Posted by Chris on September 25, 2009
Since i finished my 30 day polyphasic experiment(decided to stick with it for now) I am now starting a new one.
This might not be the most exiting but it is sorely needed. My new 30 day habit is going to be: diet and exercise.
I have posted my diet and exercise routine before and that is theoretically how i eat. But in reality i haven't eaten like that consistently over the past few month. Consistently to me means: no cheating, eating restricted calories every day for 30 days.
The Rules: Ill try to keep it as simple as possible.
The #1 rule is to stay below 2200 calories. So if i dont have time to cook or don't feel like eating tuna 1 day as long as i stay below the calories I'm still ok.
#2 Try to stick to the diet and healthy foods. After rule #1 this one isn't as important for weight loss but it is for health. The key to weight gain and loss is calories in vs calories out. If there is a net loss then you will loose weight and the other way around.
#3 P90X at least 1 hour per day. Again this aids weight loss and is great for health and body composition. It can offset some bad choices on the calories as well if needed.
So starting today.
Stats:
Male
Height: 6'2
Weight: 203lbs
Body fat%: just below 20
Goal: 10% body fat in the 180lbs
Posted by Chris on September 12, 2009
I overslept again, but this time by 4 hours. So I slept almost a full 7 hours. I blame the Chili! I woke up at 2 and i was pretty tired and had this great idea to keep sleeping in my mind for some reason. So i hit snooze and fell back asleep. Only to be woken up again of course, but this time i decided i was going to get up. So i turned off my alarm clock and ..... fell back asleep until 5:50.
I conclude. Diet is extremely important to adaption and probably polyphasic sleep overall. Overeating screws up your sleep, and since your not getting a whole lot of it, it really messes up your whole day.
Now back to getting up after 7 hours. I feel pretty good of course, but here is the kicker, I don't feel any better than if had gotten up at 2 and had my 7 am nap. Of course i would have felt pretty tired at 2am compared to now. But I don't think that's a fair comparison.
Day 18 recap: I actually felt kind of sluggish in the morning till noon(where i took a nap) I felt like i had slept way to much. The rest of the day went as usual. I did get tired at nap times and took them like always.
Posted by Chris on September 9, 2009
Great, I feel much better today, but now I have to find out why! Was it the diet or the exercise? Was it the 1.5 hour extra nap i took or the 10 minutes I added to my 3 hour core? I made quite a few positive changes yesterday to try and steer the experiment back on track. I hope to be able to find the correlation between these factors over the next few days.
Day 15 recap: In the after noon i decided to be adventurous and take some
Gaspari Nutrition SuperPump250, 800 Grams, Refreshing Orange
again to resume my old workout habits. It went well, I didn't do as good as before but that could be because i haven't lifted heavy for a few weeks. And to my surprise i didn't really have any problems falling asleep.
Posted by Chris on September 1, 2009
It's a week!
7 Days of sleeping 4 hours and I'm still alive. Now on to today. I'm pretty tired, similar to Day 6, but not quite as bad. I had trouble falling asleep last night so my core nap could have been less than 3 hours. I'm using my trusty Iron Gym
to do pull-ups again to keep my self awake. I have it hung up in the room across from me so its a matter of walking out the door to do pull-ups. I'm still waiting for things to get better so I can start improving my productivity and add some serious exercise routines back into my schedule.
Day 7 recap: The rest of the day was pretty average. I'm starting to slowly up my exercising and started with a bit of cardio today.
Posted by Chris on August 28, 2009
Ahhh. Day 3. Dare I say it ? Yes, its worse then day 2 and 1 added together. My eyes hurt and I'm very tired. The first hour awake I had trouble focusing my eyes. Now I'm kind of in the zombie mode. I'm awake but not really. My body feels heavy and tired. It feels like I have to drag it around with sheer will power. Not sure what I'm going to do. Even physical activities sound like a lot of work with this tired body of mine. And my eyes still hurt.
Once again the 7am Nap saved the day! The 7am Nap together with my vitamins and a shower pretty much turns me from zombie to a normal awake business person. The rest of the day was similar to day 1 and 2. I feel normal until about 9pm at which time I then get very tired and have to fight till 11pm.
So I figure once it starts getting better I will incorporate regular heavy weight workouts and my regular supplements back in (check Diet for more info). I want to test how well my muscle recovery will work in this new sleep environment.
Posted by Chris on August 27, 2009
I want to give as much information surrounding my polyphasic sleep experiment as possible. Diet seems to be a hot topic around the sleep blogs. Some say it helps to be vegan/vegetarian. Others Say the extended waking Hours require more calories.
Well here is my current Diet that I've been on and stick to pretty generally.
Supplements i take:
B complex:
Schiff Super Vitamin B Complex, 120 Tablets
Omega3 Flax caps:
Optimum Flaxseed Oil Softgels, 1000mg/100 Softgels
Multivitamin:
Nature's Best Multi Pak, 30 Packets
Protein Powder:
CytoSport Muscle Milk Light, 1.65 Lbs., Chocolate Milk
Fat Burner:
I used to take Lipo6x but I stopped for this experiment since it has caffeine and other stimulants in it.
Nutrex Lipo 6x, 120 Multi-Phase Capsules
I also used to take a pre-workout supplement, but I stopped taking that for the experiment as well. Although I plan on resuming it once I feel normal and adapted
Gaspari Nutrition SuperPump250, 800 Grams, Refreshing Orange
As you can see I've done my homework and I've been keeping in shape for many years. I will be able to tell how my body reacts to the changes in sleep and whether or not I need to make any dietary adjustments.
Breakfast:
For breakfast I usually have either 2 eggs and some toast or oatmeal with a scoop of protein powder and milk. Sometimes I'll have some turkey bacon with my eggs. It just depends on my Mood. Basically my diet is #1 calorie restricted and #2 low carb and high protein. I have Body goals I'm following in addition to the Polyphasic Sleep experiment.
Lunch:
For lunch I usually have a tuna sandwich or some kind of chicken/rice combination. Anything whole food high in protein will do.
Dinner:
Dinner is pretty much the same as Lunch. I try to eat chicken, fish or Low fat red meat and lots of vegetables.
Snacks:
Any good diet has lots of snacks through out the day. I usually stick with baby carrots, almonds, various fruits or fat free cottage cheese mixes.