10 minute mark - Shower # 4

For those of you still curious, as soon as you really get under the cold water, you almost get tunnel vision and start to hyper ventilate. Past that, adrenaline gets pushed out, your heart beast fast, and you really wake up. Keep breathing!

Yesterday I pushed my shower to six minutes, thirty seconds. I have added a 360 spin with my head directly under the water stream every 2 minutes or so. That really wakes me up, plus, it gets me so cold so fast. I did 2 cold pack applications, 30 minutes each, one later in the day, and the final, around 9pm. I used my cold pack for the early application, and a bag of frozen peas for the evening application. The peas worked real well. Might just stick to those. 

Today, I went the full 10 minutes. Once you get to 6 minutes, there's really no difference between 6 and 10. What a difference afterward though. I was still cold 90 minutes later. Not super uncomfortable, but every 20 minutes or so my body would shiver.

I will be adding  a second shower later in the day into the routine. 

As to the food, 2 hard boiled eggs, and some black beans. Lunch was a can of tuna and a small salad.

Dinner to be determined. 

Also, I may start doing video updates. Got the new camera and why not?

Weight, Diet, and a cold shower

Clocked in this morning at 221.  I had already eaten breakfast and had my 2 glasses of cold water. I would assume my weight as soon as I got up (the time I usually weigh in) weight was closer to 219, but for the sake of honesty, its 221 today. 

My eating has been about the same for the past few days, weeks in fact. 2-3 eggs in the morning, salad and protein (tuna, beef, chicken, fish), some almonds or a south beach bar for a snack, and about the same for dinner. 

Now onto what you really read this thing for, the cold showers. I didn't take one Feb 1 for personal reasons, and Feb 2 I just wimped out. Today is another story. I went 6 minutes. Video below -- its clean -- hello, I'm taking a shower! No really. SFW. 

Books

I read a lot, either for school, professional skills, or just enjoyment, so in casual conversation, I tend to recommend books often. If it's for enjoyment, I usually go with an audible book. They really bring a good fiction to life, plus you cannot beat the price - $15/mo. 

Here are my current recommendations, with links to Amazon to purchase.

Free Agent Nation - great breakdown of how things are shaping up economically in the PSTS (professional, scientific, technical services) economy. 

Linchpin - Some hyperbole, but after you get through that and see the forest through the trees, the message is still sound - be the best you can be at something, and make sure you are indispensable. 

4 hour work week - I don't like the name anymore than you do. Tim has a very matter-of-fact tone, and I like it. He doesn't take excuses and doesn't put up with those that accept mediocrity in their life. Is this all original material? No. Is this applicable 100% to everyone? Absolutely not. But what's here does have great value. For instance, Tim's time management strategy involving interruptions dances around the TOC explanation of it. He's so close to nailing his explanation. 

 I've read MANY reviews, blog posts, etc of people bashing Ferriss, all the while stating they haven't read the book. 

The Goal - I don't think any one book has changed my thinking and direction in life more than this. For me, it all starts here. Say what you will about TOC - "Its just JIT", or "It's too subjective." Ok. No book sells as much as this and has a critical following in production globally and is just JIT. I have a number of other TOC books I can recommend, but they are primarily academic so I recommend them with caution.

Critical Chain - I am a TOC junkie, as noted above. I've read almost every book from Goldratt and company. I use TOC for management & strategy development. TOC is based in production, but I dont work in that field, so I apply its tools to management, perhaps at a journeyman level. This book is great for anyone who is a project manager or wants some help at time management. It's written in novel form, which makes for easy reading and comprehension of difficult material. 

Thinking Strategically - This one is on game theory. It's a dry read, but its the best I found without getting super-academic. I would recommend reading the first 2 chapters then flipping through to see what you might be interested in. 

Influence - This is more a book on how your emotions/brain interpret situations. I found the info about reciprocity to be the most interesting. I would say this is the science behind "Achieving Success Through Social Capital" or any other book on social capital. 

Emotions Revealed - Ekman will probably be given his due after he dies. This guy is amazing. Is this subjective? Maybe. His science has been sensationalized by the Fox show "Lie to Me", which I do love. Having said that, the story of his science and how this happened is amazing. 

Freakonomics - If you haven't read this yet, read it. It's informative and fun. The podcast is cool too.

Flawless Consulting - With the "Free Agent Nation" upon us, this book is a great resource.  If you are going into consulting, its invaluable. I have completed around 12 consulting jobs thus far, and after reading this, I see exactly how problems could have been averted or jobs saved. It was a required reading in a consulting course. One of the few books that was required that I have found to have actionable information. 

Outliers - I liked this one the best of all of Gladwells books. 

