As can probably be deducted from my recent new year’s resolution post, one of the great themes for my personal projects in 2011 is health and physical fitness. It has always been of great interest to me, but my new found drive was probably kick started after reading The Four Hour Body by one of my favorite authors namely Tim Ferris.
I am pretty lean and always has been – for many years I was one of those people who could eat whatever I wanted without getting fat. For the last 4-5 years I have however gained some belly fat much to my annoyance. I was pretty active last year, lots of swimming, lots of running and I ran my first half marathon which was a great personal achievement. My belly fat however went nowhere. I am one of the fortunate people who actually enjoy exercise, so I wasn’t doing these things to loose fat, but it would have been a nice bonus to loose a few centimeters around my waist. Vanity, I know – I am however not afraid to admit, that I not only want to feel and function well but also look good.
I realized that I probably had to work on the other big part of the health puzzle, namely diet. I decided to try “The Slow Carb” diet as described in The 4 hour Body. In short the diet is high protein, lots of greens and vegetables and only carbohydrates in form of legumes (lentils and beans). No fruit, no grains, no bread (or anything white like pasta or rice), no potatoes. Water, tea, red wine and coffee but not any other drink with calories in it are allowed. One cheat day per week is permitted where you can go all out on otherwise forbidden food.
This was done as a project lasting one month. I teamed up with a buddy of mine – he had some other goals than mine, but we decided to make a photo journal of every meal we had for one month. Each day we uploaded the photos to a shared Dropbox-folder, so we could check up on each other. This created a lot of leverage and was a great motivator for getting through the month. We both missed a few pictures here and there and slacked off for the last couple of days in the experiment, but my taken photos can be found in the bottom of this post.
I decided to break the rules in one area, but otherwise I followed the slow carb diet religiously from 2. January to 2. February. The one rule I broke is the no bread rule. I had Danish rye bread almost every day for lunch. I had to modify more or less all my other meals, but this was an area where i did not want to budge. The biggest challenge of the project was probably the no rice and no pasta requirement, but after a while I kind of got used to eating legumes instead of these.
A typical day would look like this:
Breakfast: 3 eggs with cayenne pepper and Læsø salt + spinach
Lunch: Danish rye bread with protein rich cold cuts + some greens
Dinner: Stew (based on minced beef or chicken) with garlic, ginger, peppers, onion + black beans or lentils
About half way into the project I started taking the PAGG-stack (read the book for more info). Otherwise I just supplemented with a multi vitamin, fish oil and vitamin D.
But what about exercise? In the beginning of the month I really tried the “minimal effective dose” approach and only did 3×25 20 kg kettlebell swings 2 times a week. But when I was half way into the month and hadn’t seen any great results I amped it up with a new hardcore exercise routine which has become something of a project in itself – I will talk about this in my next post.
I wish I could say that I had great results after the month had passed. I weighed exactly the same after the experiment as I did before (I know I could have gained muscle and lost fat though), but i did loose a single centimeter of my belly. But it was hardly “rapid body modification”. In the four hour body there is a chapter about “stubborn belly fat”, but I think that diet is too hardcore even for me. The good thing that has come out of the project is that I have become much more aware of what I eat, and I have continued eating slow carb’ish on most days. I have reintroduced fruits and grains but I haven’t eaten much white bread, pasta or rice since the experiment. I am however not quite as religious about the rules as I was when doing the project.
I am not saying that the slow carb diet doesn’t work – I just did not have the greatest results. But I am well aware that there were a few things I could have done better, the first thing is upping the number of meals per day. The second is to drink more water.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in 2010, and I would say that the quality of the books I’ve been reading has been incredibly high. When you read a lot of books about psychology and personal development, it is very easy to find some that are mediocre at best. Earlier it would be a pretty random process when choosing a book to read, now I would say that I have a more systematized process to finding the real gems out there. This blog post is about that process. There are a couple of ways I go about discovering new books.
Maintaing a “to read” list
I maintain a Google Doc called “To read” which is basically a list of books I potentially want to read. If I am not entirely sure whether I want to read it, it goes to the bottom of the list. If I am sure I want to read it it goes to the top. Then whenever I am ready to read a new book I will pick one from the top of the list. Whenever I learn something (good or bad) about a book on the list it goes up, down or gets deleted from the list altogether. 
Staying up to date with bestseller-lists
I am sure this is a no-brainer for a lot of people, but this is something I haven’t really done in the past. I particularly enjoy following the New York Times bestseller list. This is probably the most prestigious book list in the world, so if a book is on this list, it has to be good! A few examples of books great I’ve discovered this year through the New York Times bestseller list are:
“Delivering Happiness”
“What Every BODY is Saying”
and
“The 5 Love Languages”
There are a number of different categories on this bestseller list – my favorite categories are the “Advice & Misc” categories – there is one for hardcover and one for paperback.
So how do I stay updated with the list? Simple. I subscribe to their RSS-feed through iGoogle which is set to the start page in my browser.
Use Amazon for recommendations
I buy 95% of my books on Amazon
Look out for mentions and recommendations from favorite authors
When you read enough (non-fiction) books about the same subject, you will eventually note that some of the authors are in some way referring to the same books. If a book gets mentioned enough times by several authors you like, there is a good chance that you should read it. This was for example the case for:
“Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”
I had read enough people writing about this particular book to be convinced to read it. And sure enough it was a great book!
That is it – my tricks for finding the best books out there.
/Anders
Happy new year!
How crazy is it that we’re in 2011 – I mean that sounds so freaking futuristic. But hey with all the new cool technology that is com
ing out it almost feels as if we’re living in the future. CERN traps anti-matter, NASA discovers new life form, and there is even a new Back to the Future game out! Ah it is good times to be alive.
Starting a new year it is the perfect time to reflect on how the the past year has been and how things can be improved in the new year. Are there any areas of your life that could use some tweaking or are there just something you would like to do, try or experience that you haven’t had the opportunity to try out yet? It seems to be the case that you are more likely to achieve these goals if you write them down. So here is my list for 2011 (in no particular order).
- Attend a (preferably a lot) crossfit exercise class at the local crossfit center
- Be able to run a 5 Km run in less than 25 minutes (personal best is 27 minutes)
- Run another half-marathon and beat the time from the one I ran in 2010 (first one ever)
- Attend a bonsai-getting-started-course (already made plans with a local bonsai-wizard)
- Get the dream job
- Read more fiction
- Drink more green tea, drink less coffee
- Play several concerts with my band
- Release the debut album with my band
- Improve (non-existent) piano skills
Now I know that these goals are far from SMART . But they serve as good reminders or themes for the new year. Later they can be crystallized into more concrete and actionable goals.
What are your new year’s resolutions for 2011?
/Anders