Grumble growling to Gainz and losses

[Grumble]

First challenge. Lets do this.

 

Goals for this Challenge are as follows, and I quote,"Stink, stank, stunk!"

 

1. Continue with BUFF Dudes 12 week plan

2. Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night

3. Do not give in to my sweet tooth (I mean candy and ice cream and sodas. Fruits fine)

4. Start using the forums as the resource and connections they are

5. Practice mindfulness

 5a. Mindful eating. Track food and be aware of what is going into my mouth. This means putting the bad stuff back.

 5b. Mindful shopping. Quitting with the gotta have its. Counts for amazon and starbucks alike.

 

As I have not the gif of gab, I shall stick to text for now.

[Grumble]

GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME TO WEEK TWO!

 

Well, it's been quite a first week for me. First off, I'd like to thank all of you for embracing my flavor of crazy and letting me play with you mighty warriors. I'm inspired each day to dig just a little deeper and pay just a little more attention. You guys rock.

 

 

Workouts have been on point. I've felt like my ass has been kicked all but one day, but I think I've got the changes I need to bring the ass-kickery to 100%

Seeing solid improvements across the board, and I've discovered that I'm setting the mark too low on new exercises. This is actually completing week 4 of my 12 week program, so I'm starting to feel the improvements, if not seeing them yet. I wish I had done before photos so I may just do some progress photos today and go from there. But beastliness is on the horizon. I can feel it in my chest.

 

So this week with food has been a little...how do I put this... off the mark? I've had decent days, I've had bad days, I think I had one really good day. But overall it's been inconsistent. That's gotta change, I need consistency. I'm not losing weight, which is fine, as I'm not gaining it either. I tend to bounce between 270-273 on any given day. I step on the scale each morning just to keep a log more than actually check my weight loss/gain. 

 

So along with that comes my newest challenge. I have my APFT in two weeks, so from here til the 8th I'm on a mini cut. Along with that comes a pretty significant caloric restriction. Right around 1900.

 

It's not all that bad though. That's with a sedentary day job and no workout. I can probably add about 800 more calories and still be in a significant deficit.

 

Sleep has missed the 7 hour mark all but two days last week. Even getting up at 4 AM to go workout, I'm still getting about 6.5 on average, so I'm feeling good. I want to continue in that trend this coming week, and if I'm not feeling like I want to drop dead, I'll adjust my goal accordingly.

 

Impulse shopping has been better since I've been more mindful of it. I've had a couple of failings (goddamn cinnamon bun) but otherwise I've maintained discipline pretty consistently. Now lets make it a habit.

 

Forums have been super useful. @Taddea Zhaan @Broba Fett for healthy food ideas. @Br0din @Blocky for fitness assistance, and everyone else for inspiration. Oh yea, and for @Leigh for being my first stalker follower.

 

And that wraps up my week. Thanks for following along and stay tuned for more less shenanigans.

 

[Grumble]

Oh, Hi! Welcome to my Week 2 in Review (Part Deux) (Author's Note: Saturday and Sunday will get extra details as I was too lazy busy too do my dailys.)

 

Well, here we are. Week two. What a week. Moved ALL THE WEIGHTS. Or at least I feel like I did. Hit PR's almost every day. Probably going to stay put on a couple of them to work on my form (looking at you deadlift), but otherwise should continue to see improvements. Saturday and sunday were lazy, only one of them was planned lazy. Sunday I meant to go run... but played Mass Effect and did homework instead.

 

 

With the new goal of cutting weight, I went back to monitoring my caloric intake. The weekdays were solid across the board, even friday. I was out all day so it would have been too easy to fall off the wagon, but nay i say! Saturday. Ah Saturday. Not only did I fall off the wagon, but I turned around and threw it into the river. Kind of on purpose. It was date night. Went to Hard Rock cafe for dinner (800 cal chicken sandwich and 2 beers), then went to El Capitan to watch Beauty and the Beast (after a stop in the GHiradelli store for a 1200 cal shake)

 

Sunday started out great... with a maple bacon donut. I think it was Mrs G's way of apologizing after knocking my coffee all over the parking lot. SO yea. Lunch was steamed green beans with garlic powder and a cajun spice mix. Good, filling enough to hold til dinner, which was a Pan seared herb chicken and farro with mozzerella and cherry tomatoes, and a balsamic vinegar drizzle. It was good, but needed... something, dunno what.

Also, Mrs G made Betty crocker lemon blueberry baked oatmeal cake muffins. Only 280 cal for the big ones, so small are about 140. Not bad. Plenty of fruit and oats, too much butter but hey. Can't win at everything.

More meal prep too. This time with chicken tenders. Gotta use up our frozen veggies so no fresh this week. Still better than nothing.