Diet, Weight, Measurements & Cold

Diet 

Breakfast

1 glass of cold water, 16oz

About 30 minutes later, 2 hard boiled eggs

1/2 5 hour energy

Lunch 

8 oz roast beef

3oz broccoli/cauliflower 
8oz coffee 

Snack
2oz coco-roasted almonds

Dinner#1
Small dinner salad
6oz baked perch
5oz peas
2nd 1/2 of the 5 hour energy

Dinner#2 - after class with a friend
10 hot wings
2 glasses of Cabernet

Around midnight I did a ketosis test and was back to 40 mg/dL, proving that you can have a little off of the diet and not get totally messed up.

Weight & Measurements

1/31/2011

223lbs

Right bicep - 15 in

Left bicep - 15in

Chest - 43in

Belly - I did this going over my belly button - 45.5in

Waist -42in

Waist around butt -45in

Right thigh - 27in

Left thigh - 27in

This is a good starting point, because we will be able to see possibly how much fat I am losing and muscle gaining. 

Cold
Hell yes the shower was cold today. I tried to get more cold water all over to induce the shivers, but it was tough. The hardest part is breathing - make sure you breathe!  Just a 5 minute one today. I did do the cold pack on my traps yesterday, 2x for 30 minutes each with about 3 hours in between treatments. No cold pack today though. Class then catching up with an old friend.

Slow Carb Diet and Ice Therapy

I recently purchased Tim Ferriss' book "The Four Hour Body". I agree, the title may be bunk, but, I can tell you that out of the chapters I have read it makes sense, especially his slow-carb diet. His slow carb diet is the south beach diet, minus cheese, and add one reset day for your glycemic index. Once I read that, it really clicked for me.

A little background on me, my health, and dieting history to understand my quick buy in to his diet. I currently weight about 220 and am 5ft 10. Why south beach or Atkins? Because I had crazy high triglycerides and my cholesterol was out of whack. I was on medication for the triglycerides, and I can say thanks to a smarter diet and lost weight, I am off the gemfibrozil. I do however still have an apparent sodium sensitivity, meaning if I eat salty foods, pizza, beef jerky, soup, many other high but not crazy high sodium high foods, I get a terrible headache and my day is ruined. So my doctor, along with some medications, recommended South Beach two years ago, and here we are. Also to note, I like to think of myself as a person who goes to the gym a lot, but I dont. I make it about once a week. 30 minutes of cardio, work on my glamor muscles , and I am out. So you can achieve good results with little workout on those diets.

I am considering trying the kettlebell workout in Tim's book. Here's two videos I found, one to make your own kettlebell, and the other a 4 minute workout.

---

I have been doing the South Beach Diet for 3 (1/10/11) weeks and have had decent weight loss. I have done Atkins many times (once a year for 3+months for 6 years) with great short term (6months) success, and the South Beach (last 2 years) with similar success as well. I do like the south beach food options much better since there is so much more you can eat. Last year I did the south beach and went from 259 down to 220 in about 3 months. I have stayed around 220 since then, but over the holidays I got up to 227.

During the times when I am on these diets, I have noticed that every three weeks or so, I seem to plateau and need to "reset" by what many claim is "going off the diet." I am going to try to not go so long this time around for a "reset" and give myself 12 hours to eat whatever I want, like Tim suggests in his book. During these diets I use Ketone strips to monitor my level of Ketosis - the phase your body goes into when its starved of carbs and starts burning body fat - and I can tell you that once you lock your body into ketosis, you can have a few meals and it may not ever get knocked out.

Case in point, last night for dinner I had:

• 1 dinner roll
• 1 Jonny Walker Black/rocks
• Split a fried calamari with my better half
• 2 tbs cream of chicken soup (I didn't want to stuff myself)
• Dinner salad
• 1/2 slab of bbq ribs
• 1/2 smallish baked potato with sour cream
• One sugar free red bull/vodka after dinner

When I came home I used a ketone strip and I had actually gone from "moderate" - 40 mg/dL to "large" - 80 mg/dL. This morning I did get pushed back to the moderate phase, but, even with all that I ate I was still in ketosis. Pretty encouraging.


***Update 2/11/2010***
After years of using Ketone strips, I just found out that when you drink alcohol, your body still produces ketones, so its a false positive when drinking. However, if you were in ketosis before the drinking, all drinking will do is pause your fat burning process. Basically, your liver chooses to handle the alcohol first, then the fat, because the alcohol is easier to break down. 

