Monday, January 17, 2011

Cleansing and Nutrition

Last year, my wife, Anita, and I returned from a long trip in India feeling stuffed and lethargic. While we were traveling we were force fed in home after loving home. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the food was very nutritious and we did an awful lot of walking, but still we came home feeling beat and ready for a sea change in our eating habits.

We immediately committed to a 28-day health and wellness program created by Ti Caudron at Cambiati Wellness Programs. We had been hearing a lot of good things from friends and relatives that had tried the program and figured we were finally ready to take the plunge.

One of our big concerns was whether the program would be flexible enough to accommodate our different goals. Anita wanted to slim down to her pre-pregnancy weight from before our daughter Sonia was born. I wanted to lose some fat while gaining some lean muscle that would improve my athleticism in activities like running, soccer, and yoga. We were amazed at how well Ti's program fit both our objectives! So amazed, in fact, that we followed up our initial success with another 28 days because we felt great and were still losing weight. In the end, I lost about 20 pounds and Anita lost about 15. I also gained about eight pounds of muscle by shifting my diet a little based on the Cambiati principles.

Since then, we have done versions of the program that we have tailored to our needs for maintenance and spot-training with Cambiati's help and support. I completed another 28-day session just before the holidays and we've both done short one to three-day "mini cleanses" whenever we have felt low energy or out of balance nutritionally.

As part of my current goals, I'm sticking to a diet that is similar to the first week of the Cambiati program and I'm giving myself a little break here and there to have drinks with friends or a dessert after a nice meal out. As a result, my energy level has been high (despite exercising seven days a week: yoga - Mon., Tues., Fri.; resistance and running - Wed., Thurs., Sat., Sun.; soccer - Thurs. nights; and golf on occasion). I'm also seeing the signs of changes in body composition...my muscles in my chest, back, shoulders and arms are getting more defined while my pants are getting loser in the waist and thighs.

I'm contemplating stepping it up and adding either intermittent fasting along the lines of the Eat Stop Eat program created by Brad Pilon and heavily touted by Rusty Moore (who created my current resistance training program) or the slow carb diet demonstrated in Tim Ferriss's book The 4-Hour Body. I'll add one of those regimens after my first two months of mass building are complete. Until then, I'm happy to maintain my current weight and watch my body composition slowly adjust.

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