<p>Ran one mile and did office weights. You might ask why I bother with running one mile - it gets me to my weekly goal of 15 miles and it’s a good warmup for weights.</p>
<p>Low is a relative term. The Atkins induction is 4% which is pretty scary to me. I think that my norm is about 50% or higher. idad says about a third. I don’t think that there are any major issues going to a third, especially with the compositional stuff that I found on the web.</p>
<p>What I’ve picked up this week is IT for losing weight and a compositional approach that makes some sense to me. The IT stuff on its own would be good enough for a sustained approach but I’d like to see if the other stuff is an added bonus. It would be nice to lose weight without metabolizing hard-earned muscle.</p>
<p>I also wanted to take it easy on the knees as I have three to four hours of tennis this weekend. I’m used to 90 minutes per week since I got injured. Before that it was about three hours per week. Dialing it up like that can be rough.</p>
<p>I did a little noodling around at Panera Bread’s nutrition calculator page. I wanted to see what a Greek Salad was like. A Greek Salad with dressing is over 75% calories from fat. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for carbs and protein. Overall calories are under 400 which is pretty amazing. In the past I only looked at calories - never really paid much attention to all of the other stuff.</p>
<p>That’s one of the foundations of my diet: huge massive salads loaded up with 2 TBS of olive oil, an ounce of good blue cheese, croutons, and enough lettuce, carrots, celery, Vidalia onions, and red bell pepper to mound a big dinner plate to overflowing. I’ve got it calculated in LiveStrong as 460 calories as follows:</p>
<p>75% fat
16% carbs
9% protein</p>
<p>It can be a lunch by itself or a dinner with a piece of grilled chicken or seafood or pork chop. I had it last night some sliced pork from a boneless roast I did out on the grill. I probably went over my 1000 calorie ceiling on dinner last night, but I’m not being quite as strict as I once was. Tonight I’m having pork with a high carb veggie: butter lima beans. That will come in under the 1000 cal target, which is good because I had a tuna on pumpernickle sandwich for lunch. All this lo-carb talk made me think that I hadn’t eaten a piece of bread in probably three weeks.</p>
<p>OK, I did the workout that was so much fun the other day again. Now, I’m a little better at it. I cranked the weights a little bit on a couple of the exercises, and got all that I could handle. This one is running a little long, mostly because an ol’ (formerly) fat guy doing 20 turkish get ups is just a long slow grind. I may have to cut those back to just five on each side. They are kicking my butt and I’d probably get more out of ten good ones. </p>
<p>I started to get the hang of slamming the medicine ball down on the floor a little more violently. That’s kinda fun.</p>
<p>Rear foot elevated split squats are killer. Five sets of 12 is max’d out for me. The last set was tough – and I’m not even using a super big weight.</p>
<p>I have a race tomorrow. A half marathon. This should be a good test of my recovery from the injury and my strength. There is a big hill. My daughter and son in law are running, too, and are excited. I am not excited. I am scared and nervous. My goal is to execute this race well like I did the two half marathons that I was supposed to walk and didn’t. I want to run evenly and not die at the end. The good part is after the giant hill (Whiskey Hill) miles 9-12 are a gradual downhill and mile 13 is pretty flat. So I just have to make it to that point. I have no idea of what pace I can maintain, which is why I really want to execute the race well. I want the cool medal at the end, too. Last year I had entered this race before I got hurt and went anyway. It was cold and pouring rain. I limped through 6 1/2 miles which was the first place H could pick me up on the course and I quit (I had pretty much planned to quit). This year I plan to finish.
