Around the new year one of my best buddies from law school, Pat Walsh, sent me an email asking if I was interested in making dramatic changes in my health and appearance. Pat and his wife are both very health conscious and I trust any tips and techniques that they recommend, so I said yes. A few days later I receive a book in the mail entitled "The 4-Hour Body: An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex, and becoming superhuman."

The book makes many major claims that I was eager to both learn how to accomplish and also ready to disprove them as a bunch of hype. I started reading the book that morning and did not stop for 6 hours! The book is an amazing read and the author, Tim Ferriss (NYTimes Bestselling author of "The 4-Hour Workweek"), backs up all his claims with logical reasoning. How does Michael Phelps eat 12,000 calories in a day? Subtract 3,000 calories for resting metabolic burn off, so we are to believe that he burns 9,000 calories everyday swimming? If that were true he would need to swim the breast stroke at olympic level speeds for 10 hours, non-stop, everyday. Obviously not happening ... I won't ruin it here but he goes on for a chapter about thermol load and how water is 4 times more conductive than air. This is just a tiny glimpse at some well researched and logical approaches to eating better and working out smarter (which actually means working out less than you would think, maybe twice a week).

So, here I am. Starting to incorporate the tips and techniques in the book. One of the first thing the book states is to make sure you graph changes by measurements beyond a weight scale. Obviously if you are gaining muscle some weeks while losing fat, the scale can be misleading and frustrating. The book also recommends posting pics and measurements online and open for others to see, this is to ensure that I stay with things. This is why I created this blog, so that I can keep myself honest and maybe ... just MAYBE ... inspire someone else to take on some of these ideas!

Monday, January 3, 2011

First Night's Ice Bath

To increase caloric burn off the book suggests a number of ways to use cold temperatures to help. I am not going to go into the science of how and why it works, go buy the book, but I will be keeping a log of my attempts.
There are various suggested ways to include cold temperatures, to start off with I tried the most extreme and most unpleasant suggestion ... the 20 minute ice bath.
Last night, I took my cayenne supplement 30 minutes before my bath, I filled a grocery bag full of ice and turned the bath tub on the coldest setting. I added the ice to the bath and stepped in.
The water was much more painful than I had expected. I LOVE cold, I sleep with an open window and fan even when it is snowing outside. So, I thought this would be a piece of cake, OH NO was I wrong!
I set an alarm for 20 mins, every 5 minutes I would slowly lower myself into the ice bath further and further. I am sad to report that I only made it 5 minutes with the water reaching my waist. I had to bail!
I then drained the tub and took a regular shower. I have to be honest though, I felt like a million bucks!!! I was so awake and alert, it was pretty cool.
I think next time I am going to try the less extreme tips like placing an ice pack on the base of your neck for 20 minutes. Apparently it is as effective as the ice bath, but ... I wanted to say that I attempted a 20 minute ice bath! :)

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