Day 83 - An extra rest day

Well, I missed out on my scheduled workout today, but I think it might be for the best. I slept in unbelievably long for me today so I think my body was telling me to slow down. I spent most of the day doing stuff getting in the Christmas spirit with my gf, so the gym appointment got pushed out of the way. I'm kind of sad that I didn't quite push the whole way to the 84 day/12 week finish line, but I still plan on going hard until Christmas. I want to make a nice post for tomorrow, but honestly, I've got a lot of other stuff going on, so it'll be hard enough for me to just get in my gym time.

Anyway, until tomorrow! I gotta crash again. Body needs rest, good quality sleep!

P.S. Today's Pics

Day 83

Day 82 - I Love Rest Days

Man, do I ever love rest days. I needed this one so much more than the ones in the past. I did a lot of relaxing things, including trying to make my own power granola bars. They didn't turn out quite how I was expecting, but at the least, they are still edible and I've got enough to last me through the week at minimum. I'm going to have to play around with the recipe a bit. My girlfriend wasn't too fond of the texture, but said that the taste was ok. Anyway, once I get a good batch, I'll share the recipe with you all.

Today was mostly uneventful in the health department other than me overeating a bit at supper, feeling a bit guilty and then sneaking in a short wii workout. Hey, it's just playing video games, eh? So technically, I was still resting.

Pictures will go up for tomorrow. For now, I really need my sleep.

P.S. Today's Pics

Day 82

Day 81 - A bit more energy

Just a quick post. I'll get pics up later. Just wanted to say that I did manage to get to the gym today for my workout. My energy level was still a little lower though, so I didn't manage to get in my cardio session after my weights, but I really think I just needed the rest. I'm looking forward to my rest day tomorrow and sleeping in after some long hours of work this week.

P.S. Today's Pics:

Day 81

Day 80 - First Real Low Day

Well, today was certainly different. It was the first day since I started my task that I had a real low day. I mean, I was totally wiped, had no energy and really had to drag myself to the gym. Every day before, I had been bursting with energy and anxiously awaited for my partner in crime to get home so we could go both shred away. Today was the first day that she was all pumped to go before me. It took me an extra half hour of lying on the couch before I was ready to go.

When I got to the gym, I really felt like the tanks were empty. I had almost no gas to do my warmup, but I did manage to get through my weights. I took a bit extra in between sets toward the end, and had to lower my weights on my last chest exercise. In the past couple weeks, I've usually gone for a bit more cardio after my weights, but this time, I had to pass.

I'm now at day 80 and nearing the end of 12 weeks of pretty much exercising 6 days a week. I know in BFFM they recommended to take a break every 12 weeks or so. I'm kind of still committed to seeing things through until the Christmas break. I have my scheduled rest day on Saturday. I'm still going to try and get my workout in tomorrow, but if I'm really low energy again, I may have to re-evaluate and maybe take a week off. Or maybe it was just an off day and I just need to get some better sleep tonight and eat a little better tomorrow (my meals were a little off today).

Here's today's pics:

Day 80

Day 79 - Another change up

Hey, I like doing things a bit different, so starting today I'm going to make my daily post before my workout. That way I might have some more interesting things to talk about other than my workout, and I won't waste away the wee hours of the morning finishing up my posts.

Today I thought I would share a little bit of data that I've collected.
For the budget conscious shredder, eating healthy may not come cheap. Some healthy food is cheaper, but others not so much. I think the biggest change that I noticed was that I was actually eating more food than before, and a lot more meat, since I tried having a source of lean protein at every meal.

Sources of lean protein are probably the largest part of my grocery bill, so I've kept a few tabs on the following staples, the stuff that I pretty much always have on hand, and end up buying even when it isn't on sale.

For some reason there's a lot of blank space here:

Food	Unit Size	#Servings	Protein/ Serving	Cost/ Unit	Cost/ 25g protein	Cost/ serving
Whole Eggs	dozen	12	6.3	2.25	0.74	0.19
Extra Lean Ground Beef	1 lb	4	21.1	2.99	0.89	0.75
Top Sirloin	1 lb	4	34.4	5.99	1.09	1.50
Chicken Breast (can)	1 tin	2	15	1.33	1.11	0.67
Egg Whites	dozen	2	21	2.25	1.34	1.13
Liquid Egg White	500 g	10	5	2.69	1.35	0.27
Protein Powder	1 kg	32	21	36.48	1.36	1.14
Cottage Cheese	500 g	4	15	3.29	1.37	0.82
Canned Tuna	1 tin	2	15	1.99	1.66	1.00
Chicken Breast	1 bag	10	22	19.99	2.27	2.00
Canned Salmon	1 tin	2	19	3.79	2.49	1.90
Salmon	1 portion	1	28.8	2.99	2.60	2.99

All prices are in Canadian Dollars and are listed as the lowest price I've paid for them that I could find or knew of off the top of my head. If was a real nut, I'd keep running tallies and use an average price, but that's probably a little extreme. I use the cost/25g of protein metric because that is about what I aim for in my protein intake per meal. For others, this might be higher or lower, depending on your needs.

Some notes:
The cheapest on this list, whole eggs, doesn't really count as a lean protein since it includes the fatty yolk. I eat mostly whites, so the average price for my egg protein intake is somewhere in between the price for whites and whole eggs. The next lowest, extra lean ground beef, isn't as clean as the other lean proteins since it still has a higher fat content than the others, most of which is saturated. Surprisingly, protein powder, even with all the marketing jazz and supplement company markup, comes in fairly reasonable. But if you use it too much, you're missing out on the other good stuff that comes from eating real food as well as the thermic effect since you're usually taking it in liquid form.

