jessejack’s BodyBlog

So my fitness project has hit a little bump in the road due to my financial situation and my cupboards being bare. I have very little good food. Most of what I have is junk. Stuff my wife eats and crap I have left over from before I started eating right. That’s pretty much all we have left to eat, and even that is going fast. So why don’t I go to the store and get more? Well, I’m an unemployed full-time student. That means I get "paid" my financial aid twice a year. I won’t get that money for another couple weeks. I’m not sure exactly how we’re going to survive but we have no cash to buy food with. Hopefully we can beg, borrow, or steal to get by. But until we scrape up the dough I don’t have anything to eat but microwave popcorn and oreos.

I feel that if I can’t feed myself to grow it would actually be worse for me to go lift than it would to sit around like a couch potato. So, I’m taking a break from the gym until I can adequately stock the fridge. I’m still checking BodySpace every day so hopefully I will stay motivated to jump back in as soon as possible. I actually feel really guilty about it but oh well.
The other thing is that since I’ve been going to the YMCA it’s been totally screwed up. I think it was about 2 months ago I paid my membership dues and I still haven’t got a membership card. About a month ago I got a call saying that they never received the payment for my first month; I told them I paid it and produced my bank statement showing the payment to YMCA. OK, so we’re cool she said. Well, here I am still waiting. I even asked them last week when I was in the gym if I had to pay another month’s dues and they said I wasn’t even in the computer yet. Obviously the girl at the desk doesn’t know anything if I’m not in the computer, so she took a message to have the membership lady call me. Still waiting! Every time I go in there I have to explain my situation to the desk person to get in. They usually don’t hassle me so that’s not a big deal. I’m not letting that hold me up, it’s just an irritation I’m hoping will get solved over my time off.

So, yeah, besides that, drama with school, drama with life, and other crap, things are going pretty shitty! But nothing worth crying about.

OK. My main goal in life in the forseeable future is to EAT. Eat everything in sight. I have dropped 8 pounds since I started and I’m down to my "panic point" to where it has to stop.

I am going to stop worrying so much about eating 100% clean and just try to get enough calories and enough protein in me to start growing. Obviously I will continue to stock my pantry with healthy foods, and when alternatives present themselves I will choose the leaner option. But if it comes down to having to shove some greasy fried chicken down my gullet in order to get enough food in me, **** it.

I’m also going to start planning my meals out in advance. What I’m going to have for every meal, and stick to it.

So every day after I work out I weigh myself on the scale in the locker room, and I’ve been dropping weight. I’m down to 153 and I’m starting to get a little bothered because my goal was actually to gain about 7 lbs (I’ve dropped about 5). I’m not getting too alarmed yet because I think I am gaining muscle; in just three weeks since I’ve started lifting I feel stronger and I’m already starting to see some improvements (I can actually flex my previously non-existent chest muscles). So my logic is that maybe I’m just shedding fat faster than I build muscle, and that once my bodyfat drops to a lower level I’ll stop losing and start gaining the weight back in muscle.

But, I’m thinking that if I hit the 150 mark I might consider easing up on my diet and just trying to eat everything in sight to get enough calories and protein in me, then go back to clean eating and cut later.

So, yeah, not quite sure where I’m going here.

PORK CHOP SANDWICHES!

I’m changing my nutrient intake a little bit. I’ve tweaked it so that it to reflect the highest protein level, and the minimum fat & carb levels recommended by the American Dietetic Association. I’m shooting for 30% protein, 45% carbs and 20% fat.

This post is mainly a "note to self".

After I tallied up all my food yesterday, it turns out that my diet was actually pretty close to my goals.

The reason this is such a success is that yesterday was Halloween. This presents some challenges. First there is the obvious, that the main Halloween food is CANDY. The second challenge was that, in shuttling my daughter around from party, to the mall, to the neighborhoods, there wasn’t much time to cook something and the obvious temptation is to grab some fast food or a slice of crappy pizza at one of the places that are giving it away for free.

However, I managed to avoid it by preparing ahead. I would say that I kind of cheated, because in order to balance out my macronutrient intake I at almost all meat the rest of the day, which is something I wouldn’t typically be able to if we were having a family dinner. But, regardless, I managed to avoid the junk food bug by going to the store and picking up 1 lb of center-cut loin pork chops, cooking them up in advance, and then munching on them throught the evening.

So I think that is really the key. A lot of times that we end up eating junk are the times that 8 PM rolls around, we’re all starving and haven’t got anything cooked, so we cruise on down to Taco Bell. So the way to avoid that is to BE PREPARED!

Although, tomorrow is my "cheat day". I see Pork Chop Johns in my future!

So the backstory on my diet is, I’m trying to keep the calories from each macronutrient in the 30-35% range of my total diet, so that they’re roughly balanced. What I’m finding is that it’s really difficult to get my protein intake up without surging either fat or carbs. One day I will have a day where my fats are astronomical, and then I’ll try to get it under control the next day by eating "lean" only to find I’ve scarfed down an amazing amount of carbs.

This missing piece here is protein; I haven’t been able to get my protein % out of the high-teens. I think this is the key: finding some high protein foods that are low-fat and low-carb that I can eat to balance my diet out. I’m guessing that this is where supplementation comes in. I’ve found a bag of whey protein laying around the house that, surprisingly, hasn’t expired. The only problem is that supplements are expensive. So I’m trying to find some "real food" alternatives, other than just eating plain turkey breast or something like that.

So that’s my hurdle. I think if I can overcome the diet portion of my plan, I’ll have the worst of it out of the way. I’ve worked out before but I have never seriously thought about eating a balanced diet…I’ve always just scarfed down whatever I was in the mood for. I think diet is going to be the #1 lifestyle change, and I also think it’s going to be the foundation of the rest of my fitness plan, because if I don’t have the nutrition that allows my training to succeed, it’s kind of pointless to even try. That’s why I’m working on tackling my diet first and foremost.

Step one in my fitness plan is to clean up my diet. I have been tracking my diet meticulously over the past couple days and I have come to one conclusion: my fat intake is through the roof.

I’m not persuaded that the ideal diet is one that excludes one nutrient or another. You get fat by eating too much and doing too little. I think that everyone is different, but a good starting place would be to balance my calories from each macronutrient so that they’re each within the 30-35% range. So, goal #1 is to shoot for that balance and stick with it.

So far my fats have been more like 50% and my proteins in the teens. That’s not so good, I think, if I’m trying to get into a weight training routine and build muscle. Plus there are obviously health risks with eating too much fatty stuff. I think the reason I’m having trouble, though, is that many things that pack protein also pack in the fats, so I’m doing some research to find low-fat alternatives to the high-protein foods I enjoy.

Just a side note, one day I drank a soda and my carbs went through the roof. I knew soda wasn’t so good for you but it was pretty wild to see exactly how much sugar (and how little of anything else) a little can of pop can pack. I’m definitely going to try and stay away from the soda as much as possible from now on.