Day 75 - Where did the time go?

Wow, I'm not quite sure where the time went, but the blog has taken a bit of a backseat to the rest of my life. Yesterday was a rest day, but I spent it running a lot of those Saturday errands, which included some Christmas shopping. Today was a fun day doing stuff with my girlfriend. Weekends are all about spending more time with her. Managed to get my first low carb day in and a HIIT session, but not sure how low carb it was exactly. Might have just been a low calorie day. Sunday's are a bit more off the map than I plan to be during the week.

Even though I missed a post yesterday (rest day), I did take pics, but I think I'll just post today's:

Day 75

Day 71 - Where'd my pillow go?

I feel sorry for my girlfriend. I've taken her pillow away. When we watch tv on the couch together, sometimes she lays her head in my lap. Well, before I had a nice little cushion for her, all that extra padding I had. Lately she's been joking with me and when she lays her head down she'll ask me, "Where'd my pillow go?". I guess my stomach is getting hard now because she's started putting a real pillow in my lap and then laying her head down. I feel sorry that I've taken her pillow away, but I'm proud that I've gotten rid of my pillow.

Ok, I'm being selfish now, I'm thinking about how funny it will be when I finally carve out that six pack and my stomach is all bumpy! Speaking of which, today was an ab day, so I guess that's what inspired me to write about that little anecdote. I tried a couple different ab exercises. I think I can stick with my girlfriend's ab workout one day of the week, and my ab workout the other. They're essentially the same exercises, but doing them slightly different. One exercise each for upper abs, lower abs, and obliques.

I also had to settle for a regular elliptical today for my HIIT. My ArcTrainer was taken again! I don't know why it's so popular now. Maybe everybody sees me using it and seeing how well I've progressed over the last couple months and they think it is some magical machine. Yeah, that's gotta be it...I think I still lift the least amount of weight out of any of the other guys at the gym, but at least I have better form than most of them. What's up with all the cheater's? Almost nobody does bicep curls with proper form. It's kind of funny when you watch the real big cheaters. It ends up showing in their physique. They end up with these big solid cores, but never build up their biceps. Anyway, I'm rambling now, I'll save the form discussion for another day.

Is it just me or does an ab workout make you extra hungry? My metabolism must be super stoked because I've already ate my 6 meals today, my last one I just finished an hour ago, and I've already got the hunger pangs. This is quite unusual for me as a lot of the time I have to almost force my 6th meal on myself. Either that or my supper didn't agree with me. I might be getting mixed signals, but it sure feels like hunger to me. I guess a bedtime snack of cottage cheese wouldn't hurt :D

Anyway, here are today's pics:

Day 71

Day 68 - HIIT'in up the bike

Today my beloved ArcTrainer was in use at the gym. This almost never happens...Even though there's only one ArcTrainer, and about 6 or 7 of all the other machines, almost nobody seems to like it. I like it because it has an interval setting of 30 sec/60 sec, which I find a good ratio for me to work my butt off on.

So today, I gave the bike a try for my HIIT workout. I like this better than the treadmill, well, mostly because the treadmill wrecks my back, and I don't have to fiddle with buttons to up the speed. I was able to set a a single resistance level and do my 30s/60s intervals of high speed/low speed. I did however, end up with a sore butt from sitting on the darn thing. It didn't quite seem as good an overall workout as the ArcTrainer and ellipticals give me, but I sure felt it in my quads. I had to stretch them extra afterwards. Speaking of stretching, my side split is starting to come back. I still got a ways to go, but I'm seeing improvement already in my range of motion.

I then went through my gf's ab workout that she does, and I must say, I'm cursing by the end of it. I'll build up those abs soon, you just wait and see!

Day 68

Day 66 - Quickie

Quick post today, just before I hit the sack. Entertained some friends this evening, so pretty tired, especially after I put in a solid workout at the gym this afternoon. Finished off with a solid HIIT session that totally drained me.

Here's today's pics:

Day 64 - Pizza can be a part of a shredder's diet

Ok, well, I know the most extreme shredder's and bodybuilder's might not agree or just stay away from pizza in general, but I made one tonight with my girlfriend and had a couple slices, and I don't think I strayed too far from my regular nutritional intake. I've eaten a lot of pizza in my day, but I think this one came out a lot better than the other ones. I think the biggest culprits are the frozen pizzas from the grocery store. They all seem to be loaded with salt and saturated fat, even the ones with chicken breast!

Well, here's what we did to make ours. First off, we started with a pre-made frozen crust with the sauce already on it. The kind we get have nearly fat-free dough (0g per serving, which really means < 0.5g) and are fairly thin. Now, it wasn't the whole wheat kind, which you can get and would have been better, but it just tastes a bit too funny for my girlfriend. The next step, was loading it up with big chunks of chicken breast. Then on top of that was loads of veggies - sliced mushroom, green and red pepper, tomatoe, green and red onion, piled nice and high. This was all topped off with some low fat mozza cheese.

Now, this may not be exact, but this is a rough estimate of what I think the numbers are for 1/4 of a pizza, which is what I ate:

Protein: ~30g, 120 cal
Fat: ~ ~7g, 63 cal
Carbs: ~60g, 240 cal

which brings the total meal in at 423 cal in a 28/15/57 protein/fat/carb split which is pretty close to my aim of 30/15/55 and just a little over my 400 cal meal threshold. I think that's pretty good for a pizza, which I made and ate without really measuring or thinking about the macronutrient ratio or total calorie intake. I think I don't even have to count it as a cheat meal, maybe half of a cheat meal? It's hard to think of pizza as being a good meal. It's funny, it seems to be one of the stereotypical bad foods. It's made several appearances on the Biggest Loser as an "evil" food. Well, I guess it probably was for me when it was the sausage, hamburger, pepperoni meat pizza, no veggies, and washed down with a half dozen beer.

I think this one was pretty good, either that or I'm rationalizing it to myself by writing this. What do you guys think? If anything though, the dough was probably a bit high on the GI, but my muscles and body were pretty starving since I left a bunch of me on the gym floor just a short while before that working my butt off on my HIIT workout. To top that off, the HVAC system was out in the cardio room, so the air was pretty thick and warm. It made breathing really tough and sapped the energy even more, but I still managed to get through my target levels.

Here's today's pics:

Day 64

Day 61 - Trying out the treadmill

Today I thought I would give the treadmill a try. Just a little try, so it was only about 5 min. I've never really ever used the treadmill for my cardio workouts. My back isn't very partial to the pounding impact a treadmill gives. It didn't feel too bad though, and maybe next time I'll try 6 min. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

I used the rest of my time at the gym to get a full HIIT workout on my wonderful ArcTrainer. I was pretty dead after the session today. It's amazing what that extra 5 min. on the treadmill took out of me.

Anyway, here's today's pics.

Day 61

Get your game face on!

Day 59 - I Love Fridays

I love Fridays, well, minus the work related stuff I got dumped on me today. Something I wasn't planning on starting for another couple weeks has had its deadline pushed up and I need to finish it by next Wednesday. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get it done though, so I'm not really worried about it.

Today started off with a killer workout. I love Fridays because I know that since Saturday is my rest day, I can really push it. I altered my workout a bit today since I had some extra time so that I did a 10 min. warm-up of steady state cardio before I did my weight session. Once I finished my weights, I then went for an all out 30 min. HIIT session and man, did I really empty the tank on that one. It felt great. I was able to keep pushing right up to the end as I told myself in my head, "Push now, don't stop, rest tomorrow".

My usual workout is 30 min. HIIT followed by 35-40 min. of weights, but lately I think that my weights have been suffering since I wipe myself out on the HIIT. It generally is better to do your cardio after your strength training, but my gym is fairly busy and you have to reserve your cardio for 30 min slots, and that's the most you can reserve. I never like to lift weights cold, so I have to get about 10 min. warmup in first. But normally its hard to get a free machine just for 10 min. Today was an exception though, so I was lucky.

But the reason I love Fridays even more is that I know I get to spend the whole weekend with my girlfriend and neither one of us is working.

Some more catch up pics:

Day 12

Day 13

and today's pics:

Day 59

Get your game face on!

Day 57 - Goals, written and actual

Today my girlfriend and I had a little talk after our workout session and it got me to thinking about what my goals really are. As a engineering guy, numbers were initially a big part of my goals, what I had written down when I started. I like numbers. I really saw this whole body transformation process as a really big lab experiment, except that the sample size was one, my own body. So the daily photos, daily weigh ins, calorie counting is just data collection. Throw it into a big pile, examine it and determine what the results are. If they aren't quite what was expected, tweak, adjust, take notes, all the while still collecting the data.

I guess I really got caught up in all the numbers, the calculations, and the plotting of my progess graphs. These are the tangible results, the quantitative goals.

Ultimately, when I started this trek, it really wasn't about the numbers, it was really only about one thing, getting healthy. Well, plus the fact that I was really sucking wind when I played frisbee in the summer... I had a lot of bad habits that needed changing. I've done a pretty good job changing a lot of them. I no longer eat a whole box of crackers at a time. I no longer feel like I have to eat every last bit of food on my plate when I go out to eat. I actually eat meals now instead of just continuously snack on junk food. I'm eating a lot more fruits and vegetables. I have more energy during the day, and I don't crash and burn after the sugar rushes. I'm happier and more productive at work. I enjoy eating healthy now.

I know I wrote down overall health as one of my goals, but for a while I guess I forgot to even think about it. Now I have, and it feels good.

Anyway, back to the data collection portion!

Catch up pics:

Day 8

This is the day I accidentally smacked my camera onto the ground from the counter it was sitting on. It hasn't worked since...Thankfully, I had my girlfriend's on hand and have been using it since (thanks babe!)

Day 9

Day 57

Get your game face on!