21 Days: Day 4

Here’s my weighin for day 4:

I fell off the TV wagon, at least night time TV.  So you think you can dance and some world news are too important to not watch

My food intake yesterday:

1. Half of a buffalo burger and 3 whole eggs scrambled and a ton of steamed veggies.

2. apple with 2 tablespoons almond butter

3. apple with 2 tablespoons sunbutter, couple of handfuls of cheezits(damn you cheezits!)

4. buffalo burger and steamed veggies

Yesterday’s meals were really spread out because I had to make a business trip up to Wyoming in the middle of the day.  I would have rather had more protein and veggies in the middle of that.  Also, since I waited too long to eat from meal #2 and meal #4, i succumbed to a couple of handfuls of cheezit crackers, not cool.

Yesterday’s workout was fun, however my blood sugar got the best of me.  I started with a blood sugar reading of 120, by the end of the workout (which was intense exercise over the course of 20 minutes) i was sooooooo tired, unable to push myself.  Checked my glucose level and it had shot up to 238.  So basically my body tried to give me a boost, but because I didn’t produce any insulin to use it, it was wasted.  Timing is everything. I need to guesstimate how much insulin to take based on what exercise and duration of the intensity of the exercise of the workout that’s coming up; that’s hard, I don’t want to overshoot and have a low.

21 Days: Day 3

Here’s the weighin for today:

I was very sore yesterday, and had a ton of work todo, seemed like a good day to take off from workouts.  Meals were pretty good, went something like this:

1. Buffalo burger + steamed veggies

2. 6 scrambled eggs(3 whole + 3 whites) + one apple w/almond butter

3. Polish sausage(not a great choice but that’s what was for dinner and it was good) + steamed spinach; followed by a couple of sticks of celery with sunbutter.(slight cheat, had about 7 french fries from one of my kids left overs from lunch, oops)

I broke down and watched tv last night too, for about an hour(it was dvr’d).  I’m human.

Bolder Boulder

Here’s the 10k Bolder Boulder race footage I put together:

21 Days: Day 2

Here’s my weighin entry for Day 2 of my 21 day experiment.

Yesterday was overall a great day.  Meals consisted of

1. Elk Burger and an apple, pre-workout

2. Ground turkey and steamed veggies, post – workout

3. Scrambled eggs(3 whole eggs + 3 egg whites) + an orange

4. Buffalo burger and steamed veggies, post olympic lifting training

I had amazing workouts yesterday.  The first began with a personal record in the full squat, 405 pounds.  This is without any equipment, including a belt.  Back in the day(1997), I could full squat 591 pounds, however that’s with a super tight lifting belt, and one of those crazy tight suits and the knee wraps, and not going as deep as I do now, so the 405 is impressive to me.

In the evening there was an olympic lifting training session.  I haven’t gone heavy in the clean and jerk for years, like even prior to my powerlifting days in the late 1990’s. Last night I clean and jerked 204 pounds, which felt pretty good to me, I don’t think that was a max lift either.

The only thing I would change is that the evening class was at 6:30pm, I didn’t eat dinner until almost 8:15pm and went to bed by 11:30.  I don’t like eating late, next time i’ll figure out some food to eat before workout.

21 Days: Day 1

Welcome to day 1 of my 21 day experiment.  I’ve decided that I want to weigh myself everyday too, just for kicks.  This weekend was filled with eating out and boozing, so my weight is reflecting that:

Myth: Six Pack Abs By Just Exercising

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

I’ve watched more tv than I should have today.  One of the recurring themes in commercials  is how to get a better body by just exercising.

People.  Every human on earth has a six pack.  It’s the way the human body is created.  No exercise on earth can give you something you already have.  If you can’t see your six pack it’s because you have a layer of fat hiding it.

Spot reduction.  It’s not physiologically possible.  So stop fucking buying into the myth.  If you have a fat ass, doing squats, lunges or any othe exercise that works the muscles in your ass will not have a direct effect on your fat ass.  A fat ass consists of fat that exists above the muscles of your ass.  Exercising muscles underneath your fat ass does one thing directly: targets the muscles “underneath” the fat ass.  The fat ass is caused by poor nutrition and laziness.  Stop eating like shit and get up and move. It’s that simple.

Bolder Boulder Festivities, My Running Career and Diabetes

We’re headed down to  Boulder to pick up our race packets for the race, we’re in the 8 am heat.  I’ve only run the race once, WAY back in 2006 when I was runner boy.  I really dislike running now.

