josiethefiend’s BodyBlog

Ah, it is so nice to watch the number on the scale moving down again.  So what if I get as excited now about .2 of a pound as I used to be about two  pounds.  Progress is progress, and I seem to be making a lot of it since I got back to calorie counting. 

Score.

I decided to try out Nectar protein, and I’m so in love.  It tastes better, has less calories, and I can mix it in plain water?  Sold.  I may even go back and buy another tub so I can have a variety of flavors.  I’m really that impressed.  I’ve also started taking CLA, but it would help if I could remember the damn stuff more than once a day.  Woops.  Finally, I’ve started cooking whole oats for breakfast every morning, and adding a scoop of the ON Cookies and Cream protein that I’m trying to hurry up and get rid of.  It’s pretty gross for drinking with milk, but seems to work alright in my oats.

As always, lifting continues to go well.  Miraculously, my boyfriend has suddenly decided to join me for my evening lifting sessions at the gym.  I’m more than a little surprised, and extremely excited to hopefully get him lifting consistantly.  I’ve also sneakily moved my ab work from the mornings to the evenings, so he will have to do it as well.  Call me selfish, but I’ve got dreams of a healthy, fit, six-pack man dancing through my head.  Heh. 

Now if I can just get him to lay off the buffets for lunch, I’ll have it made.

As for me, my stomach is shrinking finally, and starting to flatten out.  I’m using a notch on my belt that has never even seen a buckle before, and all of my pants are too big.  I’m totally daydreaming of posing suits by next year. 

Heh.  Rad song.

Anywho, all is well.  The day after getting hit by that truck, I wasn’t even sore.  My joints were a little stiff in the leg that got hit, that was all. By the next day, it was like nothing even happened.  I atribute this to my body being used to receiving far worse abuse from my own workouts five days a week.  Booya.

This Monday I started tracking my calories and such on FitDay again, and it’s worked wonders.  It’s so much easier to loose weight when I am holding myself accountable for everything I eat.  I’m down just over a full pound this week.  HUZZAH!  Naturally, I continue to lift hard and lift well. 

I’m really driven right now.  My relationship is on the rocks at the moment.  Nothing like busting your ass at the gym or obsessively monitoring your nutrition for a little healthy escapism.

Lifting continues to go exceptionally well for me this week.  My lifts just keep going up up up.  I’m thrilled.  I think it has a lot to do with me eating better.  Perhaps there was something in the fish and fresh fruit that I’ve started eating more of that was missing before?  Not sure, but I will be trying to stick with it. 

There were bumps in the road this week, and I definitely didn’t eat clean for more that three meals in a row.  But, I didn’t do horrible either.  Regardless, every time I ate something less then ideal, my body told me that I was messing up.  Strange how I never realized how crappy certaine foods made me feel before, or how good others made me feel. 

I rather feel like gorging myself on food today, so tonight I think I may pick up a bunch of fruits, some yogurt, and maybe even a little dark chocolate, and have myself a finger food buffett tonight for desert, and just a good old fashioned protein shake for dinner. 

I’m really discovering the keys to better eating, though.  Namely being prepared ahead of time, never letting yourself get too hungry, and remembering all the great reasons to not eat junk.  I keep managing to convince myself that a few nachos here, and a handful of pretzels there, won’t really do much damage and won’t make me feel icky.  But they always do.

And finally, I believe I need to step up my cardio.  I’ve been affraid of sabotaging my weightlifting with too much, but I think I’m being too timid and using this rationale as an excuse to avoid putting a lot of effort into my cardio.  Time to take it up a notch.

Yesterday I did stiff-leg deadlifts at 120 lbs for ten reps.  I’m nearly bursting with pride.

I went up on all my Thursday lifts yesterday, and had overall the best workout in a long time.  45 lb shoulder presses, 90 lb lat pulls, ugh, it was awesome.  I feel so amazing today, with these tired but happy muscles reminding me all day of what I accomplished.  Then today is Bi’s and Tri’s, which is purely fun for me.  I get a kick out of doing burly bicep curls, pretending I’m out at muscle beach instead of in the stinky free-weight room.

Speaking of which, I’m currently gym shopping.  Not only do I feel like I’m kinda outgrowing my current gym (it doesn’t even have crash pads for doing cleans, lame), and it’s not a great one at all.  The oversold me on my membership, it’s not well cleaned or cleaned often enough, something is always broken (and it’s more often then not the air conditioning), and there’s duct tape and torn padding all over the place.  Yeah, it’s the most convenient location, but I think it’s time to move on.  My membership expires on the third, so I have a little time.

I’m kind of hoping to find a place with one of those neat sybex things I saw in "Getting Cut With Glass" last night.  So cool!  And those are great vids on Bodybuilding.com, btw.  I learned a lot, and now there’s some new lifts I want to try.  That reverse hack squat looks really neat, as did the shoulder presses from a full stop on the smith machine.

