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It’s official I am going through with my first lifestyle experiment inspired by the one and only Tim Ferriss author of the 4 Hour Work Week.

My goal is to loose 20 lbs of fat in 30 days while simultaneously gaining 30+ pounds of muscle during the same 30 day time period. I’m not sure if I will be able to hit those two lofty targets but I am putting my body through the experiment of a strict diet and strict workout plan. I’m on day 5 so far and I’m seeing some results already, here are the details of the diet I am doing:

The Slow Carb Diet

The diet I am on is the slow carb diet used by:
Dean Karnazes, an ultramarathoner famed for completing 50 marathons on 50 consecutive days in 50 different states. The most impressive part of this, for me, is that he did so, not with the typical anemic marathoner build, but with a well-muscled mesomorph body.

Here are the rules I have to follow:
Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates

Avoid any carbohydrate that is – or can be – white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins:
Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork

Legumes:
Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans

Vegetables:
Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them.

Most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories. A 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a 1/2 cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.

Some athletes eat 6-8x per day to break up caloric load and avoid fat gain. I think this is ridiculously inconvenient. I eat 4x per day:

10am – breakfast
1pm – lunch
5pm – smaller second lunch
7:30-9pm – sports training
10pm – dinner
12am – glass of wine

Here is my groceries for the week:

And here is what I have ate for the past 4 days 3x a day:

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories

Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week

I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.
[Source: From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks]

In addition to the slow carb diet I am also consecutively doing a strict workout plan, here are the rules I have to follow:

Rule #1:
Follow Arthur Jones’ general recommendations for one-set-to-failure from the little-known Colorado Experiment, but with lower frequency (maximum of twice per week) and with at least 3 minutes between exercises.

Rule #2:
Perform every repetition with a 5/5 cadence (5 seconds up, 5 seconds down) to eliminate momentum and ensure constant load.

Rule #3:
Focus on no more than 4-7 multi-joint exercises (leg press, trap bar deadlift, overhead press, Yates bent row, dips, incline machine benchpress, etc.) and exercise your entire body each workout to elicit a maximal hormonal (testosterone, growth hormone + IGF-1) response.

Rule #4:
Eat enormous quantities of protein (much like my current fat-loss diet) with low-glycemic index carbohydrates like quinoa, but drop calories by 50% one day per week to prevent protein uptake downregulation.

Rule #5:
Exercise less frequently as you increase strength and size, as your recovery abilities can only increase 20-30%, while you can often increase fat-free muscle tissue up to 100% before reaching a genetic set-point.

Rule #6:
Record every workout in detail, including date, time of day, order of exercises, reps, and weight. Remember that this is an experiment, and you need to control the variables to accurately assess progress and make adjustments.
[Source: How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days... Without Doing Any Exercise]

For the actual exercises I am using a modified HST workout plan. Here are the exact exercises I am doing in no particular order:

Using Machines:
Shoulderpress, abdominal, pulldowns, squats, ab crunch, low row, eagle leg press, calves, dips, leg swing

Free-weights:
See http://www.thetrainingstationinc.com/freeweightexercises.html for animation:
Single arm row, dumbbell side raises, French press, flat barbell press, dumbbell pull overs,

So far the lifestyle experiment is going great. The things I like best about it are since it is so strict it helps me not deviate away from the rules, I get to cook my food for the entire week (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) all in one day during the beginning of the week, and it’s a very short intensive workout which fits in nicely with my schedule.

Now only 25 more days to go!