Tag: health

4 Hour Body: What I Miss

Nick Momrik5 Comments

I’m closing in on 3 weeks of my 4 Hour Body plan and have been thinking about things I miss eating and drinking.

  1. Milk
  2. Pasta
  3. Bread
  4. Potatoes
  5. Rice
  6. Iced Coffee w/ milk or cream
  7. Chocolate
  8. Cheese

Amazingly I haven’t been hungry on the new diet, but I’ve had my share of cravings. Lucky for me, I cleaned (ate) all of this stuff out of the apartment before I started on 4HB because I knew I’d end up cheating. I’ve been keeping a list of cravings in an app on my iPhone and plan to take full advantage of Saturday’s cheat day since I’m not traveling this weekend.

I saw nice progress during week 1, but it dropped off last week and I’m not seeing much improvement this week either. This is surprising because I was out-of-town most of the first week and ate more off the diet for dinners than I have in the last two weeks. I think I’m going to cut back on my bean portions to see if I stay full throughout the day and hopefully it will help to shed a few more pounds. I’ve been doing my fair share of cardio because I want to get in better shape too, so I wonder if that’s having an impact on weight and fat loss.

4 Hour Body: Week 2

Nick Momrik24 Comments

I’ve completed my second week of 4 Hour Body. Read 4 Hour Body: Before I Begin and Week 1 to see where this journey began. I started the week at 189.7 lbs and 18.7% body fat.

Day 8 – Sunday, January 23, 2011

Looks like I put on almost 2 pounds on cheat day. Weight was up to 191.5 this morning. Bad start to the week by eating french toast and sausage links for breakfast. It was the last meal with our Theme Team in Tucson though. For lunch I had a grilled chicken salad. Played 18 holes of golf where I walked 5.67 miles. For dinner I ate a chicken bowl from Chipotle with guacamole and veggies instead of rice. Glass of red wine before bed.

BreakfastLunchDinner

Read More »

4 Hour Body: Week 1

Nick Momrik30 Comments

I’ve completed my first week of 4 Hour Body. Read 4 Hour Body: Before I Begin for more information. It wasn’t the best week to start because I was on the road most of the week, but I stuck very close to the diet. I started the week at 193.9 lbs and 19.4% body fat.

Day 1 – Sunday, January 16, 2011

After weighing in, I did swings with a 50 lb kettlebell (3 sets of 25), 10 myotatic crunches, and 10 cat vomits. These exercises were a lot harder than I expected, especially the kettlebell swings.

Breakfast consisted of black beans, spinach, and egg whites with one whole egg topped with southwest salsa. The egg and salsa mixture was very good. The beans and the spinach were OK, so I need to find a way to put some excitement into them. I didn’t eat soon enough after waking up, so I’m going to switch to one weigh-in per week because I need to wait at least 30 minutes after getting out of bed to get consistent body fat numbers on the scale.

For lunch I had turkey breast slices, a small avocado, peas, and a lettuce and tomato salad with homemade vinaigrette. The sodium content in the turkey is terrible, but I wanted to eat it instead of throwing it away. While golfing, I had a small thing of trail mix at the start of the back 9. Walked a little over 5.5 miles on the course. Dinner was black beans, asparagus, and garlic stir-fry beef. Had a glass of red wine at night.




Read More »

4 Hour Body: Before I Begin

Nick Momrik20 Comments

Last week I read The 4 Hour Body: : An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Tim Ferriss and loved it. The book is loaded with great info. I’m going to do the Slow Carb Diet, kettlebell workout, 6 minute abs, some cardio of my own, and of course I’ll be golfing. My plan is to keep track of everything, take photos of my meals, and publish a weekly update.

Equipment

Before 4 Hour Body

For full disclosure, I lost some weight since November 28th, when I hit 198 pounds on the scale. I was able to do this by cutting out junk food, fast food, pop/soda, and trying to eat good healthy foods most of the time. I did a few short workouts near the end of December and have been doing cardio for the last 2 weeks.

Current Data

To track progress I’ll be using 3 key numbers, which I recorded this morning:

  • Weight: 193.9 lbs
  • Body fat:  19.4%
  • Total inches: 144.75

Total inches is a sum of the right arm (mid bicep), left arm, waist at navel, hips, right thigh, and left thigh.

