TPower81’s BodyBlog

I’ve been thinking a bit, as I often do, about things going on in the world and why they are so.  I’m not a nutritionist by any means but I really do think that part of the reason why our society is so padded is because of the whole anti-fat movement in the 90’s.  You look at the ww2 generation that is slowly and peacefully exiting this world and you see people who have eaten eggs whole, butter and not margarine, bacon, whole milk, and red meat all their lives!  Yet, they still remained relatively healthy.

 I think part of this is due to the fact that the latter generation was very hand on, active and not so much of the "sit in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day".  In addition though, I think that dietary fat plays an important role in body composition.

 I remember growing up and all the sudden fitness took the trend of low fat, fat free foods.  All the sudden people were scared to eat fat for fear that it would get them fat!  What I think has happened though is people have replaced fat calories with carb calories.  This has led to two problems.

First of all, the carb increase.  It can be difficult at times to pick good carbs to eat.  Most of the carbs that people eat these days are processed and not low glycemic by any means.  I’m not argueing all carbs eaten have to be low glycemic, only that the average person is not paying attention to this at all when picking foods to eat.  The effect is the body is storing more energy as fat for later use.  It has gone from being in balance, to having too much energy, therefore storing it for later use.

The second thing that I think has happened is the body has gotten used to using carbs as an energy source.  The flip side of this is that fat is no longer breaked down as effectively as before.  A person on a low fat diet doesn’t really notice this because they aren’t taking in fat.  What I think the problem with this is that in addition to not dealing with fat intake very well, the body also is unfamiliar with breaking down fat stores in the body for energy.  In fact, in most cases the body may not even touch these fat stores, instead catabolizing itself and burning muscle for energy over the fat.  Muscle is much easier to get energy from, and if the body is not used to or equipped to transfering fat to energy because there is no fat in the diet, then it will produce "skinny fat" or simply just obese people that can’t figure out why they can’t lose fat while on a 1500 calorie diet.

In my opinion, fat needs to be reintroduced to society as not being all that bad.  No fear, guys, eating fat isn’t going to make you fat.  I hope to show this in the coming weeks while on "The Anabolic Diet".  My calories are coming from roughly 60% fat sources, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

If you have any comments on this, I’d love to hear them.  Once again, I’m not a nutrition expert at all, and most of the time I have no idea how the body works, lol.  Just saying, the way I see it right now, the fat scare of the 90’s combined with all the simple sugar in a lot of today’s pre-packaged foods has made a lot of people overweight.

I’ve been thinking a bit, as I often do, about things going on in the world and why they are so.  I’m not a nutritionist by any means but I really do think that part of the reason why our society is so padded is because of the whole anti-fat movement in the 90’s.  You look at the ww2 generation that is slowly and peacefully exiting this world and you see people who have eaten eggs whole, butter and not margarine, bacon, whole milk, and red meat all their lives!  Yet, they still remained relatively healthy.

 I think part of this is due to the fact that the latter generation was very hand on, active and not so much of the "sit in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day".  In addition though, I think that dietary fat plays an important role in body composition.

 I remember growing up and all the sudden fitness took the trend of low fat, fat free foods.  All the sudden people were scared to eat fat for fear that it would get them fat!  What I think has happened though is people have replaced fat calories with carb calories.  This has led to two problems.

First of all, the carb increase.  It can be difficult at times to pick good carbs to eat.  Most of the carbs that people eat these days are processed and not low glycemic by any means.  I’m not argueing all carbs eaten have to be low glycemic, only that the average person is not paying attention to this at all when picking foods to eat.  The effect is the body is storing more energy as fat for later use.  It has gone from being in balance, to having too much energy, therefore storing it for later use.

