Boiling a Frog

Workout 010, 100 Days Out

As the story goes, if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out. If however, you gently place the frog into a pot with tepid water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will just sit there floating in the water until it is boiled to death. Must of us aren’t sick enough to actually confirm this theory by testing it, but it remains a useful metaphor for losing body fat anyway. Stick with and I will explain.

There are several things you can do to lose the holiday fluff typically gained from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. You can eat less, you can eat differently, you can increase your activity level, and a host of other things as well. Each of these things are just tools for for body fat reduction. The more of these tools you use at the same time, the more heat applied to the frog in the story above. The body doesn’t like rapid change just like the frog. Even if you have enough body fat to live off of for next decade, your body is not interested in giving up its reserves stored up for the next famine. Like the frog in the story, turn the heat up slowly and the extra butter will melt off without the body wanting to jump out of the pot. I’ll use myself as an example. This is the first week of my pre-contest prep, so turning the heat up slowly for me right now is going to consist of eliminating processed carbs and drinking more water. That’s it. No counting calories, no carb cycling, no 60 minute cardio sessions, nothing extra at all. I will most likely do some of these things in the upcoming weeks, but I will add additional body fat reduction tools and turn up the heat slowly. Try it for yourself if you would like to lose a few pounds. Turn the heat up slowly rather than jumping straight into a starvation diet and three hour cardio sessions from day 1, and you should get much better results.

Continuing my active recovery week this morning. I decided to bust out an old stand-by of mine. It has been more than a year since I’ve done my particular version of tai-chi. I was glad to see that I remembered the routine without any problem. It wasn’t tough (it’s not suppose to be), but it was far from pretty. My balance was wobbly and I couldn’t seem to slow the movements down with as much control as I normally did a year or so ago. Suppose that is to be expected. I need to find room for tai-chi in my regular workout plan after this recovery week.

The AM Workout

PLANNED	ACTUAL	COMMENTS
Start/Finish – 4:30/6:00am	4:25-6:32am	Not sure why this took so much time.
Daily Min. (Floor)	long version
Tai-chi	10 mins	Out of practice and it show
Stationary Bike	30 mins

The PM Workout

No PM session this week.

PLANNED	ACTUAL	COMMENTS
Start/Finish – ?
Jump Rope Tabata
Stationary Bike