FORtheCURE’s BodyBlog

I’ve received several pm’s from concerned bodyspacer’s who have told me my several pound weight loss over the last 4 days means that i am losing lean tissue (muscle) and that i need to bump my calories up.

While i sincerely appreciate the advice and concern, the reason i am losing so much weight is that I’m doing the depletion work from Lyle McDonald’s "The Ultimate Diet 2.0" and am losing significant amounts of glycogen, water and hopefully body fat. currently I’m eating at around 50% of maintenance calories which would normally be extremely catabolic, however I’ve taken certain dietary precautions and will reintroduce carbohydrate and appropriate tension loads during the weekend per protocol, that will (hopefully) rebuild any lost lean tissue.

So it’s all part of the master plan and we’ll see how it goes based upon my progress pics. thanks for your support!

-Chris

Well, after 14 (yes, 14!) days of the worst flu/cold/food poisoning/head spinning, exorcist like vomiting sickness in my life, I’m back in the gym! I tried to keep protein higher and did manage to get a few sets of weights in over the last 2 weeks but my strength was waaaaaay down and after 2 or 3 sets I was so fatigued that it felt like I had just worked out for 3 hours. So I was unable to use loads that were sufficient enough to maintain muscle mass. To add to my problem, I could keep hardly any food down and my apatite was non existent due to persistent nausea. But despite it all, miraculously, my body comp didn’t change that much! (I will update progress photos today) I got lucky though, because I didn’t man up and use my inner strength to break through the pain and ensure that I was maintaining my calories/protein/hydration. Frankly I’m surprised I didn’t atrophy into a bald, white Steve Urkle! (Did I do that??) But like everything else I’ve experienced in life, I’m going to assign the blame squarely where it belongs (my parents, I mean myself, ha ha) learn from it (ie. What will I do differently next time) and resolve to do better next time and move on! So what will I do differently the next time I’m faced with the dear god, please kill me now, wretched, I’d punch my own grandmother in the face to get better flu again?

1)      I will maintain sufficient protein intake via whole foods and if too nauseated to do so, protein shakes to prevent catabolism due to illness and reduced anaerobic activity.

2)      I will stay ultra hydrated, as being dehydrated contributes to lethargy, catabolism (probably), and may slow recovery from the illness.

3)      If strength is moderately maintained, I will hit each body part with 1 or 2 sets in an attempt to maintain mass.

4)      I will forgo aerobics, as I will more than likely already be in a caloric deficit due to food restriction from nausea. Research is equivocal as to if moderate intensity aerobic exercise will impair recovery.

What do you guys think? Any other suggestions! Thanks!

Well here are my quick thoughts. First of all, I loath NO supplements because at best they lead to a very transient raise in nitric oxide levels that probably does not alter body composition at all. We have a few small studies that suggest this is true, but much anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. The bottom line is that there are so many short coming to engineering a supp that jacks up systemic nitric oxide levels, or at least where it counts at the vascular level. Actually the hard part is maintaining the resultant vasodilation as NO is a very transient compound that is quickly inactivated. Not to mention that many other homeostatic controls kick in to decrease vasodilation independent of any increase blood flow from arginine induced NO effects. Even if you jack up NOS (there may be a few compounds that accomplish this in vivo) to limit the arginine “bottleneck”, you still have the aforementioned homeostatic mechanisms at play that make long term vasodilatation unlikely. In any event I’m wondering if we cant put this supposed short term vasodilation to good use, that is, actually use it to make a lasting change in body composition. I’m thinking that if a sufficient concoction is taken to bypasses the numerous limitations to increasing NO at the vascular level, and short term vasodilation is accomplished, this may help with lipolysis from stubborn body fat areas. If you’re doing cardio when depleted, you already have a shit ton for free fatty acids in the bloodstream but it may be possible to use yohimbine (which increases bloodflow to via a different pathway) and caffeine with a NO formulation to reach the resistant areas of the adipose tissue. There are several studies that do show that a lack of blood flow does impede lipolysis and the export of FFA from these tissues which would undoubtedly slow fat loss from these sites. What do you guys think??