Greg's Running Blog

Today was as good as it gets in terms of nutrition, with the exception of sodium. I had a healthy amount of saturated fat, fat, protein, carbs and sugar. The things that did in my sodium were the 3 slices of prosciutto I had, 2 for breakfast and 1 for dinner. Just those three slices added 1000mb of sodium to my diet. But it was worth it, it was so yummy! I have finished off my gourmet bison burger and fennel puree for dinner and ate the leftover shrimp for lunch with my new-found grain, quinoa. I have to figure out something for tomorrow though I have nothing prepared so I’ll have to make something up rather quick.

As good as nutrition was I’m still feeling pretty crappy. My kids have dragged home some sort of cold bug from daycare and it is going through the whole family. I feel like I’m coming down with something myself but I’ll try to stay the course as much as I can. I think it’s just a common cold and hopefully I’ll fight it off rather quickly. I hate being sick and with the small children in the house I’ve had my fair amounts of colds in the past couple of years.

Other than the starting cold symptoms there is not much else to report on.

This week was spot on and rock solid. Nutrition was awesome with the exception of Monday that was low in protein and Saturday that was high in saturated fats. Other than that diet was great.

I have managed to stick to my workout schedule with cardio every day and strength training 5 times a week. I have started lifting heavier and lowering the reps. I think I will settle on 3×10 for now, 3×8 was just too much stress. My shoulder was a bit tender after both chest days so I will definitely have to keep an eye on it to make sure I don’t screw it up and put myself out of commission.

I have dropped from 221.3 lbs to 218.0 lbs this past week, a total of 3.3 lbs lost. I’m certainly sticking to the goal. I have lost a quarter inch from my thigh, and calf and half an inch from my chest, hips and neck. It has been a great week. My total weight loss from the beginning is 19 lbs so far.

Next week I don’t plan to change anything up, I think I will stick with the plan as it seems to be working.

Considering the wide variety of foods I eat it is still pretty amazing that I can still manage to eat within 50 calories of my target for so long (within 25 calories for the past 4 days). Today I had two new items on my menu. One was a creamy green pea soup and the other one was quinoa. Quinoa is a grain that can be substituted for rice but it contains a large amount of protein with all 9 essential amino acids. It tastes pretty good and I really enjoyed the change from brown rice. I think I will make it again. The green pea soup was good too, the only problem was that it was high in fats due to the heavy cream I added to it, even though I added less than half of what the original recipe called for. I had bison burger again, leftover from yesterday. The only way I could manage to control my fats was eating shrimp for lunch. Today’s food choices were excellent and I am really pleased with them.

Today was photo day again. Not a whole lot of changes from my last one. My bicep is getting skinnier and I can see a hint of triceps now on the back of my arm. My hips went down 0.25 inches and so did my calf. Other than that, not much else has changed. I had a sodium rich day today so I probably retain a bit more water.

12/05/2009 Transformation Picture

Elliptical

• 60 minutes
• 123 avg heart rate
• 526 calories

The other day I thought I came as close to my 1700 calorie target as possible. I was off by 2 calories. Apparently I could come even closer as today I managed 1701 calories. I think my measuring could be more off than my counting. If I mismeasured even by 1g of protein or carb that would shift it by 4 calories. Nothing really rides on 4 calories, I figure as long as you are within 100 calories it’s OK. And I have been well within 100 calories so far.

While my calorie intake for today was as perfect as it could have been my macro distribution was not. I managed to eat 38% fat and unfortunately over 16% of it was from saturated fats. Not the best ratio. But I’ll tell you where I screwed it up and how it all happened.

I had to take the car for an oil change in the morning and I was short on time. So I heated up one of those Jimmy Dean ham and cheese omelets. While I used to eat two of them for breakfast with a healthy dose of white bead now I only had one and no bread. The problem with that omelet is that it has 7 grams of saturated fat in its 250 calories. Add in the 770 mg of sodium and you can see why I haven’t been eating these. One whole box actually expired on us in the freezer now and this box was about to go to waste when I decided to make a quick breakfast. Now whether zapping this heat attack and a half in the microwave 2 minutes versus measuring out a cup of non fat yogurt and a dozen almonds is the quicker breakfast is for a whole different discussion altogether. So this was my first meal of the day that was high in saturated fats and sodium.

