Fasted Cardio and Why I'm NOT Starving:

To begin I would like to say this is the 6th "draft" I've sat down and typed in my blog... I have wanted to write but just haven't had the urge, or I start going on a rant and just decide it's not what I really want anyone to be reading about my life, or, it's just really not what I'm trying to say.  I have always felt pretty gifted as a writer/typer, but recently, I've been trying to keep my opinion more to myself and wear less on my sleeve.

We have had A LOT going on lately, and even after moving down here I felt like I needed to post a blog to update our friends and family, especially after my short-lived breakup with Facebook.

I started getting pretty negative about my posts, and I started to get annoyed with some of our family and friends who would text me usually around the same 24 hour period and ask me the same questions! When I broke up with Facebook, I had a draft typed up in here (BlogStew Part 2), that I actually came on and deleted just so that I wouldn't feel the urge to actually post it - because what it was really just turned into a rant about all the things I REALLY want to say, but I've learned over the years it's often best to grin and bear it and bite your tongue - sometimes.

Today, I am going to change the direction of my blog a little bit and talk about my relationship with food, fasting, and why I suddenly think they are really important.  This entire blog may come off as completely hypocritical given the nature of my job in the Coast Guard (and the percentage of my instagram feed that is beautiful pictures of food), however, I plan to make some adjustments (where I can - considering my boss is a big ole' pork lovin' country boy) I had a revelation recently about how our culture glamorizes and romances over food.  We spend time entertaining around food, when we're bored - we eat, we plan our excitements around food (where will we eat out? which restaurant has our favorite calamari <haha! to: dad, aimee, kyle> who makes the best bacon? what "special meal" are you making on said holiday?), we gorge ourselves unintentionally on food (then we joke about how we overate), we eat when we're sad, different foods make us happy (ice cream! chocolate! cupcakes!) ... you get the point hopefully.  Food should not be purposed for those things - food should be fuel for our bodies, plain and simple.  We hear all over the news, more and more cases of children with autism, cancer becoming a household mainstay, obesity, heart problems, liver disease - and honestly I feel that in LARGE, it's because our society has a poor relationship with food.

You may have heard that success in weight loss is 80% diet and 20% workout - which is PAINFULLY true.  You can not outrun or out-cardio a bad diet - you just can't.  Mostly because you will feel like shit, and also because your body is going to turn the crap you ate into fat regardless - so all you're doing is losing water weight temporarily (if at all), unless you completely change your body composition to lean muscle - in which case you wouldn't have been eating crap in the first place. 

What I want to address is that in addition to the 80% diet & 20% workout relationship, maintenance is 90% mental and 10% motivation.  Most people - myself included - can commit to a "good" diet, leafy green salads, lean meat, maybe a little salad dressing, a gallon of water, then a square dinner leave out the carbs (double serve them to your husband obviously), and maybe a beer (or two... glasses of wine... haha).  Little slips and 'cheats' along the way, take that 80% down little by little - and then you're really only committing to a 50% diet, and 20% workout and 30% cheating - which means you're probably not making progress.  Then you start getting frustrated because you're lifting all this heavy crap, sweating your butt off, eating 3 cups of spinach - and you've still got cellulite on the back of your thighs, or your bathing suit bottom makes a little bulge you thought for sure would be gone by summertime.

It is possible to retrain yourself mentally and physically to only need to eat to fuel your body.   

80% diet should be no big deal.

