Month: June 2009

Daily Stats 06/22/09

Today was a serious workout day.  I started with a workout with Trevor at 11.  We’ve been focusing on fixing the basics: posture, shoulders, knee movement, and muscles around the spine.  As I’m preparing myself to compete in a body building competition, I need to make sure my body can handle the kind of weight I’ll need to lift to build serious muscle.  I’ve been working out for eight years and these workouts with Trevor have been different than anything I’ve ever done before.  First, he’s totally awesome and knows more about human physiology than anyone I’ve met.  Second, we’ve been focused on all my little muscles that I’ve neglected for most of my life.  Although the workouts are totally light weight, I struggle to push through.  Yeah, it’s kind of humbling to struggle with 10 pound weights.

After working out with Trevor, I rested for a couple hours and had a heavy shoulder workout with Eddie.  I can feel my strength coming back to me as I gradually overcome my injuries.  It feels awesome.

First workout:

Second workout:

This is what we did today.  It felt great to shoulder press 70 lbs on the dumbbells it’s been a while since I’ve been able to do that.

Daily Diet 06/21/09

Weight: 203.2 lbs
Bodyfat: 10.6%

It’s funny how even after being immersed in body building nutrition for the last five years, my body is still a mystery to me.  On Saturday I was feeling completely bloated and I weighed in at 203.8.  I tapered my diet yesterday and feel great today, but I’m still weighing in at 203.2.

I did cheat a little yesterday.  I made my weekly pilgrimage to Costco where I purchase all my protein for the week.  On my way out I grabbed a Costco hotdog.  So good.  I think Costco serves one of the best hotdogs I’ve ever had.

Calories out: 3256, Calories in: 2965, Protein: 234g, Carbs: 295g, Fat: 95g


Daily Diet 06/20/09

Yesterday I felt like a giant turtle.  I really needed to lay off the diet for a day.  That being said, I was absolutely ravenous at night (might have had something to do with the Mad Max marathon I had).  Not for regular food though – for chocolate.  I ended up breaking.  I had a piece of frozen Dark Hershey’s Chocolate.  It was AWESOME.  Whenever I’m dieting I really only miss two things – frozen chocolate and pizza.  The upside is that it’s amazing how much better stuff tastes when you don’t gorge yourself on it all the time.

Bodybugg says I burned 3438, but I only took in 2125.  It’s not great, but I really need to ease myself into eating for a caloric surplus.  My body just isn’t used to consuming this much food.

Daily Stats 06/19/09

I had a great workout with Trevor and Eddie yesterday.  Eddie and I started out with some heavy leg presses, then Trevor joined us and we focused a lot more on core strengthening.  Trevor’s been taking a completely different approach with me – focusing on reprogramming my body and strengthening my weaknesses.  My lower back and shoulders are in terrible condition.  In fact, I wake up in almost debilitating pain every morning with my lower back completely frozen.  5 minutes in the shower fixes it, but I literally can’t sleep more than 6 hours a night because of the pain.  Sometimes my shoulders get so bad I struggle to put clothes on.

Instead of jumping in and going heavy (which is something I would naturally do), Trevor’s been building up my base and strengthening all my core stabilizer muscles that usually get no attention.  In fact, after just a week of working out with him, my body feels completely different.  I feel more nimble and solid.  I feel good about this.  A few more weeks of reprogramming my muscles and I’ll be benching 275 in no time!

This was a pretty long workout – almost two hours start to finish.  Most of my workouts are a lot shorter, but since Trevor joined us half way though, this one was longer but less intense.  I usually push myself so hard in the gym, it’s nice to just take it slow for once and focus on getting the motions right.  After working out for a while, it’s easy to lose sight of how important form is.  I think the same is true for a lot of things.  Once you’ve been doing something for a long time, it’s easy to over look some of the finer aspects of the process.  That’s usually when you get in trouble 🙂

Daily Diet 06/19/09

Today’s weight: 203.8
Today’s bodyfat: 8.3%

I’ve been feeling really “over-eaten” the last few days.  I think I might have ramped up my diet a little too fast.  I’m trying to taper it down and not eat so much at night.  We’re also just starting to figure out my workout program, so I’m not burning as many calories as I will be and my body is not in “muscle building” mode, so I’m worried about adding fat.