Goals

At the end of 4 weeks I want to get my weight down to 180, body fat to 12%, and total inches to 135. The plan is to weigh in each day and take the other measurements on Saturday since that’s cheat day. I’ll post a progress report every Sunday. I dare you to join me on this journey!

The Journey

Low Fat Protein Bar Recipe

Nick Momrik24 Comments

Protein bars can be a great source of energy.  They can also be very expensive and taste like crap. I must have looked through 50 recipes online over the weekend looking for a good one. Most of this recipe is from one I found at Stella’s Kitchen.

Ingredients

  • 3 1/2 cups quick oats
  • 1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk
  • 4 scoops protein powder (I used chocolate)
  • 1/4 cup flax seeds
  • 1 cup sugar free maple syrup
  • 2 egg whites
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/2 cup natural applesauce (unsweetened)

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites in a bowl
  2. Mix the egg whites with the orange juice, applesause, syrup, and vanilla
  3. In another bowl mix the oats, dry milk, protein powder, and flax seeds
  4. Add the liquid mix to the dry mix and stir until everything is completely worked together. It will turn out similar to cookie dough.
  5. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
  6. Spray a 9×13 baking dish with non-stick spray
  7. Spread batter into the dish
  8. Bake for 25-30 minutes
  9. Allow to completely cool and then cut into bars
  10. Store some of the bars in an airtight container and some in the freezer

Nutrition

I did some quick calculations for the ingredients I used and came up with a total of:

  • 2240 calories
  • 326g of carbohydrates
  • 176g of protein
  • 39g of fat
  • 45g of fiber

I cut my pan into 12 bars which gives the following per bar:

  • 187 calories
  • 27g of carbohydrates
  • 15g of protein
  • 3g of fat
  • 4g of fiber

Notes

You can easily leave out the flax seeds or add other ingredients to the mix. I plan to add nuts and maybe some raisins or dried fruit with my next batch.

You can cut back on the amount of applesauce if you want bars that aren’t as moist. With 1/3 cup of applesauce, the consistency comes out somewhere between cake and a granola bar. The baking time also probably has something to do with this. I had my first batch in the oven for about 27 minutes and the edges were just starting to become crusty.

If you try alternatives or have suggestions for improvements, leave a comment.

Health Update

Nick MomrikLeave a comment

Quick update on my health, after the scary trip to the emergency room…

I saw my family Doctor and he referred me to a neurologist. The neurologist figured it was either a really bad migraine or some type of “bug” in the brain. With the history of brain aneurysms in the family (grandparent on each side died from it), he wanted to do some tests to rule it out for me. I had a MRI and a MRA done on my brain a couple of weeks ago and am getting an EEG in a couple weeks, then a month later I go back to see the neurologist. When I had the MRI and MRA done the technician didn’t see anything jump out at him and the Doctor hasn’t called me, so I’m guessing everything looked fine there.

I haven’t had any further headaches and have been feeling great, so it looks like nothing serious.

I'm Healthy: My Fitness and Diet Journey

Nick Momrik1 Comment

Back in February, I made a decision to change my life. My weight was up to 199.5 pounds and I wasn’t happy. I had never tipped the scales at over 200 and didn’t plan on seeing if I could do it. I started exercising on a regular basis and eating completely different.

In a little over 3 months I lost 20 pounds. I continued to my routines and eventually my weight dropped as low as 173 pounds. Around the end of July and through August I was golfing more than ever, so my exercise routine fell off, but my weight stayed around 175 the whole time.

Read More »

Who Needs Sleep?

Nick MomrikLeave a comment

I do. I’ve had problems sleeping for years and finally decided to do something about it. I visited a Doctor last week and was sent to a sleep clinic. They put sensors all over my body and monitored me for a night. It was something different to say the least.

My results didn’t show any major problems like sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome, so that’s good. I guess. It’s tough not knowing the exact reason why I have trouble sleeping. According to the sleep study my sleep efficiency is only 67%, which means for the total time I spend in bed, I’m only sleeping 2/3 of the time. When I do fall asleep my sleep stage distribution is “grossly normal” according to the report. I basically have a hard time getting to sleep and then I wake up several times throughout the night for extended periods of time.

Read More »