Cold Thermogenesis Guidelines/Results page 61

[ljbprrfmof]

gopintos, are you nearing your goal weight? That could be why you are experiencing plateaus. I think ice baths will help.

[gopintos]

Ok so I started at the beginning, and it is making more sense. Sometimes I have to read things several times before I start to get it.

Okay so anyways, I am up to the part about cold ponds, like page 8/9. The kids love to swim regardless of temps. They were out there this past March when we had some unseasonable warm air temps. I am sure the water was still very very cold. And yesterday we had some cooler air temps, and they wanted to swim and I said no. After I got tired of hearing, can I just put my feet in and try it, he was all the way in it before too long. "He" being my 7 year old grandson.

I guess I should not be discouraging this, and perhaps joining him? Which I did on Memorial Day for about an hour even though it was quite chilly I thought. Maybe I should sneek out there every day before dawn, before my neighbors can see me? ha. Do a little dip and meditation. Not sure what order. Trying to figure out what time of day I should do some CT and spot icing.

This is all so fascinating. I started to read about it a few months ago. Tried a little face plunge but decided just to go cold shower. I remember it not being so bad, but for some reason got side tracked and never tried it again. I am always running outside in the winter time w/o shoes, to feed the birds or whatever and DH always gets on to me about it. I try to always drink iced water because I thought it had benefits along these same lines. I had heard that dropping the temp inside was also a good thing and tried that last winter to some extent but I forgot about that until just now.

Okay, back to reading. I was just wondering about the kids swimming in the pond and if I should oblige or discourage. I made a sandy beach and they love to swim and then lay on the sandy beach, or cover themselves up sometimes to warm up. The sand gets extremely hot. This is a Missouri beach - Missouri sand, and the sand gets fire hot in the sun, not like a nice ocean beach.

[gopintos]

gopintos, are you nearing your goal weight? That could be why you are experiencing plateaus. I think ice baths will help.

No but I have lost close to 50 pounds. I think part of my up and down is because of muscles doing their thing. So I am not really tripping on the scale because there is no way I can be gaining fat. Just can not be possible. Like everyone else, it just isnt as fast as I would like. I really thought (hoped) once I started doing all the right things, it would just fall off. I lost weight after 3rd child, before 4th child, about 17 years ago, about 50 pounds and it seemed so effortless once I got my head in the game. I guess I thought I would defy age and be the exception to the rule because I do not feel 47, fairly athletic or I use to be anyways, so I guess I just thought it would just magically melt away. I never was very good at science, and this (the science of weight loss and the whys/why nots) is all very fascinating to me.

So I dont know that plateau is the right word. It is up and down, within a few pounds and some of my tape measurements move, some don't. Like my arms have never moved this entire time even though I can see it toning up with my own eyes, they are just better and better all the time, yet no inch loss until just a week or so ago.

So I am not discouraged by any means, I just want to do whatever I need to do to maximize. We are going to Sturgis in August, I cant remember if I said that already, and I know I wont be goal weight by then, but I want to do all I can to be the best I can be by that time. I am just so ready to get rid of the rest of this crap. I have been carrying it around far too long and even though I feel pretty good and I am very happy with what I have achieved so far, I just know that I am capable of so much more.

[Whitefox]

Diet and exercise are certainly more effective than CT (although I am interested in how a combination of all three would work - going even stricter on diet, harder/softer on exercise, and adding in CT). This post indicates that ketogenic diets as well as MILD cold stimulate thermogenesis by way of UCP: Conditioning Research: Mitochondrial Un-coupling (!)

