So Joe…

I recently purchased a Body-Solid PowerLift FID46 Flat/Incline/Decline Weight Bench. I chose this bench because it is very sturdy, and the bench can easily adjust to an incline or decline position. The picture shows the bench with light grey pads, mine looks the same, but the pads are black instead of light grey. Read more…

I recently purchased a Powerline Power Rack PPR-200. If you’re not familiar with what a power rack is, it’s basically a metal rack that holds a weight bar, and provides safety catches that allow someone to lift heavy weights without a spotter. Should you not be able to lift the weight for that last rep, you can set the weight down on the safety bars, and be able to safely crawl out from under the weight. The PowerLine PPR-200 is reasonably priced, easy to adjust, and has a ‘lat’ option. It is very similar to the RockSolid PKR-127, as well as a number of other racks. It appears that the main difference between racks is the size of the tubing used, and if it is bolted or welded together. The PPR-200 uses 2″ tubing, and is bolted together. More expensive racks use 2.5″ or 3″ tubing, and are welded. For my needs, being a beginner, the PPR-200 is more than strong enough for my needs. If I should get to the point where I’m moving close to 1000lbs around, I’ll be happy to buy a stronger setup! Read more…

I doubt this page is of much interest to anyone, it’s primarily for me to keep track of my progress, but maybe it can be an inspiration to someone, at least based on my results so far at the writing of this.

I was originally inspired to push my workout goals by this website. He takes pictures every week, and it’s amazing to see his transformation since he started. I wish I would have kept pictures from the start of my weight loss, but I didn’t. I’m going to start now, to at least track the improvements in my muscle development. Click on the picture to the left to see the gallery where I’ll store them, it’s mostly for me to keep track of how I’m improving, but if others are inspired by them, as I was by John Stone’s site, then that would be great. Oh, by the way, the pictures are of me just in underwear or shorts, so it’s not for the squeamish!

I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet to help me figure out how many calories I need, how they should be distributed through the day, and how much should be carbs, protein and fat. You can download it and try it yourself.

The cells in yellow should be changed to match your conditions and goals, simply type in your info, and press enter. Weight and body fat are pretty obvious ones. If you don’t know your body fat, you can get an estimate here. Activity Factor is used to calculate the base amount of calories you burn each day beyond those just used to keep you alive. Here’s a simple chart to help you choose:

• 1.200 = sedentary (little or no exercise)
• 1.375 = lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week)
• 1.550 = moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week)
• 1.725 = very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week)
• 1.900 = extra active (very hard exercise/sports and physical job)

Lower down you’ll see ‘Additional’, which is special activities that you do each day that you want to add (for instance, I add 564 calories for my 30 minutes of rowing, and 45 minutes of walking each day). Note that you could include these activites in your ‘Activity Factor’ by choosing a higher factor, this just offers another way to add those activities you do each day.

To the right of the times for each meal you should enter what percentage of your daily calories you wish to devote to that meal. If you want less than 6 meals, set the meals you don’t want to 0%. Be sure the total of the six cells equals 100%!

Above the Carbs, Protein and Fat you should enter what percentage of your calories should be from each of those types. Again, be sure the total of these three equals 100%!

With all of this info entered, you’ll then see a breakdown of how many grams of carbs, protein and fat you should eat at each meal to maintain the weight that you entered. If you enter a weight that is higher or lower than your current weight, eating the suggested amounts should eventually get you to that weight.

