Big_James’s BodyBlog

So I am starting to get it all together the diet the workouts the supplements everything.  I have dropped another 2 inches from my waist and can easily fit my 38" jeans and can actually fit my 36" jeans but they are bit tight and I don’t like tight.  My wife says I look really good in them but I think I can wait another week or two.  I am really picking up the cardio now trying to cut down another 20 lbs.  I figure once I am in the 240-250 range I should have a good idea of just how much more I need to loose.  So what was the change well of course you know the diet I am writing it down almost every day and the days I am not I am not worried as it is almost the same everyday.  I change some of the final meals and cycle on the carbohydrates but I have it so drilled into my head its like I am running on automatic pilot.  The dangers of running on auto pilot are sometimes you miss stuff so I plan on getting back to detailing it all.  The thing I did find with my food journal was the sodium intake so I have starting watching that like a hawk.

Hope all is well with you.

James

I am not sure how many people have heard about the president’s challenge so I will give you a quick little bio.  The challenge was given several years ago I am not sure if the current president (George Bush) had anything to do with it.  Basically it is a fitness quest for more physical activity. You put in your current work ethic and then based on what workouts you do you get points.  The points are given based on time and what you did for exercise for a given day.  Example running for 30 minutes at 8 mph would get you around 300 points.  These points are added up day after day week after week and at certain levels you win medals.  The medal levels are based on your current activity level and what you are doing to change it.  So if you say you are very non-active your medals will be easier to reach.  Where  as mine I said I was fairly active so they come with a bit more work.  Now I have never been a strict person on entering my workouts so I can tell you that I should have gotten all the medals by now if I would have stayed on top of it.  That doesn’t really matter though I am doing it now and I am only 1857 points away from the final medal gold.  Depending on if I add some more cardio or not I will get the points about middle of next week.  I will than have to pay a small fee to have the medal shipped to me.  This is not for everyone but I sure enjoyed getting my bronze I never ordered my silver because I had my heart set on Gold.  You should give it a try you can easily cheat the numbers but you are only cheating yourself then.

Fun little motivational item.  You can find a link in my links section.

James

So I had to do some test photos for a new photo assignment coming up so I used my wife as the subject matter.  Here is the shots I took of her check out the back she is showing definition already and her arms are looking tough as well.

You can see she is getting some arms and looks hardcore in this shot the off focus was caused by the fact that I was using a tilt/shift lens. Now lets take a look at her amazing back.

I know I know how did a geek get so lucky to hookup with a hottie like this well I clubbed her first…all kidding aside she is a geek too.  You know you got lucky when she talks about games like Zelda and Gothic 3 more than you do.

James

My Dad always encouraged me to be the best I could be and that nothing was impossible all through his entire life he has an amazing sense of humor and has this ability to bring the best from people. Now that he is gone I am taking up his crusade to help his daughter my sister to lose some weight. It is very hard to encourage her when you call her and she is typically ordering food from a fast food joint. Today I had enough as she was telling me she needed to go because she was picking up her pizza. My sister is morbidly obese and that is hard to write she is in excess of 100 lbs over weight and I just can’t seem to get through to her. I said some things she might not have liked after she told me about the pizza but I hope I have not pushed her away.

I constantly remind her that she can do this and just small changes will go a long ways. She says she is no longer drinking soda but just a day before I was speaking to her and she was in the drive through and ordered herself a Dr. Pepper to go with her 2000+ calorie meal.

I wish I lived closer to her but I don’t she are in different states but it seems like she is just eater herself to death. Any ideas are welcome.

James

So lets talk meat we all need the protein as it helps us grow muscles and is not as easy for the body to metabolize. So I shop at Costco I typically purchase either the lean sirloin steak or I purchase the ground turkey meat or the chicken breast. Tonight it is Friday so I wanted to do the Sirloin I purchased the leanest one I could see but just because it says lean doesn’t mean there is not fat on it. For instance the pieces that I got I still cut off another whole pound of fat. This is just a constant reminder that you don’t always get what the label says. Make sure you always weigh your food you can see one of my previous posts for a good scale. These are just common sense approaches to food.