The benefit of doing fasted cardio in the morning, meaning, you wake up and do some kind of cardio exercise (more than 20 minutes and at moderate intensity - a light jog) before consuming your breakfast - and considering you didn't eat dinner after 7pm.  According to bodybuilding.com, "it is a fact that you can target the body fat stores easier when doing fasted cardio, but, before taking that as the word that fasted cardio is all you should be performing, keep in mind that fat loss is still heavily dependent on your diet". Be weary about fasted cardio if you are trying to maintain muscle mass, because your body will depend on burning fat stores and depending on the intensity of the cardio you are doing, you could wind up burning muscle mass in addition.  You can supplement lifting and maintaining muscle mass by taking BCAA's (which you can either google or I will write about in a later post when I start lifting again).  "With regards to the fat that is burned during fasted cardio, more than any other form of fat burning exercise, when done in a fasted state like this you will have a greater ability to target the stubborn fat stores on your body. These areas of the body tend to be more resistant to giving up their fat stores and are why these are generally the very last places that you'll lose body fat as well. In addition supplementing caffeine before doing your moderate intensity fasted cardio, will help to boost the levels of catecholamines in the body, which then stimulates fat burning enzymes to make fatty acids more available to be burned off, you'll see even better results yet."

"The biggest skepticism about fasting stems from the concern that it will disrupt metabolism and lead to weight gain. Yet a new study published this year in the journal Cell Metabolism suggests that limiting periods of food intake to eight hours a day might reduce the risk of obesity and obesity-related diseases."

So - maybe this doesn't sound like something you can try - or maybe it doesn't sound like something you even want to try, but I did - and I am willing to share with you my feelings on it.  I ate dinner around 4pm yesterday, I had two heaping cups of arugula, about 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese,  balsamic vinegar drizzled on it, and a cup of cottage cheese with cinnamon sprinkled on it (typically I would have eaten something with more protein like chicken or turkey but I didn't have any groceries so I was literally eating what was in my fridge).  Yesterday afternoon I made the decision that I was going to revamp my relationship with food and stop feeling like shit all the time.  I went to the grocery store, prepped my meals for the next three days, and committed to my fast.  I was hungry around 8PM but I think it was because I was unloading the groceries and I was thinking about it. I went to bed around 10, woke up at 5AM and ran 4.35 miles *see my workout on FB* on the treadmill.  I felt hungry when I first woke up so I drank some green tea (I literally made two gallons of steeped green tea and cooled it in my fridge).  I felt awesome during my run, and never felt hungry, lethargic, exhausted, or faint.  In fact, when my run was complete I had the most intense runners high ever - the best euphoric feelings I've had in a long time, following a good workout.  I sat in the sauna for about 7 minutes, showered, and left the gym around 730AM.  I ate breakfast about a half an hour later - putting me almost exactly at 16 hours, I ate half a grapefruit (to assist with my fat burning), one slice of wheat bread, and a tablespoon of 100% organic and natural peanut butter (nothing in it but peanuts - the way peanut butter should be).  Around 930 I felt like I was hungry - but I started thinking this was just my mind playing tricks on me and I just needed to battle it - I also felt pretty tired, but I was sitting in a powerpoint seminar so I just put my mind over it and thought about how strong I am mentally (and also drank two cups of black coffee).  We broke for lunch around 1100 and I ate one more slice of whole wheat bread, and a half cup of tuna (no mayo - just tuna).  I drank about 4 more cups of coffee and lots of water throughout the afternoon and finally ate dinner again around 430 - I had one cup of green beans (no seasoning), two grilled chicken tenderloins (just garlic powder), half an apple, and half a banana (to help break my fast for my cardio tomorrow).  Overall I have felt awesome all day, like I could take on the world - my mind was clear, my thoughts were clear, and I feel good.

Why am I doing this?  To kick-start my revamped relationship with food. No more beer/wine (for a little while at least), only organic (instead of some organic), NO artificial sweeteners, NO pre-workout supplements (just green tea or black coffee), NO salad dressing, NO fried food... etc.  

I've complained for too many years and put a lot of blame on my thyroid - but I am not so sure in retrospect that my thyroid is to blame for all of my issues and overall feeling of sluggishness.  I eat a lot of what I used to think was "good" food - but really, all I have been doing was eating a lot of garbage that tasted good but was really bad for my body.  It may sound horrible, but I feel awesome, and to me feeling good is better than the temporary deliciousness of homemade Alfredo sauce or the golden brown delicious crunch of a piece of fresh warm garlic bread.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/assessing-fasted-cardio-training.html
http://experiencelife.com/article/the-case-for-intermittent-fasting/