I bought some sushi the night before and I knew I had to eat it Saturday. So I ate the Philadelphia Roll for lunch. Another item that is high in saturated fats (10g) and sodium (789mg). Had I eaten it on a day when I had nothing but lean turkey for my other meals I would have been OK. But I had to eat it with two other high saturated fat meals and this is the way to ruin your macros for a day.

For dinner I made some burgers. But not ordinary burgers that normal people would. Noooo. I have been watching the food network and I saw some fancy burgers made from lamb with cheese in them. Yum! I have decided to make them but I knew that lamb was a killer meat full of saturated fats so I opted for bison. Bison is leaner than chicken. Bison is awesome. But even the leanest bison could not offset the Romano cheese that went into it. So I ended up with 9.7g of saturated fats for dinner. Sodium was also through the roof at 1,642 mg. Every time you need a comma separator to write down your sodium value from a single meal you know you’re in trouble.

And even with all this food I was only at 1,600 calories so I could enjoy a 25g piece of chocolate for dessert. I haven’t had chocolate for 6 weeks now, not counting the thin layers on the nutrition bars that I have been eating, and it was certainly a nice experience. I’m not really sure that small piece of chocolate is worth 13 minutes on the elliptical but it was enjoyable nevertheless.

My left shoulder is in pain. I’m not sure if it’s the good kind of muscle pain or the bad kind that has to do with my shoulder issue. I might have lifted a bit too much yesterday and the incline press was not good for it. I’m taking the weekend off from strength training anyway so I hope it gets better and heals right up by Monday for chest day.

Lat Pull

• 3×10 @ 100 lbs

Seated Low Row

• 3×10 @ 130 lbs

Chest Supported Row – Inner Grips

• 3×10 @ 100 lbs

Today I ate some grilled chicken for lunch and had some turkey leg for dinner. I can’t stress enough that portion control seems to be the absolute key when it comes to proper diet. Two months ago I probably would have eaten helf the turkey leg with who knows how much rice. today I measured out my 4 oz of meat and 1/2 cup of rice and I knew that once it’s gone it’s gone, no more. And the funny part is that when you have the food right in front of you and you see that the supply is limited to whatever is on your plate, you end up being pretty satisfied with that. Obviously having 2 cups of vegetables to go along with it helps tremendously too. But it still comes down to portion control. Especially on calorie dense food such as rice, bread, meats.

A cup of cooked brown rice has 220 calories in it. A cup of broccoli has 30. A cup of green beans has 30. A cup of cauliflower has 30. You see where I’m heading with this? If you double up on rice you just ate an extra 220 calories. If you double up on broccoli you ate 30 extra calories. And it’s just as easy to do one as it is to do the other. And this is why I measure out my food prior sitting down to the table so I never lose sight as how much I am eating.

I’m reading a book right now called Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think.This book specifically talks about studies that have proven that people who plate their food before sitting down to eat it eat less than people who serve themselves at the table. They not only serve more but are a lot more likely to go back for seconds. So based on statistical facts I highly recommend everyone to utilize portion control and pre-plating techniques when it comes to the bad stuff. The book also said that it works the other way too. So maybe you should plate your mashed potatoes and gravy in the kitchen while leave the veggie on the dining table so it’s more convenient to get seconds from that.

As for today’s nutrition, I think I did as good as usual. Had good amounts of protein, low amounts of fat and decent amounts of carbs. The only thing my myfooddiary.com account whined about was sodium. And that had to do with the turkey leg I ate for dinner. But it was worth it, smoked turkey leg is leaps and bounds above the oven roasted turkey that we managed to make at this past Thanksgiving. That stuff was dry and boring.