I believe it's the same people that Mark posted about as supporting mild cold (60ish). I realize that they may have given them the kiddie-cold version so as to avoid any hypothermia lawsuits by participants, however I have no doubt that there are some negative effects to extreme cold immersion. Exercise is a hormetic stressor when in the right intensity and frequency. When overdone, it is simply stressful and damages the body. Cold is a hormetic stressor when in the right intensity and frequency. When overdone, it is also stressful - as was pointed out, it spikes adrenaline and thus cortisol. If you're taking a 45min ice bath, that's around the point that Mark says it's too much running. Furthermore, Wim Hof is great and all, but just because he can do it all and appear healthy doesn't mean he is optimally healthy internally. He also doesn't look like Brad Pitt, which I think is the goal for CT-users rather than running ice marathons that almost make you lose your toes (around 6:50): Extraordinary people - Iceman - YouTube

On the topic of spot-icing killing fat cells rather than shrinking them, that's great and all but it's not unique. It is a myth that fat cells are immortal. Fat cells have life cycles like all other cells in the body - spot-icing kills them, certainly, but so does diet/exercise. If you diet your way to smaller fat cells, and you had an excess amount b/c you were overweight or obese, then eventually your body will "pare" away these excess cells through apoptosis, because caloric restriction would dictate that your body cannot support that many fat cells with fewer calories. Thus, over time, the fat cells will be killed. So while losing the weight, it's important to keep up the good diet/exercise or you can put weight back on quickly, as in the case of yo-yo dieting where stretches of binge eating can rapidly re-fill the fat cells that you so painstakingly emptied before those cells have committed cellular suicide.

So CT works, but so does diet and exercise (and variations to bust plateaus). Extremely cold stuff is in no way necessary to get past a plateau. Mild cold + ketogenic diet may add up to the beneficial effects of very cold CT, whilst saving yourself from the negatives. Just a thought.

[otzi]

Diet and exercise are certainly more effective than CT (although I am interested in how a combination of all three would work - going even stricter on diet, harder/softer on exercise, and adding in CT). This post indicates that ketogenic diets as well as MILD cold stimulate thermogenesis by way of UCP: Conditioning Research: Mitochondrial Un-coupling (!)

I believe it's the same people that Mark posted about as supporting mild cold (60ish). I realize that they may have given them the kiddie-cold version so as to avoid any hypothermia lawsuits by participants, however I have no doubt that there are some negative effects to extreme cold immersion. Exercise is a hormetic stressor when in the right intensity and frequency. When overdone, it is simply stressful and damages the body. Cold is a hormetic stressor when in the right intensity and frequency. When overdone, it is also stressful - as was pointed out, it spikes adrenaline and thus cortisol. If you're taking a 45min ice bath, that's around the point that Mark says it's too much running. Furthermore, Wim Hof is great and all, but just because he can do it all and appear healthy doesn't mean he is optimally healthy internally. He also doesn't look like Brad Pitt, which I think is the goal for CT-users rather than running ice marathons that almost make you lose your toes (around 6:50): Extraordinary people - Iceman - YouTube

On the topic of spot-icing killing fat cells rather than shrinking them, that's great and all but it's not unique. It is a myth that fat cells are immortal. Fat cells have life cycles like all other cells in the body - spot-icing kills them, certainly, but so does diet/exercise. If you diet your way to smaller fat cells, and you had an excess amount b/c you were overweight or obese, then eventually your body will "pare" away these excess cells through apoptosis, because caloric restriction would dictate that your body cannot support that many fat cells with fewer calories. Thus, over time, the fat cells will be killed. So while losing the weight, it's important to keep up the good diet/exercise or you can put weight back on quickly, as in the case of yo-yo dieting where stretches of binge eating can rapidly re-fill the fat cells that you so painstakingly emptied before those cells have committed cellular suicide.

So CT works, but so does diet and exercise (and variations to bust plateaus). Extremely cold stuff is in no way necessary to get past a plateau. Mild cold + ketogenic diet may add up to the beneficial effects of very cold CT, whilst saving yourself from the negatives. Just a thought.

Very astute observations and I agree on all points. This is not a magic bullet, just a tool like IF or low carb. People have been losing weight and getting healthy without CT forever.

I do think there is merit in increasing BAT stores, though, that can't be done any way except cold exposure. Increased BAT leads to all kinds of metabolic advantages.

Interesting link on UCP. It was written in 2008, lots have changed since then, one of the commenters was Steven Guyenet, who said

". The canonical view is that mice have UCP activity but humans don't (except as infants). Mice are capable of non-shivering thermogenesis using a tissue called brown adipose tissue. Human infants have it too, but we lose it as we develop.

That's why we have to shiver to generate heat, instead of just pumping up our UCP activity. But maybe we do have a limited ability to do it after all... "

We know this isn't true now.

