Greg's Running Blog

Today I spent the entire day at home with the family. I’m still recovering from the cold and my appetite is still way down. The only way I managed to eat 1,630 calories was by drinking a second protein shake after dinner, otherwise I’d been closer to 1,500 which I know is just not healthy. Breakfast was two eggs with two slices of bread and a big pear. It was great. Pears are so juicy with awesome texture. I just love them. For lunch I had another grilled fillet of salmon. I have also cooked up a large batch of quinoa again so that is my grain of choice for the next couple of days. For dinner I made bison burgers again. They turned out just as good as they did last time. I’m sure the Romano cheese has something to do with the flavor but I don’t care. It was still well within my caloric limits. The only thing I have skimped on was vegetables. I was not too hungry and I didn’t bother making steamed vegetables to go with my dinner. Sadly I did not miss them.

I don’t know if this loss in appetite just a temporary thing or my stomach has shrunk for good, but I hope some of my appetite comes back, I need to maintain the 1,700 calorie diet somehow and 1,700 calories is a lot of food when you eat clean foods with lots of vegetables.

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 121 avg heart rate
• 483 calories

I wrote my first guest post that appeared on johnisfit.com today. It is a condensed version of what I have found important so far in my fat loss journey and what I think are the things that will make the biggest difference in any transformation endeavor from fat to fit. Make sure you read it if you haven’t already. John has been on his journey a lot longer than I have and he has written a ton of great articles that can be motivational and helpful for everyone.

If you stumbled upon my blog from my guest post, welcome! This is the place where I keep a public account of my transformation and sometimes I sprinkle some advice/ideas in there along the way. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me.

I took a day off from work that is how crappy I have been feeling. I hardly ever miss work for my own sickness, it’s usually to stay home with a sick child. But by Thursday night I was so sick I just couldn’t take it any more and felt I needed a day to recuperate. The recuperation worked except for my appetite. I really haven’t felt like eating much all day, I had a hard time finishing the grilled salmon at lunch and I could only eat a fraction of the grilled shrimp I was planning on eating for dinner along with the brown rice and vegetables. I just wasn’t hungry. It is paramount to eat enough nutrients to keep your body going but with being sick I just couldn’t force myself to eat any more. My macronutrient ratios were good I just didn’t eat enough calories. I will have to get back on eating my full meals soon otherwise I’ll be in trouble. I really hope that by tomorrow I’ll feel a lot better. I’m still retaining a lot of water (2.7lbs from my 2 day prior weight) but I’m confident that it will get better once this cold is over. Since I stayed home I also skipped my strength training.

I had skipped last nights cardio and I had to forgo today’s lunch one as I was at home, resting instead of in the gym at work. My the evening I have felt better and I have felt good enough to do my hour long cardio. It was OK and I felt pretty good after it. My nose is still heavily congested but it clears up while doing cardio. It really gets bad during the night though.

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 131 avg heart rate
• 564 calories

Since I’ve been feeling pretty sick it was a challenge to get myself to do the pictures. It is probably the reason behind my facial expression, I just didn’t feel like taking pictures. I have also felt bloated and like I have been retaining water. I don’t know if it’s from the medications or from the high sodium turkey I ate Wednesday but I felt bloated and puffy. I have gained 3.3 lbs in weight from one day to the next. It didn’t feel great. But when I compared my photos I can actually see that I’m still leaning out. While I thought my face was all bloated it actually doesn’t look as bad as I have felt while taking the photos. My waist, chest and hips all have shrunk a quarter of an inch since the last photo.

12/17/2009 Transformation Picture

But tonight I did not only take my own pictures. I had to take photos of my kids too for their “Thank You” notes for their daycare teachers. So I managed to whip out these two in a hurry, I could have done better but this is all I could manage on such a short notice.

Today I felt pretty miserable. I’ve had this cold for way too long. i might have had H1N1 I just didn’t know it and this is the last of it. Eating was OK, except by dinner time I really didn’t feel like eating much I was so tired and miserable. I finished the evening off with some wieners and bread which is nothing stellar but that is all I could eat. I have skipped cardio at lunch due to having to get my fingerprints done by the FBI for my citizenship test. The place was pretty impressive in terms of speed and technology. My and my wife were in an out in 20 minutes and they use fancy imaging devices now instead of good old ink and paper. I was very impressed by the whole procedure. I just hope the rest of the process through naturalization will be just this easy. They gave me a test book for the civics test with 100 questions. They’re pretty trivial questions about who the president is and who did the US claim independence from. So I skipped the lunch cardio and I also gave up on the evening one. By 7:00PM I was having a mild fever and I could barely move around. I was totally done and I wanted nothing but to crash and sleep. I went to bed rather early hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Today I was really beat down by the cold by the time I was ready to do strength exercise. Due to my busy lunch schedule I had to do my strength exercise after work. I took it easy and it still wasn’t easy. I’m so done with being sick!

Incline Press

• 2×10 @ 100lbs
• 1×6 @ 90lbs

Decline Press

• 3×10 @ 70lbs

Today I finally got some good amounts of protein. I think I have also figured out the trick to get high amounts of protein. It’s by eating lean meats like chicken and turkey so my fat stays low. There is only so much room in 1,700 calories to mix it up. And lean meats are a safe bet. It’s either that or a bunch of protein shakes. I’m not a big fan of shakes. I’ll drink it to keep my protein level up but if I had a choice I’d rather stuff my face with some bad carbs for the same calories. For lunch I had smoked turkey with green beans and black eyed peas. It was a company lunch at a barbecue joint. During these company lunches I’d usually get a two meat combo with sausage and brisket or maybe ribs have the broccoli rice cheese casserole and fried okra for sides and finish it off with some peach cobbler. That’s 3x the calories of what I ate and I walked away perfectly content and satisfied today. It’s these changes that make my diet work. Sure, everyone hates to give up dessert when “the man” is paying for it but I’d rather do that than pack it on my hips.