Training & Diet Update, Dead Lift Videos and Random Thoughts

Here’s the play by play from the past week along with some insights at the end.  Bon Apetit.

Monday

Bench Press:

225x5

250x2 (was supposed to be five)

225x2x3

Wednesday

Hang Clean and Jerk:

176x2

220x2x5

Friday:

Dead Lift:

440x3

506x2

550x1

484x2x3

Front Squat:

185x6x3

The diet is over.  The final tally is 21.4 lbs (209.5 to 188.1) lost and my body fat went from 13.1% to 8.8%.  Not too shabby for doing it over the holidays when most of America's weight is going in the other direction  I won’t say it was the toughest thing I’ve ever done but it was up there.  I thought it was going to be over four weeks ago but Lance and I decided to push on.  Well,at least I did.  I've never been sub 10% before.  The hard part is going to be staying there.


Here's the finished product.

Bathroom selfies FTW.

One thing that kind of surprised me was that my lean mass dropped by almost 10 lbs.  The more I thought about it the more I realized it’s due to a few reasons.  The biggest one being that when I did the initial weigh in I was bloated and my muscles were full of glycogen (glycogen is the storage form of glucose).  This extra water and muscle glycogen is usually the first weight that is lost on a diet.  The second reason was that I did an herbal cleanse.  This removes toxins and built up junk from your system.  The third reason is that with Intermittent Fasting old, damaged proteins are removed from the muscles.  Over the long term this protein breakdown is a bad thing, but in the short term it’s good.  Either way, it’s time to build that number back up.

Like I said last week I’m going to slowly bring my weight back up trying to stay as lean as I can.  If I feel like I’m getting a little too puffy I’ll cut back the calories for a bit. 

I’m going to keep doing Intermittent Fasting as I think it fits well with my schedule for the most part.  I’m going to play around with different protocols and see which ones I like and don’t like.

One that I’m going to try is the every so often cheat and then fast for 24-30 hours.  And when I say cheat I mean it.  Nothing is off limits for a period of time and then no eating for at least 24 hours.  The cheat days will more than likely be Saturdays with Sunday being the fast day since I don’t usually do anything very physically taxing on Sundays anyways. I am going to be eating a ton for the Super Bowl.  Super Bowl Sunday is the second biggest eating day in America, only trailing Thanksgiving.  I fully plan to do my part.  On the menu are ham sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches, Italian beef sandwiches, meatball sandwiches, conglomerations of all four of those, along with a whole host of other sides and desserts.  It could be along the lines of epic.


And who do I want to win the Super Bowl?  I'd actually kind of like to see both teams come down with dysentery and both lose.  I'll also be rooting for the Halftime Show to be cancelled.  Madonna?  Really?  I bet this year the Puppy Bowl has it's highest ratings ever. 

In a couple of weeks I’ll be traveling up to Wausau with what I’m sure will be a great group of kids to do the annual Wunsch Family Foundation Circle of Friends Winter Trip.  This is going to be my fourth Winter Trip and it will be the 14^th or 15^th overall.  This trip is always a blast.  All of the kids either have cancer or have had cancer.  We go skiing, snowmobiling, tubing, cosmic bowling, and do a bunch of other fun stuff.  It’s always one of the highlights of my year.

I probably pushed a little too hard on the dead lift today.  Back is going to be angry with me for a few days.  It’s nothing that some soft tissue work can’t work out, but I have to keep the big picture in mind.  Either way I’m happy with a 550 lb. pull at 188.

Speaking of which, a small part of me wants to trumpet that I did X times my bodyweight and talk about how cool I am.  But a bigger part of me isn’t going to fall into the body weight argument trap.  Strong is strong no matter how much you weigh.  People that want to point to body weight multiples to justify their numbers probably aren’t that strong anyways.  A 550 dead lift is decent but in the grand scheme of things it’s just that, decent.


Here's videos of today's lifts:











And with that, that's it, that's all, that's all there is.  Have a great weekend.

Related Posts:


Diet Update and Confessions of a Former Fat Boy

Intermittent Fasting: A Few Talking Points

F+(Pb) or (Ch)=Y...my theorem on the properties of peanut butter and/or cheese.