---

Ice Therapy

Now, onto one of the more controversial parts of Tim's book, the Ice Therapy fat burning method. In 2009 through the use of PET scans, PhD Bruce Spiegelman and his team of researchers found they could manipulate cells to become brown fat cells, or BAT. In fact, up until brown fat showed up on PET scans, doctors and researchers alike believed that only babies and small animals (mice) had brown fat. Spiegelman's methods and intent involve developing a drug to induce the creation of brown fat to help reduce the number of people with diabetes and obesity.

Move forward to January 2010, and Dr. Aaron Cypress starts looking at brown fat. He found a difference in the amounts of brown fat in men and women.

Here is the link for the original article, and in here is why a cold pack on your neck works.

"...women are twice as likely as men to have significant amounts of active brown fat—perhaps because with less muscle mass, they need brown fat to stay warm." Did you catch that last part?

It continues - " temperature seems to be an important controller of brown fat activity. ...found that when subjects spent 2 hours in a cold room wearing thin clothing and intermittently soaking their feet in ice water, their brown fat burned 15 times more energy than it did at room temperature. "

"Until a pill becomes available, there are ways for people to rev up their brown fat activity. “I don’t think you could get a lot of people to put up with [cold] therapy,” Enerbäck says, but it could help to turn down your home’s central heating and to spend some time outside in the fall and winter. Studies suggest that people who work outdoors have higher brown fat activity than average, so it’s not absurd to think that walking to work on a brisk day could boost your metabolism. "

****Added on 2/11/2010
Additionally, I should note that cold water pulls heat off of your body at a much more effective rate than cold air.  The idea is not to create brown fat with this, its just an added possible bonus.  The idea is to cool your body to a slightly lower temperature, then have your body work to heat you back up, essentially increasing your RMR (resting metabolic rate) throughout the day.  This doesn't happen all at once, but after a few days, say 10, the rate will increase.  This is why on the rest day or "binge" day, you still burn through a good amount of what you eat. ****

Now, if you read Tim's section on ice therapy after you read these documents, it will make a lot more sense to you skeptics. His method is just really aggressive.

I took my first 5 minute shower today.
Was it cold? Hell yes.
Did it suck? Only for the first minute or so.

It actually wasn't as bad as I expected, but it was still bad. Having been a athlete when I was younger, I have had my share of ice baths. Tim suggests the ice bath as a more aggressive mode, but I think it may be easier. Really. The shower was tough.

Later tonight I will do the icepack on my neck, and start over again in the morning.

I will keep you posted, but I am only doing weekly weigh ins. So no update until next week. And maybe a picture. I am going to be looking for a job soon, and I don't know if I want a pic of me all fat online.

***Please look at my other posts concerning these cold showers as I have kept with this for a while now.***

Also, I am not a doctor and I don't pretend to be, so be careful and talk to your doctor about what you are doing. It's the responsible thing to do.

My Car

Good bye car. I miss you. Please know that you were worth much more than the $4,677.50 State Farm said you were worth.

NEW SKILLS!?

I am going to be graduating in December, so I decided to tweak up the ol' resume and see what's out there. I ventured onto Monster, and they have really added some great tools. Under "Work Experience" in their profile builder, they have a section for skills. Just begin typing something, and a list of possible skills pops up.

It wasn't until I did this I actually realized all the things I do at my current place of employment.

They are:

Access database design and development - seriously? there isn't a day that goes by where I don't do some type of development in one of the 5 dbs we have!

Access - database management - Again, there are 5 dbs to manage, one all my own doing!

Financial Modeling - I have created and managed some different financial projections for shipping using various formulas and statistical methods.

Financial Statement Analysis - Each week I run/analyze the P&L for the Internet division. I understand that this may not be the traditional definition of Financial Statement, but, its pretty close to an income statement.

Customer Relationship Management - currently I run the Customer Satisfaction Survey, and do all follow-up communication with unhappy customers.

UPS Online Shipping - each week I match up the UPS invoice with our orders for that week and comb through it for money or training issues. Thus far for the year, I have found nearly $8k!

Logistics - I create and manage the supply schedule for all of our shipping material with the controller

Data Analysis and Presentation - I create and run various financial and inside data reports and present findings. Latest report was on the shipping department and possible lost business due to the old shipping containers.

Mainframe and internal financial systems - I have written and administer various financial reports that are run each week.

SQL - while my knowledge may be basic, its still pretty good.

Operations Problem Solving - My job has a real broad direction. I basically look for problems and fix them.

Not really sure what my current job is called, since I have so much freedom and wear so many hats. Originally, I was thinking my job was Quality Control Manager, because that's what I was told I was. BUT I do so much more than just Quality Control. I decided that Data and Operations Analyst fit much better.

I am sure that there are more, but for now, this is it!!