Real Life Fitness – Getting Fit With Brent

Goodbye 2012! You were a fun, yet difficult year for me when it comes to fitness.

2012 never really got going for me with exercise. Starting the year with shoulder pain and ending it with shoulder surgery made upper body resistance impossible. I managed a round of Insanity, attempted to start another round, hit burn out, had to quit P90X2 due to shoulders, and things went downhill from there.

I did learn a bit about myself and something I need to work on. I obviously suffer from a seasonal depression called S.A.D. It is nothing that I think I will need major intervention but something that I am going to have to adjust around. It affects how I eat, how I feel, motivation to exercise, and other things that have typically caused weight gain in the fall.

So I start 2013 like this:

I’m back to a state with my body that is not pretty. I have a lot of fat to lose. I feel bloated from around 2 weeks of extremely poor eating

I am rehabbing from a labrum repair. This has kept me from doing much exercise

I am having another surgery sometime in the next 1-2 months.

I have a lot of obstacles to overcome to get to where I want to go. I am in a very positive mental state to get there though. I am restarting a paleo/primal diet. I am going to use a local facility for cardio and and leg training. My goal is to quickly de-bloat and start the fat burning process.

My goal is to be back down in the 160′s as quickly as possible. Last year when I did this I got down to 175 (from 190) in a matter of 2 weeks. I have a bit more to lose this year but know I can do it.

When fall rolls around I have to be prepared to fight the depression. I hope by then to be back into P90X workouts and be fully rehabbed on both shoulders.

I also plan to use a few of Beachbody’s supplements. I am starting out with not using Shakeology everyday. I will go the first 3-5 days without it to allow my body to start coming off of the large amounts of sugar I have consumed. My first 3-5 days will be hard. I will be focusing on LISS cardio. I will incorporate strength training in once I feel I am past the sugar detox phase.

Here’s to 2013!

Brent Nutrition And Diet, Primal/Paleo Eating, Shoulder Surgery diet, paleo diet, primal diet, reflections, weight loss

P90X Plyo was a challenge today.

Yesterday was a two workout day (Chest and Back in the morning, and the PT in the afternoon).  To compound things, I got to bed late last night.  I had a cramp in my leg overnight which woke me up.  And then, I woke up ahead of my alarm clock.

Yeah, I know….woe is me.  It was just a rough night after a fairly tough day exercise wise.

So when I got into P90X Plyo X today, I was a bit (understatement) tired.  A lo w carb diet, not great sleep, etc, just makes it a bit harder.  It was a challenge from the start.  But I completed the main workout (skipped the bonus workout due to running behind), and felt exhausted by the time all was said and done.

Based on the cramp in the leg, I’m drinking more water tonight and, if I have more, will take in part of a banana tomorrow just to get the extra potassium in me to help with them.  I’ve had them fairly regularly over the last few weeks.

Today’s meals:

Breakfast – Shakeology + 2 eggs scrambled

Lunch – Chili and veggies

Supper – Fajitas on lettuce

My goal for the rest of the month is to cut down on dairy.  I’ll leave butter in as a cooking fat (and maybe some in a sweet potato), but going to cut out most of the cheese and use heavy cream as a occasional indulgence with my food.

P90X Shoulders and Arms tomorrow.  Hopefully this left bicep tendon doesn’t act up!

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating P90X, p90x plyo, paleo, paleo diet, primal diet

This week I’ve restarted P90X to incorporate the upper body workouts.  I still have a slightly modified schedule (doing Kenpo at the beginning of the week instead of the end, to keep my PT days lined up with my resistance days), but today brought Chest and Back back into my world.

A couple of rules I had to implement:

1.  No pull-ups going beyond 90 degrees.  Doing that fine with Legs and Back, so easy to do that here.

2.  Lighter weights on all row exercises.   May increase soon, but want to start light weight and focus on form.

3.  All push-ups from the knees.

4.  If I feel pain, back off.  Keep in pain free range of motion.

So a lot of it was an experiment at first.  I did notice my right shoulder bothering me some, so I had to cut the range of motion down quite a bit.  I had no problem doing that as the point of doing this is to keep strengthening and get some exercise outside of PT on MWF’s.

Overall though I’d rate today a success.  I completed the workout.  No, not nearly as hardcore as I used to be, but complete nonetheless.

And did so without aggrevating things, which is good.

Primal food today was good:

Breakfast:  Shakeology, 1 egg, 2 slices of bacon.

Lunch:  Lots of Romaine lettuce, some shredded carrots, some bell peppers, half a on the vine tomato, some green pepper, and left over pork roast.

Snack:  1oz macadamia nuts

Supper:  6oz filet mignon, 1 cup mixed veggies sauted in butter, and a sweet potato with some butter, small dollop of sour cream, and just a small amount of cheese (had to get the fat content of this meal up!)

This was probably one of the most satisfying meals I’ve had.  I’m not a big fan of taking that much carb at night, but based on how much training I did today I felt the extra little bit was warranted.

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating P90X, p90x chest and back, p90x paleo diet, p90x primal diet, paleo diet, primal diet

If you look at The Primal Blueprint and think about the outline of fitness Mark Sisson gives in the book, yoga would probably fall under the rest/walk days.  Nothing too strenuous, some stretching, some light resistance work (body weight only), and some sweat, but nothing overboard.

Well, at least that’s how I view the yoga.

Decided to chicken out of doing P90X2′s yoga and stuck with Fountain Of Youth (48 minutes is big reason why).  I also wanted to do this one to test my shoulders.  Here is what I learned:

- Push-ups still bother me slightly at the bottom in the left arm.

-  Side arm balance is still not comfortable, but if I strengthen/tighten the arm muscles and push harder against the floor while doing this, I experience less pain.  Definitely something I’m going to discuss with my therapist as I think we may be able to correct the muscles to handle this.

But overall a good yoga session.  I need to work on my hips and hip flexors.  I was feeling it in the Warrior 3 series!

Today was an okay diet day.  Nothing off the diet (too far):

Breakfast – Primal smoothie (which I will not do again) with 2 eggs from free range chickens.

Lunch – Chef Salad with ham and salami and jack cheese, lettuce, sweet red peppers, some  tomato, and other veggies that I cannot remember.  House dressing (which I thought was made from EVOO, but after eating I’m doubting it was…bad Omega 6 day).

Supper – Chili.  Barely any pork rinds to go with it.

I’d say my carb and calorie count was low, but oh well.  It was one of those days where I was stressed enough to want to eat off the diet, but I refused to stray too far (the dressing being about the worse thing for me).

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating P90X, paleo diet, primal blueprint diet, primal diet

Plyo day.  I forget how week 2 can seem to be tougher.  You think week one is tough, but week 2 seems to exhaust you more.  Less pain, just more exhaustion.  Maybe is because we push harder because the pain is less.  Maybe we think we survived week one, we push harder week 2.

So I pushed harder.  And I actually stopped a bit early due to running behind.  But hey, I had already burned through almost 600 calories, even stopping early!

Yesterday my carb intake was moderation.  Shake for breakfast (only around 23g), salad at lunch (15g maybe?), veggies at dinner (another 20g maybe?), so I think I was between 60-70g.  But sleep last night was not good.  Well, slept fine, just did not get enough.  I did wake up on my own, but it was less than 7 hours of sleep.

So…with that, and knowing my body is still in the converting to fat burning instead of carb burning, and not getting sleep, Plyo felt that much more rough.

But contrary to my title, I don’t think Plyo made me grouchy…just thought it was catchy!  Rather, I think the sleep, the conversion process, and the exercise contributed to me being more tired.  So speaking of which, it’s almost bed time.

But here is my intake today:

Breakfast – 4 slices bacon, 3 eggs, sweet potato, some scallions, all cooked and put together in one big hash.

Lunch – Salad.  Some chicken.

Supper – New York Strip with Cajun butter, lots of veggies

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating p90x calories burned plyo, p90x plyo, paleo diet, primal blueprint diet, primal diet

I’ve been asked this a couple of times now:

Are you watching your cholesterol with this new diet?

It’s a fair question.  In fact, I’m glad that people are concerned about me enough to ask if this is going to hurt me or not.  But I’ve done a lot of reading from Mark’s Daily Apple and other sites and have come to this conclusion:

Fatty foods do not raise cholesterol.  Carbs do and high levels of Omega 6′s do.

The SAD (Standard American Diet) would have you believe that fat from most sources is bad for you, especially animal sources.  They also want you to believe oils like Canola oil are good for you. They have it backwards.  Animal fats are good for you, and even better for you if they are raised in a natural way (grass fed and grass finished, and not in large feed yards where they eat nothing but grains and stand in their own feces).

The problem is, so many of our fats contain a higher ratio of Omega 6′s and not the heart healthy Omega 3′s.  The more this ratio is out of line, the more likely things will go wrong (such as a higher cholesterol profile, bigger risk of inflammation, heart issues, etc).  Thank you conventional livestock raising!

But grass fed meats and pastured, free range eggs contain a roughly 2:1 ratio of Omega 6/3.  With some basic fish oil supplements, you could easily achieve a nearly 1:1 ratio of Omega 6/3 which would be near optimal and pretty darn good for you.

