Vegan Weight Training Blog

Because I received an impromptu break during the week I was recovering from dental work, I’ve rescheduled my next break week. It will start Sunday, August 12th. I’m not going to go nuts with the cheat foods like I did the time before last. Having a "cheat week" was a terrible idea. I’m spacing it out now. Saturdays are my cheat days, and even then I’m limiting myself to one or two bad items.

So far the crystalline fructose I’m using as a sweetener is not causing any ill effects. I felt fine at the gym today. Also, my appetite is huge these days. I feel really good about that, because it means my workouts are effective. My body wants more food to make more muscle.

I am continuing to greatly restrict carbs in order to reduce fat, but I’m still not ripped. Hopefully eliminating added sugars and the remaining high GI foods I was eating will do the trick. Most of all, I want a six-pack. I do a lot of weighted ab exercises, and I can feel some nice abs under the fat, but they’re just not as visible as I’d like them to be.

I am up to ten sets of HIIT, which is where I think I’ll stay for a while. I did well today, averaging 31 seconds on each sprint and keeping my intensity high. Now I will work on speed, and on reducing rest time between sprints.

Recently I have been looking into the GI scores of different foods. I was having a hard time losing fat and getting ripped, and I’d also discovered that added table sugar in my diet was responsible for my acne. I knew the Glycemic Index was important, but I’d never had a reason to look at it closely before. I knew white rice and white bread were bad, but I didn’t know how bad until I took a serious look at the Glycemic Index. Once I did, I was surprised to find out those foods (and others, such as baked potatoes and popcorn) are even worse than table sugar. They invoke an insulin response that causes your body to store fat.

Additionally, I was under the mistaken impression that honey was a healthy sweetener, but it has nearly the same GI as table sugar. In the past, I was putting 3-4 teaspoons of honey a day into my oats and tea. After cutting out honey in June (out of frustration, even though I "knew" it was a healthy food) I started using Stevia in my tea and a lot of raisins to sweeten my oats. But Stevia tastes terrible, and it turns out raisins have the same GI as white rice. So a few days ago I decided to look at all the sweeteners on the Glycemic Index to try and find the lowest one.

It appears to me that crystalline fructose is the winner. The GI is only 22, which is just amazingly low. (Anything with a Glycemix Index of 55 or lower counts as a Low GI food, and anything 70 or higher counts as a High GI food.) I got some crystalline fructose yesterday and tried it in my tea and oats, and it sweetened them just fine. I noticed no side effects or unusual aftertaste. I also bought some more agave nectar, which I’d only been using sporadically before. It has a very pleasant flavor and (being mostly fructose) has a GI of only 32. So I’m going to give it a month and see what happens. If sweetening my oats and tea with crystalline fructose gives me zits and makes me fat, then I’ll just have to live without added sweeteners.

My skin completely cleared up once I cut added sugar out of my diet for a few weeks. I thought I could get away with one cheat day per week, but apparently if I want clear skin, I just can’t have any added sugar at all. Today is Monday, and I have eight new zits just from a few sugary items I ate on Saturday. All I had was two small soy puddings, a teaspoon of vegan fruit-sweetened fudge in my oats, one of my girlfriend’s Captain Morgan wine coolers, and two cups of tea with honey. I can live without added sugar in my diet, but it is a bit frustrating because I know plenty of people eat a lot more sugar on a regular basis and have clear skin.

I did 9 intervals today, but I averaged about 26 seconds instead of 30 seconds during the sprints because it was so hot outside. I could have done better, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Things are going well. I haven’t been doing many compound lifts with barbells, so I don’t have many new lifting stats to enter, but I have been doing isolation exercises with dumbells and maintaining a high level of intensity with that. I’ll get back to compound lifts and start making entries in late August, but in the meantime I will continue to focus on some specific areas where I was lacking.

I got some Jarrow 1-to-3 multivitamins yesterday. From what I’ve read, they’re tied with NOW ADAM multivitamins as the best on the market. I’ll take them on heavy lifting days with my pre-workout meal and take the Deva one-a-day multi on all other days. Along with the Jarrow multi, I also got a NOW calcium supplement. For the past week I’ve been taking vegan acidophilus  to rebuild the good bacteria in my system now that I’m off the amoxicillin.

I don’t like Brazil nuts, but they’re nutritious and high in protein, so I’ve been using them for "mindless" snacking when I’m busy doing other things. That way I don’t have to think about the taste.

I don’t know why, but this was the hardest day I’ve had in the gym in months. Maybe it was the pills the dentist gave me. I nearly threw up after doing weighted leg lifts on the Captain’s Chair. I was in a cold sweat and I had to sit down. I was *this close* to going home, but I started to feel better so I kept at it.

My form is getting better on the Wide Grip Pulldown. I had been using too much bicep, but now I’m using much more of my lats in the motion. You just have to imagine that your hands are hooks, and concentrate on moving your elbows down while activating your lats.