4HB Challenge - Day 3

Day three and going strong! We made today our "binge" day, as prescribed by the 4 hour body diet. Though he recommends waiting at least 5 days for your first binge day, it would've been pretty hard to make the diet work around the big 4th of July festivities at my Aunt Kelly & Uncle Dave's house.

Yesterday was rough because I realized after Monday how much food I'd actually have to eat to get to 3500+ calories a day. So I ate, and ate, and ate. And barely made it - 3586 calories yesterday. It was a challenge to eat that many calories, mainly due to the fact that our diet is so healthy and low calorie. Each meal only averages out to around 300 calories, so either I can eat 10 meals a day, or figure out some other way. I ended up deciding to supplement with a few glasses of whole milk a day, two of them being part of my protein shake. It actually makes the protein powder taste better, so it worked out nicely.

Also last night I got a few supplements. I didn't want to go overboard and buy a huge stack of stuff, so I stuck with the basics and got:

 - 3.5g creating pills, to be taken once in the morning and one at night, 

 - 300mg alpha lipoid acid pills. From the book: 

Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) is a potent antioxidant and free radical scavenger that has been proven to regenerate vitamin C and vitamin E; restore levels of intracellular glutathione, an important antioxidant that declines with age; and increase excretion of toxic heavy metals such as mercury.

 - GNC Pro Performance Amplified Mass. I was running low on protein powder and figured this would help with caloric intake.

 - Glutamine powder. It helps with recovery of muscles after a workout, but also is prescribed to aid with food absorption. I am taking 80g per day for the first 5 days of the workout/diet, and then just after workouts from then on. It's a lot, but it doesn't seem to have any side effects, and making sure all that food goes to the right places is going to be a big plus.

Now for an exciting new addition to the Challenge! My youngest brother Michael was so skeptical of my workout plan that it ended up in me challenging him as well! He's an avid gym goer, 6 days a week for an hour or hour and a half at a time. Now there's nothing wrong with that if you enjoy going to the gym that much. I don't. I'd rather go rock climbing, or mountain biking, or any other outdoorsy type recreation. The 4 hour body's "minimal effective dose" approach really resonated with me, and I'm excited to see if I can actually put on more muscle in 30 days by only going to the gym a total of 4 hours, which is less time than Michael does in 3 days. We're going to see who can put on more lean muscle, and if I win he gets to buy me a new pair of vibram five fingers, and if he wins, well, I'll let you know when he lets me know. But yeah! I'm excited to have something to compare this workout to.

As far as overall feeling, it was nice and hard at the same time today to binge. I don't eat tons and tons of crappy food all the time anyway, so it's pretty normal for me to eat pie, cookies, and all the other desserts, as well as eat large helpings of bbq, and drink lots of soda at these family gatherings. It was a little fun to know that eating all this stuff today is actually going to help me lose weight in the long run.

I feel really good. My energy level seems a little higher, my "insides" feel like they've been optimized a little bit, and overall am really looking forward to the results that this month long experiment brings. Who knows, it might turn into our lifestyle if it all goes to plan.