Lessons Of The Week

I'm finishing up my first week of Body Beast and I've learned a couple things this week.

1) I never knew how to lift weights.

I mean, yes, I know how to physically pick things up.But with as much weight training as I've done in my life, this week I realized that the reason I never got the results I was looking for was that I wasn't putting a good program together. Body Beast uses Dynamic Set Training, which means every workout is full of a mix of single sets, drop sets, super sets, multi sets, giant sets, etc. I like to refer to the giant sets as holy shit sets. I've never trained like this before but so far I'm loving it. The workouts are tough as hell and by the end you're pretty much at muscle failure. I'm already starting to see results and now I think I might be becoming addicted.

2) Eating a lot of food is hard work.

That sounds weird to say. I guess if you're just eating whatever you want without a care in the world, you can really throw some food down. But with this program the nutrition plan calls for a serious increase in the amount of calories you eat. But in order to help the muscle growth, it can't just be more calories, it has to be the right kind of calories. They've got me with a calorie goal of 2,884 per day. That's a lot of food. But let's face it, there is a difference between 2,884 calories of fast food and potato chips and 2,884 calories of healthy food. So I've been logging all of my food in the MyFitnessPal app. It's really pretty awesome. If you haven't checked it out, you should.

As I mentioned, this extra food needs to be the right kinds of food. For the first two phases (Build and Bulk) the macro-nutrient breakdown goal is 50% Carbs, 25% Protein and 25% Fat.This can also be tracked in MyFitnessPal. I actually did pretty good with keeping this balance this week. My weekly breakdown ended up being 44% Carbs, 28% Protein and 28% Fat. I guess that's not bad for still trying to figure this thing out.

I'm officially on vacation and heading to the beach with the family in the morning. Really looking forward to getting away for a couple days. We need it. Going to try to keep up with the eating plan, but I know we'll be eating out a lot so we'll see how this goes.

Weigh In Sunday - So, about that plan...

As I mentioned before, I had started a hybrid schedule of Focus T25 and Body Beast. I like both programs, but after about a week and a half I realized something just wasn't feeling right. Basically, for me anyway, I think they're just too different to do together. The goals are too different. T25 is heavy cardio and a fat burner, awesome for weight loss. Body Beast is a pretty hardcore weight lifting program for serious muscle building. And so having such different goals, they also have VERY different nutrition plans. And I think that's what was causing the issues for me. See, according to the T25 plan, I should be eating around 1,600 calories per day to lose weight.But on the Body Beast plan I should be eating much more, around 3,000 calories per day, to support the muscle growth and prevent the body from burning up muscle if it doesn't have enough fuel. So what was happening was I tried to balance my calories but I just wasn't eating enough and by the end of the day I was totally burned out and I felt like I was being counterproductive.

So I've decided to make a change in plans. I'm now focusing fully on the Body Beast program. It's a 90 day schedule, just like P90X3 was. I'm doing the Lean Beast version which includes a bit of cardio to help burn fat. So nutrition-wise, it means I need to up my daily food intake. My target calories are 2,884 which is a lot more than I've been eating over the last 6 months. So it's going to be a bit of a challenge just to make sure I eat enough, which seems weird. Also need to make sure it's the right food so I'm packing on muscle and not putting fat back on.

So yesterday we went shopping. With the increased food, I'm trying to do it as cheaply as possible, buying stuff in bulk and going for some inexpensive but really good food like Tuna. And Produce Junction right near us here in Jersey has super low prices for a lot of fruits and veggies (got 5 lbs of bananas for $2).

And here's the schedule I'm following:

My numbers for this week pretty much show exactly what I was feeling. Everything stayed basically the same. Aside from my weight being .5 lb lower, I had no change. So hopefully that changes with this new program. 

Weight -

Starting Weight: 213.8 lbs

Current Weight: 179.4 lbs

Total Change: -34.4 lbs

Body Fat Percentage -

Starting Percentage: 27.7%

Current Percentage: 18.1%

Total Change: -9.6%

Starting BMI: 31.5

Current BMI: 26.5

Total Change: -5

Time to get Beastly.

