Lose Weight and Get Healthy With Intermittent Fasting (IF)

Is Intermittent Fasting (IF) yet another fad diet program, let's find out!

What is Intermittent Fasting, it's the process of scheduling a regular set periods of time (Daily or Weekly) in which you do not eat food, or anything with calories in it.

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting (IF): 

• Helps your body burn Fat as fuel instead of Carbs as fuel.
• Helps you learn to control your food instead of your food controlling you.
• Helps restore vital health related hormone levels in your body.
• Let's your body focus on something other than digesting food, like injury repair, the immune system...
• Purges your body of harmful toxins stored in the cells.
• Preserving memory functioning and learning.

Ways you can Intermittently fast:

• Stop eating for a 24 hour period 1 to 2 times per week. (Stop eating at 7pm the day before and eat again after 7pm the next day)
• Only eat within a 6-8 hour window each day which allows your body 16-18 hours of fasting time benefits each day. (Eat from Noon till 6pm)

How is IF (Intermittent Fasting) supposed to work "Quotes from Dr. Mercola":

• Teaches your body how to use FAT as it's primary source of fuel by getting your body into a fat burning state since you need 8 hours from the time you last ate before your body really starts using Fat as fuel instead of stored Carbohydrates as fuel.
• When your body is using stored fat as fuel instead of stored carbs as fuel it helps your body to do the following:
  • Normalize your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health and to avoid "insulin resistance", which is a primary contributing factor to nearly all chronic disease, such as diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.
  • Normalize ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone"
  • Lowering triglyceride levels. (A form of Cholesterol)
  • Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage (pro anti-aging benefits).
  • Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production (for protection of cannibalism of muscle tissue), HGH plays an important part in health, fitness and slowing the aging process. Intermittent Fasting boosts HGH levels as much as 1300% in women and 2000% in men. That's huge!

"HGH, commonly referred to as "the fitness hormone" plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. Other benefits of Intermittent Fasting (IF) are giving your digestive track a break which many people believe allows your body to focus on other things like repairing damaged tissue, fight disease or sickness…"

 What Intermittent fasting is not:

• Not an excuse to eat whatever you want when it's time to eat. This will eliminate the health benefits of Intermittent Fasting (IF). Yes you do need to pack a full days worth of food in a short period of time but make healthy choices.
• Not a substitute for proper nutrition or exercise. On an IF diet it's best to eat complex carbs, moderate amounts of protein and slightly higher than normal "Healthy Fats", since FAT will be your new source of fuel used by your body for energy.
• IF is not a short term plan, Intermittent fasting (IF) is a lifestyle choice.

Perhaps there is a reason why most religions advocate some sort of regular periods of fasting?

Personally I'm not trying the Intermittent fasting diet to "lose weight", I am interested in the other health benefits of IF and perhaps being able to feel a bit less guilty about a cheat meal is a nice bonus :) The increase in HGH Levels, reduced inflammation and normalizing my insulin and leptin sensitivity are all very good reasons for me to give Intermittent Fasting a try.

So Is Intermittent Fasting Yet Another Diet Fad Program? Guess I will find out...

Related Links:

• What the Science Says About Intermittent Fasting
• LeanGains Website

CrossFit Langley - 5x11 55 Rep Workout for Time - With Narration

The other day at my CrossFit Gym we did a pretty grueling "Ladder styled" workout that consisted of Rowing, 35 pound per arm dumbbell Curl-Presses, Deficit Push-ups, Pull-ups and Ab Rolls. In total we had to do 55 reps of each which would normally be broken down into 10 decreasing sets that start with 10 and go down by one rep until you are left with a single rep for your last set. Each set was to be accompanied by a 100 meter row, so 1000 meters of rowing in total.

We where also given the option of doing 5 sets of 11 reps each accompanied by a 200 meter row which gets the job done a bit faster but is way more intense since you do less walking around and as you get tired the 11 reps per set become very difficult to do. I opted for the more intense 11 rep 5 set workout :)

So this is what my 21 minute workout consisted of...

Five Sets of Each:

• 200 Meter Row
• (11 Reps) 35 Pound per arm Dumbbell Curl - Press
• (11 Reps) Deficit Push-ups
• (11 Reps) Pull-ups
• (11 Reps) Ab Rolls

Grow Your Moustache for Mens Health Month - Movember 2013

It's Movember again, time for us guys to band together and grow a Moustache for Men's Health! It doesn't really matter what age you are because Protate or Testicualr Cancer as well as Mental Health issues can hit us men at any age or affect someone close to you.

What can you do to help the cause:

• Grow a Moustache!
• Donate a few bucks.
• Tell your friends to take part by passing on this video and getting involved.
• Send me a photo of your Moustache for my video montage.

Here is a direct link to my Movemeber Mo Space URL

Workout Journal - Squats - 265 Pounds for 6 Reps

Still chipping away at the Squats! We all know Squats build a great but (Glutes) and chiseled Quads ;) Anyways, my last Workout Journal entry for squats was almost exactly a month ago and I did 275 pounds for 2 reps. Today at CrossFit Langley we where working on 5 sets of 5 reps increasing our weight as we went up to achieve a maximum weight 5 rep set. My goal weight was 265 pounds and I hit the 5 reps with a bit of juice still left in the tank so I did one more for good measure.

I'm not sure what my max single rep Squat is but hope to get somewhere just over 300 pounds when we do our next heavy weight Squat workout.

Here are the set weights leading up to the 6 rep 265 pound squat set:

• 5 x 135 (Warmup)
• 5 x 185
• 5 x 205
• 5 x 225
• 5 x 245
• 6 x 265 

We finished up the day with a quick 6 round AMRAP of:

• 5 squats @ 135 pounds (nice and deep)
• 6 box step-ups
• 12 lunges

Video samples taken from (www.crossfit.com)

X-Men Wolverine Halloween Costume 2013

Below you can check out my YouTube Video of me in my X-Men Wolverine Halloween Costume :)

Items required to pull off the X-Men Wolverine Costume...

• Pair of medium fade Jeans (Not too tight, not too lose...)
• White tank top (AKA wife beater). I added some knife marks for added effect.
• Brown leather belt with cool belt buckle (Chief head belt buckle would have been awesome).
• Some sort of brown shoes or work boots, (get ones with a tall sole for additional hight).
• It's best to get some Wolverine claws, you can get basic toy versions or very realistic ones like the awesome ones I got from darkmatterprops.com.
• Either grow out your hair and style it in Wolverine fashion or if you don't have enough (like me), then buy a suitable brown wig. (I had to dye mine darker)
• Grow out Wolverine Beard (basically just huge sideburns that do not include mustache or chin area and follow your jaw line at the bottom)
• Workout lots and get lean to pull off the Hugh Jackman Jacked Up body.