Sandman's "Last Chance Workout!" Challenge

[sandman]

Feb 5 Update:

Workout:

nope.. weekends are the worst for me and I tend to derail - simply because we just get so busy doing family things..

On the Menu:

breakfast: homemade egg mcmuffin. The bun wasn't paleo, but the rest of the ingredients were.. 2 eggs, 2 bacon slices, small slice of cheddar. garnished with a dollop of homemade primal ketchup.

snack: not hungry

lunch: leftover butter chicken (even better today!)

snack: not hungry

dinner: had a date night with my wife.. so we kegged it up and went for steak. 10oz new york, extra veggies and only a couple forkfulls of the garlic mashed. It took A LOT of willpower to leave those garlic mashed behind. We split a dessert of ice cream however, so why did i bother leaving the garlic mashed again???

After dinner we headed over to chapters to kill some time. I picked up the "Paleo Solution" by Robb Wolf. A book I've been eagerly waiting to get my hands on. My wife is going to read it while I finish off the Primal Blueprint, and then we're going to trade when we're both done them!

I've been feeling kinda bloaty today however.. obviously didn't drink enough water these past couple days.. Will have to remedy that tomorrow.

[Sanjh]

Workout:

nope.. weekends are the worst for me and I tend to derail - simply because we just get so busy doing family things..

Well, if you're going primal, as long as there was frequent moving at a slow pace, you should be good, no?

[Shadawyn]

Thanks for the omelet cupcake recipe! I made some minor alterations, adding cheese to the egg batter to make more of a "mini-quiche" minus the crust. They're baking now and look and smell quite tasty

[sandman]

Well, if you're going primal, as long as there was frequent moving at a slow pace, you should be good, no?

TRUE... However I would add that the frequent moving at a slow pace should at least get the heart rate up a bit for sustained periods - of which this did not.

Thanks for the omelet cupcake recipe! I made some minor alterations, adding cheese to the egg batter to make more of a "mini-quiche" minus the crust. They're baking now and look and smell quite tasty

Ah cheese.. I do sometimes put it in my batter as well. You'll have to let me know what you think of them!

[sandman]

Feb 6 Update:

Workout:

Aerobic - 1.5hrs of "moving frequently at a slow pace" at the pool with my kids. Don't let anyone say that chasing a 3 and a 1 year old around the pool isn't a workout, lol.

On the Menu:

Breakfast: 2 egg cupcakes

Snack: not hungry

Lunch: Last of the leftover butter chicken

Snack: couple tablespoons worth of semisweet chocolate chips

Dinner: gluten free slow cooker lasagna, salad

We had some family over for dinner last night so I made up a slow cooker lasagna, but used a brown rice based lasagna noodle instead of the traditional wheat based ones. Nobody even knew the difference. The only non-primal ingredient in it was the noodles, but I was ok with that since they were at least gluten free.

Overall a great day.. I started out still feeling full and a little bit gross from the bread and Ice cream I had the night before - but got myself back on track with breakfast and felt way better as the day went on.

[sandman]

Feb 7 Update:

Workout:

AM Strength Training. Adding to the new bests I had last time, I bumped up the reps on all my other exercises to see where I'm at. My new circuit reps consist of: 30 Prisoner squats (up from 20), 15 pushups, 26 lunges (up from 20), 30 rows (15 each arm), 80 sec plank (up from 75), and 40 jumping jacks (up from 30). My car was being flaky starting this morning, so it cut into the time I had available to work out. Was only able to complete 1.5 circuits, but that still equated to about a half hour of working out. Not too bad.

On the Menu:

Breakfast: 3 egg cupcakes

Snack:

Lunch: Salad + ?

Snack:

Dinner:

Week 1 Gut Check!

First week of the challenge and I think I'm making decent progress. I've read a bunch of the Primal Blueprint. Picked up the Paleo Solution and am itching to dive into it. (My wife is going to read that while I finish up the PB)

Increases the reps of my BW workout, ate mostly paleo, and am down a pound. Not the 2.5lbs I was hoping for, but that just means I'll need to push extra hard this coming week!

[lwow]

Are you doing any other tracking of your progress instead of the dreaded scale? It seems like you are keeping your eating up really well and doing workouts that could very well be putting on muscle and losing more fat than the scale shows. I challenge you to quit the scale for the next 3 weeks, get measurements immediately and track those instead. You can have your scale back in 3 weeks.

[sandman]

Are you doing any other tracking of your progress instead of the dreaded scale? It seems like you are keeping your eating up really well and doing workouts that could very well be putting on muscle and losing more fat than the scale shows. I challenge you to quit the scale for the next 3 weeks, get measurements immediately and track those instead. You can have your scale back in 3 weeks.

OH trust me - if you read around this board you'll see I'm like the #1 person that tells people to ditch the scale. I only report my scale progress here to memorialize the number for future reference but I definitely don't live by it.

