While I loved this experiment, and the amount of discipline that it required, I am going to have to press pause for now.  I’m in the middle of a religious fast (it’s Ramadan for Muslims), and my lack of disciplined nutrition and the fact that I don’t eat or drink throughout the daylight, I just don’t have the energy to keep up the intensity of work that I usually put into the gym.  I’m losing almost a pound a day, and I imagine that it is muscle as well as fat, so I’m going to do my best just to try to maintain.  At the end of Ramadan (about 20 more days) I’ll get back on track and the six pack abs experiment will continue.  Until then, I bid you adue.

My meals consist of nothing but great, natural ingredients.

Meals are as follows:

Breakfast:

• 1 cup oatmeal (100% rolled oats, no sugar or any other ingredients), made with fat free milk, honey, and cinnamin
• 2 sunny side up or boiled eggs
• 2-4 strips turkey bacon

Lunch and Dinner:

• Grilled chicken breast or grilled lean burger patty (no bun or anything else)
• steamed veggies or beans
• baked sweet or red potato

Snacks:

• tablespoon of peanut butter
• fruit (peaches, pineapple, strawberries, mango, grapes)
• Whole wheat mac and cheese, made only with fat free milk (no butter)

This is what my life has become.  I have switched my fitness plan from a 5 day split, hitting each muscle group once a week, to a 3 day split, doing 3 full body workouts per week.  In between each work out I take a day of cardio only, and usually play basketball for about 2 hours.  This seems to be working well, and  I feel great.

I’ll keep you posted as things progress.  Still no visible abs, but when I flex the top 2 show.

Nutrition-wise I’ve been ok.  I’ll admit there was a cheeseburger here and there, but no sweets and I’ve maintained a healthy level of calories, with a low amount of fats (I made the burgers myself using 92% lean ground beef on a george foreman grill).  Starting today I plan to resume counting calories and hitting the gym harder.  Hopefully all will go well!

Yesterday was day 7 of my Six Pack Abdominals experiment.  Overall things went well, though as you can see I didn’t eat nearly what I was supposed to.  I’m aiming to eat about 2800 calories, and yesterday I was about 900 calories short… just a little, right?  If I keep up this fitness level, I really need to be reaching my caloric intake goal.

I also decided to start supplementing caffeine.  I am taking 200 mg first thing in the morning and about 15 minutes before my workout.  This will give me a little extra boost of energy, and should slightly increase my metabolic performance throughout the day.  I don’t drink coffee or soda, so I don’t see this being a problem.  I’m also still taking a multi-vitamin, 1000 mg of Vitamin C, and 30 grams of protein powder after each workout.  When I play basketball I also take 400 mg of Ibuprofen, because I get shin splints pretty bad, and the Ibuprofen at least masks it during play.

This morning I weighed 204.8.  Remember my goal is to be at 185 in 53 days.  We’ll see…

I’m going to try and be better at recording everything, so hopefully tomorrow I’ll have all the graphs to show off again.  Wish me luck on day 7!

As you can see, I ate 3,042 calories yesterday, and as the image below shows, I burned 4,779 calories.  Not bad for the first day.  I’m sure that kind of activity wont keep up, since I don’t play basketball for 2+ hours everyday.  I actually played for 3 hours, but considering all of the breaks between games and such, I put 2:15 in the program.  My legs are a bit sore, but overall it was a great first day.  I feel great, and I’m excited about keeping up with it today!

Follow my fitness journal at http://fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=IbrahimZCL

My diet has been stable throughout the entire experiment, although the times which I became hungry were a little different.  I’m not hungry for breakfast till about 10:30 am, lunch around 3, and dinner around 9-10pm.  Usually I also eat a smaller meal around 1-2 am, and snack in between each meal of the day.

My level of alertness is higher than usual.  I wake up instantly and am ready to start the day.  I’ve even adjusted to my midday lul, by eating lunch right before and drinking a cup of coffee.  If I can squeeze it in I even take a 15 minute nap right before my class (which starts at noon).  These seem to help me stay awake through that 1-2:30 pm period.

Fitness has actually been a huge factor in the biphasic experiment.  On days that I hit the weights hard, if I didn’t adjust by taking an extra 1.5 hours sleep, I often couldn’t wake up, or I’d wake up really sore and tired.  When adding the 1.5 hours though, things went swimmingly.

The greatest difficulty for biphasic (which isn’t even that difficult) is adjusting to the social aspect.  Because I need to nap for an hour and a half around 9 pm, hanging out with friends in the evening is a bit difficult.  And my fiance (as supportive as she is) generally likes for me to be closer to her in the evening.

My plan as of right now is to continue with biphasic throughout the week and switch to a more monophasic weekend schedule (maybe with a shorter midday nap, to make the transition easier).  I think this would better serve my schedule than trying to keep a biphasic schedule on the weekend, as I had trouble with that throughout the experiment.  It turns out that it is much more difficult to get out of bed when there isn’t really anything pressing on the schedule.

All in all, the Universal Man sleep schedule was a great success.  It was great fun and is definitely worth trying.

I have only 3 days left of the Biphasic sleep experiment.  The Universal Man sleep schedule (as I have named it) has served me well these last 27 days, and I sure have enjoyed the experiment.  My plan for biphasic will probably be to adhere to the schedule Sunday through Thursday evening, then convert to monophasic over the weekend.  I’ve found that switching between isn’t difficult at all.  In fact, if I miss my evening nap, monophasic becomes the natural result of that night.  So things should work out well that way.

Only 3 days left, then I start a new experiment.  What’s next?  I’m not yet sure, but stay tuned, because it’s sure to be an interesting one.