Overview of Research Program

As promised (and late) here is a general outline of what I will be doing over the next 16 weeks, and beyond. You can find a link to the article here

If you don’t want to read the link then basically the researchers with the University of South Australia are looking at how continous dieting and intermittent (on/off) dieting compare.

The inclusion criteria for the research was:

Aged 18+
BMI over 27kg/m2
Healthy of have type 2 diabetes managed by diet alone or stable doe metformin
Not pregnant of breast feeding (I didn’t have to worry about this one)

Exclusion criteria was:

Previous surgery for weight reduction
Drinking more than 2 standard drinks per day and not able /willing to decrease (due to high calorie contend)
Participating in any ongoing dietary studies
Eating out more than once a week and not able/willing to decrease for the duration of the study

As I didn’t meet any of the exclusion criteria is was all go from there.

I am sticking to a 5500kj (1315 cals) diet per day and it is structured out so I am meeting a certain amount of fats/ oils, vegetables, protein etc.

A day for me will be broken down as follows:

Cereal: 50g High fibre cereal (3/4 cup)
Bread: 3 Slices per day
Dairy: 2 serves
1 serve is equal to 250ml skim milk
200g diet yoghurt
20g full fat cheese or 40g reduced fat cheese
Fruit: 2 serves
1 serve is equal to 150g fresh or tinned, unsweetened fruit
150ml unsweetened fruit juice
30g dried fruit
Protein foods:
Lunch 50g cooked meat, poultry or fish
Dinner 150g of lean meat, poultry or fish (raw weight)
Vegetables: 4 Cups (no potato or sweet potato)
2 cups of salad greens and 2 cups of mixed greens
Fats and Oils: 20g of poly or monounsaturated oil or spread

I am now in my third week and already 2.3kgs down from starting weight (I report back fortnightly) and apart from feeling quite hungry initially, I am on the right track now and starting to adapt.

Along with this I am required to 10,000 steps per day, but since my City to Bay Run on Sunday I have not been feeling the best and haven’t been able to train as much as what I would have liked to.

So with this, I have a couple of extra days of “recovery” and time to finish planning my program which will now start from Monday and I hope to add this to the blog at some point over the weekend.

Until next time, happy fitness!

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It’s REAL now!

Firstly, thank you to all the followers who have helped me reach 100+ in the past few days. I started this to document things about me (training etc) with no expectations. But to have over 100 people reading this is a great motivator!

Anyway, I am on the final countdown to my first fun run this coming Sunday. Again it is the City to Bay which is a 12km run starting in the Adelaide CBD and traveling to the Glenelg (The Bay).

I am ready to have a red hot go at this and today I went and picked up my runners bib (which I am pretty chuffed about) in preparation for Sunday.

Now while I want to do well in this run, I am not expecting a lot from myself other than to finish the run injury free. I’ve just got to have faith in my training and hope that the adrenalin and general excitement from all the participants helps me a bit also.

I will be on to provide a full update and a few pictures if the run at some point in the afternoon.

Wish me luck :)<

Day 1 in the bag

I made it successfully through day one. It was a wierd feeling purely for the fact that I don’t mind a bit of caffeine and yesterday I really didn’t want it (which shocked me), but my head was calling me every name under the sun and repayed me with a whopper of a headache for 90% of the day.

There is no way I will be giving in, so I will just have to put up with whatever comes my way and deal with each scenario as it rises.

My food was nice from start to finish and I didn’t really find myself overly hungry and really wanting food in between what I had planned for the day. I haven’t organised for anything special for the first couple of days, purely for the fact I want to prepare a lot of the staple foods (veg/ salad etc) in advance so I can focus a bit more on preparing the protein.

Breakfast I had 2 x fried eggs with 100g of shaved leg ham and 1 cup of spinach with a green tea

Lunch was approximately 175g of chicken breast with oregano with 2 cups of brocoli and a roast tomato

My snacks throughout the day consisted of a handful of almonds, banana, carrot and a tin of plain tuna. I don’t know if I will need to cut back my snacks, but I will have them on hand and see if I can go with out them, but knowing they are there in case.

It was a gym day yesterday which was really nice. It was made even better because I hit a new PR on the leg press. I got to update my board from 120kgs to 140kgs. I didn’t go in with the midset of having a go at my PR, but was feeling really strong so thought why not!

I did a circuit of the following for 3 rounds and then finished off with 4 sets of quad and hamstring curls.

