First Week's Experience...

Dear Friends,

I'm here to report on the first week's progress.

To review: Heather and I have modified our diet to a "Slow-Carb" configuration. That means no bread, pasta, tortillas or anything with flour or wheat.

Our breakfasts have been as follows:

Egg-Beater (approx 3 eggs), Nuked chopped spinach (handful) and 1/2 cup of organic black beans. Topped with 1 tablespoon of sour cream and liberally splashed with hot sauce.

This is surprisingly good, and feels great in your tummy. For those worried about becoming a methane factory, I've got good news: after a few days, your intestinal flora change to be able to accommodate the legumes and we've had no problems at all.

Lunch is generally a salad with some leftover meat of some kind, grilled pork, chicken or whatever is on hand.

Snack of 3 low-fat mozzarella string cheese, handful of raw almonds and an apple.

Dinner is skinless grilled chicken, roast pork loin or fish. Sides of green beans, broccoli or edemame beans. No dessert.

Lots of purified water, at least a gallon a day for me.

So far, I'm finding a significant reduction in my edema and somewhat elevated energy levels.

I did find that I'm more sensitive to blood sugar fluctuations, and am having headaches. I'm assuming it's from detoxing and will fade over time. I'm not taking any aspirin or painkillers, just more water.

Often I'll have a glass of wine in the evening, but this week it just makes me feel terrible, so I've stopped.

Exercise was going for a walk a couple of times, but tonight we hit the gym for real (Yea!)

We'll be focusing on Static Contraction lifting and I'll be on the exercise bike for 15-20 minutes following.

My thinking is that the weight lifting uses up the glycogen stores in the muscles and primes the cardiovascular system. By the time I actually get on the bike, the glycogen stores are depleted and the muscles will have to shift over to burning fat right away.

I don't know that this is true, but from my limited knowledge of cellular respiration and androgenic cycles... it sounds good so what the hell!?! If I'm all wet, please correct me.

My goal is to avoid the normal 15 minute "warm-up" that conventional wisdom states you need in order to start burning fat with your aerobics. There is nothing quite as boring as sitting on an exercise bike watching Jerry Springer re-runs.

I'll be weighing in this evening so I can share all the gory details with everyone.

That's it for now,

Erik