Ok, so you’re probably wanting my sources.  I’m going to link some articles from Mark’s Daily Apple, and he has a lot of other references there.  Do the research, do the digging, and you’ll see that I’m not crazy for doing this diet.

The Definitive Guide To Cholesterol

Mark Sisson Is Not Afraid of Fat

Rethinking Diabetes and Cholesterol

The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fat

You can do your own digging from these sources.  But go back and also review some of the success stories from his website and see people’s physical reports.  You’ll be shocked how a diet like this can actually improve your numbers.

Brent Nutrition And Diet, Primal/Paleo Eating cholesterol, paleo diet, primal blueprint, primal diet

Greetings all!

If you’ve read any of my post over the last little bit, you’ll see I’m making a big change to eating via The Primal Blueprint.  Honestly it is something I’ve considered and planned to do for nearly 2 months and I’m excited to jump in feet first (or mouth first, in this case).  It’s a daunting change and day one proved to be fairly easy to handle overall.  I’m probably a ways to perfection, but I can honestly say I ate well!

Of course, the entire concept of eating Primally is to eat similar to how Grok did, which may mean you do not eat 3 times a day.  And while I ate three “meals” (or just 3 separate times), they all occurred between the hours of noon and 8pm, a very similar schedule to an intermittent fasting regiment.  Intentional?  Nope…stayed up too late last night from New Years Eve, slept in this morning, and just could not squeeze breakfast in by then.

I started out by exercising:  P90X Kenpo X.  Having not done this one in a while, and exercising in a fasted state, I was pleased that I had enough energy to complete.  Not a problem.

And then, it was time to start eating.  Three egg omelet with onion, bell pepper, some cheese, topped with homemade salsa, and a few strawberries.  A great primal start (and a tasty one too).

That was a fairly small meal.  It was very, very low carb.  So for an afternoon snack, I had to concoct something with Shakeology.  I knew I needed the carbs, the shake has 17g of it (all healthy carbs), and I had plenty of wiggle room.  So I did a shake with 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 8oz almond milk, and 1 tbsp almond butter.  It was very good, but I do not like the taste of sucralose in the whey protein.  Time to order some of Beachbody’s whey with fructose (slightly more carbs, but anything is better than chemical sweeteners).

For supper, it was time to dine well.  We decided to do a beef pot roast (more specifically, it was a eye of round roast).  Potatoes were off limits to me right now, but we cooked some in there anyways.

We made the mistake of not thawing the meat well, and with as tough as this roast was made us think of ideas to tenderize the next one.  I’m leaning towards greek yogurt or buttermilk with spices….

Plus, since it thawed late, we did not cook it on a slower cook temp.  So while the meat tasted fine, it was a bit tough.  Lesson learned with the beef roast (we usually do pork roast, but this came in a rather large meat package we purchased).

Along with the roast and the veggies with it (potato, carrots, and onion in with the roast), I took some butter and a veggie meddly and sauted it all up (had broccoli, cauliflower, zuchinni, squash, and carrots).  But for the experiment, I made a gravy….primal style!

This was quite an interesting event.  The basics were all the same:  butter and broth.  But, the problem was avoiding flour.  My wife makes awesome gravy, but it has the white grain powder I’m avoiding.  So I used some arrowroot instead.  It worked wonderfully!  The viscosity and consistency was a bit like egg whites, but it coated the meat well and was very tasty!  Now that I know I can do it, it will be a staple in the diet.

Now, I can tell I’ve eaten less overall.  And I can tell I’ve had much less carbohydrates today.  I did have one piece of 90% dark chocolate and one strawberry post supper for dessert.  But my overall calories are in check, my carbs are definitely in the Primal Blueprint 50-100g range, and I feel fine.

I expect the wall to hit around day 4-5 though.  I’m mentally prepping myself for it (my wife is bracing for me to go through it too).

Speaking of all of this, admission time (I don’t mind telling on myself):

I gained quite a bit of weight back over the last 3 months.  Actually, I gained a LOT back. Most of it came within the month of December.  Cruise, Christmas, parties, just a bad thing.

But more than anything, I ate grotesque amounts of sugar laden desserts!  I knew coming into today that not only the reduction in carbs would be hard (as well as weening myself from caffeine drinks again), the detox from all of the sugar would be a pain.  So far, no major issues.

But, before measurements were done, pictures taken, and I hope that the combination of P90X and Primal Eating will produce some great results over the next 3 months.  A lot of people notice changes within the first 30 days of Primal eating.  I’m on day 1.  29 day days left!

Grok on, and BRING IT!

Brent P90X, Primal/Paleo Eating P90X, paleo diet, primal diet, the primal blueprint