Sunday, December 23, 2012

Food and Exercise log, 12/23-12/30

After a week of sloppy eating and little exercise due to a sore shoulder, I'm getting back on the program. Yesterday, I had a big brunch then a paleo-friendly dinner, and this morning we went to a kids concert and then over to Buckley's for lunch. I ordered the corned beef hash with two eggs on top, which turned out to be a bad choice. At Portage Bay Cafe, the hash is made up of root vegetables, and only a few potatoes. I didn't expect that good, but I didn't expect the pure volume of potatoes vs. corned beef. I ended up picking through and eating the little chunks of corned beef, but got some potatoes too. I probably left two whole potatoes on the plate. When I got home, I had a couple oz of summer sausage with mayo and two tsp of almond butter.
As an aside, I was reading Tim Ferriss' book last night and he suggested doing 60-90 seconds of squats (high intensity exercise) before a meal and then again 90 minutes after the meal to curb insulin response. He also suggested some other supplements to take with the meal, but I didn't do that. I did do the squats in the parking lot before the meal. My wife was embarrassed.
I'm headed to the gym this afternoon. I'm going to do squats. This week is the fourth week of the cycle, so it's a "deloading week," meaning no more than about 65% of 1 Rep Max (1RM). So I'll knock these out tonight and go to Steve's Crossfit class, where he can modify the WOD for me to be light on my shoulder.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

A disastrous two weeks of dieting

Well, the last few weeks have been tough from a diet/workout perspective. Things were marching along well at the beginning of the month...I had a new 1 rep max 1RM deadlift of 160kg while in Phoenix with Annelisa. I also was able to show off my brand new muscle up. Two days later, i was able to do 4 muscle ups (nor in one set). Two days after that, I did the "12 days of crossfit" workout and improved by about 8 minutes over last year, finishing with the 8th best time.
Unfortunately, I woke up the next morning with a sore left shoulder. It felt very similar to the symptoms that I had just rehabbed out of my tight shoulder, which took a year to rehab. So I have backed off on working out for the last two weeks. I'm doing Wendler 5/3/1 deadlifts and squats and some shoulder mobility work with Steve 2 days/week and Dave's mobility class on the weekend.
The good news is that I was able to go 7 reps at 135kg on the deadlift which translates to an estimated 1RM of 166kg using wendler's formula. I looked back at last December and my 1RM was 135kg.
This is about 23% improvement y/y. Not so bad considering I wasn't really doing much the first half of the year.
But the other half of the problem is my diet. We had snacks at work including Oreo cookies, pizza at lunch, Hershey's kisses for dessert at home, etc etc. and once I start falling off the wagon, it's hard to get back on. As Dave says, the only way to get rid of sugar from the diet is cold turkey, like any addiction. So I've put on about 5 pounds.
Now that I've written it down it doesn't sound so bad, but I need to stop the fall. The good news might be that we're heading for vacation next week and we will be away from all the crappy good around work. The bad news might be that we'll be in wine country, and we will be wine tasting. Too early to tell.
I'm also teaming up with one of my colleagues starting when we are back in January to do our own leaning challenge.
And Steve thinks maybe I can start doing handstands again in January.

I started back on paleo diet this morning...I am one hour into it. I had a diablo omelet with goat cheese rather than jack cheese, with veggies rather than potatoes on the side. With diet coke :(
One meal at a time!
Update: I didn't have any snacks after brunch, and dinner was a 1/4 lb bison burger with about a tsp of mayo, I ate ~2-3oz of turkey sausage off of Toby's plate. I also had a cup or so of sauteed onions and peppers and a couple cups of broiled broccoli, with some mayo mixed in. Finished off with about 2tsp of organic almond butter. Unfortunately this brand has some cane sugar mixed in, but not much.
All in all, a good day recovering from a bad week if I can keep from snacking this evening.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Food and workout log, 12/2-12/8

Sunday, 12/2 - Got up this morning with a sore (left) shoulder from thrusters yesterday (43 reps at 48kg) plus Dave's shoulder mobility class.
Brunch (10am) - 2oz summer sausage, goat cheese omelet. I fell off the wagon and had some of the kids' Halloween candy.