Jorge’s BodyBlog

Ok so first off I apologize for slacking on the blogging side of things, its been a wierd and hectic week. I’ve also slacked on workouts which has really sucked. This week I had to go in to work at 5am on Wednesday so it has thrown my schedule completely out of whack. The good news is that today was our weigh-in day and I’m down a couple of pounds which was nice to see. Now if I could actually keep consistent with workouts my gains would be even greater, WOO HOO! Anyhow I’ll try to keep blogging and working out on a more consistent basis.

In a time where everyone is pinching pennies and making every cent stretch as much as possible I experienced/learned something new today that I’ve heard before but never really took to heart until now: shop at a farmer’s market. Since Jess and I are cleaning up our diets and focusing more on healthier foods we went with our friend Christina down to one of the farmer’s markets here in town. WOW! Really fresh fruits and veggies of all kinds for ridiculously cheaper prices than grocery store. I love bananas and in the store you’d pay what $2-3 bucks for a bundle? They had it for $1. In fact a lot of the items were for $1. Onions were 2 for $1. Giant peppers (red, yellow, etc.) were 2 for $1 while I’m looking at Sweetbay’s circular and it’s almost $3 for a pound. On top of the cost savings it was just plain fun. Always nice to do something a little different that gets you out of the house. Oh and afterward we went by a health food store and picked up another few choice items. For lunch we had (oh God, hell must have froze over for me to be eating this…) tofu hot dogs on sprouted wheat buns…and they were good! 26g of protein in the dog alone, can’t complain about that. Right now Jess is marinating some tofu she bought as well so we’ll see how that turns out.

Ok so it is the second week of me and my wife’s weight loss adventure and thanks to Biggest Loser we were prepared to see little to no good news this week. Sure enough she lost/gained 0 and I gained 1.4 lb. To be completely honest this past week I slacked on my workouts (cardio) and wasn’t consistent with my eating habits which is key. To get a hold on our eating habits, which is our worst enemy, Jessica and I are going to start doing Weight Watchers. We’ve calculated our points allowances and have figured out points values for some of our regular foods (i.e. my morning protein shake is 4 pts). Now that we have some concrete numbers to follow our eating habits should fall in to line quick. Already this morning we’ve gone "holy crap, that has HOW many points?!?" for some of the stuff we eat regularly. Our friend Christina warned us it’d be an eye opener when you start realizing how many "bad" things you eat regularly.

Also, since Jessica wanted me to share this with everyone since she’s cooking breakfast right now, use Parkay Spray Butter when cooking to keep your points down. The spray has 0 points and is available pretty much at any grocery store.

Tonight did some interval training on the treadmill. I borrowed a page from Bill Phillips’ Body for Life program and did his 20 minute aerobics routine. It goes as follows:

Overall it wasn’t too bad, afterward I did 3 sets of 20 crunches. I feel I cheated myself a bit and could have gone harder. I think I let off on the throttle since last time I tried it I was so out of shape I couldn’t even finish it. Next time I’ll bump up speeds and inclines to really get myself to those intensity levels. I’ll give it to Bill, I tried the BFL program in high school and I really liked it. It’s based on solid principles, doesn’t get fancy and the support and structure is fantastic. If you haven’t heard about it or tried it I highly recommend it. As for the football part of my post I’ve been enjoying Bowl Week and watched Ole Miss take out Texas Tech in fine form. Gotta love the SEC. I can’t wait for the Gators to lay a beatdown on Oklahoma and I’m going to go shower and get ready to watch Alabama show Tulsa what a real football team looks like. Till next time!

Ok so today was the official start of the MT contest and had my first real workout today. The program I’m using for this first phase, since I’ve been out of the gym game for so long, is the beginner’s workout from this month’s Muscle and Fitness. Routine goes as follows:

Week 1: Full-Body Split

Afterwards I downed a protein shake with 2 scoops (~40g protein). Also I ate strips of grilled chicken and some sweet potatoes and hour before the workout. Workout wasn’t bad, I noted some parts where I felt I could have gone higher with the first weights but I’m limited due to the fact that I’m working out in an apartment complex gym and the highest dumbell I have to work with are 45’s. All in all not bad, had my heart rate monitor with me and I was about 125-135 throughout workout.Gonna go watch USC-Penn State now, good luck everyone with their own resolutions and workouts!