 

 

Sleep has been consistently about 6 hours. Not hating life, plenty of energy to play with Grimble, so I'm adjusting my challenge appropriately. 6 hours is my new baseline.

 

Practicing mindfulness in my impulse eating/shopping has been good. Had one slipup if you want to call it that. Picked up a replacement pair of basketball shorts cause it's time to retire my XXLs.

 

As usual, the forums are a cornucopia of assistance. Notables this week are @Br0din for suggesting tricep pushdowns to make my tri day a madhouse. @CourtnieMarie for the egg scramble, which I have not made yet. Ran out of eggs so that will happen probably today on the way home. @RedStone for the liquid chalk recipe. Gonna make that this week too. Weights are just getting too heavy to maintain grip with my extra sweaty self. (Wokring on grip strength too, but still, sweaty is sweaty)

 

As for weight, my lowest last week was 270.2 and my highest (after starting  the cut) was 273.3. THat was sunday morning. Post saturday healthy eating destruction. Note to everyone trying to lose weight. Biggest Loser is bullshit. It's not about the week, it's about the trend. Someone else posted that on the forums too. Months is a better metric than days or even weeks. Example. I weigh myself every morning. This morning, two days after bad Sat, I was back to 271.2. Make good decisions in the long haul and the occasional unhealthy day will be nothing more than a blip on your radar.

 

I think that covers everything of note work week two. Until next week.

 

[Grumble]

Week 3 COMPLETE!

 

Thank god. Last week was full of frustrations. Between my medical shenanigan, uninspired lifting, awful eating and sleeping on the weekend. I'm ready to get back to my routine this week. Until saturday, when vacation starts. Texas, here I come!

 

Weights were up across the board. Even Deadlift, which had excellent form. Finally. Turns out that third plate is magic for your form. Who knew! Upped the reps on my standing calf raise. no idea what else to do. Not putting 540 lbs on a barbell for that. At least, not yet anyway. Going to start running in week 4, I swear!

 

 

Food during the week is becoming routine. I eat pretty much the same thing, and I'm ok with it. It's no longer a forcing myself to eat a specific amount of this or that, it's just how my weekdays go. My weekends are another story entirely. Does nothing but meat for dinner 2 days in a row count as paleo? Cause the pizza sure as hell wasn't. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this social life/weight loss phenomenon.

 

 

But I'm logging all of it. So it helps keep me accountable. Weekend was extra bad, so the next few days will be a little extra good. Can't go nuts on the calorie deficit. Week 4 starts the next phase of my program and introduces supersets into the workout. I needs dem calories. 

 

I was solid on my sleep until the weekend too. Damnit. 10.5 hours and 3.5 respectively. And going into my reserve day on sunday. Yeesh. Definitely messed with my caffeine intake. But i'm alright, zonked out at 815 last night and slept solid til 4, when my alarm went off. So it looks like things are balanced again. We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

 

 

Mindfulness shopping? Check

Mindfulness eating?

 

We'll get there.

 

The forums are supportive, inspirational, and hilarious. @RedStone, I'm still waiting on that anecdote.

 

Weight was all over the place. as low as 270 flat on friday, 273.1 on sunday. But I took some progress photos this morning. It's definitely more lean muscle than before. Haven't decided if I am mentally ready to post them online. We'll see.

 

ANd that brings me to the end of week three. Final week just before my Texas excursion, and maybe some house window shopping, so let's get tanking!

 

[Grumble]

week 4 tracking

[Laghail]

I'm following the crap out of this challenge!

 

[RedStone]

4 hours ago, Grumble said:

As I have not the gif of gab, I shall stick to text for now.

 

Hmm. I dunno... that's pretty good...

 

[Leigh]

Oooh! We have very similar goals! I shall stalk and sporadically post to see how you are

 

Sent from my LG-K210 using Tapatalk

 

 

[Emerald_Dragonfly]

19 hours ago, Grumble said:

As I have not the gif of gab, I shall stick to text for now.

[Grumble]

14 hours ago, Leigh said:

Oooh! We have very similar goals! I shall stalk and sporadically post to see how you are

 

Sent from my LG-K210 using Tapatalk

 

 

OOh, I already have a stalker!

[Laghail]

7 minutes ago, Grumble said:

OOh, I already have a stalker!

You've official arrived as a NF member.

[Grumble]

Side note, thank god for prep week. Lets me get the last of my bad ideas out of my system.

[Leigh]

Side note, thank god for prep week. Lets me get the last of my bad ideas out of my system.

 

Ha! No kidding right? I've failed nearly all of my food goals for today and other than the annoyance of having to do 60 squats for my cookies and I'm going with the same math but in empty bar OHP for pop (I have a seriously ghetto bar at home) I am very glad that prep week is there.

 

Gives me a chance to tweak things, add things and to find out if I have bitten off far more than I can chew in terms of lifting.

