Day 90 - Guilty

I'm guilty. Full confession tomorrow and update to this post tomorrow. It's late, so I need sleep.

Addendum:

Day 90

Day 88 - Transformer: Hard Gainer in Disguise

I hit a new milestone today, but not necessarily one I was looking for. Today I hit a new low on the scale, 133.4 lbs. Of course, I thought I was now on a strengthening and muscle gain program. I guess I've just fallen into the classic "but I don't want to get fat again" mode. Even though I was trying to eat more, I just haven't been able to get myself to really put myself in a surplus. I mean, I kind of pigged out a bit last weekend. After doing so, I sort of had that fat bloated and gross feeling, and backed off a bit. Maybe that is what I'm going to have to do to gain some muscle back? I mean, I did see my weight go up a bit this week only to have it rocket back down the past couple days.

Maybe, even after those years of packing on the fat, I'm a hard-gainer in disguise? Back when I was lifting heavy before, I don't think I was ever really able to put muscle on before. I might get a bit more definition, but my weight would go down. Well, at least I know a bit more about this stuff now. I only had my bf tested once before up until this past year (I was about 16% back when I was 18). I've done some reading that puts reasonable muscle gains in the range of 0.25-0.5 lbs a week (I'm not a genetic freak so I'm going to aim for the average). That's lean muscle tissue. With that muscle tissue comes about an extra 0.25-0.5 lbs of glycogen and water. So a gain of about 0.5-1 lb of lean mass should be possible in a week with little fat gain.

Ok, well, I know I'm really good at pigging out, but can I pig out on good clean food? Maybe. We'll see. Maybe I just need a good binge fest to spike my muscle growth to go with my weight training. Hmmm, I'm just about to head out to my gf's Christmas work party w/ plenty of free food provided. Will I live to tell the tale? Tune in tomorrow and find out if Raiden managed to gain muscle, or gain fat, or through the miracle of the Hard-Gainer in Disguise, actually lose muscle and fat after pigging out!

Until next time, Transformers, transform and roll out! (apologies to Optimus Prime and Hasbro)

Day 88

Day 87 - The Gun Show

Hey, did you get your tickets yet...to the Gun Show?

Ok, well, the gun show pics have been making their way around the Shredder blogs, so I thought I would throw mine in the mix. It's one of those things that you never really see for yourself. It's like looking at your own ears. No matter how fast you turn your head, you can never see them with your own eyes. Not even me, and I think I have pretty big ears. Or maybe my eyes just aren't fast enough o_0


Haha, ok, well, that was fun.

...and now for the rest of the story:

Just pics today. I'll chat more later. Gotta get some quality sleep to let those muslces recoup and grow!

Day 87

Day 86 - The obligatory fat pants pic and another change up

Well, I'll start off today by saying it was an honour being featured in Adam Waters' blog post today as part of the "ShredderSphere". Back when I started taking my daily pics and lurking on Adam's blog, I never thought I'd come as far as I have and actually become a part of Adam's shredding community. Although I'm not an official member of the Shredder Council or a part of the current weekly accountability group shred, I've been shredding alongside them all and posting daily (since day 52).

Currently, I've switched modes from fat loss to muscle gain/strengthening in preparation for my return to the ice to play in a special hockey game over the Christmas break. So, as part of the strengthening, I've upped my calories and my weight has changed direction and is slowly going up. I figured I should get the obligatory "fat pants" pic done before I put on too much more (hopefully muscle). My lowest daily weigh-in was 133.6 lbs a week ago. Today my weigh-in was 134.8 when I took these pictures:



These pants were a size 32 waist. The new pair of jeans I bought a few weeks ago are size 28. I actually probably could have gone with a 27 in the waist, but my legs were too big.

Today, I also changed up my weight routine. Initially I had been continuing on with the bodybuilding type muscle growth/fat loss 3 set x 8-12 rep x 3 exercise scheme. This has been great for my muscle definition and my fat loss, but isn't the best scheme for building strength and power, which is my focus now, since those are the qualities that I desire as an ice hockey goaltender. This requires different type of exercise-set-rep scheme, honestly, a type that I hadn't really done before. I was kind of stuck in the 3x10 or 3x12 or 3x15 mindset with a lot of isolation exercises.

Well, I'm going to be following the StrongLifts 5x5 beginner strength program, which focuses on compound exercises using heavier weights at lower reps. Even though I've been weight training on and off for close to 8 years now, I am probably still considered a beginner with respect to strength training (which is different from general weightlifting and bodybuilding). As I haven't done some of the exercises in this program in a while, I think it's best for me to follow the beginner program. I'll be using different starting weights once I figure those out, but the idea of progression in weights rather than sets and reps will be followed.

Today was the first day of this new program and I must say, the barbell squats felt pretty good and I concentrated a lot on my form (after listening to Michael's podcast). The pull-ups that I did were probably the most draining on me, but they felt awesome. 3 sets of those, each one to failure.