Last night my wife was looking online to see if there were any good fitness games for the Wii and Wii Fit. She came across My Fitness Coach. After reading great reviews about it we decided to pick it up tonight at Target. We just got done doing our initial profiles and trying out some of the workouts real quick and I’ve got to say that it looks pretty awesome so far! The game is very dynamic and allows you to use tools at your disposal like heart rate monitor, balance ball, step board and hand weights. Based on if you have those available that day it will tailor your workouts to make use of those items.

The game also asks you things like how are you feeling that day (i.e. energetic, ok or lucky to be here) and based on that it tailors the intensity. After your workout it tells you how many calories you’ve burned and you can also set workout dates so it really is like having your own personal trainer. I’m not sure what happens if you miss a scheduled workout but hopefully I won’t find out!The last really cool thing is that you can add credits for workouts you do outside of the game (i.e. cycling, lifting weights, running, etc.) and it will count that towards your pre-set goals.
If you have a Wii I highly recommend picking it up (we paid $30). If you’re not sure try it out by renting it at Blockbuster and giving it a try. For those curious, no it doesn’t look like it supports the Wii Fit but given the workouts you don’t really need it.

Great news, last night my wife decided to join me on this fitness journey! We’re going to start working out together at our local apartment’s gym. I’d prefer to join a real gym to get access to some staples like bench press and squat racks but since we’re on a tight budget at the moment we’ve decided not to join a gym until we’ve lost a certain amount of weight using the current gym. It’s a great idea since before I’ve joined gyms and just pissed money away by not going! Another awesome idea by my wife was to use one of our white erase boards and put it in the living room with both of our current weights and the dates of every Sunday for four months. She also wrote some motivational slogans on the board for us which was really cool. In the past we’ve tried using websites and whatnot to keep track of what we’re doing but having the board in the living room is something to constantly remind us of our goals (having stuff on website and not in view tends to make one forget). Well weigh-in days are officially Sundays now so wish us luck! I’ll update on our statuses on this blog.

So I woke up this morning, legs sore and my foot hurting pretty bad. I guess my body was a bit more angry with me about actually moving than I previously thought. My foot feels like sort of a muscle sprain along the outside portion of my foot. Because it was hurting I knew running would be a bad idea but I didn’t want to miss out on cardio today so I opted for 30 minutes steady state on a bike instead. Glad I did that because my foot didn’t hurt doing that and I feel a lot better that I did do it. I’m also starting to wake up and take a protein shake and do one before and after exercise to get my protein intake up. I’m planning to do the MT Transformation contest so I figure this week is a warm up week before I really get going.

Just got back from the run. Ipod loaded with Guitar Hero 3 soundtrack, Rise Against and some other random rock I set out with no real plan, just run. Quickly my body said "whoa wtf, why are we actually working?!?!". I kept jogging as long as I could and then the workout turned into a 2 min on - 1 min off routine until I lapped the neighborhood a couple of times. To say the least it was humbling since I was breathing way harder than a 26 year old should on a simple run but you know what, it’s going to get better. I’ve downed my protein shake (had one before run as well), gonna eat a couple of hard boiled eggs we cooked this week, shower and get on with my day.

So last night I was in the bathroom thumbing through another issue of Muscle & Fitness when I came across an ad for the bodybuilding.com transformation challenge. I looked at myself and realized this is just the motivation I needed to get my lazy ass out of the apartment and back in to the gym. It’s now 7:30am on a Saturday and I realized that I couldn’t stay asleep because I was actually excited to start exercising again, something I haven’t felt in quite a few years. A little bit of background for those those souls bored enough to read this, I’m currently 6′4" 250 lbs. I just recently got married in October and while married life is great it has provided its share of challenges on the health side of things. When my wife and I get home too often either of us are too tired to cook so we give in to the usual ordering of Domino’s Pizza or swinging by a local fast food chain and ordering horrendously. Before I met my wife my diet was similar only worse (bachelor living…yeah, don’t miss that). Back in high school I was a fitness nut. I used to work at Bally’s, I played 3 sports (football, wrestling and rowing). In college I rowed for 2 years for Syracuse and eventually I just let myself slip further and further from the gym. I think the last time I went to a gym consistently was when I was on the crew team in Syracuse back in 2001-02. Seven years and roughly 60 lbs later its time for a change. I’ll try to keep this as updated as possible and get my pics up as soon as I can. For now, it’s time to get my ass running!