So, I’ve been thinking about last night. I managed to get to bed without doing too much damage (ie. had dinner, but no snack) although my weight is kind of wonky this morning (higher than it should be). I ended up 315 calories over the 2300 that I should have had, and still ended at 25% protein. Of course, I drank less than half the water I normally do, and replaced that liquid with beer.

The thing is that I do kind of enjoy these once a week things, and being able to plan for them to end at 4pm (when they kick us out). What ended up putting me over was the food, not the drink. However, I don’t see me not eating while drinking 3 or 4 beers. I could drink less (and probably should) but I also don’t see that changing by much.

So… new plan. Drop Sat-Thu by 100 calories a day, and not worry so much about Friday afternoons. The only catch with this is that it might screw up my Sunday weigh-ins (we’ll see how that goes), although in the long run I should still go down from week to week. I think I’m willing to live with that for a little while.

So, food for yesterday:

Total: 2615 (25% fat, 32% carbs, 25% protein, 18% alcohol)

Breakfast: egg/egg white scramble with cheese and salsa, whole wheat pita, clementines (514)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: whole wheat pita, smoked turkey, cheese, lettuce, onion, salad dressing, apple (529)
PM Snack: beer, chicken fajita wrap (1116)
Dinner: chicken thighs, curry sauce, broccoli/cauliflower/carrots, salad w/dressing (456)
Late Snack: none (0)

I’m seriously in trouble of being over my calories today. I think the macros are probably not going to be even remotely in line, but we’ll see. I did, however, get a workout in… although kind of a sad one.

- - - -

I started off with 3 mins cardio (walking/jogging on the spot), the prescribed warm-ups, and then did:

Power Training - Strength Training (weeks 10-12)
Workout A1 (1 of 10)

1: Clean High Pull - 65t/3, 65t/3, 65t/3, 65t/3
2: Front Squat - 65t/5, 65t/3, 65t/2, 65t/1
3: Single-leg Supine Hip Extension - 5, 3, 2, 1
4: Push-ups (incline) - 5, 3, 2, 1
5: Two-point Dumbbell Row with Twist - 25e/5, 25e/3, 25e/2, 25e/1
6: Shoulder Press - 65t/5, 65t/3, 65t/2, 65t/1
7: Chin-ups (band assisted, attempts) - 5, 3, 2, 1
8: Cable Woodchop - 8, 8, 8, 8
9: Four-point Plank - 45sec, 45sec, 45sec, 45sec

Total time: 70 mins
HR monitor: 432 cals, Max: 154 (87%), Avg: 121 (69%)

I say sad because I didn’t push any of the weights up on the lower reps. Usually I would, but I wasn’t 100% co-ordinated when I started, so I just worked on not killing myself. 

A real quick post as I have homework to do and I haven’t started it. As well, I want to make it an early night.

Yesterday: 2000 cals (38%P, 25%F, 37%C)

Today: 2006 cals, (30%P, 23%F, 37%C , 10% alcohol)

Yep, 10% alcohol. We stepped into the pub for a couple of hours before our last class.

Oh, and an hour on the treadmill this morning… 396 cals burned.

Not sure what’s on tap for tomorrow. And yep, that’s kind of a pun. I’m not sure if I’ll stay after class for drinks or not. I’m honestly not that big a beer fan. I might go tomorrow and just not drink… we’ll see how that goes.

Again, I’m kind of late getting this entry made. I need to be up in 7.5 hours, so quick and dirty it is. I did manage to also get 2×30 min sessions on the treadmill in the afternoon (total cals - 415). Did lots of homework, and I think I’m pretty much caught up - until tomorrow starts of course!

Food for today:

Total: 2303 (27% fat, 40% carbs, 33% protein)

Pre-WO: protein shake (179)
Breakfast: two scrambled eggs, honey oatmeal bread, jam, clementines (352)
AM Snack: blueberry bran snack cake (103)
Lunch: turkey noodle soup, honey oatmeal bread, apple (399)
PM Snack: hummus, carrots, flatbread (236)
Dinner: turkey/beef hamburgers(2), whole wheat roll(1), condiments, salad w/dressing (695)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (339)

- - - -

I started off with 3 mins cardio (walking/jogging on the spot), the prescribed warm-ups, and then did:

Power Training - Strength Training (weeks 7-9)
Workout B5 (10 of 10)

