added a few flavor varieties into the mix with the knowledge that this may
impede the overall goal. But since I am
not competing in a contest that was not that much of a concern. I am more concerned with the process than
hitting an exact number but something has to be there as a target for the sake
of evaluation.
Our flight left on the Tuesday after
the week of the experiment. Starting on
Monday, a week before the flight, the project began. The most difficult part, like any weight
reduction program, is to get the diet right.
Exercise is easy. My wife and I
already a clean diet so cleaning it up even further meant losing some of the
variety in our normal meal planning.
Before
going into the specifics of each day let me give an outline of how my typical
day runs:
·
5:30am-Wake Up, Relieve myself, Weigh-in
·
6:00am-Finish Breakfast, wake up son feed him breakfast
·
6:30-7:00am Leave to train first client of the day
·
7:00am-9:00 Train independent clients before heading to work
·
9:00-5:00pm work, train other clients, teach group exercise classes,
work on operational responsibilities, write in the free moments
·
Morning Snack between 10-10:30am
·
Lunch 1:00-1:30
·
Workout 2-3:00pm
·
Afternoon snack after workout
·
5:30pm arrive home
·
6:00pm Dinner
·
6-8:00 Family Time, put son to sleep
·
9:30pm Go to sleep
If you are going to attempt this or
any other weight loss program, weigh yourself in the morning, before breakfast,
and after performing the morning ritual.
This is the emptiest your body will get and, thus, the most accurate
time to weigh.
Every
morning with breakfast, the following vitamins and supplements were taken:
·
1- Generic Kroger brand men’s health formula multivitamin
·
1-Spring Valley Chewable Vitamin C 500mg
·
2-Spring Valley Fish Oil 100mg/300mg Omega-3 capsules
In
addition to these supplements, in the evenings, before bed I had one more of
the vitamin C and two of the fish oil capsules.
The only other supplement used was Dymatize Nutrition’s Elite Gourmet
Whey & Casein Blend protein powder.
Another important factor to consider
with the nutritional side is that absolutely no salt was added to any of the food
consumed. The sodium in salt helps the
body retain water. Salt in all of it
forms was eliminated from the meal plan.
In fact the saltiest tasting thing that I ate was the two tablespoons of
salsa used to season the omelet every morning.
If you want to see big changes on the scale in a short time avoid
anything with salt. The lack of salt can lead to excessive water loss and
result in dehydration. To avoid this, I
drank a gallon of water per day.
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