Now that I’ve calculated how many calories and what type of calories I should be eating each day, I need to know when to eat them. I’ve been doing the ‘6 meals a day’ thing for a bit now and it seems to work fine (keeps my metabolism going), so I’ll continue on that path. Now, I just need to divide up the calories into those 6 meals. After looking around at different plans and rationals, here’s how I’ve decided to spread my calories out:

• Breakfast (approx 7:30am) 25%
  Breakfast is a much more important meal than I’ve given it credit for in the past. Now that I’m doing cardio when I get up, and eating breakfast, I feel much more energized throughout the day. I’m going to dedicate 25% of the calories to this meal to help lay a good foundation for the day, and to take advantage of the fact that I have full access to my kitchen, and can be more creative with the meal.
• Morning Snack (approx 10:15am) 10%
  The goal of the snack is to maintain consistent blood-sugar levels, and to feed the muscles as they continue to grow.
• Lunch (approx 1:00pm) 20%
  Lunch is important to provide that extra energy boost to make it through the afternoon. Generally being at work for this meal, I don’t have as many options.
• Afternoon Snack (approx 3:45pm) 10%
  The goal of the snack is to maintain consistent blood-sugar levels, and to feed the muscles as they continue to grow.
• Dinner (approx 6:30pm) 25%
  Dinner is my ‘enjoyment’ meal of the day. Here’s where I hope to spend a little extra time making something that’s not only healthy, but enjoyable to eat. On days I workout, this will likely be the meal after the workout, which is also important for getting the right mix of nutients to the recuperating muscles.
• Evening Snack (approx 9:15pm) 10%
  The goal of the snack is to maintain consistent blood-sugar levels, and to feed the muscles as they continue to grow.

So, now I know how many calories I need, I know when I need them, and how much of each kind of calorie I need for each meal. Now I can look at what kinds of meals I can have, stay tuned!

Based on my current measurements of 150.5lbs and 15.5% body fat, I have a bit more than 23lbs of body fat. That means my Lean Body Mass (LBM) is 127lbs.¹ Based on that, my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)² is 1619, (370 + (21.6 * LBM) / 2.2).

To then include calories burned for typical daily activites, aka ‘Activity Factor’, I multiply this by 1.4 which is typical for light to moderate activity. So, my calories burned through basic activity is 647. Throw in 30 minutes of rowing (300), and add the 45 minute walk at 4 mph (264) and it goes to 2830.

I’ve been averaging 1581 calories per day, which is 1249 calories shy of what I need to maintain weight. That would be 8743 calories per week. It takes 3500 calories to burn one pound of fat, so my 8743 would result in 2.5lbs of fat loss per week. I’ve been losing an average of about 2lbs a week (sometimes higher, sometimes lower), so my estimated calorie count is at least within the ballpark.

Wow, I’m gonna be adding over 1000 calories to my daily diet just to stop loosing weight. How to do it? Well, what I eat is going to be important if I want to continue losing body fat and gaining muscle. This means increasing protein notably, and from what I’ve seen, a 40:40:20 breakdown should work well for my goals. This means 40% carbs, 40% protein, and 20% fat. Knowing this, I can calculate the number of grams I’ll need of each. Carbs and Protein have 4 calories per gram, and fat has 9 calories per gram. So, doing the math, I get the following:

• Carbs: 1132 calories, 283 grams
• Protein: 1132 calories, 283 grams
• Fat: 566 calories, 63 grams

So, starting on Sunday, I’m going to switch to this new plan. Note that none of this factors in the weight training. I’m going to first try these levels, while still training with weights, and see how it goes. After a few weeks, I can make adjustments as necessary depending on what happens to body fat and LBM. Now that I know how much I need to eat, stay tuned to see when and what I’m going to eat.

Well, it’s Sunday, time to take my measurements. Here’s the results:

• Weight: 150.5lbs (down 1.5lbs)
• Body Fat: 15.5% (scale=16, caliper=15, down 1%)
• Belly: 33.25″ (down .75″)

Not bad, I’m almost there. If you remember from my original goal, I wanted to get to 150lbs, 15% body fat, and 32″ belly by June 1. I’m pretty suprised, not only that I’ll hit that almost two months early, but that those three different, and not strictly related numbers, have all come so equally close to my goal at the same time. Damn I’m good!