 

 

 

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[Blocky]

23 minutes ago, Leigh said:

 

Ha! No kidding right? I've failed nearly all of my food goals for today and other than the annoyance of having to do 60 squats for my cookies and I'm going with the same math but in empty bar OHP for pop (I have a seriously ghetto bar at home) I am very glad that prep week is there.

 

 

I enjoy lifting too much... If I was going to use this approach, I would have to do burpees of other stupid forms of cardio

[Leigh]

14 minutes ago, Blocky said:

 

I enjoy lifting too much... If I was going to use this approach, I would have to do burpees of other stupid forms of cardio

 

Whoa whoa whoa... let's not getting crazy... if I was willing to do cardio for cookies, I'd be a ranger

[Grumble]

 

Whoa whoa whoa... let's not getting crazy... if I was willing to do cardio for cookies, I'd be a ranger [emoji14]

 

No, that's different. Rangers do Cardio and eat cookies. We do Cardio so we can eat cookies. There's a distinct difference.

 

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[Leigh]

1 minute ago, Grumble said:

 

No, that's different. Rangers do Cardio and eat cookies. We do Cardio so we can eat cookies. There's a distinct difference.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

 

but I burn more calories lifting than I do running... so why go the long way to the goal if I don't have to?

[Grumble]

 

So still hitting it because I was in the middle of the weeks routine when I decided to engage in NF again.

 

 

Notes for today.

 

 

Mediocre food choices

 

 

Sesame bagel with cream cheese for breakfast.

 

Marie calendars herb chicken with potatoes and corn

 

Meatloaf with baked potato and cheese sauce

 

 

Bad food choices

 

Cool ranch doritos and a redbull to keep me awake on my commute home. I need a healthier car option.

 

 

Lifting

 

Squats 225 for 10x4

 

Walking dumbbell lunges 45 for 10x3

 

Romanian deadlines 225 for 12x2 and 235 for 12x2

 

Due to time constraints skipped kettle Bell swing and glute bridge

 

Seated calf raise 190 for 10x5

 

 

Working off about 3.5 hours of sleep and a mild hangover I think I did pretty well.

 

 

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[Grumble]

but I burn more calories lifting than I do running... so why go the long way to the goal if I don't have to?

I run because the military makes me. So I eat cookies in defiance.

 

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[Jord]

8 hours ago, Grumble said:

 

Bad food choices

 

Cool ranch doritos and a redbull to keep me awake on my commute home. I need a healthier car option.

 

 

Pretty much anything that's not doritos and red bull.  

 

I make these protein powder PB oatmeal cups things in a muffin pan and freeze them. That's what I eat for dinner on workout days because I drive 35 minutes to go do powerlifting and leave directly from work. 

 

But if you aren't feeling martha stewart level industrious there are numerous protein bars on the market. 

 

[.TIFF]

Nice goals, I should probably work on that impulse spending myself... I really don't want to count the amount of workout leggings I have these days, lol.

[Grumble]

 

Pretty much anything that's not doritos and red bull. [emoji6] 

 

I make these protein powder PB oatmeal cups things in a muffin pan and freeze them. That's what I eat for dinner on workout days because I drive 35 minutes to go do powerlifting and leave directly from work. 

 

But if you aren't feeling martha stewart level industrious there are numerous protein bars on the market. 

 

 

Protein bars are fine, but pricey. I'm on a self imposed budget. So I might try the oatmeal things. You have a recipe you can share?

 

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[Mike Wazowski]

Homemade smoothie is another good car option. Especially if you're the type that likes sipping a beverage while you drive.

 

And following along as a fellow sweet tooth tamer!

[Jord]

1 hour ago, Grumble said:

 

Protein bars are fine, but pricey. I'm on a self imposed budget. So I might try the oatmeal things. You have a recipe you can share?

 

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1 1/2 cup of almond milk

5 scoops of vanilla whey protein powder

3 cups of old fashioned oats

1/2 cup of nuts (optional)

1/4 tsp of salt

1 tbsp of cinnamon

8 tbsp (1/2 cup) of peanut butter (but I do mine by weight)

4 tbsp of ground flax

 

That works if you don't mind them being dense and want quick and easy. You can also add baking soda and baking powder for leavening for some height and fluff in your protein cups/muffins. But they fit better in my freezer more compact. 

 

This makes 12 muffins. Baked at 375 for 20 min. 16g of protein each. Nutrients vary depending on your protein powder. 

 

I freeze them in packs of two and grab a pack on workout days. They are thawed by the time I eat them. 

[Grumble]

Taddea Zhaan These are freaking amazing. As it happens to be my alternate friday off, I got to bake! So i made them, and they almost didn't  make it into the oven.

Side note, i might be cheating because I used Cookies and Cream whey, but its all I had on hand.