1: One-arm Dumbbell Snatch - skipped
2: Forward Lunge - 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5
3: Romanian Deadlift - 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5
4: Side to Side Push-up - 5, 5, 5, 5 (subbed regular push-ups)
5: Bent-over Row - 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5
6: Dumbbell Alternating Press - 25e/5, 25e/5, 25e/5, 25e/5
7: Negative Chin-ups - 5, 5, 5, 5
8: Seated Russian Twist - 25t/5, 25t/5, 25t/5, 25t/5
9: Four-point Plank - 45sec, 45sec, 45sec, 45sec

Total time: 65 mins
HR monitor: 421 cals, Max: 156 (88%), Avg: 123 (69%)

I skipped the one-arm dumbbell snatch today and subbed in regular push-ups for the side to side ones. I’ve noticed that the elbow only really bothers me on single arm movements, so this seemed like the best alternative. Although I still kept in the alternating press. It was actually a pretty decent workout for an early morning one. I’ll have to take some time before Friday to do sheets for the next set of workouts.

I’ve pretty much decided to switch the Thurs AM workout to a Friday PM one. I’m better doing cardio in the morning, so I’ll do it on Thursday mornings. Although this week I may be tutoring someone (yet to be decided).

Today was a weird day. It’s kind of a long day with perhaps a couple of high pressure classes. The morning starts with Algebra, followed by Statistics. Neither are particularly tough classes (at least for me). Without a break we go into an Electricity lab, with the nutty professor. It started with a quiz that I think was very easy (just two questions), although we did two labs today, which made it time consuming. It wasn’t too bad, and we got both done (primarily because I answered some of the questions that I could before the lab). We got 9/10 on both previous labs… so I’m okay with that (I didn’t see a 10/10, so that makes me feel okay about it).

The big problem came after the lab. We had an hour and twenty minutes before CAD, and since the lab is empty I decided to head there. Technically you can’t eat in the lab (but everyone does), and you definitely can’t in the open access lab. This was a huge mistake. There were lots of people there and people are trying to complete the drawing for today (which should have been done except for the new stuff today), people wanting to compare sectional views for next week’s drawing, people asking questions about Minitab (out stats package), people asking questions about our Problem Solving lab (due Thursday).

I GOT NOTHING DONE!

I was just going to decompress after electricity and surf the net, catch up on logs, etc. I got I think one post made and never got back to it. I think Mon/Wed/Fri I’m going to take my laptop and then hide from people during my longer breaks. Last semester I took it a couple of times, and I think I had a problem with getting the wireless to work. However, even if I don’t get that figured out, I could have finished my Minitab project and worked on next week’s CAD file. I’m starting to lose my patience a little. To some extent I don’t mind helping people (if I can) since it helps me learn better. However, I can’t help everyone, all the time, at the same time.

There you go, venting over. By the time I got out of CAD (thankfully early) I had a blinding headache. I’m not sure though that some of it isn’t food related. I think next week I need to plan a lower calorie dinner and try fitting in a few snacks as well. Breakfast was at ~7:30am, Lunch was at ~1pm and I left the afternoon snack until I was home ~4:30.  So, I’ve made a list of homework to do for tomorrow (to keep me on track). So the plan is to get up reasonably early and do a session of lifting, then work on the school work.

Food for today:

Total: 2002 (29% fat, 37% carbs, 34% protein)

Breakfast: egg/egg white omelet with salsa, honey oatmeal bread, jam, clementines (413)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, sirloin steak, apple (462)
PM Snack: blueberry bran snack cake (206)
Dinner: szechwan beef stir-fry, salad w/dressing (690)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (230)

Really quick post as I’d planned on being in bed in about 10 minutes….

Today was homework, more homework, laundry, and I put together a pan on the chocolate zucchini cake (the version with the protein powder) just before dinner. There was no Sunday workout as my arm was bugging me from the typing and writing from the homework. Oh, and I reloaded one of the empty wood bins (not a huge job, just a couple of loads), and barbecued the steak out in the very cold night.

So, that was my very boring, but very busy day. I realised tonight that I had planned on transplanting the geranium seedlings, and starting a few other seeds, but that just didn’t happen. I’m not sure it’s going to happen until later in the week, or maybe next weekend. Ugh, when did I get so busy all of a sudden?

The macros are a little different than the planned ones were. The cake came out well, and I couldn’t fit all 24 pieces in the container for the freezer. So I gave a piece to my mother and had 2 pieces with my evening snack. So, a little less protein, a little more carbs and fat than planned, but well worth it. I really think with some kind of icing (even just melted chocolate chips) you could serve this to people and they would never know.