I guess it doesn't really change my grocery shopping or eating habits too much, except I'm going to try and make more use of egg (whites) and not to completely avoid the ground beef. Top Sirloin actually looks like a decent source as well, it's just a matter of limiting the size of the steaks that is the trouble. It's easy to take a nice big piece of meat which is probably closer to two servings. I think my salmon consumption will go down a bit as well and just make sure I keep up with my flax oil. I could get cheaper tuna as well, but for some reason I trust the little bit more expensive stuff more.

Well, there you have it, a short, but not too scientific insight on my grocery shopping habits. If anyone else has some tips on getting cheap sources of quality lean protein, let me know!

...and now for today's pics:

Day 79

Day 78 - Change of plans

If you've been following me the last couple days, I was starting to incorporate carb cycling into my program to shed those last few pounds of fat. Today, I made a decision to alter those plans and add a new goal to my current milestone. In addition I'll be extending my milestone deadline to correspond with the date of the event for my new goal.

I've talked a bit about hockey in my past posts, and it was a very important part of my life when I was younger, especially back in high school. The ultimate goal of my quest is to get in the best shape of my life. This should also mean that I should be playing hockey. I haven't hit the ice for over 3 years now, but I am now making it part of my mission to get back on the ice and strap those pads on again.

Today, I got an invitation to play in an organized pick-up game (yeah, organized pickup sounds like an oxymoron) on Boxing day with all my old high school teammates and others from town, who will all be home for the holidays. For most people, I think this will be just some time to fool around and just have some fun. But for me, it symbolizes a lot more. I mean, if any of them knew it was my goal to train for this one single pick up game, they'd think I was crazy. But I've had a lot of setbacks since high school (my speedbumps!) and this game is going to mean a lot to me.

So, what does this mean? Well, today I weighed in at 133.8 lbs, and 20.4% BF (I post my PhysicsDiet numbers in my weekly stats, which are running averages, so they lag my daily numbers) on my scale. Before I made this blog, my goal was to get under 22% BF on my scale by Dec 15th. On my charts, I had only set the axis for my weight loss to go from 155 down to 135 (I made it fixed so I had something to shoot for). I since had to adjust the axis, and I also set 21% BF as a goal when I started blogging. To be honest, I never thought I was going to get below 135 lbs. Ever. So, I've essentially hit my BF% and total fat loss goals already. But, for me to play hockey, strength and stamina will be bigger factors now that I've lost most of the excess fat that was slowing me down.

Right now, losing fat won't really help me, as there's the possibility that I'll lose a bit of strength in the process and it probably won't make me that much faster. So, there's really only one way for me to go, and that's to now try and put on some lean muscle (especially back and legs), and at the same time also get my cardiovascular fitness up. Both of those new goals means I'm going to need a lot more calories, so carb cycling is now out the window. I'll return to that after the New Year to shed any bit of fat that I put on during this short muscle gain phase (and the holiday meals!).

My plan now is to shoot for maintenance calories all this week (2700), and then next week go into an approximately 10% calorie surplus (an even 3000). During this time, I'm not so much changing my workout schedule, but I am going to push myself even harder. Since I'll be eating more calories, I plan on having more energy so I can lift even more weight, and go even faster and longer on my cardio sessions. I'm not going to worry too much about whether the energy for my workouts is coming from the food I just ate or the fat stores in my body. I just want to give my heart the best workout it can get.

I'm not quite sure what kind of muscle gains I can make in this short time, but I'll take anything I can get.

Wish me luck!

Here's today's pics:

Day 78

Day 77 - Something doesn't add up! It's not Day 76!

Well, I realized today that I'm one off on my day count. I missed counting a day somewhere back around day 35 when I was taking pictures. You'd think with my obsession with numbers that I would have caught onto this earlier. I should have realized my weekly stat posts weren't a multiple of 7. I guess I just thought it was an off by one error, which happens in computer programming, especially when your index starts with 0. Anyway, enough geek talk.

Today was my first high carb day, and I was aiming for eating maintenance calories, which according to my own calculations I have worked out to be around 2700, since I've been mostly aiming for 2200 a day and losing an average of 1 lb a week lately. To be honest, it seemed like a lot of food for me today, but hopefully I'll have a nice store of glycogen in my muscles now. I gave my legs a good workout, and they felt much better since I didn't do my HIIT on the bike like last week. I did however hit the bike for some post weight steady state cardio.

Tonight for supper I had a new food. My girlfriend and I tried making quinoa for the first time. In my healthy food searching I stumbled upon it and thought I'd give it a try. I picked up just a sampling from our local bulk food store and made it in my rice cooker. It's supposedly a real super food as it's a seed that is used like a grain, with a higher protein content than wheat or rice, with a well-rounded amino acid profile. It tasted pretty pretty good and was a nice change from rice or potatoes. It's a bit expensive though for a starchy staple, coming in at about $10/kg, especially compared to my big bags of rice. It's worth a try though. I think I'll get some more and try it in some mixed dishes instead of just eating it on its own.

Without further adieu, here's my weekly stats:

Week 11: 2007-11-19 to 2007-11-26
Weight: 136.36 (-1.23)
BF: 21.43 (-0.50)
Suprailiac: 11 mm (11.6%)
Jackson/Pollock chest/ab/thigh: 8/16/14 (10.96%)

and my daily pics:

Day 77