Hello,

this is a optimal journal start from me, a student of sports science from germany. I will do my best to live an optimal life and solve the problems appearing in a student's everyday life.
The entries will be very short, I will do my best to post only the important things.

Here are aims I am shooting for the next weeks/month:

-improve sleep
-achieving optimal body composition
-lay optimal hormonal foundation for muscle building
-improve resistance against the cold
-prevent illness

I will do CT most days of the week using the protocoll and try to eat within the light cycle only (dinner may differ 1-2 hours).
I will try to eat good quality food, but often it isn't possible because of the limitted student's budget but I will do my best.
I have to choose a weight-training routine, since I think I have a good leptin sensitivity, to build more muscle/strength. This must function with a ketogenic diet. I've been reading many articles and think to use HIT principles.

Until now I have skipped breakfast and have used a IF-regime. I'm not hungry at all in the morning hours. We'll see how I'll change variables.
For CT I'm using face-dunks in tap water sometimes with cubes. In addition I use cold showers and try to improve my time at the coldest temperature (I turn it colder while I'm standing under it). After just one week the body starts heating quickly.

First Question:

Is it better for the hormones to skip dinner if I can't eat until 7pm and eat the next meal not until the next morning?

 

Welcome to journal land Alex!

I think it is better for your hormones to skip dinner if so late... and eat a breakfast instead. Because your sleep will be better, you should not eat 4 hours before going to bed. Good sleep = better hormones
But IDK... context.. if you are healthy and young and have no issues maybe it is not worst thing to do to eat shortly after 7 PM?

 

Would have been 8.30-9.00. It doesn't bother me to fast either, because like I wrote I now can get away with skipping meals without getting hungry. So if there is a hormonal advantage (can be sleep) to skip the meal if it's so late I would to it.

 

There is a hormonal advantage: Growth Hormone, autophagy. Crappy house cleaning at night >> accelerated aging.

 

Hi Alex! welcome to journal land

Sleep is the most important thing as smart cat says.

Great goals ......

How is your EMF Exposure?

Google Erwan Lecorre and Movnat and have a look at what he does....

 

Yes, for performance and movement optimization you should check out MovNat, Ido Portal, Katy Bowman and Andreo Spina.

Katy just did a podcast with Ben Greenfield.
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/11/the-best-posture-tips/

They all have websites and Facebook pages.

Ido Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLogFAbTlDI

http://www.youtube.com/user/portaldo/videos

Andreo Spina
http://www.youtube.com/user/AndreoSpina/videos

And our important springs: fascia
http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/the-top-5-ways-fascia-matters-to-athletes

 

CT yesterday after a workout was good. I did it in the shower for 15min with almost maximal cold tab water temperature. Started to shiver really fast but also the body heats very fast now. Face-dunks were included right before, I start to add some ice cubes to the water.
Sleep last night was terrible. I wanted to go to bed 9.30 PM but lay awake some hours. In the middle of the night my body started heating up, I don't know why. Haven't had sleep problems for a long time. I ate very many brussel sprouts with lunch and my body didn't want it, maybe that was the reason...

 

Nutrition:

Lunch 1.30 pm: pork, broccoli & butter
Dinner: 7.00 pm: salmon, butter & onions

CT before dinner:

10min face dunking 9°C
15min showering 12°C

Didn't shiver much during having the shower. Heat radiation came quickly. Face dunks with max. time every time, only looked up for O2.

 

Hey Butters, are you still waking up in the middle of the night?, it's started to happen to me too, went to bed around 9:30 to 10:30PM and bam middle of the night wake up then can't go back to sleep...

 

No that's not my problem. My sleep was very good recently, last night was horrible. Sometimes I wake up at night, but only when I drank too much pre bed and then I also have no problems to fall asleep very quickly again.

 

23.11.

Lunch 12.30pm: lean pork meat and a lot of butter
Dinner 7.00pm: salmon, lean pork meat and a lot of butter

Had weight training yesterday. It wasn't the best training. I feel the glycogen depletion in my muscles, because I've been very lox carb/ketogenic for more than 2 weeks. But I'm feeling very good the whole day, sleep after this one horrible night came back and I feel refreshed in the morning few minutes after waking up. I hope I will get the "bam" - feeling, when you wake up and are crystal clear and ready for war from the first second, soon again regularly.
I read the intermittend fasting article, where Dr. Kruse mentioned Martin Berkhan's LeanGains. I tried LG before for a short timespan, but I always had the same problem after a few days. I couldn't get the carbs out of my head and tried everything to justify big carb binges on the reload days. I couldn't get them out of my head, despite I've always been not fat and should have had a good LS.
Everytime I went very low carb I started feeling amazing over the day, but got sleepy soon in the evening and often slept 9-10 hours. But it always was winter time. I thought there must be something wrong, because when I reintegrated carbs my sleep wasn't so long anymore. So carbs became more regular and I never went keto for a long time. After I read some articles here I now think it's perfectly normal to feel sleepy soon in the evening and sleep a bit longer than in summer times, coupled with training I need this time to replenish my ATP.
What I wanted to say is, I will give keto a try in this winter in connection with CT, because I don't want to deplete my stem-cells anymore. But I also want to achieve a good physique and I think it's also possible with ketogenic food. Not feeling "the high" in training like with carbohydrates, shouldn't hold me back.