Circuit – weight was at 25kgs
15 thrusters
15 upright rows
10 burpee to box jump @ 50cm

Below is a picture of me on the leg press.

Overall I had a good day and have a very good feeling about the month going forward.

Until next time, happy fitness!

That’s how you do a leg session!

Firstly, my last post was actually my 50th since starting my blog….GO ME! I have found it to be such a great outlet and personal support for myself, and can’t wait for the next 50 posts.

Anyway, back to my reasoning for this post. Today I knocked out a thigh burning, calf sculpting (that’s how I see what I did today anyway haha) leg session. I am not too keen on seeing how I am going to feel tomorrow, but I know how ever it is it was all worth it. This is the first time I have really blasted my legs. I mean I’ve done squats, leg presses/ curls etc, but never to hardheartedness of what I put myself through this morning. The workout was:

1km row
Superset of Leg Raises and Walking Lunges
Leg Raises – 3 x 12 @ 25kgs
Lunges – 3 x 5m with 12kg DB’s

Squats
4 x 15 @ 20kgs

Leg Press Drop Sets to Failure
24 @ 80kgs
23 @ 70kgs
26 @ 60kgs
20 @ 50kgs
24 @ 40kgs

Calf Raises
1 x 15 @ 35kgs
1 x 15 @ 55kgs
1 x 15 @ 75kgs

Thrusters
1 x 20 @ 15kgs
1 x 15 @ 20kgs
2 x 10 @ 30kgs

1km row
2km walk for warm down

It felt amazing to knock out such a big workout, and I will look at doing this again next week and maybe up the weights a little leading in to the Easter long weekend.

And with all the squats I completed, I don’t have to complete any for my 30 Day Squat Challenge tonight!

My bicep seems to be back to 100% (FINALLY), so I will be looking to do a modified version of my arm workout from last week.

Until next time, happy fitness!

PS – I just had a pretty kick arse stir fry with lamb, carrot, broccoli, beans and brown rice in a sweet chilli sauce.

Another Day, More Stairs!

It was another stair day today, and I actually turned RunKeeper on to see how far I do travel during the time I run up and down the stairs.

Including the 1.3kms to and from the stairs, I completed 1.6kms worth of stair running. On top of this I completed Day 1 of the 30 Squat Challenge and my legs feel like htey are on FIRE!

I have been neglecting my core and lower back recently, so tonight will be a big core session (lots of planking, sit ups etc), and then tomorrow I will do an active recovery of a slow run which off the top of my head is around 3.1(ish)kms.

Still have to figure out 3 more goals/ tests for the month so let me have it if you have an idea.

Until next time, happy fitness!

there it is!!

WOW! I have missed that….A LOT! Today was a day where I really had to dig deep and sort of reinvent myself (I couldn’t think of anything else) in my training. I made a little visit to my old friend the stairs with another couple of guys. While I have trained with one of these guys quite a bit, the other I haven’t trained with for a long time and it was a good little reminder of how far I have actually come, and that I still have a little while to go. It was a time capped session to 30 minutes with the following ladder style workout:

1 x to the top of the ramp

2 x across the top

3 x to top of ramp

4 x across top

5 x to top of ramp

6 x across top

5 x to top of ramp

4 x across top

3 x ramp

2 x top

1 x ramp

It was more a metal test than a physical one, and I am pleased to say I gave it my all and didn’t leave anyting out there (well my body feels like that anyway). Below is a picture of how I felt upon completion of the workout

Tonight will be a stretch and roll on the foam roller, and then tomorrow I will go for a light run to get some blood going through my legs, I know I am in for a bit of soreness tomorrow 😉 Until next time, Happy Fitness!

Another weekend

Ahhhhh! I have almost finished a very nice weekend with my family. I have been around the house doing some cleaning and visited the park with the kids, and then this morning spent an hour or so at the beach .

After the beach we come home and had some lunch and the kids went to bed for their nap, and I went outside for a workout.

I completed the EMOM session I did on Tuesday evening, but this time added 5 double unders EMOM.

It was a painful session today for some reason (my legs were really fatigued, really early). I worked through it and feel fantastic (but general soreness) and pleased I pushed myself through it.

I did have some film to put up and show to you all, but I’m having a few technical difficulties with that at the moment. Hopefully I’ll have them up ready for my next post.

Until next time, happy fitness!

Benchmarking

I was sitting around thinking while working on this months program about what I want to achieve. Apart from the obvious of wanting to drop a kilo or two, I haven’t really done anything in the way of testing my fitness. By this I mean seeing how fit I have actually become.