Anyway, I hope to catch up and reply to some of the comments and to get around to everyone else's blog to comment soon. It's a busy time for me, so everyone keep shreddin'!

Today's pics:

Day 86

Day 85 - Snowed in!

Well, the snow continued to fall last night and for most of today. We got totally hammered and pretty much everything was shut down all around the city. That also meant that my gym was closed down. Boo-urns I say, Boo-urns! This meant that I had to improvise on my workout today. I am not so well equipped in my humble apartment, but I did some resistance band work and some stability ball exercises. Not close to a full workout, but better than nothing I guess. I really wish I had some free weights and a bench. You can do quite a bit with just those. I might look into getting the Bowflex select-tech set which are close to $500, but I don't know if I really have the money to spend on those, especially when my gym is essentially free. I mean, it's not like it gets snowed in every week, so 500 bucks is a lot to spend just for those rare occassions when it snows a ton.

Believe it or not, even with almost a foot of snow on the ground, I was running around doing other things, so I didn't quite have time to sit down and focus on making my video. I could put up the quick and dirty version, but I'd rather wait a bit.

Oh, just thought I would add, I found out today that the "pick-up" hockey game I'm planning to play in on Boxing Day has now become a charity game in memory of a former arena employee who died of suddenly of cancer a couple years ago. All proceeds will be going to the Cancer Society. They're also looking into getting it filmed for the local community channel. Talk about added pressure now! There could potentially be a lot of people coming out to watch this game, including a lot of old town folk who used to watch me back in high school. I definitely gotta up my conditioning now! After I found out about this, I told my girlfriend and then she proceeded to practice "shooting" on me by throwing balls at me from point blank. I think my reflexes and hand-eye co-ordination are still there, but we'll see.

Anyway, here's today's pics:

Day 85

Day 84 - My 12 Week Transformation

Well, my current trek doesn't end today, but I did hit the magical 12 week point. Since 12 weeks seems to be a common length of time that others have been using as the time it takes to make significant changes and turn their health around, I thought I would take some time to reflect on the changes that I have made in this time. Don't have much time before I need to get some sleep, so I'll probably keep it short and maybe add some other stuff later.

Mentally, I have seen big changes. As I did more and more things to make myself healthier, my mental health improved. I have been in general a lot happier and overall more energetic in my everyday life. I have been more alert, aware, and simply, just better.

Physically, I went from being the winded weekend athlete, dreading covering a "fast and fit" person during frisbee games, to being the dreaded one. I could play a game and not be completely exhausted afterward. I was more confident in my abilities and was able to push my body further.

Nutritionally, I have reduced my cravings of junk food as well as my intake of those junk foods drastically. I enjoy eating healthy food and it is now habit to go to the effort of preparing a full meal when I'm hungry rather than nibbling at whatever cheap food is hanging around and never getting around to eating real food. I've rediscovered fruits and vegetables, and over the course of my journey so far, I've introduced or at least tried out a lot of new exciting foods.

Statistically speaking, I lost 18.1 lbs of weight. Since my BF scale isn't accurate, I don't have a good number on the overall fat loss, but if I assume that my starting BF% was 21%, which I don't think is too far off, and use my ending stats from the AccuMeasure, then I have essentially maintained my lean body mass, so the weight loss is essentially all fat and water weight.

I consistently saw the amount of weight I lifted go up, and made lots of gains in my cardiovascular health.

I plan on putting a little 12 week transformation video together soon. We'll see how that little project goes. I might even be able to get it up tomorrow, but we'll see. If it's not tomorrow, it may not be until the weekend when I get a chunk of free time. Maybe I'll put up some graphs as well.

Here's the weekly stat update:

Week 12: 2007-11-26 to 2007-12-03
Weight: 135.27 (-1.09, -18.1 total)
BF: 21.03 (-0.40, -5.6 total)
Suprailiac: 10 mm (11.6%)
Jackson/Pollock chest/ab/thigh: 8/14/12 (9.74%)

I was definitely surprised to see my Jackson/Pollock dip below into the magical single digits. I couldn't believe it. I redid the measurements 3 times, but they kept coming out the same, so I guess it must be true. I lost 2mm of both my ab and thigh measurements, and that was with my decision to shoot for maintenance calories last week, a missed workout, and 2 sub par workouts. Amazing.

Oh, I just thought I would add that I did make it back to the gym today after taking the whole weekend off and having a couple sub-par workouts before the weekend. I got in a full workout today and I felt great. I think the extra day really gave me what I needed to jump back into it. I mean, I even had to trek through a winter storm to get to the gym! It was one of those 2 steps forward, slide 1 step backward kind of walks. Here's the view outside my apt window today:


and here are my daily pics, showing the changes I made in just 12 short weeks!

Day 84