The second thing that I think has happened is the body has gotten used to using carbs as an energy source.  The flip side of this is that fat is no longer breaked down as effectively as before.  A person on a low fat diet doesn’t really notice this because they aren’t taking in fat.  What I think the problem with this is that in addition to not dealing with fat intake very well, the body also is unfamiliar with breaking down fat stores in the body for energy.  In fact, in most cases the body may not even touch these fat stores, instead catabolizing itself and burning muscle for energy over the fat.  Muscle is much easier to get energy from, and if the body is not used to or equipped to transfering fat to energy because there is no fat in the diet, then it will produce "skinny fat" or simply just obese people that can’t figure out why they can’t lose fat while on a 1500 calorie diet.

In my opinion, fat needs to be reintroduced to society as not being all that bad.  No fear, guys, eating fat isn’t going to make you fat.  I hope to show this in the coming weeks while on "The Anabolic Diet".  My calories are coming from roughly 60% fat sources, 35% protein, and 5% carbs.

If you have any comments on this, I’d love to hear them.  Once again, I’m not a nutrition expert at all, and most of the time I have no idea how the body works, lol.  Just saying, the way I see it right now, the fat scare of the 90’s combined with all the simple sugar in a lot of today’s pre-packaged foods has made a lot of people overweight.

I took a few days off from work and flew out to see my family this weekend in Portland.  I only get to see them about 3-4 times a year so I was pretty happy to be home.  The only problem is that most of my closest friends live there too, along with my GF’s family.  What ends up happening is I try and schedule time with everyone and there is always someone that gets the short end of the stick.  This time it happened to be my GF’s family as well as some of her friends that I’ve never met.  So she wasn’t very happy about that…

My Mom has been dieting strictly as well as me and man, I think she’s lost as much weight as I have!  She’s pretty tiny now and I worry she is too tiny and has bought into the whole, eat light, do lots of cardio thing that women get stuck in.  Not much muscle going on there.

The interesting thing is my mom is the fit one and my Dad could care less.  So my Mom was all about me, my new muscles and showing me off to people because she knows what discipline and dedication it takes to build a body.  My Dad on the other hand never really even mentioned he thought I looked good!  This put me off a bit, until hearing Sunday’s sermon. 

It was about parents and how they love their kids.  Parents should love without expectactions and it is up to the kids to understand this and not feel like they have to do this or that in order to earn the love of their parents.  In addition, we shouldn’t feel like we have to do this or that to make our parents proud of us.  So I took this to heart and realized that my Dad loves me completely no matter if I’m 200lbs 5% BF or 200lbs 20%BF and that I shouldn’t be expecting him to be extra proud of me just for what I’ve accomplished in the gym.

 So anyways, back to the daily routine that I’ve come to enjoy.  Good eating and exercise.  Time to build some effin muscle!

I decided to take this week off.  I’ve just ended a long cut, while doing high volume workouts in the gym.  I feel like I need to give my body a break, and this week seemed like a good idea considering I’m taking a 4 day weekend vacation to see friends and family in oregon.

Problem is, I just can’t keep out of the gym.  I decided to do three full body workouts, light this week just to keep the body going a bit rather than sit around.  I also am walking like usual, 3-5 miles a day if I can.  My first workout was yesterday.  I had read of a workout consisting of body weight exercises and thought I’d give it a try.  If I remember right it was pullups, dips, squats (with BW on shoulders) and crunches.  You start at doing a set of 10 through all the exercises and then rest 2 min.  Then do sets of 9, then 8 and all the way down to 1.  Then if you’re still up to it you go back up to 10.

 Well, it seemed a bit easy to me.  By the time I got back around to an exercise I was ready to go and didn’t need any rest at all.  I stopped taking the 2 min rest and just went back to chin-ups.  Then once I got down to low reps I got tired of reracking my weight on squat so I started doing 2 rounds at once.  For instance if I was going to do sets of 5 I would do 5 chin-ups.  5 dips, 5 squats then turn around and do 4 squats, 4 dips, 4 chins, then 3 chins, 3 dips, 3 squats. etc.  OH yeah, I forgot to do crunches…oh well.  So I did all this and made my way all the way back up to 10. 

