Each time Dr. Darden and I have taken photos ( an absolute MUST for keeping track of your real progress), we've repeated certain poses, so the photos were easier to compare. These are two of them: the first is basically relaxed, with hands on head, and the second is a double biceps pose.
There's a substantial loss of fat, as you can see, but what's really been interesting to me is that as I've lost weight, I actually look bigger, muscle-wise. I'm over twenty pounds different between the first and last in these photos. Yet I look bigger.
Maybe I've said this before, maybe I haven't, but I worked out with Dr. Darden just once a week. For a maximum of 30 minutes. These days, we work out for about twenty minutes. No cardio, ever. The reason for that is HIT training is so intense, you are breathing like a racehorse after the first one or two exercises. Cardio is uncecessary ( not to mention, when it comes to running and the like, often DANGEROUS to your joints, bones, and everything else).
Another key thing with our program was SUPERHYDRATION. As in a GALLON of ice cold water each and every day. Dr. Darden went over all of this and other aspects of this eating plan ( I don't say the word "diet" anymore) in detail in his book " Flat Stomach ASAP" that is now out of print but still available online, by the way. A gallon may seem like a lot to some people, but I've always been a heavy drinker. I guess I was just dehydrated was the reason why! I went to CVS pharmacy and found a handy 1/2 gallon jug and just filled it up twice a day. It's been a lot easier that way.
Over the years, I had done everything from starving myself, to low fat, to low carb dieting. Atkins, Zone, South Beach, I tried them all at various times. They ALL worked. For awhile. But it's funny, I realized that the only one that really worked for me was the starving thing. It's effects were the most dramatic, and lasted the longest. But I did NOT want to starve again ( that was back in my modeling days ), just because I don't like it (who does?) and I didn't want to lose muscle mass. What I did with Darden, though, along with the crazy intense HIT workouts once a week, was to greatly reduce my calorie intake and cycle it, to keep the body guessing. I learned that it's amazing how many calories we ingest every day in the Western World, and how we really don't need that many. All the studies on calories restriction show that it prolongs longevity and lifespan.
We started at 1500 calories for a week, them 1400, 1300, and 1200. Then 1400 again ( I lost a lot of my weight this week, when my body started thinking "Okay, I'm not starving... I can drop fat again"), 1300, and 1200. That dropped me to 12% BF, and 174 pounds, which was our original goal. We did another week at 1500 calories, just to see what would happen...
To be continued....
I'm going to start adding more reviews to this site of books and products that I reccommend, for those of you who are interested. This book, that I mentioned in my previous post on here, is by Dr. Darden ( my personal trainer and good friend), and was basically the "Textbook" for my entire transformation these past few months. Like I said, it's out of print now, but still available through a couple of outlets ( I grabbed this photo from Amazon, where I think it's available thru their partners).
