Here is an interesting website i found called Sugarstacks. The purpose of the website is to help illustrate the amount of sugar that is in some products by photographing them beside the equivalent amount of sugar cubes.
On another diet related matter. My cousin over a ten week period has lost 12kgs and 36.5cms. That is quite amazing. To a achieve this she went on a rather strict eating plan and PT. Quite an amazing feet. kudos to Her
Is fat our enemy?
Im a big fan of RATM and I am a big fan off fat. Unfortunately being a fan of fat has not been that good to me in the past as i don't discriminate what fats I eat. I was just reading about benefits and side effects of low fat food, and all is not good. The argument put forward by the author was the effect of fat reduced food like certain yogurts on the market. These products are still high in sugar and apparently due to the lack of fat the sugar is absorbed much faster creating a larger insulin spike. I will look into this more as i am very interested in how insulin levels effect our over all health.
I have never been a fan of fat reduced foods, they seem to be in the same league as decaffeinated coffee. What can I say, I am just not kind of guy that can order a skinny latte.
Last night I watched the latest episode of BBC Horizon program. Last nights episode was tilted "Why Aren't Thin People Fat" The theme of the program was to see why some of us are over weight and some people seem unable to put weight on.
The episode focused on a group of volunteers who all fit the 'I eat what I want and never put on weight' profile. The experiment had the volunteers dramatically increase there calorie intake for four weeks while limiting exercise.. What they found that all of them put on some weight but the results were varied. What they found was that some of the volunteers had trouble actually eating the prescribed calories and would throw up if they forced it two much.
The most interesting results was for the volunteer who had the smallest increase in body weight actually put on more muscle than fat. With extensive testing they discovered that his metabolism had dramatically increased to deal with the added calories, his body was fighting to stop him putting on extra fat.
A professor from Columbia University was interviewed. His research was to determine why peoples weight does not fluctuate more. Through his research he has calculated that for the average persons weight gain over there adulthood would have them only increasing there daily recomended intake by the calories of one extra fried chip. His hypothesizes is that people are unable to regulate there eating habits that precisely and therefore the most rational exploration is our bodies have a predetermined weight it wants to stay at.
Some of the themes during the episode were
- It appears that some of our predisposition for body weight is determined before we are born. This is due to our mothers physical condition and age while pregnant.
- Our ability to know when we are full varies from person to person. This was demonstrated with a charming experiment conducted with preschool age children.
- The number of fat cells in determined during our adolescence and stay with us for life. This does not mean that you will be fat for life but if you were over weight as a teenager you will have a harder time keeping weight off when you are older.
- Chocolate is yummy and packed full of calories.
- What goes in our mouth is not the only deciding factor on our weight.
- yes, there is evidence that our mothers are some part to blame (as if we didn't know that already)
All the people that took part in the experiment had no trouble returning to there pre weight. Just another example that there body know were it wants to be.
Something i would like more from the episode is how the volunteers got there calories. There is strong evidence that calories from one food is used differently by the body than other sources. I believe that this should have been discussed in the program.
For more information [link]
Now to Last nights workout.
We had a new face at the gym last night plus an old one return. I took some time out of my program to help supervise. I wanted to make sure the new recruits weren't to eager. I still completed some work sets but my over all work load was less than normal.
Squats: I was going to have 140kg as my work sets but the first set was way to easy so jumped up to 150kg. Still having trouble getting a consistent depth.
Press: Skipped most of the warm up sets. Put 80kg on the bar. First rep was good and strict but the others required some assistance from my legs.
Deadlift: Only managed 4 x 140kg. Back is a good sore to day and I am hoping that hopefully this will encourage some adaptation.
Now 140.4kg is a lot of weight to lift, unfortunately it is not my new record for benchpress but how much I now weight. I know that all my body measurement are going the right way so this should be an indications that I am putting on muscle and not fat. But unfortunately this is still a lot of wight to move around. My understanding is that my body is starting to use the food I eat to help create muscle instead of storing it as fat, this is a good thing. But I really do not want to get heavy, my goal is not be a 'Super Heavy Weight.' The big guys are incredible athletes but I want to be also more mobile. I know what I need to do, cut down food intake, good to know though that my body is starting to adapt.
Some more good news is that I just took stomach measurement again and it is now down to 128cm. This might be just down to fluid loss, I have just been down in Melbourne and the heat was just stupid. On Wedensday the temp was 44c. It is hard to keep fluids up when you are walking around in that heat.
