Day 132 - Pics

Another quick post...Maybe tomorrow I'll have something informative or insightful. As for today...well, mostly spent it putting together that entertainment stand we picked up yesterday and moving furniture around. So there was a fair bit of heavy and awkward lifting today. Just ready for bed now.

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 14

Day 131 - Light Change Up

Saturday's are normally a rest day for me, but my workouts this week were one day behind due to my gym being closed for the snowstorm we had on Monday. I thought I might get to the gym today to do my normal Friday workout, but Saturday is a real errand running day for my gf and I, and we just didn't get around to doing everything we had on our "to do" list. I decided that I'll get back on schedule on Monday, resting again tomorrow.

I figured I could get in a mini-workout today at home. Just enough to stress my muscles and get the heart rate up for a bit. I did supersets of push-ups, "Hindu" squats, and crunches. Basically I went hard, fast and intense for 15 min or so. It was enough to get me out of breath, and enough to already feel a bit of muscle soreness, so I think it was a decent "active" rest day. I think it was just enough to pump my system so it doesn't hit rock bottom before I hit the weights hard again on Monday.

This was on top of the deadlifts/squats I did earlier in the day as we bought a tv entertainment stand. The box is probably close to 75 lbs I would guess, and awkwardly shaped. I had to carry, set down, lift, then carry this heavy awkard box through each door between the store and my apartment. I think it's something that before would have been easy for me to injure myself doing. But the good thing about squats and deadlifts is that they translate into real world motions, and real world strength.

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 13

Day 130 - Quick Post

Just a quick post today to put my picture up. Things are going great and last nights workout left me good and exhausted again, so I spent the day resting and concentrating on eating clean. I even tried out the BFFM pancakes after seeing Lilla's video. It really isn't much different from what I have for breakfast normally though. I usually have a bowl of oatmeal with chocolate protein powder, and a piece of fruit (bananna, orange or berries).

I decided to make mine with a bananna instead of apples, since bananas are my "recovery" fruit that I like to have post workout and now am having for 1st breakfast the day after a workout. To be honest, they came out a little bland for me, so I think next time I might have to succumb and put in some splenda or go with an all fruit jam on top. The chunks of banana are good, but the plain oats portion of it was lacking. Here's how they turned out:



Looks like I might have had the pan a little too hot! Here's hoping the next batch is better!

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 12

Day 129 - What's in your grocery cart?

Today while I was at the grocery store I ran into an old buddy who just happened to be in town for a bit. I saw him a little over the Christmas break, but we didn't really get a chance to talk. The first thing he said to me was, "you're eating healthy!" I think the giant stalk of celery sticking out of my baasket gave it away. He then jokingly pointed at someone else's cart and said, "they're healthy too, eh? Look at all those Pizza Pops!" That person had about 6 cartons of them in their cart along with an assortment of other garbage food. For those that aren't familiar with Pizza Pops, they are the epitome of North American convenience food. Pepperoni and cheese mixed with a preservative filled tomato sauce inside a white flour pocket that is microwaveable and ready in minutes.

He then went on to say how good it was to see me all slimmed down and eating healthy. This meant a lot more to me coming from him. I've known him longer than I can remember and he's a good honest person. He's also the one from our town who was known as the big gym rat and we spent a lot of time at our gym together. He was always the stereotypical ectomorph growing up. Skin and bones. But he made a big transformation after his final year in high school and packed on a lot of muscle. He did his research and made a big commitment to his workouts and his nutrition and he made great gains. If you didn't know him when he was younger, you wouldn't believe that he was as skinny as he was growing up. But he made a plan, stuck to it, and got great results.

But it all starts with the grocery cart. You really can tell a lot about a person by what's in their grocery cart. Now, I know that when embarking on fitness missions such as these, that your best measuring stick is yourself. But I always like to play the "am I the healthiest person in this line?" game at the grocery store. It's a fun little game to play when you're right beside all those impulse sweets right by the register. I know they say that you shouldn't feel good at other people's expense, but I enjoy the victory of putting my fresh organic veggies on the converyer belt behind someone with their bags of potato chips and (soda) pop. Does that make me judegemental? Elitist? Snobbish? Possibly, but it does make me feel good about making healthy eating choices.

So here's what was in my cart today when my friend complimented me on my healthy eating:
skim milk, Low fat Triscuits (whole wheat crackers), organic steel cut oats, egg whites, whole wheat hamburger buns, organic baby spinach, low fat (4% MF) probiotic cheese, strawberries, herring, celery, green pepper, blueberries, cucumber, fresh Atlantic salmon, and a box of clementines.

How does this compare with your lists? Are you the healthiest person in your grocery line?

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 11

Day 128 - I'm Full!

Well, today was just another day of getting good rest and eating well. Based on my measurements from Monday, I'm starting to make lean mass gains with little fat loss, but it's hard to really convince myself that it is lean mass gains. I've been eating more and to be honest, I just feel full a lot of the time now and have that "putting on fat" feel. I might have to drop my cals just a bit from what I've been going at lately on rest days since I didn't account for my overall activity level decreasing from the 6 workouts/week I was doing before. Even though it toook me a while to turn my system around and get it into "gain" mode, I think I might have overshot.

Or, I can just let things ride out...it's near impossible to put on lean mass without a bit of fat gain. I've done the fat burn before, and I'm confident I can do it again, it'd just be nice if there was less to get rid of once I put on some muscle.

This really is a tough mental struggle switching modes and staying committed.

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 10

Day 127 - Back in the groove

Well, the extra rest helped out and it felt good to get back into the gym today. Last week was more of a warm-up. Today's sessions I tackled weights that were more than what I was doing before Christmas.

I warmed up on the deadlift with the weight I was using before Christmas and it felt so much lighter. Now that I'm confident my form is good, I threw on an extra 50 lbs on top of that.

I'm in the groove and ready to step it up and go big!

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 9

Day 126 - Snowed in, a bit late

This is actually an entry for yesterday, which I missed posting on, but I'll still post for today this evening.

Well, I thought I was going to jump right back into my workout schedule, but mother nature had a different plan. After a quick thaw that saw most of the insanse amount of snow that had cumulated over the last few weeks melt away, we got dumped on again. A nice fresh layer of clean snow on top of the crusty, dirty brown stuff that remained. The snowfall started at pretty much the worst time, early enough that by the time my scheduled workout came around there was a good amount of snow down and they shut down campus (including the gym) so that folks could get home safely as more was coming in the night.

So yesterday's workout got pushed to today, which I had planned to be a rest day for yesterday's workout. This should mean I'm good and rested and able to put in a maximum effort in the gym tonight. Since my current workout plan is only 3 sessions/week, I'm not going to beat myself up about it being a day late, as long as I get my 3 sessions in this week.

Also yesterday was measurement day, so here are the results:

M2 Week 1: 2008-01-07 to 2008-01-14
Weight: 135.78 (+0.56)
Suprailiac: 10 mm -> 11.6% (no change)
Jackson/Pollock chest/ab/thigh: 7/14/11 -> 9.13% (no change)
Avg BF: 10.4% (no change)
Lean Mass: 121.66 (+0.5)
Fat Mass: 14.12 (+0.06)

Get your game face on!

Cheers,
Raiden

M2 Day 8