Written by I’ve been setting new personal records lately.
My personal best (set sometime last year) on pullups was 19 in a row, an improvement of 6 over my previous best. It seemed like a fluke, because after I did the 19, I was nowhere close until last week. I came home after a long day, still in my jeans from work, stepped up to the bar with no warmup, and pulled 20. The 20th rep looked terrible, as I practically threw myself at the bar, but I was too excited to not count it. The next morning, I pulled 21. 2 days later, I pulled 20 again. No fluke this time. (Now updated for 5/27: 22 in a row)
I’ve been running for most of the last year, and most of my runs are along a beautiful trail near my house that happens to be exactly 2.5 miles. I run with my Blackberry in my pocket so I can track my stats with the built-in GPS. Back in September, I ran the course in 26:07. Last week, after months of continuous improvement, I set a new personal best at 21:33.
When I do strength training, my favorite style is Crossfit. And, one of the common workouts that I do, because it requires no equipment other than a pullup bar and a timer, is Cindy. Cindy is an AMRAP (As Many Reps/Rounds As Possible) lasting 20 minutes where each round is 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats. My previous best had been 18 rounds. Last week, I hit 21 rounds.
And, as of this morning, I hit another personal best with Crossfit’s Fran workout. 5:57 for rounds of pullups and 95# squat thrusters of 21, 15, and 9 reps. 45 reps of each, under 6 minutes total. My previous best was 6:35.
So what’s been happening?
I’d have to say the greatest contributor to each of these improvements has to be weight loss. From January 31st until now, I’ve dropped 22 pounds – 20 in the first 6 weeks. And, despite the stall on total weight loss of only an additional 2 pounds, I’ve continued to lose fat. Clothes that couldn’t be worn with a 20 pound loss could be worn with a 22 pounds loss – a clear indication of additional fat loss.
How did I do it? Simply following the eating principles of Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet as outlined in his book The Four Hour Body.
Now I’m ready for the next step in the body experiment: The Sugar-Free Summer.
I’ve already essentially eliminated sugar for 6 days a week just following the Slow Carb Diet rules. 7 days a week is a huge step, so why would I do it? For me, the challenge is simple: It’s entirely possible that I could eliminate taking a daily medication if I eliminated fructose from my diet. Dr. Robert Lustig explains the science behind it in the following long but extremely informative video.
Somewhere around the 56 minute mark, Dr. Lustig explains the body chemistry that takes place when sugar hits the digestive system, making a strong argument that fructose is actually a toxin. Around the 58 minute mark, he identifies the reaction in the liver as the fructose is metabolized, which results in an increase of the waste product uric acid.
That’s the part that put me over the edge to wanting to try going sugar free. I take a daily medication, allopurinol, to control my body’s output of uric acid. Left uncontrolled, excess uric acid settles in my joints, causing an extraordinarily painful arthritic condition called gout. If I could solve the problem at the source instead of taking a medication to control it, wouldn’t that be a smart thing to do? After all, if I were diabetic, I would surely change my eating habits to avoid insulin therapy. Why not do the same thing with gout?
So, this week I started on the next phase of sugar elimination with 2 goals in mind:
1. Eliminating gout without the aid of drugs. Allopurinol has helped decrease the gout attack frequency, but it certainly hasn’t eliminated the disease. I’ve already cut my dosage in half and will stop taking it altogether after a couple of weeks of ramping down.
2. Additional fat loss. The leanest I’ve been in at least the last 15 years has been 218 pounds, and that was aided by a bout of the stomach flu. But, the goal is fat loss, not necessarily weight loss so I guess I’ll have to have my wife take some awkward pictures to see if it made a difference.
Here we go…
Good luck! We are trying to go close to sugar-free around here as well. We’ve hit a few challenges though with the kids (example – sugar is in bread and pbj is about all they’ll eat for lunch) so we are still trying to work out the kinks!