The only measurements I have are the ones I get from my good old 'butt dyno', to use an autocross term lol. I don't have any concrete measurements but I KNOW that good things are happening because I can see my biceps and forearms getting some definition, and my pants are fitting looser, as are my shirts - so I have no complaints really.

[Sanjh]

Feb 7 Update:

Workout:

AM Strength Training. Adding to the new bests I had last time, I bumped up the reps on all my other exercises to see where I'm at. My new circuit reps consist of: 30 Prisoner squats (up from 20), 15 pushups, 26 lunges (up from 20), 30 rows (15 each arm), 80 sec plank (up from 75), and 40 jumping jacks (up from 30). My car was being flaky starting this morning, so it cut into the time I had available to work out. Was only able to complete 1.5 circuits, but that still equated to about a half hour of working out. Not too bad.

On the Menu:

Breakfast: 3 egg cupcakes

Snack:

Lunch: Salad + ?

Snack:

Dinner:

Week 1 Gut Check!

First week of the challenge and I think I'm making decent progress. I've read a bunch of the Primal Blueprint. Picked up the Paleo Solution and am itching to dive into it. (My wife is going to read that while I finish up the PB)

Increases the reps of my BW workout, ate mostly paleo, and am down a pound. Not the 2.5lbs I was hoping for, but that just means I'll need to push extra hard this coming week!

How far are you through PB? I'm about 30% through it (variable length ebook makes it hard to judge pages). Congrats on the progress!

[sandman]

Feb 8 Update:

Workout:

Missed it - daughter had a rough night of teething (or something) that kept her up, and by proxy kept me up. I barely made it through the day at work.

On the Menu:

Breakfast: 2 egg cupcakes

Snack: not hungry

Lunch: meatloaf, salad

Snack: not hungry

Dinner: scramble fried ground beef, cauliflower, onions, mushrooms. With a light 'sauce' of canned mushroom soup.

The soup probably wasn't paleo, but I'm ok with it. It was a minor point over an otherwise solid eating day.

[sandman]

How far are you through PB? I'm about 30% through it (variable length ebook makes it hard to judge pages). Congrats on the progress!

I'm on the 'how to workout' chapter.. somewhere in the back half of the book. How'd you get it on e-book???? That wasn't an option for me when I purchased it!

[Sanjh]

I'm on the 'how to workout' chapter.. somewhere in the back half of the book. How'd you get it on e-book???? That wasn't an option for me when I purchased it!

The Kindle store. The 'DRM'ness of it pains me a little, but they have apps for all of the devices I use, so it makes sense. Plus $10 versus ~$25? That is a world of difference as a grad student.

[Silence]

Way to go! glad it's working out well. Chasing toddlers around a pool definetly qualifies as a work out

[sandman]

Feb 9 Update:

Workout:

AM Cardio - treadmill - did a 20 minute run with increasing speed by .2 mph each minute. Ran a 2 minute sprint at 6.2mph, but upon completing it decided I could have gone faster. Next cardio day I'll bump that up a couple steps.

On the Menu:

I honestly don't remember the details, but I know I didn't eat off Paleo at all.

[sandman]

Feb 10 Update:

Workout

AM Strength Training - bumped up my lunges to 30 reps (from 26) and added another pushup (to 16)

On the Menu:

breakfast - egg, bacon, cheese, lettuce wrap.. ok, it was all shoved in a whole wheat wrap.. sue me!

snack - not hungry (late breakfast)

lunch - gr. beef with cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, homemade paleo ketchup

snack - tba

dinner - we have an employee function tonight. not sure what's on the menu but I'll be attempting to stick to paleo as best i can

In other news...

We completed all the preliminary steps last night to get our house listed on the market. We're on the move!

and

This morning I won a Valentines dinner for two at a restaurant called the Melting Pot! Looks like this coming monday is going to be a carby one!!! Now, to tell my wife or not? She still thinks we're going somewhere else...

[Sanjh]

Feb 10 Update:

Workout

AM Strength Training - bumped up my lunges to 30 reps (from 26) and added another pushup (to 16)

On the Menu:

breakfast - egg, bacon, cheese, lettuce wrap.. ok, it was all shoved in a whole wheat wrap.. sue me!

snack - not hungry (late breakfast)

lunch - gr. beef with cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, homemade paleo ketchup

snack - tba

dinner - we have an employee function tonight. not sure what's on the menu but I'll be attempting to stick to paleo as best i can

In other news...

We completed all the preliminary steps last night to get our house listed on the market. We're on the move!

and

This morning I won a Valentines dinner for two at a restaurant called the Melting Pot! Looks like this coming monday is going to be a carby one!!! Now, to tell my wife or not? She still thinks we're going somewhere else...