 In all my workout consisted of 109 chin-ups, 109 dips and 109 squats of 185lbs.  I then hit the bench for a burnout set and hit the shower.  Workout didn’t seem to tax me that much but this is some respectable volume!

I think tommorow I will do the same but add in push-ups and crunches.  I just hope to keep moving back and forth quick enough to get my heart rate up.  I might just start at 10, go to 5 then back up to 10 too.  That would only be 85 total reps.  Not as bad…

Deloading….hmm.

A lot of people have been asking me about my diet and giving me a lot of good comments on how my physique has developed.  First off, thank you all for these comments.  Its great to hear and really helps motivate me to keep it up.

A typical day of eating for me is 6-7 meals.  On workout days I take in 2 scoops of whey and additional carbs.  I’ve been going low carb for my cut and now am starting to introduce more carbs into my diet to help clean bulk.  90% of the time during the week I will eat the following:

6am Breakfast

1/2 cup oatmeal, 5 egg whites, 1 whole egg, 1 cup green beans, 10 almonds, 4oz lean meat.

8:30 PWO

1/2 cup oatmeal, 1.5 scoops whey, 10 almonds

11:00 1st Lunch

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

1:30 2nd Lunch

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

4:00pm pre-dinner

1 cup green beans, 4-6oz lean meat, 10 almonds

6:30pm dinner

1 cup green beans, 4 oz lean meat, 10 almonds

8:30pm post dinner

protein shake

On NON-workout days I will start eating at 7am, 6 meals puts me at 8ish to eat my last meal.  Sometimes I will substitute tomatoes, edamame, onions, asparagus or broccolli for my veggies but green beans are a staple.  I eat roughly 10lbs of green beans a week.  If I’m a little hungrier than normal I will eat more veggies.  I always try and eat some fat with my meals.  I take fish oil capsules at every meal, and Cellmass before bead and on rise in the morning.

Thats about it…lol.  Pretty boring really.  The fun part is in seasoning the chicken, tuna, salmon, ground turkey and ground beef.  I try and keep it low sodium or at least if I’ve been taking in a lot of sodium the past few days I’ll clean off it for 3 days before taking in more.  I like to eat pretty simple, but stuff is still tasty.

 Lastly, I’m not doing competitions or anything serious, so its not a big deal to get a nice binge meal in here and there.  Yeah its not helping you achieve your goals but since bodybuilding is more of a hobby than anything for me, its not a big deal to only look better than 80% of the people out there instead of 81%.  In the grand scheme of things, this is life, enjoy it.  When cheating becomes so frequent that progress is halted, well thats where I draw the line.

My diet works to help achieve my goals, and so far has allowed me enough flexibility to enjoy eating still.  These are important things when choosing a diet.  It must help you achieve your goals and you must not hate it!

I set a goal a few weeks ago…maybe two weeks, not sure.  Anyways I set a goal that by the end of the year I want to be repping 100lb DB’s on the incline bench.  So far I’ve been working up about 5 lbs a week.  I do 5 sets of 6, then the next workout I will do 5 sets of 8.  Then I go back to 5 sets of 6 and increase the weight 5 lbs. 

 Today I moved up to the 90lbers.  I wore my bodybuilding shirt to boost my morale and help represent well!  I figured, if my shirt says bodybuilding.com on it, I should look like I know what the eff is going on right?  First set was pretty hard, but the rest fell into place very nicely.  I got all 5 sets up without any cheats and what I think was pretty good form throughout! 

Next was 5 sets of barbell flat bench.  I worked them at 205.  Then cranked a few declines out (3 sets).  Hit some dips up, then the fly machine.  Rope pulldowns and done.  Took my shirt off once in the locker room and admired a nice full chest…I just wish it were like that all the time and not just pumped! 

 It will come with time, patience, hard work…