Now that I’ve figured out the formula to loosing body fat, which is actually pretty simple if you are willing to do the work, I need to change things, and it will probably become more difficult. I’m gonna stay with the current plan for one more week, which should easily hit my target weight and body fat, and come within .5″ of my belly goal. Then I’m going to change things up to try and gain muscle, and loose body fat. Weight lose will likely stop decreasing for a short time, and then go up slowly as the muscle mass replaces the body fat (muscle weighs more than fat). This is going to be difficult, since I’ll be eating more calories to promote growth, yet trying not to have any of that go to fat.

I’m going to try and do weight training three times this week (as long as the muscles feel like they’re ready for it). I’ll try to balance getting enough workout in, while still allowing enough opportunity for muscle growth. Stay tuned, things should get interesting!

I’m staying on pace, up at 6:30, interval row today, breakfast, and out the door. Drank a gallon again yesterday, it’s getting easier as I get used to it, and I still visit the bathroom frequently, but I think it’s getting a little less frequent than a week ago. I tried the yogurt with 1tbsp of Flax seed ground up into it yesterday. Was a raspberry yogurt, you couldn’t really taste the Flax, it was just the texture that was changed, as it made the yogurt a bit more ‘gritty’, but no reason not to keep on it. I was at Sendik’s yesterday using a gift certificate someone got me for Christmas, and I noticed they had Flax seed there, so I bought a pound and I’ll keep using it. I also got a bunch of whole-wheat pasta, which is supposed to be better than the ‘enriched bleached flour’ that is used in the normal pasta I’ve been using. Costs much more, but it’s kinda like free money, so I’ll give it a try and see if it’s worth it.

I had decided to do a weight routine last night when I got home, and I had recently ‘procured’ a DVD called ‘Tom Holland – Total Body Workout’, so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s about 40 minutes long, and basically combines aerobic, crunches, lunges, and work with dumbells. You don’t stop at all, it’s a solid push through, and man, was I exausted when I was done. I didn’t think I’d be able to move today, but I’m not bad, I guess all that stretching and winding down that is incorporated into the program really does help. I’ll probably try to work one of those in a couple/few times a week to get things started before I venture off into a more standard weight lifting routine.

Afterwards I had the salmon with some sauce on it (it’s a vegetable dip I bought with sour cream mixed with a spice, kinda like a taco dip almost). I baked it for 20 minutes, then broiled it for a couple to brown the top. Warmed up some broccoli with it, and buttered a piece of bread, damn that was a good meal. Costs a little more than most of the meals I eat at home, but nice to treat yourself now and then, and it was still low in calories and high in nutrients.

Research shows that high intensity training for shorter periods of time is more effective at burning fat than low intensity, long duration training, and the higher the intensity of the cardio, the greater the fat loss.

Did you know that for every pound of lean muscle you gain, you will burn an extra 50 calories per day? Contrary to this, as you lose weight, your metabolism also slows down. Recent studies have shown that when you lose 10f your bodyweight, your metabolism drops by about 15which means that its gets harder to lose more weight, while losing weight.

Here’s a list of some of the factors affecting metabolism in order of greatest impact to least:

• muscle tissue (you already know why this is on the top of the list)
• meal frequency (the longer you go between meals the more your metabolism slows down to conserve energy)
• activity level (important but doesn’t make any difference if you don’t match your eating to your expenditure)
• food choices (ex. low-fat diets tend to result in poor hormone production which leads to a slower metabolism)
• hydration (over 70f bodily functions take place in water not enough water causes all your systems to slow down and unnecessary stress)
• genetics (some people have higher metabolisms than others you can’t change genetics but you can still win the battle!)
• hormone production and function (think you have a slow thyroid? it’s not likely before you go blame it on the thyroid first stabilize your blood sugar and throw in some progressive exercise 2-3 times each week)
• stress (stress also can slow metabolism by placing extra stress and strain on numerous systems. plus, many people tend to overeat when “stressed out”)

The major cause of a slowing metabolism is three fold…

1. You lose muscle due to the lack of physical stress
2. your body cannibalizes muscle when it needs energy but you won’t supply any because you are “dieting” and skipping meals
3. Your activity levels tend to decrease as you get older