Greg's Running Blog

Today was the first strength exercise I’ve had in a while. I was feeling pretty good until I got down and set up to do some bench press. I usually put about 100 lbs on bench press but last time I went I have upped it to 130lbs and I could manage it just fine. Well not this time. I was back at 110 lbs and even with watching my rests to be at least 2:30 between sets I could only do the 110lbs. I’m not sure if I’d consider that losing strength just yet or just simply being out of shape from being home, not doing strength training for two weeks. My fly went fine with 80 lbs. It feels great to be back in the gym and working with some weights again, I’m looking forward tomorrow’s back day.

• I've been slacking this weekend with the updates on my website. They will come later today… Off to the Museum of Science. #
• I have skipped cardio 3 days in a row. I need to get a hold of myself! #

Wow! It’s been 10 weeks since I have started my transformation. I can hardly believe that it’s been this long and again I can’t believe that I have made such great progress in such short amount of time. I have been getting a lot of comments about how much better I look and even my family is commenting on my pictures now that I’m uploading for their viewing pleasure at my photo site. I don’t think I can keep my transformation a secret for much longer with them they’re definitely onto me. At work people actually are noticing that I’m slimmer. It feels great to get such positive feedback on my efforts. But enough about the subjective stuff, let’s get down to the numbers!

This week was tough in terms of keeping my cardio sessions. I have skipped three in a row at the beginning of the week but I did my regular ones through the rest of the week. I watched too many movies with my wife but I cut myself some slack considering this is the only time we can get away from the kids without having to hire a sitter. My father-in-law has been a great blessing and help for the past 3 weeks and I’ll hate to see him go back home next Wednesday. Sure, I should have more time to my fitness progress but I’ll miss him and I know my kids will miss him even more. Next time we’ll see him will be when we go back home for my cousin’s wedding in July.

Considering my struggles with food and cardio I have still managed to drop 2.6 lbs from 206.1 to 203.5 and I reduced my body fat from 29.8% to 29.0%. My calories have remained under 1,500 for the most part except for that cheat meal full of tortillas and fajitas Sunday night.

All in all I think this week was a success and I’m pretty happy with my results. I’m looking forward to going back to the gym and doing double cardio sessions throughout the week once I go back to work though.

You’ve read that right! I had a 1200 calorie dinner tonight. And I still managed to eat only 1800 calories. How did I do it? I ate little for breakfast and lunch. As I have written before, my father-in-law has been in town for the past three weeks. We have eaten out with him plenty of times and I ate mostly green beans with some kind of smoked meat. What I haven’t told you is that I absolutely love Mexican food. And my father-in-law has never been to a Mexican restaurant before. So tonight we took him to one which I consider one of the best, yummiest fajita place; Uncle Julio’s.

I used to go to Uncle Julio’s with my co-workers for lunch on a regular basis. Since I have started my transformation 2.5 months ago I have not been to Uncle Julio’s nor had I had any Mexican food. Actually I did go to On The Border once with my co-workers for a birthday lunch and had the BBQ Salmon which was excellent but it was no fajita. When I think Mexican food I think Fajitas. When I think fajitas I think Uncle Julio’s. Their steak fajitas are so juicy and moist it just melts in your mouth. I love it. I also like their salsa, it is not your garden variety salsa, it has a smokey flavor to it. Their tortillas are really bad for you just as the chips but the tortillas get made right in front of you in an old school tortilla machine. I’m not a big fan of guacamole or the pico de gallo so I usually substitute cheese and sour cream.

Since I have been anticipating the big dinner meal for a couple of days I knew I had to cut it light on breakfast and lunch. For breakfast I ate nonfat yogurt and almonds as usual. It’s around 240-260 calories depending on the almonds (wasabi or plain) or the yogurt (light vanilla or plain). For lunch I had three eggs, one slice of bread and one green bell pepper for a total of 320 calories. I didn’t have much protein by this time and my calories were low and I knew things weren’t going to get much better.

For dinner I went all out. I had half a bowl of chips with the smoked salsa. Then me and my father-in-law ordered a pound of fajita meat with refried beans and rice. The only thing I gave up was the sour cream and cheese. I didn’t have any of that and only had three tortillas instead of my usual four. Now one thing Unce Julio’s doesn’t do is they don’t list nutritional information for anything. It’s not available. This is a big turn-off and makes it all the more complicated. So I had to estimate my calories off of other Mexican restaurant’s menus but I’m pretty confident that I came close to the actual intake with the 1200 calories. It was a carbohydrate feast. I had 175 grams of carbs today which is the most I’ve had in almost a month.

