Greg's Weight Loss Blog

The bad news is that I’m pretty sore today from yesterday’s chest exercise. The new 3×8 with more weight is definitely getting to my wimpy protein storage some would call muscles. The good news is that I’m sore in the muscles and I think my shoulder is fine. I was really worried about it yesterday but it seems to be genuine muscle pain so I’m pretty happy about that. Today I have tried the same routine for my back, skipped an exercise and I had a hard time nailing down the optimal weight for each exercise. I’m sure I’ll get better at it with practice. Let’s see just how sore I will get in my back by tomorrow.

Lat Pull

• 1×8 @ 130 lbs
• 1×8 @ 120 lbs
• 1×8 @ 110 lbs

Seated Low Row

• 1×10 @ 110 lbs
• 1×10 @ 120 lbs
• 1×10 @ 130 lbs

Chest Supported Row – Inner Grips

• 3×8 @ 100 lbs

I forgot to take my Polar heart rate monitor to work today I only got the chest strap but not the receiver. It’s a good thing that the Precor elliptical at work is compatible with my heart rate monitor strap and it recorded my average heart rate for the session which was 134. And since I’ve been doing enough 30 minute exercises I can pretty much estimate what 30 minutes on the elliptical with 134 avg heart rate mean in terms of calories, it’s around 308 calories.

Elliptical

• 30 minutes
• 134 avg heart rate
• 308 calories

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 135 avg heart rate
• 626 calories

Today’s eating was damn near perfect. I had really low fat amount, perfect amount of protein and overall great food. I was getting really sick and tired of turkey and luckily my wife went to the store and got me some shrimp. I have already blogged about just how good shrimp is. I ate half a pound of the thing tonight, quickly grilled on skewers, ready to eat. The only bad part of shrimp is that it is high in cholesterol but I’m not sure I buy into that whole thing about cholesterol vs. good fat thing. Luckily I made enough that I can have it for lunch tomorrow. Yay! No turkey for lunch!

Elliptical

• 30 minutes
• 128 avg heart rate
• 285 calories

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 139 avg heart rate
• 653 calories

Today was another Taco Bell day for lunch. I’m really liking their chicken soft tacos. The only thing I hate about it is that every day I go there my sodium level is screwed for the day. Like I have decided last time though, I opted not to get their crappy salad and made myself a cup and a half of steamed broccoli and mixed veggies instead. Much better deal. We still have so much turkey left over from Thanksgiving that I feel like I’ll be eating Turkey well into December. I’m about to freeze some of it, it’s just way too much darn turkey. I haven’t had red meat in five days now. I think I’m due for some stake already. I have also been skipping on the protein shakes and it shows in my macros. Protein has been dwindling for the past several days, I think it’s time to pick it up again.

This week was not perfect but pretty decent. I kind of fell off the wagon in terms of cardio over the holiday weekend, I skipped cardio on two days. I just couldn’t squeeze it in with all the other things that have been going on around the house with the kids, hanging Christmas lights on the house and just generally hanging out. I have also missed two strength workouts due to being off from work.

In terms of nutrition I think I stayed the course. It wasn’t easy with restaurant visits and friends trying to stuff you with all kinds of pies and yummy, sugary fattening stuff. I certainly have managed my diet well. Based on my fat loss so far I need to cut a bit more calories which will mean reworking some of my diet choices to reduce another 100 calories from it to keep the pounds falling off.

I dropped 2.9 lbs (1.3 kg) this week and I am just north of the magical 100 kg mark. I should be breaking that one sometime next week. My fat % went from 35.1% to 34.5% this week. It shows that I’m keeping on the lean mass and only losing the fat, which is a good thing. Next week I’ll try to be more diligent about the cardio workouts and I should be able to do all my strength exercise as well.

Today I went bike riding with my son for 30 minutes. Since we use the Adams Trail-a-bike attachment I pretty much pedal for two. We rode out to the playground then met up with mom and my daughter who took the car. The weather has turned for the worst and got pretty cold and super windy so my son decided to hitch a ride home with mom and little sis while I pedaled home myself in some pretty chilly and brutal winds. My heart rate was up to 150 at times and I was barely moving. I’m just glad I made it home before the rain started to pour. I also did some elliptical while the kiddos napped and I did another hour at night.

Bicycling

• 30 minutes
• 127 avg heart rate
• 264 calories

Elliptical

• 30 minutes
• 125 avg heart rate
• 273 calories

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 114 avg heart rate
• 445 calories

Today I ate clean. I had dark meat turkey brown rice and steamed veggies for lunch and dinner. I’m growing pretty tired of turkey now, I think it’s time to get some beef. The only item that I wasn’t planning on having and succumbed to peer pressure was 100 grams of smoothie. My wife decided to make a fruit smoothie as some of the fruits in the fridge were about to go bad. So she made one with clementines, pineapple, strawberries, magos and some other berries I think. Since we ran out of honey we didn’t put any in it although usually we have it with some honey. I only had 100 grams of it so it was basically around 50 calories of fruit which was clearly manageable. Otherwise there is really not much else to report.

I have skipped morning snack again, but it seems like I will have to skip it forever. Or maybe drop to half a cup of rice per meal. Or go with one scoop of whey protein in the afternoon instead of two. Something has to give. Since I have dropped weight my basal metabolic rate has also dropped. It means I will have to keep cutting calories to maintain my deficit, otherwise my weight loss rate will decrease. So my new target is around 1700-1800 calories instead of the 1800-1900 that I have been trying to maintain.