Back in June 2005, the week before a family reunion, I had a bad low.  I had taken too much insulin and my blood sugar dropped FAST.

[Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this].

So I was in the middle of cooking up some scrambled eggs, and my legs were giving out on me.  I was so low, I was literally not right in the head, temporarily insane.  The intelligent thing would have been to sit down and get some sugar, but I was too low the think clearly.  While making the eggs my body finally gave out and I collapsed.

When I came to, I was lying in a pool of blood and scrambled eggs.  I hobbled to the bathroom, blood pouring from some part of my face, and was horrified at what I saw.  You see we have hardwood floors.  After passing out, I had gotten turned around and fell face first into the hardwood floor.  I smashed a hole through the my two front teeth.  My teeth were still in my mouth, but there was a huge dime size hole through them.

I had to go to the dentist to get fixed.  I had no dental insurance and the place I went to wanted money up front before helping me.  2000 dollars and 3 hours later I had two new front teeth, the dentist did an amazing job, I guess for 2k in cash he’d better.

Anywho, so after that incident I started working out, like some treadmill stuff, very short distance.  In July I worked out every single day of that month, mostly running.  I kept it up and ran my Bolder Boulder in May 2006.   A year later I ran my first(and so far only) marathon in May 2007.

That marathon sucked.  I mean really sucked.  I had gone from weighing 240 pounds down to 179 without any dieting by strictly performing ridiculous amounts of running.  In march 2007 I ran just over 200 miles that month.  I had one week that month where I hit just over 60 miles.

After the marathon I hated running.  Really hated running(and still do).  A 5 mile run was painful, mostly just mentally.  So I slowly kept doing less and less, kept eating the same amount(remember I didn’t diet at all) and gradually grew back into my 240 pound former self.

My friend Nick got me started on  crossfit back in August 2008.  I loved it and hated it.  It’s an entirely different workout experience(more on that on future posts).  I didn’t start doing it seriously until January of this year.  The plan now is that I’ve not been running, not much anyway, only crossfit training.  One 5k run in March, and one for a crossfit workout about a month ago, and I’m gonna just do the race and see how I do.  I’ve got the Bolder Boulder this Monday.  Joe Colton’s off-road adventure on June 13, that’s a 10 miler.  I’m kinda psyched, since I’m not running, the pressure to do well at these races tends to be less so I have more fun.  I guess I’ll find out how much fun on Monday

Sebastian’s Voodoo

Found a neat video on youtube from the NFB Competition channel.  Here’s a film short, Sebastian’s Voodoo:

The Basement: Perimeter Attack

In hind site I wish I had taken before pics of the basement.  Toys everywhere.  We have two cats that hang out down there and there was a ton of cat hair in the carpet.

I started around the edges and worked my way to the middle.  The strategy worked brilliantly! All toys are in bins of some sort(still unorganized, that’s next) and off of the ground.  Cat hair vacuumed up, it really looks clean but there’s more to go, one side of the basement is still cluttered with a tent that Riley used one night and left a bunch of stuff in there.

Cleaning the basement is important, it’s what I see on the way to the office(I work mostly at home).  The sight of the mess makes me start thinking of the mess and takes focus away from what I was going to accomplish in the office.  So I’m on track, the really big effort will be getting the kids to actually go through all of their crap and decide which things we can get rid of(donate)…

The Power of Less

I’m trying to simplify my life and Leo Babauta’s book The Power of Less is helpful.  I’m a sucker for stuff like this but this is a great little book.

Currently there is too much “stuff” in our house.  Our basement and garage are filled with crap we hardly use.  The kids have huge amounts of toys and arts and craft type stuff strewn about.   I’m deeply affected by the state of things around me.  If things around me are a mess usually that makes it hard for me to concentrate and focus.  I like organization.   Get all of those little things out of the way and the path to doing what you really want to do becomes very clear.

Books.  I have tons of them.  I haven’t read alot of them.  This is one area I want simplified.  I’m a software developer, so some of those books aren’t the kind you read cover to cover, they are more reference type books.  But there are some software books that are meant for cover to cover reading that I need to tackle.  Other books I have are biographies and such, I just never make time to get them read.  That’s one of my goals over my 21 days.  Get rid of books(donate or what have you) that I haven’t read or won’t read, clear the bookshelves of clutter!