My 2008 6 week program transformation notes
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Diet started 9/22/08 / ENDED 11/8/08
Today: 9 28 08 Sunday
So here’s the summary for the past week. I have dropped body fat from 21% to 19%. I am not journaling every day because I am unhappy with the fact that I had surgery on 9 9 08 (Stitches out 9 19 08) and my back wound keeps bleeding and I need to let it heal. I am unhappy because I still am not lifting weights during this program. Half of me just wants to have a normal diet and for that reason I have cut back some but not totally. The other half of me wants to get this program over and done and have the results of course. I’m still snacking on graham crackers through my work day. I went out for lasagna with Beth’s family the other (Sat) night. (I just didn’t over stuff myself, though it was very hard to eat healthy at the restaurant we went to) I had lasagna with lots of Ricotta Cheese. (A bit much). Anyway this has been about the worst my diet has been in as far as going a stray. For lunch I’ve been eating turkey and swiss sandwiches with water.
Each day this week except today (I gave myself a break); I started my day with 1.5 mile run at 5 mph/hr on the treadmill. Once I can get a few days where I do not bleed, I plan to work out. I may attempt exercises that don’t involve back stress this week.
For this reason, I haven’t been perfect with my diet. I cannot do this for the wife, it’s not enough. She’s not dieting with me. I need to think in terms of being my personal best because I stand completely alone.
As far as motivation, I’ve been ok. This diet is nice so far because other then all the additional junk food that no longer exists, I’m eating about the same way I did through my diet last year and ever since. I have less desire to eat like a pig like I once did.
101608 Saturday
Unfortunately I never got around to doing this in week 2 and now week 3 has already ended. During week 2, I finally got to lifting again. My percentage body fat finally gave way. I was running every day and that didn’t seem to do me any good. Now I am lifting and my body fat does seem to be going down. I’m doubling up on protein and eating salads after work. I am also able to resist chocolate which is huge and am eating more fruit instead of graham crackers at work. We have lots of low cal TV dinners, like 300 calories and these are actually making me full. I am using barbells for curls, but I don’t seem to get as good of a workout as when I use dumbbells. My changes for this upcoming week will probably be to change my ab exercise and do dumbbell curls. I also would like to focus on core strength exercises for more sets. I would also like to incorporate more variety, for example more types of aerobic activity. At this point it seems my abs will never come but perhaps with more protein, variety, targeting key muscle groups, and eating smaller meals and more protein in the evening may help. I may even get back to egg whites in the morning. I had a hot dog and some zero calorie coke Friday night and a cow today. That’s about all the cheating I have done.
10/19/08 Sunday
I am now starting week 4. My body fat seems to be stuck and I am getting frustrated. I’m still attempting new things. I began reading about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) in which you increase your heart rate for short periods of time and I decided to begin to apply that to my training. I am now doing cycle training in which I do 4 exercises in a row with minimal rest, take a minute to reload up the weights and adjust the equipment and repeat this 3 times. The first day I did this, I saw my body fat percentage finally go down. This was only the first time and then it went back up again. My snacks have been mostly apples, bananas and at work graham crackers. Stress at work leads me to eat more often, though just in little bits. I am also trying some new ab exercises. I’ve tried something called a figure 8 and just cannot get it. My running is going ok, I am trying to run 4 days a week (instead of 6 days a week due to pain in my feet due to shoe rubbing) and it’s going ok, but I still question if I am accomplishing anything in the 1.5 mile 18 minute run at a 135 bpm heart rate. HIIT advises a shorter workout but it will inhibit the body’s ability to recover from the regular workouts. HIIT recommends either I do this, or jog at a leisurely pace with an elevated heart rate for 1 hours. That’s just too long. I do admit, I wish I saw better results by now and having abs is becoming less important. Monitoring my diet so closely when I am a stress eater and going to work to feel stress is a challenge. At the end, what does it all mean anyway? I guess I can say I am healthier and I accomplished a dream. A dream that I had no idea would be so difficult and it would probably be short lived anyway because this is getting a bit old. I will say though, this diet has been much easier then before because I have pretty much stuck to this diet for the last year anyway. Will I continue to run after 6 weeks I wonder? Well, perhaps as long as I begin to see progress. If I don’t see progress, there may be better ways I can use my time. We’ll see.