So, this month will be a focus on my all around fitness and testing/ benchmarking. I will be completing the same program each week for the following four weeks and keeping track of my timing. It will consist of:

Monday: 5 rounds – 300 run with 10 burpees

Tuesday:
Lunch – 20min AMRAP: Stair run with 10 x push up/ dip/ bench dips
Evening – Charlie (which is the benchmarking part of the workout) followed by some general lift work

Wednesday: Rest Day

Thursday: 6 rounds – 200m run/ 30 squats/ 20 situps/ 10 push ups

Friday: 300m row completed in under 1m15s to failure with a 30s rest between sets
Superset #1
12 leg presses
12 DB thrusters
Superset #2
12 lat pull down
12 upright row

I am very keen to see how I finish up come the end of the month, and I am really hopeful of some good reports back.

While I am posting, I may as well add the details of my first session for the month. I really struggled during the workout today as I was out in the garden and very active with the kids over the weekend and my legs were quite tight, but I am better for the run though. My time was 17m55s (which is slower than my original time), but the only way I can go this month with my timing is down.

I have been very unsucessful with my food again the last week or two, so I really need to focus on what I am eating and when. It’s not that I am eating crap all the time, it’s just happening sporadically so it needs to be tightened up a bit. Currently, I am working on a 60 day plan that I am really keen to test myself on and focus on key parts of my whole process/ progress to date.

Until next time, happy fitness!

Training Day – 27/2/14

FINALLY! I got back in to training today. So glad to be feeling better and able to knock out a session.

Today I was up at the work gym for around 40 minutes and with the music on it really felt like I was only in there for half that amount of time….It was very nice.

I started with a 10 minute warm up between the bike and some light stretching, and then got in to the session. I completed 3 rounds for time of:

400m run (@13km/h) with 30 situps – 20 squats – 10 pushups

Then jumped on the stationary bike and completed a 5 minute 30s high intensity/ 30s recovery ride, with a warm down and stretch following that.

I wasn’t 100% sure on where I would be with the main part of the session, so I allowed myself a time of 15 minutes to complete the whole workout, and surprised myself upon completion when I saw that I completed this in 14m18s. It is another benchmark for me to continually work towards beating.

As I mentioned in my last post, I now have a weight bar and some weight plates to do a bit of strenght work. Tonight I will go home and do some work with the bar only on my squat form (OH, Back and Front), and to also get used to the way the movement feels. I have found quite a cool podcast online around Crossfit, and they also release technique WOD’s to assist you with certain lifts etc.

All the guys are current crossfitters who (from what I can gather) have come from a weight lifting background and also coach both weightlifting and crossfit.Their podcasst is Barbell Shrugged and I am really enjoying listening to their stuff on the way to and from work on the train.

Until next time happy fitness!

IF weight loss was easy………..

…..Everybody would be doing it….Right??

I mean setting an alarm for 5am 3 to 4 times a week isn’t really that hard. Once you wake and change after said alarm you go straight to the gym. Once you are at the gym you give it everything you have. Then once you have finished at the gym you have all your calories/ macros/ paleo/ vegan (you get my drift) meals ready and packed to consume throughout the day?

JEEZ, re-reading that makes it sound easy, so honestly why is/ has my weight been a problem for me?

It is the motivation? I don’t thin so. Is it the training? No. I love the training! Is it physical? Sometimes yes. But, my confidence is growing. Is it mental? YES! Yes it is!

I have so much control in regards to the training side of my weight loss. I train when I have to and I rest when I feel the need so I don’t burn out or injure myself. But the major problem is I am still no where near strong enough mentally when it comes to my food.

Sometimes life does get in the way, but can that always be used as an excuse when I have to be committed to everything 110%? Some may disagree, but for me it has to be. I was fat/ unhealthy/ lazy/ slack and all the other words people associate with obesity. I don’t like using those words, but it really is horrible that it is seen that way when no matter what some people do things won’t/ can’t change.

Thankfully something really did click for me and I can honestly say that I WILL NOT put myself in that position ever again. The only problem I have is I am getting physically strong, but still very menatlly weak.

I plan meals, I pre pack snacks for each day and still I find myself taking the “easy” option every now and then. To be honest while I have lost around 40(ish)kgs it could have been close to 50-60kgs if it wasn’t for this weakness.The worst part of the whole thing is, I know I am doing and can’t bring myself to stop.

How do you combat the mental side of weight loss/ fitness? I would love to hear your ideas around this.