Even eating as much as I felt like yesterday, I still ended up with a caloric deficit of 2,147 calories (i'm very active). I felt ground down, and did not complete the two of the last three WODs. I'm chalking it up to the diet and considering it a sunk cost to have missed them. I am much closer to my weight goal for the quarter though (165, 11% bodyfat by Oct. 4th).
July 24th: 179.5 18% bodyfat (147 lean)
Aug. 2nd 171.5 14% bodyfat (147 lean)
- size 34 pants fit (barely) again.
The weight loss on Atkins seems to be as advertised, I seem to have low "metabolic resistance".
The mental/performance/physical benefits seem vastly overblown at least for me. I did experience some exercise-induced euphoria (perhaps the runners high occurs when the body is totally depleted of glycogen and has to use fat as fuel?). My performance overall was compromised as follows:
Strength/muscle mass: not affected
Stamina: down perhaps 20%
Endurance: totally compromised, perhaps on the order of 50%
Conclusion: a VLCD is fantastic for reducing bodyfat without loosing muscle mass. In addition, there is NO hunger on such a diet, which seems to reinforce Gary Taub's hypothesis that hunger causes fat and not the other way around. A VLCD does not, however seem to enhance performance, at least for me. Coach has stated that a diet much under 40% carbohydrate will not support CF-type metabolic loads, so this was not unexpected. Being able to loose 8 lbs of pure bodyfat in less than two weeks with no loss of muscle mass is pretty amazing, and this might be a great diet to pair with a two-week strength cycle at some point.