Weigh In Sunday - Beast 25

I need to get back to posting more often. The past few weeks I've pretty much just been posting on Sundays. I'm totally slacking I know. Things just get busy during the week so it's tough, but I'm going to make an effort to post more about stuff other than just my weigh ins.

Here are couple of quick updates.

One of the cool things that Beachbody does is after you finish a program you can submit your results and they send you a free T-Shirt for the program that you completed. These shirts cannot be purchased anywhere. The only way to get them is to earn them. And yesterday I got my P90X3 shirt. I earned this one and I'm pretty proud of that.

This week I started a new program. I had been doing Focus T25 and I like it, but I also felt like I was missing out on strength training. So the solution to that - I picked up a copy of Body Beast. If you're not familiar with Body Beast, it's a pretty hardcore lifting program with trainer Sagi Kalev, a former Mr. Israel. What I did was combine the two into a custom hybrid schedule. Basically I'm alternating between the two programs each day. For the first month I'm using workouts from the Build phase of Body Beast and the Alpha phase of T25. So far I love it. It might be a perfect combo. I'm also throwing in X3 Yoga from P90X3 one day a week to take a break from the really high intensity stuff and work on flexibility and balance. 

My goal at this point is to cut body fat and build muscle. I'm thinking this hybrid progam could help me do just that. After the first 3 days, I weighed in this morning and saw my weight go back up one pound but body fat take a nice drop. Here's where I stand right now:

Weight -

Starting Weight: 213.8 lbs

Current Weight: 179.8 lbs

Total Change: -34 lbs

Body Fat Percentage -

Starting Percentage: 27.7%

Current Percentage: 18.1%

Total Change: -9.6%

Starting BMI: 31.5

Current BMI: 26.5

Total Change: -5

Weigh In Sunday - Wasn't Expecting That

This week has been crappy. And that's putting it lightly because my mother will probably read this. I was on the road for work and one night while out to dinner one of my new contact lenses irritated my eye and I woke up the next morning with my eye crusted shut, totally bloodshot and sore as all hell. I had to go back to glasses for the rest of the week because my eye was just throbbing for days. So that was fun. Then I came home and took my son out to this event at the Garden State Discovery Museum here in Jersey. That was fun and he had a great time, but then he tells me he wants to race me. I don't like to turn down a challenge so we went over to this open area of grass to race. We start running along. Yes, I let him win. I mean he's 4. I'll wait until he at least hits double digits before I take him down. But just as we get to the end of the race I step down directly into a hole in the ground and completely rolled my ankle. It was really painful. The pain just shot straight up my leg. I have barely been able to put any pressure on it for a few days now, which means I've also had to skip some workouts. Yesterday it felt better when I woke up and I was going to test it out, but the more I walked on it I realized it still needs another day or so. So I've been feeling a bit frustrated not being able to work out. It makes me afraid that I won't get back to it again. So if I'm not back into my programs within the next 2 days you all have full permission to come to my house, throw the DVDs in and tell me to get my ass off the couch. And to top it all off, the past couple nights have sucked on a whole different level. But that's another story for another time and place.

So when I got up this morning, knowing it was weigh in day and that I probably wasn't going to like what I saw I was hesitant to even do it. But then I got on the scale. And saw that I still dropped another 1.8 lbs since my last weigh in!! BAM! Thankfully with all the crap that's been going on I haven't let my eating plan slip so I've at least managed to keep myself on track somewhat. And the crazy part of that - this 1.8 lbs puts me at exactly 35 lbs that I've lost since February. 35 POUNDS! That's awesome. So even though this week hasn't been the best, I've got a renewed focus today....in several areas...and I'm ready to get back to it.

Weight -

Starting Weight: 213.8 lbs

Current Weight: 178.8 lbs

Total Change: -35 lbs (YEEEEEEAH!!!)

Body Fat Percentage -

Starting Percentage: 27.7%

Current Percentage: 18.8%

Total Change: -8.9%

Starting BMI: 31.5

Current BMI: 26.4

Total Change: -5.1

And today's final thought: