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 67 - Pics and stuff

Well, this post is actually for yesterday and yesterday's pics, which I didn't get up in time yesterday as it was my rest day and my gf and I spent last evening with some friends who had us over for dinner and a night of board games and socializing (yeah, we're a wild bunch now). Even though yesterday was my rest day and planned relaxed day for meals, I ended up eating clean just about all day anyway, except for a couple desserts at our friends place with a couple glasses of wine, but even that wasn't too bad. The meal they cooked for us was actually pretty good as it was a nice meal of roast beef with potatoes and carrots with some shrimp as well. The beef was pretty lean, and I snuck a few more shrimp than the others for the nice low fat protein. I limited myself to one tiny bite size of fudge, and a small brownie. To be honest, I don't really have that much of a sweet tooth, my biggest weaknesses are fatty salty fried foods and the like, which I have to confess, I was making up for from Friday.

I didn't mention it in my post Friday night, but that was probably my blowout. We went out with some friends for cheap apps and drinks at a place downtown, which turned into me preying on the classic wings and beer. It was only a couple beer and about a dozen wings, which is half of what I used to do, but it was still a lot for my stomach to take. It isn't used to getting stuffed anymore. I ended up feeling a large amount of abdominal pain. I guess my brain doesn't clue in to stop eating anytime I have beer with my food. Later though, after the pain subsided, I was back to munching on chips and dip with a couple glasses of wine. Baked Tostito chips and low fat dip mind you, but its still junk food.

So, this weekend was a little set back, but I think I managed a little better than I have in the past. I'm well refreshed now and ready for another weak of eating clean and shredding hard.

I also thought I would start posting my before pics everyday now, which will hopefully keep me motivated. I'll do another post tonight probably after I finish my day and workout.

Day 67

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 65 - A few of my favourite things

Today my girlfriend (jokingly) played the "do you love me more than..." game and she then proceeded to name off a bunch of things that, I didn't realize, but have become a part of my everyday life. It's funny how the outside observers pick up on these things. Well, in no particular order, these are some of my new favourite things:

Cottage Cheese (fat free)
Tuna
Chicken breast
The cardio room
The weight room
The ArcTrainer
Protein Shakes
Spinach
Bananas
Broccoli
Egg whites
Cat food

Ok, well not really the last one, but she refers to any of my tinned meats (tuna, salmon, chicken breast chunks, turkey, all great to put on spinach salads!) as being cat food. Maybe she has something there...I could probably save money if I bought cat food and it probably has just as much protein. I think I still prefer the taste of people food though, so I'll stick with that...for now anyway.

But my most favourite thing of course, is still my girlfriend. She wins hands down. No contest. Well, maybe if I try cat food...

Had a chest/tricep/forearms session today after some light cardio. Added an another chest exercise to my routine as well as some forearm work. I hope they're not too sore tomorrow for my bicep workout though. Ah, but I have my rest day coming up. Time to push it hard!

Here's today's pics:

Day 65

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 63 - Snow!

Well, we got some snow up here today. I guess winter is now here. It's been hovering around freezing temps the last few days, so I guess the snow wasn't really a surprise.

Just a quick post today as I've been pretty busy with finishing up some work, but I must say, today I really felt the effects of the added lunges I did yesterday. Really felt it in my glutes! I think I've hit a mini-plateau, as my weight hasn't really budged the last week or so, maybe even gone up a bit, but I'm hoping my new routine will give it a spike and help me get rid of that last bit of fat. Today was my lower back and shoulder session. I added an exercise to each for a total of 9 sets for each muscle group, up from last weeks 6, increased the weight, but lowered the reps. I'll probably feel it tomorrow!

Anyway, here's today's pics.

Day 63

Day 62 - Day off...kinda

Well, today was sort of a holiday here in Canada. We have Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, but this year that was the Sunday, so a lot of places made today a work holiday. I technically didn't have it off, but my hours are flexible and my girlfriend had it off, so I took the day off to spend time with her.

It didn't mean though that I was taking the day off from my exercise schedule or eating clean though! We did sleep in though, so my whole schedule was about an hour behind the usual. An hour is easy to make up in spacing out my meals though. My first 3 meals were closer to 2.5 hours apart rather than the normal 3.

Today was the first weight day of my new schedule. I changed it up a bit last week, but starting today, my schedule will be pretty much the same until I meet my milestone 1 date, Dec. 22. I'm going to a 4 day split and doing strength training 4 times a week. Today was my leg workout, and I only did warm-up steady state cardio (about 10 min). I added weighted lunges to my list of leg exercises since my goal with this new split is to work the muscles a little harder each workout, but not as many different muscles in one workout.

After my workout, it was a beautiful evening here, so my girlfriend and I decided to go for a nice walk around town. We strolled for an hour or so and took in some fresh air.

Oh, I just remembered, today is Monday, which I'm going to designate as my weekly stats update. As I've mentioned before, I use PhysicsDiet to track my daily weight and BF measurements from my digital scale. I also use an AccuMeasure caliber and track my suprailiac and Jackson/Pollock 3 site BF measurements.

Here are this weeks numbers:

Average Weight: 138.52 lbs (down from 139.62)
Average BF: 22.32% (down from 22.76)
Suprailiac: 12 mm ~= 13.6% (no change)
Jackson/Pollock Chest/Abdomen/Thigh: 8/17/16 mm ~= 11.87% (down from 12.17)

and here are today's pics:

Day 62