TLC: Trust, Love, Consistency

Morning weight: 62.5kg (137.8lb) down 1kg
Yesterday’s cardio: 30 mins/139calories neighborhood dog walk
Yesterday’s weights: 50 mins/ 149calores, lats & traps
Yesterday’s water: about 4L

I didn’t get to bed early enough last night and then I lay in bed getting anxious about the weight not dropping and whether I should have carbed up last night. Consequentially I got 7 hours of very poor quality sleep. I almost ditched my morning walk, but luckily I have a demanding training partner, who, after a few throws of the frisbee will drag me up and down all the hills in my neighborhood.

Here’s my training partner, Kevin, ready as always for action.

Before I left for my walk I put some quinoa on in the rice cooker. I swear this is the best and easiest way to make quinoa. Rather than one big carb meal at the end of the day, I thought I’d steel just a tiny bit of the carbs for breaky and my pre-workout meal this evening. It was nice and fluffy and warming but not really enough to bring me back to life. I made sure I had my almond butter with it, to avoid the insulin spike.

Please excuse my diet addled brain in yesterday’s ramblings. I now realise oatmeal isn’t made from wheat, it is however a more refined grain than what I was thinking of.

So, what have I decided on for my carb meal? If I’m feeling a bit Gordan Ramsey (actually I prefer Bill Grainger, he’s much more down to earth and cuter), I’ll be fixing the following:

Grilled polenta, topped with a organic tomato & onion sugo.
Served on a bed of green beans with a side of roasted sweet potato, sprinkled with pepipitas and drizzled with Fleaureau Penisular extra virgin olive oil

If I still feel like death I may just opt for a traditional cut diet carb up. Yawn!

Just like V, I’ve been keeping a dirty secret. My weight hasn’t dropped. In 2 weeks my scales have been laughing at me. Tuesday confirmed my awful secret, with caliper test and tape measurements saying I hadn’t moved. This pissed me off no end. As I’d been eating at 1550 calories for 2 weeks and done several huge cardio sessions. I’d known I was going nowhere for a while and time getting tighter everyday I’ve decided to do something about it. I’m back up to 1900 calories, cut diet style. I’ve played with the cut diet before and it is effective, but it left me feeling like a zombie. I became obsessed with the low carb speedy weight loss that I never did the carb ups; the carb-ups are just a weird combo too. So for the last 3 days I’ve switched my macros towards cut-diet, with a few non-cut ingredients (wheat and legumes) still in my diet. I’ve already started to see my weight drop a little. I’m imagining this is some water weight, but I was already dieting anyway. Tonight is my 18th meal which means it’s carb-up time. I’m hanging out for it. I don’t care that I’m going to be eating the worlds weirdest combo of foods. Who knows what’s up with my metabolism. 18 months of under-eating and not losing weight has got me here. Here’s hoping the scivation kiddies can get me out.

So today I’m off to the central markets to get my body weight (63.8kg) in green beans, asparagus, chicken, fish and kangaroo. Sunday’s farmers market will see me purchasing eggsessive (sorry) amounts of eggs and broccoli and then I’m all in for the next 13 weeks.

I’d like to thank Kim for his words of inspiration in the latest Aussie Muscle newsletter. I was fooling myself when I thought I could cruise through this process. There aren’t more bodybuilders and figure competitors for a reason. This stuff hard-work.

Two competitors come into Australian Muscle and we ask them both the same question, “how’s the diet going?”

Competitor #1: “Great! I feel fine, looking forward to the show.”
Competitor #2: “I feel like crap. I got no energy, I’m irritable, and I’m starving all the time. I feel like puking every time I look at my food!”

Fast forward to competition day. Competitor #1 finished last, Competitor #2 wins.

I’ve been toying with upping my calories along with my carb intake for the rest of the month to see if I can stack on a bit of lean muscle to replace what I lost with my injury. I’ve upped from about 1500 to 2000 which should be just above my maintainance level. I’ve been feeling mainly hungrier (especially early in the morning) so I’m hoping this is my metabolism revving up. I’m a bit worried this is a stupid thing to do 16 weeks out, but I figure I can cut hard for 10-12 weeks and make the grade. I’ll be running this all past the master of my destiny, Joe, tonight.

I’ve also booked an appointment with my GP for next-next weekend to just get a check up. I want to be on top of anything that might spring up while I’m prepping and so I’m gonna see about getting all the bloods done. I’m also a bit worried about my circulation after my physio pointed out that I was blue all the way to my elbows! I’ve always had blue hands in winter but I’ve been paying a bit more attention to the symptoms since he mentioned it and I seem to warm up and cool down with food. This ring minor alarm bells with me as my Grandmother has a lazy thyroid and react the same way to food. Dad tells me that she’s also always had dud circulation. I’d love for this to be an excuse for my metabolism to be crappy, though I somewhat doubt it. My metabolism must be OK as I’ve been sitting at 15-17% bf for over a year. Looking back I don’t even think I’ve fried it too bad by dieting as I’ve varied between lows of 1400 and highs of 2000 pretty solidly.

This is all speculation. I’ll report back with the result from my teams of experts!

Not too disappointed with the results not excited either. I’ll take it as a starting point for great things to come!

Scored another 8 points for the day, must not snack before bed.

I haven’t jumped on the scales in few days due to knowing my weight would be up for the month, but today I couldn’t resist. Looking in the mirror when I got out the shower I could see veins in my hips (by the hip bones) ‘hey you’re new’ and my delts are looking sharper too. Surely I’d made some losses.

So I jumped on the scales and thought I’d do the bodyfat analysis and noticed that the scales thought I was a good 7cm shorter than I was. Well that explains my sudden spike in BF over the last few weeks, someone (probably the BF) has been playing with my scales! Even with the wrong height settings still in I was down 2% and with the correct height input it had me at 13.7% (athlete mode). I’d love to believe this, but shouldn’t I have some awesome abs by now if that was the case?

So I ask you all: Where are my abs?

I’ll have to wait a few more days to double check these numbers when my fluid levels even out, but it is exciting progress.