Peter Beck Kim's Other Blog

Kwap! 7 lbs down but only 2 lbs fat. Back to the #4HB drawing board :)

If you look really closely, you can see the BodPod reading on % fat has dropped a mere 0.2% units, from 23.8% to 23.6%, after 4 weeks on the 4HB Slow-Carb Diet. I was expecting a drop into the teens at least, as well as a weight drop of around 15 lbs. Time to roll up the sleeves and see what da heck happened.

• Total wt lost: 6.8 lbs (had lost a bit over 3 lbs in the week prior to formally getting measured, so closer to 10 lbs since starting SCD)
• Fat lost: 2.1 lbs
• Fat free mass lost (e.g. muscle): 4.7 lbs

By any stretch of the imagination, these are pretty poor #s for a month on Slow-Carb -- from a weight and fat loss standpoint. I was thrilled to be under 200 lbs for the first time since college, and most thrilled with the 30 point BP drop that prompted this endeavor in the first place. But I'd expected double the drop, and losing nearly 5 lbs of muscle surprised me ("You're getting lighter," my wife kept saying, "and not in a good way").

Should it have been a shocker?

Previous exercise regimen:

1. The Five Tibetans yoga poses, every night, 19 reps per exercise
2. Rings One routines, M/W/F, a progressive and intensive bodyweight strength + agility program
3. FlowFit twice weekly, at low to moderate intensity as a joint mobility and compensation routine
4. Walking, 20-60 minutes, 3-6 days a week

Exercise during these last 4 weeks:

1. Kettlebell swings, 24 kg, 2-hand swings, 75-102 reps, 2-3 days per week

With that drop in exercise volume, it's a wonder I didn't lose more muscle mass.

I'll be re-measuring and reporting the change in TI -- total inches -- on my cheat day this Saturday; I have lost inches, but noticed that the waist slimming, while ongoing, had slowed in the last 2 weeks, and that I'd also lost fractional inches from my arms, legs, and already flat butt.

Clearly, am hitting an equilibrium point between three forces:

1. Decreased overall muscle stimulation from exercise (less muscle), resulting in
2. Decreased caloric expenditure compared to previously (plateaued fat loss)
3. Different type and lesser amount of caloric intake (drop in BP and hunger -- yesss!)

This raises some interesting questions about my primary focus, which was and still is blood pressure reduction. Losing "just" 2 pounds of fat is chump change on paper, but is a surprising real-world volume -- about four and a half cups, or a little over a quart. Was the fat loss itself responsible for the BP drop? [Research topic: check with Plastic Surgeons who do lipo on hypertensive patients, and compare pre-op BPs to daily post-op readings for a week in folks with a small amount of removed fat (around 2 lbs)]. Did the decreased exercise volume help the BP by reducing overtraining stress? Or was it more the sodium reduction plus potassium rich food intake (green smoothies)?

Next direction queries:

Can the 23.6% body fat -- 24% -- be lowered into the teens, while pursuing total weaning off BP medication? Probably; there's no intrinsic reason why lowering body fat percentage should raise blood pressure.

Has the muscle mass loss plateaued? Also, probably; the weight has been stable within 2 lbs for the last 1-2 weeks. Ergo, the current dietary habits, including a cheat day per week, equate to daily activities plus 2 brief kettebell swing sessions per week.

So which way to go, reduce calories, increase metabolic burn rate, or both?

Easiest would be to reduce calories a tidge, by one of the intermittent fasting protocols. Skip lunch a couple days a week, or for longevity and protein restriction purposes, turn the cheat day breakfast into a protein-free green smoothie, and ditto for one other dinner during the week.

Increasing metabolic burn rate would mean ramping up the exercise burn and/or building muscle, and or invoking other aides: the thermogenic cold therapy protocol from 4HB, or the PAGG stack. For efficiency and the minimizing of pills, I'm leaning towards the cold showers and ice packs on the traps, and adding one KB grind day a week: more frequent and drawn out exercise may not be needed, and might raise the BP, which I've seen before. Isometric gymnastics and total body bodyweight programs are also candidates, just less standardizable than KB lifting.

So, here's to Round Two!

Chronic Tacos low carb tostada bowl for #4HB Slow-Carb lunch...and Gumby

Never gets old:

• chicken
• lettuce
• pinto beans this time
• ladle thwock of guac
• cilantro, onions, pico de gallo and medium green salsa
• no tostada shell, chips, rice, tortilla, etc.

For breakfast, had a quick 3 egg in-skillet scramble, after sauteeing 2 clawfuls of organic spinach in a glop of olive oil with a little Dairygold butter. No added salt, lots of ground pepper, and some leftover black beans heated up with some sprinkled cayenne pepper on top. Protein, potassium, magnesium, fiber, and testosterone enahncement all in one.

Hibiscus tea through the morning.

Still exploring the exercise options...will be studying Tracy Reifkind's DVD, Programming The Kettlebell Swing, this weekend. Have a line out to a local kinesiologist for an exercise physiology update. Both should help direct the next phase of personal testing: which exercise types are either blood pressure neutral, or hypertension reducing.

One senior RKC gave a shout out to Gumby: get flexible like Gumby before focusing on any other moves, if you've got elevated BP. I was more flexible than most, though no pal to Pokey, when my BP was 30 points higher a month ago, but I see his point. Hard to lower your pump pressure if you're tight and clenched all the time.

Love the KB swings, but miss the adeptness of moving up, down, and around. Even if they don't lower the BP, it's time to re-introduce the joint mobility and movement training.

On choosing exercise for BP lowering, along with #4HB

Is there an exercise better than kettlebell swings to optimize blood pressure control?

It's an interesting question -- and maybe one that doesn't need an answer. So far, my BP seems to be dropping pretty well, with a fairly modest (read: much less than before) exercise program. Mondays and Fridays, doing 75 kettelbell swings with a 24 kg RKC 'bell, two-handed, is about it. I've even forgone my prior joint mobility, FlowFit, and 5 Tibetans, and my BP hasn't apparently suffered. This morning's was the lowest systolic BP reading I can remember, ever: 118.

For some things, the most effective way to advance is to sit the hell down.

The focus has been on other, less strenuous tweaks. Diet. Supplementation. Breathing meditation. Some work within minutes, others take weeks. But none require months to significanty lower blood pressure, not even diligent exercise in the sports medicine research.

So, Possibility Numero Uno: Efficient blood pressure reduction may be 80% non-exercise dependent. Right now, it appears to be more like 90-95% due to the tweaks above.

Possibility Numero Dos: Exercise selection may be more a matter of finding a program that doesn't worsen blood pressure, instead of discovering one that lowers it. This is a better way of looking at matters if BP lowering has already occured via Non-Exercise Tweaks (NETs), and the goal is to retain those losses.

Right now, my sample size consists of myself, and the 3 weeks I've been doing Slow Carb + KB swings + NETs of my own devising -- not very generalizable. But if correct, this modified 4HB approach would have tremendous appeal from an efficiency standpoint. If the only way to reach a goal is by a daily, periodized slog, so be it -- but it's a LOT easier to eat right and sip hibiscus tea throughout the day (more on this later) than to lift a canonball or your own bodyweight hundreds of times every day, if the goal is to simply not blast holes in your arteries. The starting point for real bodywork should be a relaxed, ready place with blood pressure already under control, not a daily fight just to keep it in check.

Otherwise, every other exercise goal (strength, mass, agility, martial arts prowess) becomes a juggling act on the edge of disaster. If you must do kettebell swings for half an hour, 3-6 days a week just to keep your BP in check, I guarantee you will have issues exploring much of anything else.