And just in case you were wondering, today is offically day four of successfully eating clean.  I have faith that I will be able to find a healthy dinner tonight.  I may have to get out my camera and do my best ChickenTuna impression to celebrate.

One final note, I’m considering incorporating creatine into my diet next week.  Now that I’ve gotten more serious about my diet, I’m willing to get more serious about my supplements.  About 3g a day seems to be the right dosage according to my research, maybe with 5g a day for the first three days, for a mini-loading.  That’s a happy medium between loading and not-loading, I think, since no one seems to agree about whether it’s necessary or not.

Well, so I still can’t do a real pull-up.  Oh well.  But, I did lift myself a few inches before my arms could do no more.  I made three attempts, and I think the second was my best, so I’ll warm up more next time.  If I had to guess, I’d say I lifted my body about four, maybe five inches.  So I’m probably about a third of the way there.  Could be better, could be worse, I’m just excited that my body didn’t feel overwhelmingly heavy to me, and that I was able to move at all.  I’ve never done that before, I’ve always just hung there straining.  This is a good sign of progress.  I can still only do full pull-ups with 50 lbs of assistance.  I suppose I might have been able to do a full one with 40 lbs if I hadn’t already fatigued my arms trying to do a real one, but it’s hard to say.
Yesterday was another success in terms of nutrition.  ZERO junk was ingested, even though I got some sad news and went to the bar with my boyfriend.  I had a protein smoothie with real fruit instead of booze.  So today, I rewarded myself a bit with a very healthy sandwich.  Whole grain organic bread, fresh organic lettuce and tomato, mayo, mustard, and two generous slices of fieldroast (a vegetarian thing, google if you must).  It was extremely satisfying, and my processed-carb cravings have been well-sated by the bread.  Go me! 
All my effort this week has left me feeling very empowered.  When I first read articles about figure, finess, and bodybuilding competitors, I was flabbergasted and could not believe that any mere mortal could have that much discipline.  I certainly never believed that I could have that much devotion to my workouts, let alone that much self-restraint with my diet.  And here I am, having probably the healthiest week of my life.  I didn’t realize I could do this.  I suppose for me it just comes down to getting right back on the horse, and eventually turning these “super human” feats into normal, everyday habits that just come naturally. 
A year ago, I was big, and lazy, and felt horrible about myself.  What a huge difference!  I think I’ve finally accepted that through consistency, patience, and perseverance, I will attain these goals I’ve set for myself.  So what if it took me over a year to loose 24 pounds.  So what if it takes me another year to lose the last 8.  I don’t care so much anymore, I’m just glad to be here and better than I was before.

Wow, I seem to be gaining in popularity here these days.  Which is exciting, because it’s so encouraging to have people who don’t even know me being to helpful and encouraging.  Lot’s of visitors today!  And lots of new friends, too.

This tuna I’m eating right now instead of the bagel I desperately want, is for you BodySpace. 

To update yesterday’s entry, I did succeed in not eating any crap yesterday.  NONE.  Today, I have thus far done the same.  And my body has come through with a HUGE motivation to stick to my clean eating; today I have finally dropped some weight, .4 of a pound to be exact.  Hey, it’s not much, but it’s the first downward movement below 143.2 in almost a month.  I’m now so determined to get down to 140.  I needed that silly .4 boost.

Lifting went very well yesterday.  Ass-to-grass squats are bloody hard, but my legs seem to be much happier with me afterwords and so they’re here to stay.  I’m very excited to get in and get some arm work done tonight, especially since I’m bummed that a friend will be moving out of town soon.  Nothing like a seriously beastly session in the gym to clear your head. 

I think I may try to do a real pullup.  I know it probobly won’t quite happen for me, so I don’t have my hopes up too much, but it will at least let me know how close or far from that goal I am.  When I do get there, I’ll make someone tape it for me so I can be cool and use the video feature here.  Then y’all can see my metal face I make when I lift.  Ha!

Yup.  I can sing the song.  Can you?

Tuna, in its various forms, has pretty much taken over my life.  I’m trying my damndest to find new and better ways to eat it, because while the seasoned, pre-cooked fillet packets are sadly a bit expensive.  But for now, my desk at work is well-stocked with packets and tins of seasoned tuna goodness.  It’s pretty much the only snack food I’m allowing myself during the day, with the exception of the occaisional piece of fruit. 

 Fish in general is becoming a huge staple.  My freezer is nearly full to bursting with frozen salmon and tilapia, which I’m very excited to experiment with.  Cooking has never been my strongsuit, but I should be able to pull this off alright. 

We’ll see.  Today I started to falter, dreaming of bagels with creamcheese, croisants, and tortilla chips.  So I conjured up the image of ChickenTuna’s abs, which is just burned on my brain at this point, and thought it through until I reached for the tuna instead. 

Now I’m rewarding myself for my good decision with 33.8 liters of 10 calorie, caffeinated, Crystal Light goodness.  Mmmmmm….