You are delightfully insane.
I think I saw an article where CT talked about if he wanted to eat something calorie dense or “bad”, he’d first take a long walk. And doing so, he either changed his mind, or just reinforced that it’s not worth eating certain foods if he has to walk.
I’ve been using walks pre-meal to work up an appetite.
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Ice baths are unique in comparison with exercise and/or calorie restriction.
With ice baths, you are not merely expending energy through shivering (10-15m is the equivalent of 60m of moderate exercise), you are converting white fat (bad guy) into brown fat (good guy). Bad guy stores energy, e.g. 50g = 300 kcals. Good guy burns energy, e.g. 50g = 300 kcals.
Anyone who recalls Michael Phelps incredible Olympic diet will know this intake was significantly determined by long periods in cool water. This is basic thermodynamics.
@JamesBrawn007 is onto something here. In my experience this is supporting fat loss when added. Went with Ice pack on upper back for a few mins and cold showers only, never tried the baths. Incorporating this again now.
Like everything its not magic but I think it works. Give it a try.
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You can pound in a nail with a wrench. Doesn’t mean you should just because you don’t like hammers.
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I was sorta thinking the same.
I would like to see the whole picture and not just a small portion. That’s why I asked to see a before and after pic of the results of this method.
Other wise I take it with a grain of salt.
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Bath salt?
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Lol
I think one definition of a kcal. is the energy required to heat one litre of water 1 degree celsius.
So, although not perfectly accurate, one could use that to roughly estimate caloric expenditure by change of water temperature.
Like a bathtub sized calorimeter.
Yes and no.
The water is in contact with the air, with the bath and with yourself. It is possible to determine the ratio of energy from each but… good luck XD
I realize that.
260 to 245 at 6’6 height. Based on every ‘best possible natty proportions’ calc I’ve seen with my anthropometrics, 245 at 12% is probably ‘my best’, but I’m far from it.
Edit: being totally clear, ‘260’ meant ‘day to day weight bounced 260-265, 268ish if I binged at a family dinner’. ‘245’ means ‘hey I saw 245 on the scale in the morning holy crap!’. Scale weight today was 250, over the last few weeks it has ranged 247-250. 250 was the target, I tried to overshoot so it would stabilize right where it is. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out.
Starting BF has been consistently at 19-20% over the last few years, but I didn’t check it immediately before, and due to lockdown, don’t have anything but the tape measure. I look leaner and didn’t lose any strength, so I think it was either all or at least mostly fat.
Again, nothing impressive, I’d say I looked ‘average but healthy’ when I started and now look ‘noticeably better’…by American standards, by T Nation standards, probably not doing so great.
At that height you could be looking solidly athletic. I know a couple of guys, one at 6’7" (plus the heel on work boots!) and they didn’t even start looking heavy until almost/around 300.
That few inches taller can make a big difference in overall appearance.
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Interesting. I can see it working( prob not 15 lbs for most people). Ellington Darden for his fatloss/bodycomp challenges has his guys drink a gallon of ice water throughout the day for similar effect.
I also think bringing inflammation down helps -therefore better recovery and prob slightly better workouts even if dont feel it.
OP ever try just an icey blast at end of shower or even colder bath for just 5 mins to be more time-efficient?
The ice water thing sounds like a good idea, if you have access to one of those pellet-style ice machines, swallowing a cup of them would probably use up a lot of energy (because your body has to melt the ice). No idea what the math actually looks like.
From a recovery standpoint, this thing always looked interesting but I never built one: https://www.instructables.com/id/CoreControl-DIY/ see links at the bottom for the academic papers.
I did once try air-drying by standing in front of a fan, because convection is a pretty effective way of removing heat from the body (water droplets carry heat away when blown off by wind). It felt unpleasant and I started to get bored fast so I didn’t do it again. I’ve done cold water at the end of showers off and on for years, it has never led to weight loss for me.
I think going ‘colder, much shorter duration’ would be inconsistent with the reasoning I used to come up with this plan, so it either wouldn’t work as well, or if it did, it would be taking advantage of a different mechanism.
My reasoning was that a) the human body has a fat-to-heat furnace that it turns on to keep you from dying of hypothermia b) there exists is a water temperature that will push that furnace to its’ upper limit without a net loss of heat c) that ‘sustainable’ water temperature is around 70F, because water temperatures lower than that eventually kill people in survival situations.
I see two reasons to go lower: 1) the number I came up with in c is the wrong number to satisfy b 2) you think that a net loss of heat is a good idea. Option 1 is definitely on the table. Option 2 I disagree with. If you’re at the correct temperature identified in b for x minutes, your ‘internal furnace’ is running at maximum for all x1 minutes to keep your temp from dropping. If you overshoot b and use a colder temperature for x2 minutes, your internal furnace will run at maximum for x2 minutes, plus the amount of time it takes to recover the lost heat (y minutes). So in the ‘colder, shorter’ case, you’ll be running your furnace for x2 + y minutes. If you set x1 = x2 + y, you get the same effect without the unpleasantness of 'homeostasis failed and I was drifting towards hypothermia.
I’m not aware of any benefits of being in the ‘drifting towards hypothermia’ state, so I tried to design this around avoiding that state completely. In terms of discomfort, 70 felt a little worse than 72, 68 felt a lot worse than 70.
If reducing time in the water is that important (most Americans watch a few hours of TV a day, so anyone without the time is an edge case), there’s probably some way to optimize this to both minimize the amount of time in the water and ensure that your core temperature never drops below some dangerous threshold (95.5F is probably a good lower limit). I don’t have the data to fill in those numbers though, and the time you save would be time spent recovering from mild hypothermia, which probably won’t be too pleasant or productive.
I’ve heard of people using very cold water plunges at the end of workouts or after saunas, but I’ve never tried it. If the effect of this protocol is all ‘signal the body to generate heat by initial cold exposure’, a quick plunge probably provides that signal, but the body would be expected to turn off the furnace as soon as your core temperature starts rising above normal (to maintain homeostasis and conserve energy).
At that height you could be looking solidly athletic.
Thank you!
This is just a clip, but I remember that they go the physiology of the cold/ice bath in the full episode. (links in the thingy, etc.).
Not gonna spoil it if you decide to watch, but it’s a pretty wicked and somewhat pertinent episode.
Resurrecting an old thread.
What’s the verdict on cold water immersion? I know Paul Carter is not a fan, but it’s gained quite a bit of popularity recently. I’ve listened to a good bit on it from Dr. Huberman, but am curious what others have found.
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This is a good question, the interwebz are full of people touting the benefits of cold water immersion.
I’d like an update also if possible.
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The weight did stay off. Of the people I’ve suggested this strategy to in person, most opt out, the one guy who tried it did not stick with it.
I don’t like cold water plunges, and I’ve always been skeptical of the benefits, plus the risk of cold shock induced cardiovascular issues is unattractive.
Overall, given the constraints this was designed under (no changes to diet, exercise, or drugs), it works well. I definitely think changing diet is a better plan, and there are exercise programs that work, which are probably just generally better in every way. I’ve never used drugs.
I think the best use of the program is as a way of revealing someone’s actual motivation to make changes: “ok, you say you can’t make diet changes, your joints hurt when you exercise, and you’re scared of drugs. Well, we can still get the fat off, all you need to do is watch a ‘Friends’ marathon!”
I think that willpower and work ethic are really important attributes, but that protocols are needed which generate results for people who lack one or both.
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Dr. Ellington Darden talks about this subject in his books, Bodyfat Breakthrough and Killing Fat