[otzi]

Ok so I was at my daughter's the other day, and she is maybe 100lbs, maybe 5ft. And she is talking about having a procedure done. She has had two children, 26 years old, and she is self conscious about this little bit of something in her tummy area, and she was telling me about this procedure she is going to have done and now I am thinking this coolsculpting stuff is what she was talking about. Did I read something about spot icing? I wonder if she can save herself some money and just do this herself? hmmm

Let her Coolsculpt and you use ice packs and compare the results for us.

[gopintos]

Diet and exercise are certainly more effective than CT (although I am interested in how a combination of all three would work - going even stricter on diet, harder/softer on exercise, and adding in CT).

...... So CT works, but so does diet and exercise (and variations to bust plateaus). Extremely cold stuff is in no way necessary to get past a plateau. Mild cold + ketogenic diet may add up to the beneficial effects of very cold CT, whilst saving yourself from the negatives. Just a thought.

This is my plan for June. I had already decided I needed to cut back on carbs again. I had been in the 20 - 50g range in April and when I added some back in in May, might have been a coincedence but it moved things along. So now I am 50 - 75g most days. I am going to take out the things I added back in, like daily greek yogurt w/banana and .5 ounces of almonds, and sweet tators .5 cups a time or two a week. Will add them back in one by one and see how it affects me.

My structured exercise also took a back seat to activities that needed done outside. Like planting trees, shrubs, I used my pushmower like a weedeater a couple hours a week. It took me 2 hours last week just to mow my hiking trail with the pushmower. The first week of May that things moved again, I also did tabata on my elliptical a couple of times, so I want to add that back in, along with maybe a ST dvd.

The kids will also be wanting to go swimming in the pond every afternoon. So I can get another hour of noodling around.

I have much more to read, so I am not sure when I should CT and when I should ST/ellipitical, but I do know I have much more energy in the mornings. I IF from supper to lunch, and sometimes I throw in a 24. That seemed to help me at the end of May to throw a couple of 24s in there last week, or else I would not have had a 5.5 pound loss. It might have been more like 3 pounds.

I am pretty excited to give all this a try

[Whitefox]

Sounds like a pretty good plan. If you've been low-carb for awhile, you might want to also try carb refeeds ala Leangains, because after extended LC you probably are insulin sensitive but have low leptin. Martin's refeed protocol is like the more-precise, substantiated version of Kruse's leptin reset. Intermittent Fasting, Set-Point and Leptin | Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health

He says: "Leptin is controlled primarily by two things, which are

a) Short term: acute energy balance. A high calorie deficit causes leptin to drop lower than what can be explained by fat loss, and a caloric surplus raises leptin higher than what can be explained by fat gain.

b) Long term: total amount of fat mass. Fat cells are factories for leptin production. Not having many factories obviously impairs production and the aboslute amount of leptin in circulation.

If A can be manipulated via a subtle energy deficit and regular refeeds of the right macrocomposition (carb refeeds acutely increase leptin, while fat has no effect), this should prove beneficial to circulating leptin levels during the diet. It might prove fruitful to "trick" the last few pounds of fat off while venturing into the single digits."

I say this because you mentioned that increasing carbs helped with the fat stuff. If you ate high-carb after heavy workouts and high-fat on all the other days, with medium protein every day, then I think that could help even more. It would be like combining the LC success you've had so far with the "coincidence" of more carbs actually helping with weight loss (for once, haha).

I don't know about when CT/ST should be if done on the same day. I think either cold or hot water are fine for after-workout (both stimulate mitochondria, help with recovery, etc.), but I don't know about CT before ST. Would colder/more-contracted/stiff muscles be good or bad for ST? I feel like I would drop the weight on myself or something >.<

[otzi]

Sounds like a pretty good plan. >.<

Whitefox - I see you haven't been on the forums long..welcome...I like your style. I hope you stick around!

[Whitefox]

Thanks! I went on a research-binge after I discovered MDA, and have wanted to get more involved with this place ever since. Lovin' all the cool discussions going on - currently in college, and thinking this "being healthy" thing may become a profession. Suffice to say, I'll be around