Ugh. Why do I enter races? I am still figuring out what shoes to wear but I think Brooks Launch has the edge. Lightweight shoe suited for longer races.</p>
<p>Oh, did I mention that I had to run the snowblower this morning? Absolutely disgusting miserable – freezing rain. Six inches of slushy snow. “Just shoot me now” weather on April 1st.</p>
<p>I guess that we were a little luckier up north - it didn’t really accumulate on the ground. By the time we got home, there was maybe one inch on the roof and it was melting quickly. It will all be gone tomorrow with the warmer temperatures.</p>
<p>Went to the Y and worked out on the weight machines. Felt very good.</p>
<p>–25 Double arm KB Swings (50# KB)
–15 Snatches (35# bar)
–10/each single arm KB Swings (30# KB)
–10 box jumps (20" box)</p>
<p>We didn’t go for time tonight, but just completion. We had another co-worker who does a lot of body-building join us tonight. I think he got quite a surprise…</p>
<p>I also got my 30# KB today finally. Was funny just showing my dad how to swing it in our hallway. It’s only about 3 feet wide if that. I’m considering trying to find a class…</p>
<p>I see why this low/lower carbs thing can be helpful. I find that I’m much less hungry throughout the day with calories from fat/protein compared to before.</p>
<p>Yeah. Other than the very early going where I was breaking the binge snacking habit, I haven’t really found myself desperately hungry or hanging on the fridge looking for something to eat.</p>
<p>The theory on that is that the two energy systems work like solar power. Carbs are burned for immediate energy needs, just like electricity from solar panels when the sun is shining. But, fat is stored energy that is constantly circulating to be burned as needed (for example, to power the body at night hours after you’ve eaten) just like you would use storage batteries in a solar installation to store electricity. You could go days without eating because you’ve got this storage mechanism.</p>
<p>Insulin’s number one job is to burn up glucose (from carbs) in the bloodstream. The way it does this is to force the body to take fat out of circulation and lock it up in storage so it can’t be burned, thus maximizing the depletion of glucose. The hunger swings come because the carbs/insulin cycle takes away fat burning as a way to smooth out the fuel availability. So, as soon as the glucose is burned up, you are are immediately hungry for more fuel.</p>
<p>The problem with insulin resistance is that the body makes more and more and more insulin, which does a weaker and weaker job of burning the glucose, but forces the body to lock away the fat more and more.</p>
<p>The actual mechanism is a process of binding three fat molecules together into a triglyceride molecule that is now too big to pass through cell walls. As long as it is in triglyceride form, it is locked in place and cannot circulate in the blood stream to be used as fuel wherever it’s needed. Insulin triggers production of the binding agent that gathers up three fat molecules and forms a triglyceride.</p>
<p>I agree with this too. There probably are some individual differences, but I found out over Christmas that eating refined stuff (sugar, bread) triggers cravings and makes me very on-edge.</p>
<p>Idad, how is your wife doing? I recognize myself in what seems to be her “If I only do this better, it will work” attitude. It is hard to admit that we have been doing the wrong thing (low fat/high carb).</p>
<p>Played 90 minutes of doubles - pretty good workout and quite a strain on the joints as the people I hit with can hit some pretty sharp angles. I didn’t get tired and I didn’t feel hungry - I guess that’s a pretty good sign. I’ll be going back to the YMCA later this afternoon for the weight machines.</p>
<p>The YMCA was packed - swimming lessons, yoga classes, weight and aerobic machine rooms packed, kids playing basketball, and both tennis course booked solid. They have 6:00 AM Yoga classes now (just saw the ad on the door) so I guess that there are many getting into shape. Or at least trying.</p>
<p>I stay out of it other than to encourage her. She says that tracking her food helps; she lost four pounds this week (basically her first week). I think her approach is to go even lower fat, but I just said how thrilled I was at four pounds and she’s doing great and tracking the food really helped me and it’s a great idea.</p>
<p>It’s frustrating because she believes that she has to starve herself to lose weight, eating 1000 calories a day – which is why dieting is a such an ordeal. But, the advice here was good: the best thing I can do is just encourage her to do it however she wants to.</p>
<p>People are funny like that. When I quit smoking, I was like a sponge finding out how successful multi-year ex-smokers had done it and giving serious consideration to their suggestions. Same with dieting. If I’ve got someone I know who has lost 75 pounds, I want to pick their brain on what worked. But, that’s not usually the way it works. The mindset seems to be, “Oh, they aren’t like me. They just had it easy…”</p>
<p>You made me fire up LiveStrong and do a spot check this month on my food intake. Yesterday, I was a “bad” boy with a tuna sandwich and six clementives and a massive portion of pork roast:</p>
<p>I haven’t figured out what good or bad is at this time but am just aiming at 3 x 1/3 and I am just starting to see how easy it is to miss a composition goal. I’m at 49/23/28 so far today and am just playing things by ear. Lots of calories still left for dinner.</p>
<p>I say “bad” because LiveStrong calculates my target as 1722 calories to lose 1 pound per week with “Light Activity”. I’ve been eating more than than and losing less than 1 pound per week, pretty much as predicted. I think I probably average closer to 1850 calories these days.</p>