Sorry guys, I’m falling behind on the updates.  It’s been a busy last few days, and Debby and I have been working out all the details of my diet.

I’m trying to get up to speed with her diet strategies for maximizing fat loss while preserving lean muscle mass.

The strategy she’s getting me to follow is unlike any I’ve tried before.

First Exposure Bias

As I work with Debby to create a new diet for myself, I’ve noticed that I’ve been battling a lot of first exposure bias. I can’t remember the scientific name for this phenomenon, but I remember it as first exposure bias, so that’s what I’m going to call it.

Essentially what first exposure bias is, is a person’s tendency to be completely biased towards the first exposure they have to information on a particular subject.

Meaning, let’s say that your first exposure to the world of personal development is through Anthony Robbins.  When you first read one of his books, attend one of his seminars, or listen / watch one of his audio / video programs, and that program makes sense to you and you learn something from it – from that point forward you will always be positively biased towards Anthony Robbins when it comes to personal development information.

In contrast, if your first personal development book that you read is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, chances are you’re always going to be biased towards his theories over anyone else.

First exposure bias tends to diminish when we study a topic in depth, but it is very prevalent when we study a topic just from one or two points of view.

For example, many people who’s first exposure to dieting was through the Atkins diet, will tend to have a positive bias towards it.  They will interpret all other diets in comparison to the first diet they tried.

For people who’s first exposure towards dieting was a vegan diet, will tend to have a positive bias towards that.

Essentially, we tend to go with the first set of information we learn about a topic and that information paints and causes bias in our minds from that point forward.

The reason I mention this is because my first major study of healthy living and diets came from Tony Robbin’s program “Living Health” which he put together with Dr. Robert Young.  Dr. Young’s theories on diet and losing fat is based on the pH balance of the body.  I grossly simplified version of his diet theory is that we should avoid foods which increase the amount of acid in our body and freely consume those which have an alkalizing effect on our body.

I was first exposed to Dr. Young’s work through Tony Robbin’s program back in 2002 and a lot of what he says still makes sense to me.

My second big exposure to volumes of information on diet and healthy eating came from an Advanced Nutrition course I took from Alive Academy here in BC, Canada.  What I learned there expanded on my knowledge of what I knew about healthy diets and healthy eating, and some of it changed my mind on some of the things that Dr. Young teaches.

Nevertheless, I still found myself positively biased towards Dr. Young’s alkalarian diet theories, and interpreted everything through that lens even while doing my nutrition courses.

One of the things I have constantly found in the diet industry is that many authors and so called “experts” have political agendas that are mixed in with their dietary recommendations.  For example, ask a diet expert who grew up hunting for sport with his Dad and was always taught that meat is an important part of a healthy meal, and they’ll show you proof that we must eat meat in order to maintain health.

In contrast, ask someone who is a member of PETA and who has been fighting to save the animals all of their lives, and their dietary recommendation will show you proof that you must eliminate meat from your diet, otherwise you’re going die a horrible death.

As I’m working with Debby and learning her theories on dieting and some of the wonderful experts she’s put me in touch with, I have found myself having to really try to keep an open mind to their theories because I will be honest with you – they are very different than what I used to believe.

I am so aware of first exposure bias because my coaching clients do it to me all the time, and that is why I’m constantly checking my Ego to make sure I am open to learning from Debby’s experience.

It’s funny because a lot of times it is me on the coaching side of that relationship having to battle first exposure bias with my students.  They will ask me something like “Hi Paul, I really need to know what you think is the best Blogging platform out there.  I tried Drupal, I tried Joomla, I tried Blogger and …” and I will say to them “In my opinion, your best bet is to go with WordPress.”  Now, the funny thing is that so often they will then argue with me and say “Well, I heard of WordPress but isn’t Drupal better?”

It’s funny how often we ask people for help and then refuse to receive it.

I’m bringing this up, because it’s something that I’m becoming really aware of working with Debby.

I hired her so that she can show me a different way of thinking and so that I can be exposed to some of her beliefs which are totally different from mine, but I’ll tell you right now it’s not an easy thing.  It’s so easy for our Ego’s to flare up and not want to listen to someone else.  I am becoming really aware of this and getting really good at being open minded and listening.

I may actually bring up first exposure bias with all my future coaching clients so that they are aware that it will probably come up.

I can guarantee you right now, that as people follow this challenge and see what I’m eating and what Nima is eating, they are going to be judging and interpreting everything from their own biases.

Vegans are going to complain that I’m eating meat.

Alkalarians will say that meat is acidic.

Low-fat dieters will say I’m eating too much fat.

We all have our biases.

Food

Here’s some photos of the types of meals I’ve been eating the last few days.

Thursday – Day 4

Friday – Day 5

Saturday – Day 6

Right away I’ll mention that if you look at these pictures and the ones I took on previous days you’re going to see I’m eating a lot of red meat.  That was not exactly planned, it was just due to poor planning on my side in terms of portioning my meat and keeping track of what I have in the freezer, what I’ve pulled out to defrost and how long certain things take to defrost.

For example, tonight I was originally planning on eating chicken as I pulled out some chicken breast from the freezer but when I got home from shopping I found it to still be frozen ( I left it in the fridge ).  I did have a fresh organic tenderloin steak I bought from a local organic store, and I just decided to eat that instead of freezing it for another day.  I don’t typically buy organic beef, as I usually get it from Costco or my local supermarket but Debby’s been on my butt to switch to at least grass fed beef if I’m going to eat steak.  When I got home, that fresh organic steak just looked so good I had to have it.  Sorry chicken, you’ll have to wait till tomorrow.

Progress

It appears that the initial first few days of rapid weight loss have come to an end, with my weight stabilizing just above 211lbs at this time.  That means I’ve lost 5lbs of weight so far, but most of that was very likely water and toxin waste that my body purged as soon as I started eating cleaner and most importantly stopped drinking pop and switched to water.

You can see my full progress pics and stats on my Body Transformation Page.