I’ve lost 40 lbs on EET in 6 months while still eating junk food every day

This article was originally published on Hive Health Media, and documents my current progress on the Eating and Exercise Timing (EET) Fitness Plan.  Below is the full article, but you can read the originally published work here.

That’s right. After I had established what the “perfect” EET habits for me that led to my 30 lbs weight loss were, I just continued doing them and knew that they would still do great things for me. 2 months later, all my expectations were completely met as I shaved off yet another 10 lbs, bringing my total weight loss on the EET to 40 lbs in 6 months.

WHAT EET IS

For those that don’t know, EET is short for “Eating and Exercise Timing”. It’s a weight loss and fitness plan created by Jon Pearlstone that allows its participants to eat literally whatever they want every day of the week without any calorie counting, portion control, or any sort of food deprivation. Exercise is ideally involved in a participant’s plan, but all workouts last less than 30 minutes.

Jon Pearlstone, creator of EET, enjoying his plan

This sort of structure was crafted to make eat as easy and stress-free for the participants as much as possible. The plan is personalized in such a way that it can blend in easily with anyone’s current way of living, including schedule, groceries and everything else.

That “eat whatever you want” line is no exaggeration, either. I eat things from Pizza Hut, KFC, and Burger King all the time and they’ve all served to help me meet my weight loss gains! I’ve actually written many topics about the plan and my experiences on it on Hive, so I highly recommend you check them out!

I DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THESE “LAST 10 LBS!”

Jon Pearlstone today

More than 2 months ago,  I wrote that “I’m still very confident that I’ll (lose that last 10 lbs) using EET, and without changing what I’m currently doing a whole lot.” And that’s honestly what really happened. Up to that point, I had been on the plan for around 4 months and had gone through several adjustments, to slow get me used to the “ideal” situations that EET would have me be in.

On day 1, I weighed in at 214 lbs and told Jon Pearlstone that my goal weight was 194, primarily because I had weighted at least 200 lbs for most of my adult life, and breaking that number would be a milestone for me. I had reached that goal around 3 months into the plan, and Jon told me something truly surprising. He said that the plan would naturally be able to allow me to lose 20 more pounds, without my doing anything too radical. I was already ecstatic at the point, since I had achieved the weight loss goal I had been fighting towards for at least half a decade in only 3 months, but this new piece of information left me a bit skeptical. “This plan was already outrageously effective for me, so it can’t be any better right? Right?” But it was.

I had lost another 10 lbs only a month later, and the feeling gave me a new air of confidence about the plan. This truly was the magic formula for me, and the best thing about it was that I didn’t even notice these brand new, epic changes. I see people write about how difficult it is to lose “those last 10 lbs” all the time, but, just to be perfectly honest, for me it was a walk in the park.

The reason for this is that the plan became second nature for me by the time I got to my 30 lbs weight loss. I already considered it a part of my natural lifestyle and dropping it for something completely different would be too much of a hassle for me at this point in time.  The reason it became second nature for me so quickly was that Jon carefully crafted my personalized plan in such a way that it was fun and sustainable for me as early as possible, and it still is to this day.

WHAT I’M CURRENTLY DOING

EET uses a technique called “forecasting”, which is a basically a schedule that the participant will follow in order to make full use of the plan. My current daily forecast is as follows:

7:30 AM – Wake up and drink Green Tea
10:30 AM – Work out of the day
11:30 AM – Treat meal where I can eat whatever I want. Pizza, fried chicken, ice cream, you name it!
5:30 PM – 1/2 can salmon, 4 egg whites, 1 chicken breast salad, 1 cup skim milk, 1/4 cup almonds, 1 small servings zero-fat yogurt
Pre-Bed (usually around 11:00 PM) – Decaf Green Tea

And here are the workouts I’m currently performing:

SWEDISH INTERVALS

Jog in place for 1 minute – I’m able to do 180 steps in 1 minute
Jump Rope as fast as I can for 1 minute – I’m currently able to do 150 – 160 rope revolutions per minute
Jog in place for 30 seconds – I’m able to do 90 steps in 30 seconds
Repeat the latter two steps 9 more times for a total of only 16 minutes of exercise.

I perform this workout every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday

I really like jumping rope since it’s almost a new skill for me to polish. I only recently picked this exercise up again after years of my rope gathering dust in the closet, and I’m still very rusty. I stumble several times during my workout, and it’s something I’m having fun trying to improve.

