Weekly Weigh-in (Week 71)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

Weight has been trending a little low this week so we’ll have to see what comes of that later on in the post.

The ups and downs with my weight, especially when my daily calorie intake is taken into question along with other factors, has lead me to the conclusion it is probably time to look into changing up my nutritional composition again. I’m thinking something similar to the Primal Experiment from January.

This time around, due in part to my increasing running mileage, I’m going to be keeping some more carbs in my diet, but I think I’m going to limit them to rice, and tubers. Other than that to flesh out some calories and load up for my long runs I’m going to be trying to keep to lean meat, veggies, nuts, seeds, and some fruit like before. It’s tasty, it’s not bad for me, and if my research pans out to be true may actually improve my times in addition to helping me lean out and put on some muscle.

The other thing that’s been tumbling around in my mind of late is trying to see what I can do about putting on some more muscle and seeing what I can do about some abs. So far it looks like my 6-minute abs is having at least some impact on my gut, and the circuits that I’ve been using to accompany it are doing pretty well all around as well. So, with some inspiration from going to watch Thor, I found the best information I could about a number of celebrity transformations for movie roles, Hemsworth for Thor, Bale for Batman, Craig for Bond, Butler for Leonidas, etc. I’ve been comparing what I could find about what they did to prepare for the roles, and there are a lot of similarities in their methods. Exactly what similarities I noted I’ll save for next week, but suffice to say I think that with a little work and some dedication I think I can probably replicate at least some measure of the results, albeit reduced because I don’t have 6 hours a day to work out and a staff of dietitians, trainers, and chefs to keep everything about me humming along smoothly. With what I do have though I think I can probably get good results, though it’ll take me longer than it did for the celebs.

Well, further details on that to come later, for now though let’s take a look at the numbers shall we? 209, down a pound from last week. So as I suspected, I dropped a bit over the week, but with some increased caloric intake I think I can remedy the losses with some more muscle. Body fat is down, if only slightly, so at least the spread is moving in the right direction even when the needle itself isn't. Until next week, keep working toward being the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 70)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.

Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.

This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.

Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.

So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 69)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

Interesting week this week. Kept up with what I'd been doing before and started some new things for good measure.

Firstly, if you've not blocked the app from your Facebook feed you've probably noticed I'm logging runs through Runkeeper a bit more often than before, I think 4 days in the last week. I decided at some point this week that I wanted to start training for a half marathon. No specific reasons other than to push myself past my current limits, and because having a specific goal in mind makes that easier for me. So I put together a training plan for my running with scheduled runs at various durations and distances so that I have something I can refer to to keep on track. So far I've done one of the timed runs and one of the distance runs on my new plan and it's going well so far.

Also this week I decided to start working on the exercises from the Pre-Hab chapter from 4HB, because they are easy enough to fit into my schedule on otherwise "off" days, and they won't hurt anything at the least, and at the best might help prevent injuries down the road. That combined with my 6-minute abs workouts and associated bodyweight circuits should keep me busy most days. I've also started with a weekly treadmill run, to coincide with Lara's biking, to push my aerobic threshold up, and once I get my heartrate monitor, alternated with a run to increase my bodies ability to handle lactic acid buildup. All that should workout to me being in much better shape overall, and staying that way.

In the wonderful world of me being a ridiculous data monger I've decided to start keeping a sleep log and tracking statistics related to my sweat rate. First, the less disgusting of the two. In an effort to improve all aspects of my life through better data collection I've decided to start tracking my perceptions related to my sleep, quality, time it takes to fall asleep, how much I wake up during the night, and if I wake up too early. So far it's been feeling fairly productive, though since it's all based on perception rather than numbers there is only so much it can do. The Sweat Rate data is an effort by me to make sure that as I increase my mileage further I avoid dehydration. When I run, like most people who do so, I sweat. How much I sweat is a variable number based on pace, temperature, humidity, and dew point, or at least that's the theory. By weighing myself before and after a run, and knowing how much water if any I ingested while on the run, I can determine how much water weight I lost over the course of my activity. That number combined with the duration of the activity can allow me to calculate a loss per hour which I can track against the conditions listed above to hopefully determine a predictive method for my sweat rate that will let me ensure I stay properly hydrated as my mileage increases.

Anyway, that was a fairly long post today and so I shall sum it up fairly briefly with numbers. Scale tells me I'm at 210 this week, same as last week, which is what I'm after right now. Until next week, always push yourself to be a better you than you were when you woke up.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 68)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.

So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.

This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.

So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.

Weekly Weigh-in (Week 67)

Sunday yet again and time for the weekly update.

This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.

This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:

• Close-grip lat pulldown: 75 -> 105 (40% increase)
• Shoulder Press: 45 -> 85 (90% increase)
• Chest Press: 85 -> 115 (35% increase)
• Leg Curl: 45 -> 75 (66% increase)

Some good numbers, consistent increases across the board. The numbers would possibly have increased more if I had been better about my caloric intake, about 80% of the time I made my overall calorie goal, but I only made my protein goal perhaps 30% of the time, and that's being somewhat generous. Even despite that I made good strength gains and seem to have made some reasonable mass gains to go with it.

So where do I go from here? Probably going to do some testing with Slow-Carb mixed with testing out the 6-minute abs stuff from 4HB. I'm really not needing to add more mass now so much as redistribute what I've already got so that it looks better. 

So what does the scale have to say about all this progress? Today the numbers came up at 209, up 2 pounds from last week, and 7.1% body fat, down half a percentage since last week. Since the start of this experiment I've gained 12 pounds of muscle and dropped 5.2 pounds of body fat. For the amount of time I put in I'd say those are some pretty fine results. Only time will tell what the future holds. Until next time, be the you you want to be.

Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.