Fitness Safari

Wow! What a difference eating right makes regarding strength. I've been in and out of gyms for 20 years and never have I actually paid attention to the correlation between my performance in the gym and what I was shoving down my throat. I've been writing lately about how I felt like I had stalled - even taken a step backward in strength (bench)...well, I took an honest look at my habits outside of the gym and had to admit I had gotten lazy. I had stopped counting calories, I was drinking wine every night and was unsuccessfully fighting severe cravings for Oreos. I was also eating a paltry amount of protein each day. I was feeling tired, sluggish and my performance in the gym was going backwards. With all of these lapses, the one thing I have stuck with is the IF. In fact, not eating for 16 hours a day is quite easy for me now and probably the only reason I didn't gain all of my weight back in the past few weeks. Despite my crappy diet, my weight held pretty steady at around...

Traveling again - I'm in Wichita this week. Yee-haw! Nice place. I actually kind of like it here. The folks are all very nice. There's no traffic that I have seen and the pace of life feels a bit less frantic - that is, until I get to the office. But hey, I have a job. I mostly love my job and I totally love the people I work with. With the 12-hour work days we've been putting in, I haven't had time to workout, but I'm keeping the diet pretty on par with leangains... The lunch options don't afford me the opportunity to really protein up, so I've been keeping them very low carb and as much protein as is possible. I didn't pack protein powder, but I did bring beef and turkey jerkey and some of those packs of mixed nuts for emergencies. Since I'm way low on calories, I've been trying to load up at the only real meal I get each day - Dinner. On Monday I had the top sirloin with a double serving of veggies. That white stuff on the top of the meat is c...

Lunch today: 8 oz rotisserie chicken (white and dark meat) 7 brussels sprouts (sauteed) 4 organic strawberries The nutrient breakdown is as follows (I forgot to add the couple tsp of bacon fat I cooked the sprouts in, so the fat is actually a bit higher than posted below). Click the picture to enlarge. All in all, 52 g protein, 20 g carbs, and 530 calories. Just under half of my allotment of 1300 for a rest day. Dinner is ribeye steak (probably about 6 oz, broccoli-cauliflower mash, green beans and some blueberries in protein milk for dessert. Mmmmm...too bad I'm really not that hungry yet. Not sure how I'll eat 90 more grams of protein before 9 pm.

I went to bed last night stuffed to the gills. I had 177g of protein yesterday and my total allotment of 1,326 calories and yet I lost another pound. Then, I was really hungry this morning and was prepared to devour every morsel of my 4-piece of Grilled Caribbean chicken I got at the grocery store, but I couldn't finish it. I'm not sure if it's because my body gets tired of eating chunks of protein or what, but after making quick work of a wing and two drumsticks, I only got halfway through the breast. I seem to get full fast, then hungry again pretty quickly after eating - even after STUFFING myself with protein and veggies. I'm planning a cheat day on Sunday where I will eat something fatty and sweet so my leptin levels can climb again and kill this constant hunger. Just so you know, I don't feel like I'm starving all of the time. The feeling is more like what you get an hour after eating Chinese food - you know you just ate, but you could probably eat a bit m...