My Journey of Change

Life is currently in a massive amount of flux.  Baby is here, friends are visiting, and I’ve jumped off back on to the gravy train with a vengeance.  Gravy train with extra gravy.    Hopefully I don’t hurt myself too much by the time I get out of this downward spiral.  It also snowed here and is damn cold, which makes it not motivational to go out and run.  Hell, it’s lucky I even managed to get a blog post in…
On a happier note, new baby has arrived and everyone is doing well (except for yours truly’s diet/motivations/workouts).

If you read my blog on an even slightly semi-regular basis, or you know me, or both, you’ll know that I get hungry at night.  Hungry for evil things.  Evil, sweet things.  Evil, sweet, yummy, tasty, deli… wait, I’m getting off topic.  (Pause to wipe drool) Evil things…yes…

I think I found an awesome snack tonight.  Oatmeal.  Yes, oatmeal.  I added in a small amount of brown sugar and a bit of protein powder, mixed in some skim milk and that is the awesome snack.  Gets me full and sweet and satisfies the craving.  Fantabulastic.  I just wonder if that’s ok to eat as my final meal of the day before I set in for blissful slumber. 

Other sweet, low fat, low cal ideas I found while perusing the food place is:

• Jello
• Pudding
• Frozen yogurt
• Popcorn

Ok, that last one isn’t sweet, but depending on the mood, it’ll still satisfy the craving.  If anybody else has great high protein, low fat, medium to low calorie snacks out there, please share!

On to another topic:  I feel like this ride is at the top of the roller coaster and I’m about to plunge down.  This is because either tomorrow or Sunday we will be welcoming our third baby to our family.  I’m not sure having a new baby around will make it easy to get in regular workouts.  As I usually hit the gym at lunch while I’m at work - and since I’m going to be home for the next 2 weeks - that’ll also be a challenge.  Now before you say "Well, just hop in the car and drive down!" it’s a half hour drive - one way - so I’ll be gone for 2 hours just to get in a workout.  You try convincing my wife to let me get away for that amount of time.

I’m thinking that during the next 2 weeks I will run as often as possible (i.e. daily).  I do have some dumbbells upstairs, but we’ll see how that works out.  Basically, I’m thinking of taking a break from the weights, focus on cardio and try to seriously frag some fat.  When I get back to work, switch up the workout and target different muscle groups.  It will also give me 2 weeks to work out that new workout plan.

New stats and pictures comin’ down this weekend…stay tuned…

So, due to family/work commitments, I wasn’t able to hit up the gym today.  (Hello 9 hour workday!)  Anyways, after taking the kids to soccer tonight, I came home and did another run.  Same route.  Today it was 7:50:62. 

7:50:62!!!  And that was WITH a 30 second "walk-break".

That brings a good light to the gloomy day I was feeling today.  I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with my weight loss.  I felt like I still eat too much;  and that I don’t know what I’m doing in trying to both build muscle and cut fat at the same time.  All this stems from weighing myself and finding that I’m not really making gains.  Of course, I don’t expect to see gains on a daily basis, but it does put me off.  I’ll be pretty disppointed if Sunday (weigh-in day) rolls around and I haven’t really lost anything.  Actually…not pretty disappointed….quite disappointed and very discouraged.  I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

If baby doesn’t come tonight, I’ll hit up the gym tomrrow at lunch.  Prolly be the last full, decent, gym workout I’ll get in before baby.  I’m thinking after that brief break/time out to welcome baby I will switch up my workout and move to the next level.  I don’t know if I’ll do a split yet or not, or if I’ll just change up the muscles I’m targeting (i.e. incline bench rather than flat).  Maybe when I’m off, I’ll continue my daily runs - to continue cutting the fat, but not necessarily the bulking.

One nice thing - my wife mentioned she would consider starting to do meal plans.  I think this could help better track what I eat (and help the wallet too!).  I’m so lucky to have a woman who supports me as much as she does.  Thanks hon!  (I know you read this!)

So I haven’t done a run since April 23rd.  Back then, it was 8:59:00 and I had to walk for the last bit of it.

Today, I managed to run all the way, and I finished my run in 8:21:84.  Yay!  Now, I’m not sure whether to try to do that faster, or to take a longer route…

Damn good healthy food sure is boring.  It just sucks.  Can you tell I’m hungry?

