Nicole and I decided to try the Ten Years Thinner program by Christine Lydon, M.D. to get us back on track eating and exercising better. Both the diet and exercise are backed up by nutritional and exercise research that pulls it all together into an follow to get manner. The diet is basically a whole foods & anti-inflamatory diet in the beginning with grains and dairy being added back in later in the 6-week period. The exercise is designed to be strenuous, get your heart rate up, and be completed in about 25 minutes.
I’m starting this at 195 pounds and body fat at 24%. Â I use the Navy body fat calculator because I find it most accurate with the most easiest measuring techniques. I’ve read some studies that show it to be at least as accurate as other commonly available methods so I’m sticking with it.
After the first two days Nicole and I werre both in pain from the workouts, but by the end of the week it had thankfully transitioned to normal muscle soreness and tiredness a after a workout. I think the first two days are a shock to your system if you haven’t exercised in awhile. Â By the end of the first week we both noticed body shape changes with clothes fitting differently and muscle definition more present.
At the start of the second week I measured myself again and found that the measurements used for body fat calculation had not changed enough to report a body fat difference. The book says don’t get hung up on measuring too often and that sometimes things might seem to go in the opposite direction as you build muscle, but it’s still a little disappointing. I can see and feel the differences but those changes haven’t started in the shrinking area yet.
At the start of the third week we can add in beans of all sorts and peas and chickpeas. Nicole has learned that she’s sensitive to beans, good to know! Halfway through week three we’ve finally got the supplements correct. I went to tenyearsthinner.com to look for something else and in addition to what I was looking for that we needed to be having larger doses of the EFA and DHA (2400mg preferably in a ration of 2:1) in our omega-3 fatty acids and that we need more calcium and magnesium. We’ll see what kind of impact that has in the coming days. Overall my energy levels are good and I get farther in the workouts which means muscle is being created.
End of week three and I don’t know why but I just realized I was doing the squeeze crunches slightly wrong. My stomach has been getting toned, but the lower abs weren’t getting so much. So today I started pulling my legs in too like I should have been doing all along and that certainly was felt when it came time to do the bench dips. Exercise-wise we’re going to do week three again to try and get our reps up in preparation for week four which adds more stuff!
Starting week 4 I’m noticing the layers of fat are getting thinner. I’ve dropped another body fat percentage point to 20, my thighs, and fore arms have gained in size, and I’m seeing more definition in muscles than I have before during previous periods of fitness. We decided to run through week 3 exercises again to try and get our reps up before the week four routing adds in another set of four exercises. Nicole’s back and neck are being aggravated so she’s going to start going different exercises.
Starting week 5, we can add in grains and grain based foods, but not more than 100 calories per meal. I’m thinking that the extra week on week-3 exercise was not the right thing to do. Yes, I feel that they were good workouts, but I am beginning to believe that it was really designed for you to move to the new exercise set. You might not be able to do all the reps but you need the extra exercises to start pushing you. I was even thinking this before I didn’t have any body fat reduction this week. Tomorrow the workouts do for four-day stretches and have 4 more exercises in them for a total of 16.
On to week 6 and I see definition starting to show in my arms and maybe in my abs? I’ve never had that before so I’m not sure. Â When the 6 weeks we’re supposed to be able to have one cheat meal a week, but our first one came durign week six for a birthday dinner. My body doesn’t seem to have noticed despite it being the first grain I’ve had in almost six weeks. Finally the fat around my middle is starting to diminish.
End of week six and on to maintenance. So where do we stand? I’ve lost 2.4 pounds and 5% body fat which means about 10 pounds of fat lost and 8 pounds of muscle gained. My clothes certainly fit differently and I feel good in general. Even when I was hitting the gym a lot and eating well previously I hadn’t had body shape changes this quickly. I’ll be continuing this to see how far it goes.