Good morning!
Somewhat unexpected, the weight went UP instead of down today. It isn't really a concern, though, just an observation. Fat% is down, so it indicates that I'm heading in the right direction. :)
I guess it's simply adjusting from the 2½ kilo drop yesterday.
The nice thing about it is that I REALLY am not concerned about it. I can honestly say so. Normally it would bug me a little, but not today. I know I'm doing well and that I'm on track.
I consumed 1700 of my 2100 calories yesterday, had PLENTY of protein for my workouts and muscle rebuild, and it's all good.
The food choices were reasonably good - pork with carrots for lunch, snacking on protein bars and apples, salmon and veggies for dinner, and a little portion (100g) of ice cream for dessert - all within my 8 hour feeding window.
I wanted to eat more in the evening, but managed to simply push away the thought of eating by concluding that I was outside my 8 hour window, and thus didn't want to mess up. :) This was nice.
...
Today has been very active already. I have walked my 5k, and I went to workout. MASSIVE success at the gym. My "Nemesis"-machine, the shoulder press, was upped for the first time in maybe 4 months! It's been heavy as heck, but after I started upping my protein and focusing more on actually eating all my calories, it's gotten a LOT easier to work with this one, and today I was finally able to add another 5 kilos to it - so now I lift 49 kilos on this one. :)
Also, I upped the abs-machine. I now go FULL blast on it. I'm not sure how many kilos this is, but it was nowhere near as heavy to lift as I had expected. This surprised me quite a lot.
I can't say this often enough - I am AMAZED how much I can lift now. I am AMAZED how far I have pushed myself in these 8 months since the gym opened. I am AMAZED how different I feel, both physically and mentally. It's a wonderful place to be. :)
...
The rest of the day is gonna be pretty easy going and relaxed. I am at work, it's now 9 am, and in two hours it's lunch time, and then I'm off to a three hour meeting. There WILL be a cake challenge, but I am pretty confident that I won't get in trouble. I will bring a protein bar, and have that when they're snacking the cake. It's a store bought cake, and probably not too interesting.
Lunch today is delish left-over salmon and veggies, and I am looking forward to it. I'm not sure what dinner will be, but if I have lunch as planned and also a HUGE protein bar, then I will have 1500 calories left for dinner. No problemo. The only thing is that I need to ensure to get enough fat and protein too, throughout the day. Gotta reach my goals, right?
It's interesting. I have been reading - as you might know - a lot about protein lately. One of the things that I see shot down quite a bit is the necessity of protein intake immediately after workouts, even tough workouts. It makes perfect sense to me that we DO NOT need it.
To quote Mike O'Connell (as he is quoting Dr. Eades in this particular blog entry) - whom I trust quite a bit as he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and the things I already follow from him works like a charm (and are easy to do):
I don’t think IF would affect muscle mass much at all. If you go without food for a long period of time, say, several days, your metabolic system goes after your muscle mass to convert the protein stored there into the glucose you need to keep your blood glucose normal. This doesn’t happen in the short term. All the protein structures in the body draw from and add to the amino acid pool. When muscle breaks down the individual amino acids go into the pool from where they’re harvested by the system that converts them to glucose. When new muscle is made, the amino acids used to construct the muscle protein are drawn from the amino acid pool. One of the contributors to the AA pool is enzymes that are no longer needed and junk proteins that the body is cleansing from the cells. When one is fasting, one of the group of enzymes not really needed is the group of digestive enzymes that would otherwise be employed in digesting food. These enzymes break down and their amino acids enter the AA pool where the muscle can pick them up as needed. Also, during an IF, the body goes into ketosis. I posted a few months back on how ketosis stimulates the process of cellular cleansing by removing junk proteins from the cells. The amino acids from these proteins also enter the AA pool where they can be recycled by the muscle mass. So, even though new protein isn’t coming into the body minute by minute from the diet, there is plenty of substrate there in the AA pool to last until the next meal, which is, at most, only 24 hours away.If you want to read the entire blog entry, you can find it
here. It's interesting stuff. :)
Following my philosophy about it all being about averages, I think this makes perfect sense. I don't think our bodies like to waste anything, unless it's truly trash. Without me being a specialist, I refuse to believe that our bodies will NOT store and keep nutrition for when it's needed, if we feed it. I am sure that our bodies will USE this nutrition when needed, unless it has it readily available in our blood streams already. Why wouldn't it? Our bodies are AMAZING. :)
Of course, this is ALSO why we gain weight and get fatter. Our bodies sees that we are feeding it, and it stores the excess energy (the calories) so we can use it later, if we need it. Then, when we go for a calorie defitit, our bodies sees that we in fact DO need the stored energy (fat) and thus start to burn it to survive. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Like I said, I am no specialist on this. However, I DO feel that I have much more energy, get better workouts, feel better and have less trouble maintaining my weight after I started focusing on consuming enough protein and fat, and eating closer to my RDI instead of going for "as low as I can" to lose weight.
This way works much better for me, and it is WAY easier. Use the RDI you're allowed, and enjoy the ride. Why not? Why would we make it harder to lose/maintain weight than absolutely necessary? I can't answer that question, but I know that we all tend to do it. It's a habit I'm trying (and hopefully succeeding) to break out of. Don't need it, don't want it.
...
So, today, with a 1500 calorie allowance after having lunch and a protein bar through the day, I will need to find some more high protein/fat foods to fill up with. I will still need to find about 1500 calories worth of food and about 100g of protein. That is A FRICKIN' LOT! I think I will have to do a nice protein rich smoothie for dessert, at least, and a good chunk of meat for dinner. :) Oh, it's a hard knock life, isn't it?
...
Today, I'm thankful for:
- the luxury of having to find out MORE food to eat today. :)
- an AWESOME workout. Two machines are now FULL BLAST!
- morning coffee!
- great weather for my morning walk!
- an easy day at work!
- Wife!
Life is good!