So just got back from the gym.  Cardio day since all-over-body-weights was yesterday.  As I was a bit crunched for time I decided to try what I think is a HIIT session.  (For those of you reading this who don’t know what HIIT is - it’s High Intensity Interval Training - I think….makes sense in my world anyways…)  Essentially it’s like wind sprints, or bike sprints…something where you run for a bit, then bust out for a short burst, then run for a bit, etc….  It supposed to burn fat like crazy, but as I mentioned in previous post, I think it can also burn muscle tissue…least I think I read that around here somewhere…

So here’s how it broke down (these were done on a stationary upright bike):

• First 3 minutes:  Casual biking at level 13
• 3:00:  10 second sprint
• 3:10:  casual “cool down” biking
• 4:00:  10 second sprint
• 4:10:  cool down
• *repeat this until 7:10
• 7:10:  cool down for 5 minutes (at this point my heart rate was somewhere up around 165ish) - brought the bike down to level 8
• 11:40:  bring the bike up to level 10
• 12:00:  sprint for 15 seconds
• 12:15:  cool down
• 13:00:  sprint for 15
• 13:15:  cool down
• 14:00:  sprint for 15
• 14:15:  press the actual “cool down” button and ride it out for 3 minutes

Boy, at the end of it I was tired, quite sweaty, and I felt like I had put in a solid cardio session of running or something.  Bike told me I burned around 170 cals too…but we’ll see.

I was super hungry when I got back to my desk too.  I ate all my protein (and a rice crispy square) right after lunch, so I may have to whip up a shake for later…

So here is the result of today’s "weigh in". 

Gained 1.8 lbs overall.  Further breaking things down, it turns out I’ve actually gained  1.4 lbs of that was fat gain…according to my calculations.  How utterly disappointing.  I didn’t think I would gain pounds last week, as I was working hard and (mostly) carefully watching what I was eating.  I guess I’ll have to be even stricter.  Here’s where I think I went wrong:

Monday - went to Boston Pizza:  Even though I ate from the healthy menu, I think I ate too much.

Tuesday - fish sticks.  It was the trianglely battered kind.  I found out afterwards it was 11g of fat per stick.  I thought it was healthier than that.  Course, that was 5.5 fish sticks ago…man was I hungry that night.

Thursday - Dairy Queen.  Nuff said.  And, I did order a small, but they messed up and gave me a medium.  I still ate all of it.

Saturday - steak.  Lots of steak.  Defninitely overate at dinner and again during my last snack at night.

Hmph…no wonder…

Aim for following week:  No cheating.  Course, if baby comes this week, that’ll be even tougher…

Even after all that eating last night, I woke up RAVENOUSLY hungry this morning.  To the point of pain in my stomach.  Whee!

Ok, so today’s workout was over 12 hours ago, but I still wanted to post on it.  I started my glutamine last night, right before bed.  I’ve decided to take it immediaty post workout and at bed.  Possibly pre-workout too.

So, this morning, I rolled out to the gym at around 8ish, and I took my naNO Vapor before driving out there.  I think it helped a little, as I was able to squeeze out a few more reps with each exercise and/or go to heavier weight.  The downfall was that I was REALLY tired when I left.  I felt like sleeping on the drive home…course, I would have ended up in the ditch, as I was the one driving.

Anyways, I read some reviews last night that there was a bit of a crash afterwards, and I did end up having a great nap this afternoon for about an hour.  I hope that doesn’t happen all the time or work is going to be hellish in the afternoon.

I ate quite a bit today too.  I was going well until supper, but then I had a massive steak (not too bad - but we went to friends’ for dinner and she made good steak - besides, it’s protein, right?)  Then tonight, I had some black forest cake (small piece), 5 doritos, cholocate milk (I love that stuff), and some cottage cheese.  A little overboard, and I’m thinking I may weigh in a little heavier than I want to tomorrow morning, but I guess we’ll see…

43 minutes of cardio put in.  500 calories.  Obviously this is slow cardio designed to burn fat and not muscle.  I see all this information out there about people doing or trying HIIT, but

a) I’m not sure I could handle it

b) I’m not exactly sure what it is

c) I don’t want to sacrifice muscle just to burn fat, and I think I run the risk of that.

It’d be nice if bodyspace included the ability to track cardio workouts for calories burned, time, etc…  Just as with workouts.  Isn’t cardio a part of a bodybuilder/fit person’s routine?  It’d also be great to track food, but that’s a lot to ask for.

Workout again tomorrow…new supplements tonight.  I’m excited!

Yes, super cheezy joke.  Get over it.

So, after 2 days off from my regular gym goings-to, I went back today.  (Off due to family commitments)  I think not getting enough rest at night affected today’s workout. 

See, I’ve been staying up - not exorbitantly late - but late enough - to play video games at home until around 11 at night.  This means I’m getting roughly 7 hours of sleep a night.  Max.  I don’t feel tired during the day going about my regular business, but as you can see from today’s workout, my reps were less, my volume was less, and I just didn’t feel like it was a great workout.  Double the fact that I don’t think I’ve eaten enough food yesterday, cross the ts, dot the i-s and you have one - not so invigorating workout.  Joy. 

Supplement sale this weekend.  Gonna look to get me some goods - maybe some glutamine - possibly creatine.  Any other suggestions? 

Anyways, I gotta get back to work and drinking my water.

Oh, special shout out to someone livin’ in L. who reads this on a daily basis and has been waiting for an update.  You know who you are…