10/29/08 Wed
HIIT Training! High Intensity Interval training. I was reading up on this which is raising the heart rate to an extreme level and then slowing down. This supposedly is great for burning fat, but then people tell me, no it’s burning carbs. Ok so somebody does not know what the heck they are talking about. I just do not know who. I have been trying this by super setting non-similar muscle group body parts together in which I do 3 circuits of 4 exercises. I run from station to station with very little time to catch my breath. How well does this work, hmmm… I’m not convinced of anything yet. Thus far my body fat is still in the 17% range and my workouts are very tough. I think I may be eating too much when I return home because one day I ate at work instead and the next morning found myself in the 16% body fat range! Could this of been a fluke? I may need to try this more. My gut has shrunk and I may look better then the last time I did this stuff for 6 weeks but man I sure need a good cheeseburger! I have to be honest it hasn’t been that bad. Heck, I’m not eating chocolate, I eat a few raisins. I don’t eat peanuts though I may have 100 calorie popcorn. Perhaps I am not doing enough though my results are not very encouraging. I think I may move to super setting similar muscle group exercises but I am not sure how I will be able to get a full body workout in. Perhaps each body part should get one exercise per week? As for aerobic activity, I am not running on workout days 1.5 miles and this part is going ok. I am now going for setting 6 on my treadmill instead of 5 since I didn’t seem to get anything out of 5. I probably will maintain a few changes for my diet after this. It is as frustrating as my body just does not seem to want to grow!! Sometimes it feels almost as if I cannot get a good contraction. Also the ab exercises I am doing now are not only confusing, but challenging to coordinate which of my body parts need to move.
11/2/2008
My weight is 169 and I am frustrated and pretty much have given up. My body fat is now in the 16% range and There is a trend where it gets lower and lower. This isn’t happening in 6 weeks, why, well in part because I’m not sure if any more sacrifice is made that it will do me any good. I guess I could eat endless crap and lose lots more weight! This week I will be doing some more aerobic activity, but at the end of the day, I just want to make it to the weekend so I can go get some ice cream. I do admit though, I have some bad days on the weekends. Friday for example I drank beer and had chips and cheese dip. Saturday, I had a late dinner. Sure these meals are as nutritious as I can find for the most part (except the beer and cheese dip where I didn’t really eat that much). Anyway, I probably will continue to eat healthy but I need a slight break to eat some chocolate and ice cream. I haven’t had an over abundance of anything, but I probably need to be more strict then I am. I also have been drained by some intense leg training. I’ve been placing emphasis on leg training because they are larger metabolism burners, though perhaps I quit early or something mentally, but the workout doesn’t seem to be as complete as it needs to be. Where’s the pump!??! Abs too, I’m trying new exercise and I am not sure if I get a good workout or I get so sick of doing abs I just basically quit. There is such a mental struggle and super setting makes these workouts even more draining.
11/8/2008
I just spent the last hour on bodybuilding.com download pics. In reviewing the pics, I actually can see some changes and this is truly inspiring. I need to create a side by side sheet so I can look closely. Already today I had about 6 peanut butter cups and am going the Chinese buffet with Beth today for lunch. I have really wanted to eat a few things and through this process, all this self denial has made me blood thirsty for certain bad for me types of foods. I’m sick of eggs for breakfast and not being able to go out at work. I miss chocolate very much and Chinese food. I also have been spending some serious time on the treadmill which hopefully I can replace with outdoor cardio once the weather improves again. The hard part about a diet is that I am a stress eater and when I get sick of my work day, I like to break it up by eating. Holding back has been almost a distraction because it’s harder for me to plow forward simply because there seems to be no better break then a small binge. Don’t get me wrong, I am not in to being a pig right now; I just think perhaps one cheat day a week may suffice for a long term diet success. Perhaps snacking during the work day could be ok as long as I maintain filler high fiber foods so I don’t over do it. So let me just say this ab challenge is tough, I lost some weight and some muscle and still am not there. I think I have been losing but painfully slow and I need to just break out and eat some of the crap I have been wanting. This past week, I have spent much more time on bb.com and I even filmed my workout Thursday night. The biggest motivator is in the pics where my stomach defiantly looks better!
