June 17th 2013

Wait... is it Monday again? Who said it could be Monday again?

I seem to be getting out of the habit of blogging at the weekend. I should rectify that..

Anyway, this weekend was a quiet one for me. Given how much pressure I put on my body last week and the effect it had on me when working out on Thursday, I decided to rest over the weekend and let my body recover. I did manage to do a couple of miles of walking on Saturday morning, but over all, I kept the weekend relatively quiet.

On the food front, I stayed relatively on course with the diet. On Saturday we attended a friend's birthday barbecue (or Braai, for the South Africans in attendance) where I pretty much gorged on meat. Just meat though. Lots of chicken wings, sausage, burgers, all cleanly cooked and all carb free. Nothing more manly than a dinner consisting of meat, meat and more meat. I had a couple of burger buns but definitely had less than my 100g of carbs across the day.

Sunday, I was a touch more relaxed, in that for dinner I had fishcakes and potatoes, which was comparatively heavy on the carbs, but it was all good clean food, so I don't feel guilty about it.

Over the weekend, I also discovered something amazing. I've been struggling a bit with hunger on this diet and I do feel myself wanting to snack during the days at work, especially when people around me are munching their way through the day. So a friend recommended I try making spinach crisps. They give you the crunch and the flavour you crave, but they're positively good for you. They're also a doddle to make. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
A couple of handfuls of baby leaf spinach
1 tablespoon of oil (olive, sunflower, or vegetable)
Salt
Pepper
Whatever flavouring you want

Put the spinach in a bowl and pour the oil on top. You only need a tablespoon of it, a little oil goes a long way.  Sprinkle the salt, pepper and your chosen flavouring on top (in this case, I'm using chilli flakes) and get your hands in, rolling the spinach and flavouring around in the oil until every leaf is covered.

Pre-heat an oven to 125 degrees centigrade. Place non-stick baking parchment or non-stick foil onto a baking tray. Lay out the leaves individually, making sure they don't overlap. Place the tray in the oven and bake.

Check the leaves after 10 minutes. Some leaves will cook faster than others. You want them to dry out and the oil to dissipate. It took about half an hour of mine to be ready in total. If you want, you can turn some of the bigger leaves over halfway through.

Once they're cooked, take the tray out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes. Once they're cool, serve and enjoy.

They're so good and very moreish. Give it a try, I really like them.

Onto this week and the pressure is back on. This weekend will the point I get measured for the suit for the work event so I need to keep the intensity up across the week to try and lose as many inches as I can. Today is weigh day so later on today I'll know how much work I need to put in to try and maximise what I can for the week.

Expect my stats and another picture this evening. For now though, go and try the spinach crisps.

June 10th 2013

Is it monday again already? Ugh.

Everyone was telling me that the weekend was going to be the hardest part of my diet. That it would be a struggle to stay clean and healthy because everyone naturally treats themselves on weekend.

Well, bugger that. It wasn't any harder than during the week. I'm thinking that's because I slept in later on both days, so I had less time of actual fasting before I could eat. Either way though, it wasn't too difficult to stay good.

The hardest part of the whole weekend is when me and Mrs D popped to the cinema (saw Star Trek, brilliant film, go and see it) on saturday night. Instinctively when you go to the cinema you want the largest popcorn available and an enormous fizzy drink to wash it down with. I managed to resist, partly due to the fact that a large popcorn and drink combo is nearly £9 but also because I had earlier managed to convince myself that I wasn't going to buy sweets. Instead, I popped into Tesco on the way to the cinema and bought a bag of mixed nuts and a bottle of mineral water. Much more filling, much more satisfying and slightly quieter. I also burped less.

I managed to get to the gym on Sunday morning and walloped through a quick workout. It was much busier than when I normally go on an evening, so I didn't really want to hang around with groups of people flocking past me. I did discover a great way to keep me going at the gym, though and it's not music. Audio Books. I've been listening to the Game Of Thrones books for a while through the Audible app on my phone and it honestly wiles away the time on the cardio machines so much better than music ever could. When I'm listening to music, I'm picking the song to bits and analysing it, or I'm wondering what the next song to come on is. When I'm listening to the book, it's just the story that's happening and I get lost in the tale being told. It's a revelation, I'd recommend you try it.

Today is monday (you can imagine my displeasure) so that means it's also weight and measurement day. I'll be posting another picture of myself today too, so you can all go and compare me to last week. Hopefully I've lost a nice chunk of weight and prove that all this hard work and suffering is working.

June 6th 2013

Boom, boom, BOOM!

I've been feeling great today. A bit more energy and a bit happier. I've still been hungry enough to want to chew my own arm off, but that's to be expected, I'm a big guy who is hardly eating, you do the math.

Today at work I only managed one walk out. This was because I've been incredibly busy being awesome so there was no time for exercise. I didn't actually mind this because it was gym night tonight, so I was going to make up for it.

Tonight's dinner consisted of a rather fabulous chicken stir fry. Lots of protein, lots of vitamins, hardly any carbs. Mint. In fact, despite my allowance of 100g of carbs a day, so far this week I've averaged less than 20g a day. Double mint.

Now when I got to the gym (remember, I like to gym in the evening when it's quiet), I decided that I would have a resistance day to try and balance out the masses of cardio work I've been doing. So I kicked off with 10 mins of cross trainer and set about the weights. 

How much strength have I lost in the last year? Turns out, a lot. Especially in my arms. When I was going to the gym in 2011 I was able to push about 70kg on the chest press, today I was struggling with half of that. 

Most people would be discouraged by a revelation like that, but I'm trying to remain positive in the face of adversity and I've set myself a little challenge. You see, I've never, in my 27 years, never once done a proper, full press up. I've done modified press ups where you arch your back slightly and pivot from your knees instead of your toes, but I've never had the upper body or core strength to do them properly.

So my challenge to myself is to do 10 press ups by September. Can't be that hard, can it?

Anyway, I digress. I'm starting to feel like this diet and exercise régime is beginning to work. I'm over the intense tiredness and I'm feeling good again. The post gym buzz is even better than it was the other day.

In total at the gym I managed a half an hour of solid cardio instead of the 20 mins I managed on Monday. Win.

I'm going back to the gym tomorrow night too but the hard bit comes after that... The weekend! The part of the week where I've always given myself a cheat or treat day. I have to be so strict this month, I can't afford any slips. It will be torture...

June 3rd, 2013 part two

Hi again

So, as I promised, I have some more details for you all. I weighed myself at the gym and I've had myself measured. It's slightly grim reading but we all start somewhere:

Weight: 26.7 stone

Chest: 54"

Waist: 64"

Bicep: 13"

Thigh: 30"

So what we can glean from that is that yes, I'm a fat bastard.

Self deprecation aside, this means I'm exactly back to my heaviest weight when I started in 2011. This is annoying on several levels. Firstly, it means all the hard work I put in during 2011 has been wasted and secondly, I appear to have put all of that weight back on my stomach. Bastard body.

Anyway, I visited the gym for the first time in ages and managed to have a nice workout. 10 minutes on the exercise bike, 20 mins of resistance then 10 minutes on the cross trainer. Not bad considering my fitness is back to 0. And that I've already walked 2 miles today too.

Diet wise, I had a large, carb loaded dinner tonight. It's going to be my last carb heavy meal for 10 days, I enjoyed it.

Last of all for today, here is my weekly picture. I'll post one every Monday so you can get a visual idea of how I'm doing. If anyone notices any change before I do, please let me know.

Night all

Michael