James

Well I just wanted to write down a goal I know I said simple but it is easy to say and hard to do. My goal is to discover my stomach by the end of April. Why is April so important that is when my wife and I have our birthdays and I will be 33 years old. Last year was so hard with the loss of my father, job changes, and even the selling and purchasing of a house it was insane. Some of my friends started accusing me of being addicted to stress but I never want to put that kind of stress in my life again. My wife and I are stronger for making it through it and I am even a bit proud of my self for actually working out during this time. I figure I have about 20-30 lbs to loose between now and the end date. I believe if I work hard enough I can do this goal it may seem like a lot but I have faith. With the changes to my diet and workouts I am on an average pace of 5 lbs a week. I know I have not updated my stats on the side I am using it as a reminder right now that I can always creep back up if I don’t watch it. Right now I am in the 260s and judging by how much fat I have left I figure by 240-245 the stomach has to be showing.

Wish me luck and I would love to hear some of your goals.

Thanks MsFitness,

James

Well tomorrow I start my interval training on R-13 which should be brutal. If you are wondering R-13 is this small little road that goes just over the length of a football field. No that really is not that far but think about this running that distance at extreme inclined there you see my problem. I will try and add some photos of R-13 at a later date but basically I am going to run to the top walk/jog down try and catch my breath (2 minute rest) and than run back up. I am going to do this 5 times or until my heart stops one of the two. This will be done on opposite days of weight training.

So on the phone with my sister today while she was out and about I overhear her ordering the dreaded fast food. She explains she just doesn’t have time today to make a meal right. So how much time is that? I didn’t bother asking her I just let it go as I don’t want to cause anyone headaches but it did get me thinking. So I am going to say by going to the fast food place she used about 2 minutes of time. That’s pretty short and if there is a line you can bet that time is more like 5 minutes or longer. So what could she have done, well how about instant oatmeal? Plain generic oatmeal of the instant variety is extremely in expensive especially if you break it out by packet. So she should have placed a glass of water in the microwave heated it up dumped into a Tupperware container with the oat meal and headed out the door total time 1 minute 20 seconds.

This is a great snack to keep at the office too they are single serving bags they have dietary fiber they have some small amount of protein. Don’t like the bland taste throw in a bag of Splenda (remember to put this in after the microwave.) I just don’t take fast food as an excuse these days sure you can have a favorite once in a while just don’t go overboard. The problem with the once in a while theory is it creeps back into an everyday thing.

Another great portable food Low Fat Cottage Cheese takes just a second to measure a cup out and throw it into a container and go just eat it before it gets too warm.

James

The Escali Food Scale is one of many brands available and just happens to be the one I selected for my personal use.  I purchase the scale from Amazon.com for just under $30 dollars.  The product is simple to use you can figure it out without really reading the directions and comes complete with 2 AA batteries.  The importance of this device in your kitchen is highly disregarded but I would like you take note of it’s importance.  When switching your diet up it starts to become urgent if not vitally important to track everything that goes in your body.  To do this by label alone is alright but at some point you will be purchasing items greater than the amount you need and you will be estimating the size.  The problem is with food people never estimate accurately and the scale takes that guess work away.  Today I used the scale to measure left over Chicken Breast.  I needed to know exactly how much was there so that I could track it estimating I would have been completely off but with the scale it was easy.  First I took a plate and sat it on the scale and then zeroed out the total with one click of a button.  Then laid the left over chicken breast onto the plate and got 13.1 0z now I had the exact amount and could easily track it in my food journal.  If you don’t already have one I suggest you get one it doesn’t have to be this brand but it was easy to use and inexpensive.

James

Congrats Bodybuilding.com I know how hard it is run a site and I am really happy you guys got what you deserved although after reading the revenue numbers I think you could have gotten more usually it is typically twice the revenue or three times which would have meant $200-$300 million.  For all the non-geeks check out the article on tech crunch.

Tech Crunch Article

Again I would think this is good news over all for all us Bodyspace members and super store users.

Best,
James