My favorite food of the day was homemade Greek chicken shwarma.  Real easy – marinate some chicken Greek style (2 tbsp red wine, 1 tbsp olive oil, Italian seasoning, fresh ground pepper), BBQ on a skewer.  Chop up tomatoes and onions and make some Tsatsiki sauce.  Put it all together in a whole wheat pita pocket and you’re done.  250 calories of pure bliss per serving.


Daily Diet 06/18/09

Today was a tough food day.  I came in at 3586 calories today, giving me a surplus of 459.  I’m just not used to taking in this much food, so on top of feeling sick, I also feel a little bogged down with constantly eating.

I have a new favorite recipe.  It’s whole wheat pasta with tuna, green olives, raw onion, garlic, and raw tomato, seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Here’s my breakdown for the day:

Calories: 3586, Protein: 320g, Carbs: 380g, Fat: 90g

Daily Stats 06/18/09

Trevor and I got together today and he set me up with a whole slew of core training and physical therapy exercises to get me ready for some serious heavy lifting in the coming months.  Also met with Rey Ronquilio who used to be a competitive body builder.  Very awesome guy.  We talked about me potentially competing at the Stingray Classic in April 2010.  That would be so awesome.

Today was chest day, usually one of my favorites, but I’m still kind of under the weather.  Eddie and I went with a workout format we’ve never tried before.  It was a High Intensity Training (HIT) style workout with seven back to back chest exercises, two sets each, with almost no rest in between.  The entire workout took about 30 minutes.  You can see my heart rate was higher than last time averaging about 126 bpm, but still not where it would usually be for a HIT workout.

Here’s the actual workout I did:

Daily Diet and Stats 06/17/09

Today’s Weight: 200.2
Today’s Body Fat: 9.0%

I’m still feeling a little under the weather today, although I’m finally getting over my pseudo cold.  I took the day off from the gym and spent most of the day working and reading behind my desk.  According to the Bodybugg, doing that makes my body burn 3074.  Not bad 😉

Food wise, I was a little off my game today.  Eating this much clean food takes a lot of planning and I just didn’t have it today.  I’ve been tired and fuzzy all day.  I managed to take in 3310 mostly clean calories.

Calories: 3310, Protein: 291g, Carbs: 280g, Fat: 114g

Here’s the total food I ate, in no particular order:

Eating 4000 clean calories a day is going to be a real challenge.  I’m going to have to start planning my meals ahead of time.  Costco must love body builders.  I was there last week and I spent $140 on meat and I’m almost half way through it 😉

Daily Diet 06/16/09

I consumed about 3137 calories today.  My Bodybugg is telling me that I burned 3181.  That makes me neutral for the day.

I’m still ramping up my diet as I figure out exactly how much I should be eating and what the protein / carb / fat breakdown should be to reach my body building goals.  I’m working towards taking in about 4000 cals on my workout days – all clean.  It is HARD eating so much clean food.  Sometimes I feel like it’s a full time job.    Clean means whole grains, low fat, low sugar, and generally unprocessed.  Here’s the total food I ate today in no particular order:

Calories: 3137, Protein: 316g, Carbs: 344g, Fat: 54g

Daily Stat Update 06/16/09

This week has started as a tough workout week.  Monday I was feeling sick and had a terrible cough.  Totally killed my workout.

I just started tracking my body fat daily, and it’s all over the place.  Last week it was at 5.5%, this week it’s at 9.4%.  As far as I understand, that’s impossible.  It’s a little disconcerting though, to watch your body fat almost double over a few days…

Eddie and I almost skipped our workout today.  It was one of those days where neither one of us felt any motivation at all.  I’m feeling sick, he’s out of it.  We pushed on through, and the workout actually ended up pretty good 🙂

As you can see from the heart rate, it was a pretty moderate workout.  Average HR looks like it was around 117.  I’ve had workouts where it shoots past 170.

Today was shoulder day.  I started with a 10 minute mile warm up at 3 pm, then another 10 minutes of rotator cuff warm up exercises.  I’m doing physical therapy for my left shoulder right now, it’s pretty bummed.

Here’s the workout:

I finally got around to actually measuring my body today, so here are the full specs…

Weight: 200.9
Body Fat: 9.4%
Waist: 34 in
Chest: 42.5 in
Shoulders: 50 in
Forearms: 12 in
Neck: 17 in
Thigh: 23.25 in
Calf: 17 in

and my first progress photo…