SWEDISH INTERVALS WITH BURNOUT SESSION

Same format as the Swedish Intervals above, but with a few more minutes of work added afterward:
1 minute total rest
Hit the heavy bag with various mixed martial arts techniques such as punches, kicks, elbows and knees for 1 minute – I’m able to do 130 – 140 strikes in 1 minute
Jog in place for 30 seconds – I’m able to do 90 steps in 30 seconds
Repeat the latter two steps 4 more times for a total of 7 1/2 minutes of additional work

I perform this workout every Monday and Friday

Originally, my Swedish Intervals were composed mostly of hitting the heavy bag, but Jon said that this was always less than ideal because Swedish Intervals are supposed to be composed of continuous movement exercise, and combinations on a bag are serial movements. Nonetheless, I kept with this workout for many months since hitting the heavy bag was my favorite “cardio” type of activity.
With my recent rediscovery of the jump rope, though, all that has changed. I still wanted to perform heavy bag work regularly, though, so Jon gave me permission to do these burnout sessions after my jump rope intervals.

I don’t do them very often, in a week anymore, though, because doing it in this format for 5 days in a week seems to burn me out too much, especially since I seem, to be hitting the bag with more force nowadays. So, I decided to split my Swedish workouts into the “hard” and “easy” format you’re reading about now. Because of the current format my heavy bag work is in now, the number of strikes I’m able to output per minute has also dropped. Before I switched to this format, I was always able to hit the bag more than 150 times each minute, but that’s changed as well since I’m performing my striking after a full Swedish Interval workout.

STRENGTH CIRCUITS

A Strength circuit for me is composed of 7 exercises performed back to back without any rest. After a full circuit, I get to rest completely for 30 seconds, then repeat the whole thing 4 more times for a total of 5 circuits. I also do a warm up circuit before beginning the full 5 circuits. The exercises I’m currently using are performed in this order:

1. Wide Push Ups – 7 reps
2. V-Ups – 11 reps
3. Front Squats with 95 lbs barbell – 5 reps
4. Bicycle Roman Twists – 7 reps
5. Chin ups – 8 reps
6. Bench Crunches – 7 reps
7. Romanian Deadlift with 95 lbs barbell – 7 reps

TABATA INTERVALS

Tabata Intervals are intervals of a continuous exercise performed at maximal intensity for 20 seconds straight, followed immediately by total rest for 10 seconds. This interval is repeated 7 more times for a total of 4 minutes of work.

Tabata Intervals are always performed after the Strength Circuits. A 3-minute rest window in between both workouts is recommended for performance on the Tabata Intervals to remain unhindered. My Tabata exercise is as follows:

Exercycle – 25 kph

If you check out my past article, you can see a huge discrepancy in my numbers for the Tabata work. About a month or two ago, the speedometer on my exercycle broke and I had it replaced with a new one. The technician who came to my house to set up the new speedometer tested it out and said that it was working perfectly, and, honestly, it was giving me more realistic numbers as per my performance. 

Don’t ask me why my old speedometer was giving me those numbers. The thing’s broken and I honestly don’t know how it worked in the first place.

You can check out my past exercises and numbers here.

THE FORBIDDEN WEIGHT RANGE

I had already mentioned that I weighed in at over 200 lbs for much of my adult life. I had always wanted to break that barrier, but never imagined that I would ever be able to reach the 170 lbs range. I had weighed within the 180 lbs range throughout my college life and I had already considered it a miracle if I could maintain that weight range once again. With EET, not only did I reach that range, but I surpassed it! I was completely ecstatic when it first happened, and now that my weight is currently stable at 173 – 174 lbs, it looks like I’m not even going back there again. It’s simply amazing how well this plan worked for me!

DO I WANT MORE?

That’s said, if you were to ask me if I wanted to settle for where I am now, I would have to say “Hell, No!” Now that I’ve come this far, all I want to do is take it further. As far as I can tell, this is pretty much the maximum weight range that my current EET plan can take me, but I want to see if I can go down yet another weight range and maintain that for the rest of my life using EET.

To do that, though, I’ll definitely have to make some changes this time around, some of them possible being major. I’ll have to consult with Jon Pearlstone again to see what can be done, but I’m just plain curious to see how much magic I can squeeze out of this amazing plan!