Unfortunately in my circle of friends there are only people who live for the pleasure of the moment (don't think too much about food despite eating not so much meat ) and I live together with 2 other guys in a flat. So sometimes it isn't possible to go to bed early because of sounds and when there are some more people it's often difficult to sleep before midnight. I don't want to do all those things these warm adapted humans do, like drinking beer together, eating out together (food consuming things) and I know now which big importance food has in our society. You get food and beverages everywhere everytime to any event and most people consume the food in passing without focus because when you eat or drink you have something to do (think about parties and the "obligatory beer" for conversation). So the negative side effect of living an optimal life is that you have difficulties to wire socially, because humans use consuming food as opportunity to connect with each other.
Enough talk.

CT:

Morning: 5-10min face-dunks
Evening after training: 15min cold shower

 

Socialisation is a big problem; as you have observed most "occasions" include refreshment, hah, a bit of a misnomer, more an opportunity to pig out. Funnily enough I can quite easily not eat or drink at say parties because one look at the food that is provided is enough for me to smile inwardly because I know I don't want it. As I seldom drink alcohol and never fizzy sugary drinks, I find it much easier to stick to water. Dinner parties are a bit trickier when someone else has cooked and food comes out that it would be rude not to eat just because you know the beef isn't grass fed or the chicken organic. I guess if all of us made a stand about this sort of thing, we might get to convert a few more each.

The bigger problem is that decent, humanely reared food is expensive and there are a lot of folk on limited budgets who can't see the bigger picture that less can be more in terms of health so they fill their family up on crisps, biscuits, sweets and ready meals and aren't selective about where their meat etc. comes from.

 

Yesterday I gave me the luxurity of eating pork belly in good quality, cooked it with some onions and brussel sprouts (not as many at a time as on the day I slept badly) and lean pork meat for more protein.

Lunch: 13.30 pm
Dinner: 7.00 pm after CT

I think about eating always after CT in the evening if I do.

 

Have you thought of having your nice high fat dinner before you C/T?

 

Yes, I've done it a few times but I wanted to try it only with water before because of what Dr. Kruse mentioned in Ben Greenfield's podcast. It is a better feeling to eat after CT, too. First you have all the shiverings and "workout" for your body, than you eat.

It's kale time:

Lunch: 12.00pm - kale, pork, butter, onions
Dinner: 6.00pm after upper body workout - pork, butter, onions

Last two week I have the feeling leaning out stalls a bit. I don't know if I'm overdoing it with the added butter. For the next days I will write down the amount of butter I eat and protein, carbs now are almost zero grams.

 

Last Days I didn't have the willpower to do CT intensive. I run around with sweatshirt outside at 0°C and don't heat inside and tolerate it good, but when it comes to CT I seem to have no tolerance. Maybe I don't eat enough and my body is going into energy saving mode, because I don't have much fat. Are my energy needs going up high when I don't heat inside and wear minimal clothes?
Yesterday I trained legs and barely made 10min of a cold shover of 15°C, than had to go out. I ate 150g protein and I think maybe 300g of butter but I didn't forced myself to, my body seemed to want it (close to 3000kcal). I'm not a friend of calorie counting, but maybe I have to look that I eat enough to cold adapt?!
Any tipps? Should I rather stuff myself with butter in the cold adapting phase than looking to get leaner in the first place?

 

FWIW, I have an easier time being in the water when I eat more.

Did you really eat 300g of butter? That's a great amount, I would have thought that should be more than enough to last you for the day.

 

Yeah in 2 meals. I was very hungry and the day before I didn't eat so much and was cold many hours after my bath until I fell asleep + I had leg training day.

 

Wow, after reading some of the different journals about how much people eat its no wonder I feel tired, cold and hungry

 

Jack tells us to get "cold, dark and sleepy"... so maybe in winter and eating ketogenic it is natural to sleep more. I do too, and I do not stress about it. I guess in summer we sleep less, in winter more, at least here in the north. Many animals sleep the whole winter even...lol

Butters I would just eat if you feel like it! I do too, sometimes I eat a bit less and sometimes I eat so much! I bet it is natural to vary the amounts of food and listening to your body and its needs. I think aiming for being skinny / ripped is not the first choice. healing comes first I am pretty sure that is what I live myself. I am not skinny but I am on my way to very healthy