Many of us who fancy ourselves competitive cyclist/athletics would set goals at the beginning of every season to have something to shoot for. Most goals are obtainable while some are simply beyond stretch limits. For example, for my first race season a few years ago, I wrote down “Top 10 in the BAR” as a goal. In reality I should have aimed for 10 points instead – for your information, I got 3 points that season. Another goal I set every year but yet to achieve is to loss 10 pounds to increase that good old power to weight ratio. Another trait of most competitive (aka geeky) cyclist is we are always on the lookout to “buy” advantages such as carbon aero wheels, aero bikes, recovery nutrition, compression sucks, etc. So why should weight lost be any different?
Since I am a big fan of Hammer Nutrition, I decided to give Appestat a try. According to Hammer, Appestat has the following benefits:
- Appestat can suppress appetite without stimulants.
- Appestat helps increase fat metabolism.
- Appestat can reduce potential for carbohydrate-to-fat conversion.
- Gluten Free
The first bullet point was easy to prove while the rest might just have to take their words for it.
I am not going to lie to you, the first few days on the stuff was a bit rough. I didn’t feel like eating much despite the fact my stomach hurt constantly presumably from hunger. It was quite strange. At first I thought it was a placebo effect – I spent $30 on a bottle so it must work right? (Read on for the answer)
The first week (out of the three weeks cycle) I just felt weak on and off the bike. It made sense because through logging my caloric intake using thedailyplate.com, on average, I was only consuming < 1600 calories per day when I normally would take in 2100 – 2600 calories.
By the second week, I was mentally and physically prepared to eat less. It was around that time I started seeing weight lost. Very exiting! I wanted to experiment a bit with taking 1 vs. 2 capsules per meal to see what it might do. To me (your mileage might vary) the effect with 1 capsule was very subtle while 2 capsules along with a small meal kept me full for hours. With that knowledge in hand along with a recommendation by Hammer, I started taking 1 cap at lunch to get a bit more calories for the day and 2 caps for dinner. With that protocol, I had absolutely no desire to snack a night which has always been a weakness of mine.
By the end of the third week, I had lost a total of 6lbs. A little faster than I prefer but I will take it. However, towards the end of the 3 weeks cycle, I felt like my body was becoming “immune” to the pills. I wanted to eat more and more. In addition, the first few days I was off the pills (sounded like something a woman would say) all I wanted to do was stuff my face no matter with sweets. So I surmised the pills were indeed able to suppress my appetite.
Having said all of the above, your results might vary but I think it’s definitely worth a try. I will begin a 2nd round shortly to hopefully reach my “fighting” weight in time for my first race of the season.
Please feel free to drop me a comment if you have any questions or would like to share your own experiences with Hammer Appestat.