The Melting Pot is quite awesome, if you avoid the bread during the cheese portion, the large amount of carbs will only show up during the desert. Dipping desert foods into chocolate for double simple-carb goodness!

Ok fine; I'm not sure how exactly to sue people, but I can look into it.

[Silence]

hope you guys have a great night out.

When are you guys planning to move?

[lwow]

make sure to save room for dessert, it is awesome

[LynnyLee]

The Melting Pot is full of awesome and made of win!

[Minyla]

Ok fine; I'm not sure how exactly to sue people, but I can look into it.

I feel like this is a good time to mention that I'm an attorney (my lawyer-sense was tingling-- it's the same feeling we get when ambulances pass by...).

Seriously, though, have fun at the Melting Pot! I'm totally jealous!

[Mad Sci]

What's the melting pot?

[sandman]

What's the melting pot?

To summarize - High End Fondue. And considering the glowing admiration above, it must be pretty good lol.

Looks like I'm getting a gift card for the place to use whenever - and it was actually recommended to me to go on a different night than V-Day just so we could enjoy the evening rather than feel rushed through the meal. SO.. I think we'll keep the table for the original place I booked - and go on another 'date night' to the Melting Pot. I'm looking forward to it!

[Sanjh]

Sandman! We haven't gotten a real update from you since February 10th! How is it going?

[sandman]

Sandman! We haven't gotten a real update from you since February 10th! How is it going?

HOLY CATS

where do I begin?! I was planning on doing a proper update tonight, but feel bad because it *has* been so long since my last update, and you've pretty much guilted me into posting now....

OK - things have been going awesome for me. I missed two of my planned workout dates, but have been on target otherwise. I geeked out saturday night, so I had a couple cheats - 2 slices of pizza, one can of pop, handful of doritos. It was nice because a bunch of us are attempting to clean up our lives, so there was a lot of healthy snack options too - veggies, deli slices, etc.

Valentines day could have been a big mess too, and I certainly did indulge with no regrets - BUT I also took it easy. Couple forkfulls of dessert, skipped the rice in my meal in favour of extra veggies, etc. We wound up NOT going to the Melting Pot that night - and instead decided to use the prize on a different night when it will be less busy and we'll feel less rushed to get through our meal.

Weight has been maintaining the same - but - i'm officially able to do the belt loop up one more notch as of this week, so woohoo to me! It's still snug, but far from uncomfortable, so i'm officially declaring this a "FUCKYEAH!" moment.

Now - what has been keeping me from posting? Pretty much ALL my free time these past coupla days have been spent getting our house staged for showing. In the span of a week we talked about selling our house, decided to sell our house, talked to a mortgage broker, met with our realtor, got preapproved for a mortgage, signed off with our realtor to list, staged the house, listed it, and have now also found a place to put an offer on. So, busy times in the Sandman household. This is also what kept me from making those two gym dates - we were just up too late doing house things for me to consider 4hrs of sleep a good thing.

Back to work... but i'll have another update shortly. Stay tuned!

[Sanjh]

HOLY CATS

where do I begin?! I was planning on doing a proper update tonight, but feel bad because it *has* been so long since my last update, and you've pretty much guilted me into posting now....

OK - things have been going awesome for me. I missed two of my planned workout dates, but have been on target otherwise. I geeked out saturday night, so I had a couple cheats - 2 slices of pizza, one can of pop, handful of doritos. It was nice because a bunch of us are attempting to clean up our lives, so there was a lot of healthy snack options too - veggies, deli slices, etc.

Valentines day could have been a big mess too, and I certainly did indulge with no regrets - BUT I also took it easy. Couple forkfulls of dessert, skipped the rice in my meal in favour of extra veggies, etc. We wound up NOT going to the Melting Pot that night - and instead decided to use the prize on a different night when it will be less busy and we'll feel less rushed to get through our meal.

Weight has been maintaining the same - but - i'm officially able to do the belt loop up one more notch as of this week, so woohoo to me! It's still snug, but far from uncomfortable, so i'm officially declaring this a "FUCKYEAH!" moment.

Now - what has been keeping me from posting? Pretty much ALL my free time these past coupla days have been spent getting our house staged for showing. In the span of a week we talked about selling our house, decided to sell our house, talked to a mortgage broker, met with our realtor, got preapproved for a mortgage, signed off with our realtor to list, staged the house, listed it, and have now also found a place to put an offer on. So, busy times in the Sandman household. This is also what kept me from making those two gym dates - we were just up too late doing house things for me to consider 4hrs of sleep a good thing.

Back to work... but i'll have another update shortly. Stay tuned!

Congrats on the '"FUCKYEAH!" moment'!

Your geek out nights seem to be a lot more healthy than mine; half a pizza, 4 or so whiskey sodas, and snacks that begin and end with 'Partially Hydrogenated'.

Good luck with the house selling and the getting of more sleep! (I know this four hours of sleep, it is not my friend...)