At the beginning of the year H and I were lucky enough to be chosen to participate in a new yoga/fitness system created by Eric Paskel called XFlowsion. For 30 days we did intense yoga/dance/martial arts 4 times a week and ate according to the XFlowsion diet (whole grains, veggies, fruits, etc, etc). By the end of the program I lost 11lbs. A month after the program I dropped another 9lbs and ended up at 163lbs / 14.5% bodyfat. Well Christmas has come early this year because Eric has moved to LA from Michigan and has offered 3 weeks of free XFlowsion classes to those who participated in the original program. The XFlowsion commercial will be re-shot, AND Eric will be opening up his own gym sometime in Jan/Feb.
So H and I are back in XFlowsion boot-camp again. We started Friday. The schedule is Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun which means we just completed our 3rd XFlowsion class today. All I can say is that XFlowsion is one hell of a workout. H and I have been doing yoga at home and at various yoga centers, but nothing compares to Eric’s classes. By the end of each class I am absolutely exhausted. I never sweat as much in any other workout than XFlowsion. It takes a lot of concentration, strength, flexibility and endurance to get through his classes. It’s intense. But it’s as intense as you want it to be because Eric is so mellow. Each class is completely different too (other than the typical yoga down-dogs and chattarungas mixed in with everything). So now I’m starting off at my new weight of 163lbs/15% bodyfat and I’m hoping to get down to 10% bodyfat by Christmas. That means I need to lose 5% of my weight in bodyfat which would be 8lbs. To accomplish this I’m going to try to be even more precise with my nutrition. Using the Harris-Benedict principle, I can assess my basal metabolic rate — also known as BMR:
Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)
66 + (6.3 x 162) + (12.9 x 71) - (6.8 x 34) = 1771
I need to multiply this by 40% and add the total since I normally work out 3-4 times a week.
This means I need to eat 2,479 calories a day just to maintain my current body weight. So I need to create a caloric deficit be reducing calories. 1lb is roughly 3500 calories. So if I decrease my calories by 500/day I will lose 1lb a week. If I can also burn 500 calories a day I could lose 2lbs a week - which would put me 2lbs away from being 10% bodyfat in 3 weeks. The big challenge is that it is the holidays and H and I love food. That means on Thanksgiving we will not be following the diet. But luckily, Eric will have an XFlowsion class Friday morning to make up for our dietary “sins”.
Out of curiosity I asked Google how many calories Bikram yoga burns (it’s the closest I could think to XFlowsion). I know it it’s going to be different for everybody since it depends on your practice intensity and a lot of other factors, but from what I could find it sounds like it’s possible to burn 600-700 calories in an hour. So XFlowsion four times a week would be 2400 calories burned at the least. I will also be hitting the weights hard at the gym twice a week and have one day to rest and recover.
During this training period I also need to make sure I eat enough calories to keep my metabolism running high. That means I need to eat approx 400 calories a meal 5 times a day which would put me at 2000 calories which is roughly the 500 caloric deficit I need to burn fat.
So last time I lost 11lbs in 4 weeks doing XFlowsion 4x week and lifting on and off for that period of time while moderately following the XFlowsion diet. That means I should have no problem hitting 10% bodyfat in 3 weeks.
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