How Eating Cereal For Breakfast Can Make You Sleepy

I got back late one night from camping in Eastern Washington. We stayed at Steamboat Rock Campgrounds. It is kind of like camping in a mini Grand Canyon, but with many places to swim. Anyway, we packed cereal and Almond Milk for breakfast. I NEVER eat cereal for breakfast anymore, but love the taste. I had 2 big bowls on Thursday morning.

My cereal of choice? Golden Grahams

Unfortunately, simple carbs like this are drug-like. I'm not exaggerating the drug-like effects. The insulin spike and resulting drowsiness are intense. In fact, even caffeine couldn't combat my insulin induced coma. Note to self: Never eat cereal when you need to be productive, only eat when napping is an option. So, Friday was all about getting my body back into fat burning mode. I needed to get back into a glycogen depleted state.

How did I accomplish this?

Step 1 : A 24 Hour Eat Stop Eat style fast

I haven't touched a calorie since 7pm last night and won't eat again until 7pm tonight. I've used Eat Stop Eat fasting for 6 years now. I fully recommend picking this up if you don't own this. Brad has recently created a 2013 expanded edition that blows away anything written on the subject of fasting for rapid fat loss without losing muscle.

Step 2: Bonus Phase Visual impact Resistance Training

I've been doing low rep Phase 3 style lifting the past 4-5 weeks. to increase density a bit. Now I'm hitting higher reps to fill in the muscles a bit. Since I'm carbed up from camping this was a pretty fun workout. If I wasn't after a size increase, I would have kept to lower reps as recommended in the Bar Brothers System.

Step 3: Week 5 Intermediate Style Visual Impact Cardio

-Since glycogen stores were loaded from all the carbs and calories from camping, I needed to burn those up with cardio. The lifting portion did a bit in that regards, but I knew I had quite a bit left. What I did was Lactate Intervals to deplete glycogen at the fastest rate possible as described in Bar Brothers full program.

30 min LT Interval (1 min @ 90% LT + 3 min @ 110% LT)

This basically means 30 minutes cycling. 1 minute at a level that is below lactate threshold alternated with 3 minutes at a level that is 10% above lactate threshold (LT). This type of interval hurts but works like a charm to get the body back into fat burning mode. Figuring out lactate threshold is beyond the scope of an email, but I cover it in detail in VI Cardio. Anyway, this is how I approach the day back from camping or other social events.