I’m still pretty happy that I could contain my daily intake and limit it to 1800 calories with this dinner pig out session. I certainly won’t be doing this again any time soon.

New year, same pictures. This is the first set of pictures of 2010 and they show strong progress from the beginning but they also show just how much further I have to go. Since the last picture I have skipped two cardio sessions and did no strength training. I didn’t expect my numbers to be great and they didn’t really change. The only thing that has changed is a whole inch drop on my hip. Everything else is the same. As for looks, the pictures really don’t look too much different than the last set either. Except for my 45 degree shot which turned out great thanks to my father-in-law. He’s been staying with us for the past three weeks and he made plenty of fun of me for taking these pictures. As I was taking them tonight he cracked some more jokes at my expense and I couldn’t help but laugh hard. Thanks to the laughing I’m grinning ear to ear on this one. Here it is.

01/02/2010 Transformation Picture

Today we went to see the Ice! show at the Gaylord Texan with my family. It’s a bunch of ice sculptures that look like the drawings from Dr. Seuss’ Grinch. It was a so-so experience and it was definitely not worth the money. I doubt we would do it again for a long time. My daughter did not enjoy it one bit, it was too cold and too dark in there. My son had a better time and went down the slide a couple of times. I passed on the hot chocolate afterward and we ended up at the mall doing some shopping and having lunch. I had Dickey’s Barbecue meal which was 6 oz of chicken, green beans and corn on the cob for sides and a slice of toast. Luckily Dickey’s provides nutritional information for their food and this combo wasn’t too bad when it comes to eating out. My wife also bought a bag of mini cookies from Corner Bakery and I had one cookie which mean 80 calories of unnecessary junk. I the old days I would have eaten half the bag though without blinking an eye.

Dinner was home made dish which involves pork tenderloins that are cooked with mushroom and cheese on top. The Pork and the mushroom are fine. It’s the cheese that gets you. There was as much calories in the cheese part as there were in the meat and mushroom combined. And the cheese alone had 9 grams of saturated fats in it which was half of my daily saturated fat intake. So basically 2 oz of cheese can screw your entire day’s saturated fat content. I’m not that picky or concerned with fats and saturated fats but if I can help it I want to keep the saturated stuff low. That did not happen today. And truth be told I could have lived without the cheese, easily.

Today I watched Journey To The Center Of The Earth while doing cardio. It was a crappy movie and my cardio wasn’t all that great either. I felt weak and I wanted to quit about 25 minutes into it. But I kept going and said to myself “I’ll do 45″ then at 45 minutes I kept on going and ended up with my usual 60 minutes. It wasn’t as intense as yesterday’s but it was a solid LISS cardio session.

Things went really great today in terms of calories and macronutrients. I was kind of lazy in the morning to make breakfast so I had a Clif bar instead. I much prefer whole foods over power bars and whey protein shakes but sometimes you just have make do with one of these things. The main problem with nutrition bars, at least for me, is that they are so calorie dense and so little volume that unless you drink a pint of water with them you will not feel very full. But since it was a late breakfast and closer to lunch it was OK not to feel overly stuffed by the breakfast.

For lunch I just made eggs and had some bacon and whole wheat bread. It is a solid breakfast meal but if you double the portion by having two slices of bread and four eggs it makes a pretty good lunch meal too. Well not on a weekday when I’m at work but it certainly works well on a weekend/holiday.

For dinner I had some chicken breast, rice and green beans. Since it was also New Year’s Day I had to eat some lentils, it’s supposed to bring you the riches throughout the year. We’ll see about that. But lentils are an excellent source of protein it seems and I will most definitely start eating them on a regular basis from now on.

I have also had a protein shake just before cardio and that has helped me to get to the 145 grams of protein for the day.

I had an awesome cardio session today. My average heart rate was 149. I haven’t had a cardio session with this high of an average heart rate since 11/03/09 when I hit 156. But back then I weighed 231 lbs and my resting heart rate was probably 20 beats higher than now. I was watching the movie Fracture while doing my cardio and I don’t know if it was the suspense or just the fact that I have upped the resistance to 10 from 9 has made the difference. I started out on this machine at a resistance of 3 when I started doing my cardio 2+ months ago. Now I’m doing 10 on the scale of 20. At work I use the Precor machine with a resistance of 15 now and I have started at 7. It’s just amazing how much more efficient my body is now. It also sucks as it takes a lot more effort to burn the same amount of calories. I take this situation over the alternative any day though.