So I did my weekly weigh in yesterday. I came in at 302.4 lbs and a body fat percentage of 42.2%. So very close to the 300 lbs and 40% marker. This was down 2.4 lbs and .5 percentage points body fat from the week before. I did do better on meeting my Move goal every day of the week and closed all three rings on my Apple Watch on 3 of the days. And I am doing better about tracking my nutrition using the Cronometer app (which I highly recommend if you’re looking for a good ketogenic tracker). So hopefully this progress will continue this week and I’ll be almost at, or maybe even below, the 300 mark.
Another reason why I think I did a little better this week at my weigh in is I’ve been better about taking cold showers in the morning. For a while I was getting one or two in a week, maybe for three minutes tops. This past week I did four cold showers with three minutes being the minimum. I believe in the efficacy of cold showers and should be doing it every day but I usually let the clock talk me out of it. Last week when I was looking for ways to get myself back on track with “good” weekly weight loss (2lbs or more for the week) I realized that I was engaged in wrong thinking about the clock issue. Yes, on a morning when I’m heading to work adding 3 extra minutes to the shower to take a cold shower would seem like 3 minutes subtracted from something else, but in reality it’s a gain. I say that because nothing quite gets the motor running like being under cold water for 3 minutes. Your body really has no choice but to rev up to generate heat to offset the heat loss due to the cold water. And that extra energy created also creates an alertness that allows you to make up the time “lost” in the cold shower by being more productive and efficient when you get out of the shower. So the benefits of taking a cold shower aren’t just for fat loss (although the extra heating your body goes through does help there, as well as generates more brown fat, which is a good kind of fat you actually want to develop). If you’re interested in the topic of brown fat and why you should want it (quick answer is it burns more calories) there are plenty of resources on the internet if you do a Google search for brown fat/brown adipose tissue. If you guys would like a quick blog about it let me know in the comments and I’ll put one together.
If you’re interested in trying cold showers, this is how I got started. First, I bought a waterproof stopwatch that I could hang from the shower curtain rod so I can time my cold shower time. I suppose you could just “feel” how long it is but if you want to know for sure that you’re improving, nothing beats the hard facts of the readout on your stopwatch. As for the shower itself, I start out taking my regular shower to get clean with very warm water, but you can start with whatever temperature you’re used to. I don’t start with the cold water because I think the warm water is better for proper cleaning, and it also gives me a moment to get prepared for the switch. If you want to just go straight cold that’s fine but I’d take a few moments before getting in the shower to get yourself mentally prepared for the shock to your body the cold water will give you.
After I’m done with the actual shower part I switch the water to pure cold. My shower allows me to adjust pressure and temperature independently, but if you have just the one knob on your shower turn it all the way down to the point where you have just enough pressure so the water is coming out at you and that should be the strictly cold water feed coming out.
When I first started I set my goal for 30 seconds and was shivering by the end. From there I increased the time by 30 seconds per cold shower until where I am now. One of the side benefits of cold showers is along with fat burn and brown fat creation, you also build a bit of mental discipline. At this point I can easily go 8 minutes without shivering. Part of this is adaptation, the other part is mental discipline telling my body not to shiver. The reason you want to learn not to shiver is that shivering defeats the growth of brown fat because your body doesn’t need it if it can just use the muscles to shiver you warm. That’s why babies have so much brown fat. They haven’t developed the shiver response. As adults we have, so we have a lot less brown fat.
One of the ways you’ll know you’re creating more brown fat is when you take the cold shower, even as long as 8 minutes like I do on the weekends, and after you get out your body goes back to warm quickly, but you didn’t shiver at all. You’ll notice as a side benefit that you don’t get the cold feeling as much throughout the day either.
So that’s this week’s blog post. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below. And I’ll see you again in a week for the next update.
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