On Friday we did Elizabeth. My time was 9:11 with assisted Dips. There was a bit of contention about if the cleans were just get the bar up or if it had to be caught in the squat position. If any one had Coach on record stating which it would be that would be great. My understanding is that we are after power output there fore the faster we move what ever helps us do that the better. To me it is simular to the kipping verse strict pullups argument. But I do understand that a clean strictly should be catching the weight with the hip crease below parallel.
I was just reading an article on the BBC website. The title of the article got my attention 'Obesity set before age of five.' The article talks about children already have their excess body weight before school age and that percentage staying with them as they get older. I have always had a little extra around the waist but at this point in time i am determined to get the weight down.
article in question BBC.co.uk
There have also been some good studies on how people who hang around with over weight people begin to gain weight, one theory is that there idea of normal body weight changes to what is around them. Well good news for me, The new ball and chain defiantly does not fall into the over weight category and is a work out machine. Now if I like it or not, (I have to admit I like it) she is the person I spend most of my time with. So this should give me added support to loose weight. Plus there is two other incentives, I enjoy working out with her and her obsession with Jason Statham's six pack gives me fuel to work harder
Last nights workout changed a little from the planed program. One of the guys I work out with had a crook knee so we changed things to fit him him. our emphasis was still on the 3x5 program, just starting with upper body work first then hitting the legs.
Starting with Bench I over anticipated my work out put. Warm up was good but I put my work sets as 110kg. I have not lifted that weight for a while and I cant now. I only got 2 reps out at that range, I then moved down to 105kg, I completed on set at this weight but there was nothing left in the tank for the third set and I had to finish on 100kg.
Next we worked on our chins. My program was as follows.
2x5 Black Band
1x5 Green Band
1x3 Green Band
1x1 No Band.
Every thing went well but still could not punch out that one unassisted rep at the end. To complete that rep i still needed some assistance from Shaza holding my feet. I am slowly getting stronger and look forward to freeing my self from the bands.
Shaza and Nick hit the bar with weighted chins. Nicks progress is amazing but that is what beginners do.
Next i just worked in with shaza when she was doing squats. I just used the same weight as her but working on my front squat. my work set ended up being 2x5 @ 70kg. Really concentrating on depth and abb control.
To finish things off i did some kettlebell work. My goal is to see how many snatches I can do in two minutes. But in stead of hitting hell for leather like I did with the bench, i am going to work up to it. My plan is to work on a running clock for two minutes but setting a certain number of reps per 30sec cycle. There was a little bit of miss communication between my time keeper and I but that was quickly sorted out. I ended up doing 15/10/10/10 I will next time just sit on 12 for each set.
This morning we hit the crossfit work out Fran. What Joy. I posted what looks like a really good time but I still needs to use a band for Chins. I am going to address this by adding chins to the 3x5 Work outs and really work on getting some decent chins out.
The other problem I had this morning was depth in the Thrusters, I just have not recovered from Wednesdays squat session. I put this down to two things. 1) that was my first real squat session in over a week so I am sorer that usual. 2) I need to look unfortunately at diet, as this can really influence ones recovery.
My Girlfriend always has a Protein shake and work out partner Steve has his own supplements after his workouts. Now these two are easily the fittest people I work out with but this is not the way I want to go. Coach Greg Glassman promotes the Zone diet for crossfitters as he believe that in helps with recovery times. I have looked into the 'Eating plan' and have spoken to people that are very keen on it. It is a very strict program and will take a lot of effort to adapt my eating habits to be zone friendly.
Fran 4:46 (Blue Band)
I broke and had a soft drink, and it was good. I believe that a lot of the temptation started with the hamburger I was eating, somethings just go mighty good together.
Or an antidote to not being an axe murder.
I have really started to reel in the old eating. One of my biggest problems is i don't eat regularly enough. I am a man with a big girth so people obviously think that I am feeding that gut 24/7. That is not the case at all. I am a man that unfortunately finds sitting down to a couple of BIG meals a day more my thing, I have it down to almost an art. I aint making drastic changes yet but I am going to work on spreading it out. Consider it stage 1.
One thing I am going to try and cut out is carbonated drinks. I don't drink anywhere near what I used to but I still run down stairs for the occasional sugar fix. well at least I'm running :) Us here in Australia have not been stricken by the pandemic that is corn syrup, but still I am having to much of a sugar spike in the afternoon. The only exception to this will be if there is whiskey in my drink, cant give that away, that would just be stupid.
Lets see how we go.
Day 1
