Week Three Begins
Entry posted by Wayne Gray
698 views
I now have two weeks under my belt, and I'm beginning week three of my workout/meal regimen. I'm still getting used to some things, but it's a lot easier to roll out of bed at 440 than it was when I started. So far I've lost four pounds and gained strength on the bench and under the bar. It's rare for me to do both at once. I am enjoying this combination of routine and meal planning.
If you're interested at all, here's what I'm doing. I hid the details behind spoilers ... because, frankly, most just won't care. lol
Meals
* Zero calories until lunchtime (not even creamer in coffee).
* I only eat twice a day - lunch and dinner (other than snacks - see below).
* Snacks consist only of fresh fruit and/or vegetables. I typically have one before dinner, so I eat less later.
* I focus first on fruits and vegetables. I learned that the average person eats about three pounds of food a day, no matter what makes up those pounds. So I try to "take up space" with high nutrition, low-calorie foods.
* Lean protein, grains with lots of soluble fiber, legumes, and greens make up most of my dinners.
* The only calories I typically drink are in a single glass of red wine every night. If it wasn't recommended by my doctor I wouldn't even have that.
Workout
* I'm on a five-day routine with two rest days a week (Wednesday and Sunday are typically my rest days).
* I do HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) every time I work out. I only go 16-18 minutes. HIIT is designed to be effective and fast.
* I work out based on the progressive overload principle. This principle focuses on forcing the body to adapt to increased weight, repetitions, or less rest between exercises. I'm focusing on increasing the weight of what challenges me for five repetitions. IE: If I can benchpress a certain weight more than five times, then it's time to move up in weight.
* I don't work sore muscles. The way my routines are spaced each body part has just barely recovered from the previous workout.
* I work big muscle groups and abdominals twice a week, small ones once.
* I only lift for about a half-hour a day. That means every single repetition is important. Muscle failure is the goal, every single time.
* I work out on an empty belly. All calories burned are from whatever is stored in my body, and until I eat at lunch I continue to burn calories in an attempt to replenish glycogen stores in muscle. Those calories are coming from fat, so long as I don't go too long in a fasting state. This is tricky. If you go too long without food your body will lose muscle preferentially over fat. I can actually feel when this begins to occur. That sickly, shaky feeling from being too hungry? For me, it signals that my body has switched to burning muscle, that I've moved from fasting to starvation mode. I know this because of careful tracking of maximum effort during weightlifting. I noticed that when I was in that "starvation mode" for longer than a few hours I lost strength in every exercise, even after I had eaten something. That's counterproductive, so even if it means violating my meal plan, if I get the shakes I will eat no matter what time of day it is.
What I'm doing is working. It means going to bed early, getting up before the sun, closely monitoring my meals, and working really hard, but it's moving the needle in the direction it needs to go. More important is the fact that I can maintain this approach.
I'm looking forward to the end of the week when I weigh in again. I've not been below 205 lbs in a while ... and I might hit that mark by Sunday.
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