Food for yesterday:

Total: 1999 (28% fat, 42% carbs, 30% protein)

Breakfast: two fried eggs, honey oatmeal bread, clementines (402)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: mushroom barley soup, honey oatmeal bread, apple (401)
PM Snack: hummus, carrots, flatbread (236)
Dinner: sirloin steak, corn, butter (677)

Late Snack: chocolate zucchini, fruit salad (284)

This morning’s weigh-in was 245.8, which is 2.2 pounds down from last week. The 9-week loss is 9.4lbs (1.04/week) which is usually the ‘number’ I look at to see how things are going overall. At the moment I’m not too impressed with it, but the only thing I can do is go forward. It’s going to take a while to get back to where it was. The other little compulsive number I look at is how many days I’ve been ‘on plan’ primarily with food. I still consider the maintenance week ‘on plan’ since I accomplished what I wanted to. So this is day 29 on plan with food.

Next week’s plan is:

Sun: lifting
Mon: rest
Tue: lifting , other weeks maybe 60 mins cardio
Wed: rest
Thu: 60 mins cardio
Fri: lifting
Sat: cardio if needed (making up the week to 120 mins)

Calories: 2000 / 2300 lifting days, 30%+ protein

I did it again, skipped last night’s post. So, a quick recap of what I did yesterday:

Electricity homework
Most of my Minitab lab (from Thurs, but due Wed)

60 mins on the treadmill (total cals - 413)

Food for yesterday:

Total: 2007 (28% fat, 41% carbs, 31% protein)

Breakfast: egg/egg white omelet with salsa and cheese, honey oatmeal bread, jam, clementines (456)
AM Snack: blueberry bran snack cake (103)
Lunch: lentil soup with chicken, honey oatmeal bread, apple (429)
PM Snack: hummus, carrots, flatbread (217)
Dinner: corned beef, chicken & turkey sausage, cabbage w/tomato sauce, butter (496)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (307)

I keep meaning to write about my elective this semester. There were a couple of choices (War in Society, History of Technology, Video Game Culture) but in the end I chose Creative Thinking. The write-up for the class was:

“Today’s workplace is built on teamwork, flexibility and collaboration. This course develops thinking skills that many traditional business processes based on efficiency, logic, and control can’t achieve. It enables students to use their full range of human abilities, from the logical, to the intuitive, to the interactive. Students will develop skills in decision making, communication, creativity and leadership by employing artistic processes such as improvisation, performance, visual media. Creative Thinking puts art back into business. It gives students transformative skills - the ability to evolve along with a rapidly changing world.”

It sounded interesting, however, it’s turned out just plain weird. Last Friday we had to write about a painful memory and then have others critique them (in small groups). Most wrote about death, I wrote about being lost. In the end, simple participation got you 4/4 (being 4% of the overall grade). This Friday we had to listen to music clips, pick one, and do some type of improv to it. We did an imaginary patrol (with one group member sneaking up), then some imaginary sword fighting, with his death at the end. Again, participation gets you 4/4, so I’m now sitting 8/8 for the class. Basically showing up on the Friday class, and doing something silly (and creative) will get you 32%.

The rest of the marks will be two small presentations (30%), which she’s already said she’s going to be very generous with since we’re a group of strangers (ie. we’re all from different programs). Although the first presentation is supposed to be film/video and she’s talking about making us upload them on YouTube, so I’m not so sure about that. I will make a point to get any video that I do have put into electronic format in the next week or so. I’ve probably got enough old camcorder stuff that I can probably come up with something (once I know what the idea is supposed to be). There will be two take-home projects (no clue, 10% + 15%), and one test (again, no clue - 15%). And yes, that adds up to 102%.  

I think it will be a fun course overall, just not sure how much work that the take-home stuff will take.

- - -

So I was enjoying the nice warmth of the fire last night and didn’t come back to enter my food. So, I’ll do that now, and then I’m off to get some of my homework done before I come back to the internet. In fact I might to do the non-computer stuff just so I’m not tempted. 

Food for yesterday:

Total: 2291 (18% fat, 39% carbs, 34% protein, 9% alcohol)

Breakfast: protein shake with oatmeal & sour cherries, pecans (441)
AM Snack: none (0)
Lunch: whole wheat tortillas, mustard, eye of round, apple (438)
PM Snack: beer (300)
Post-WO: protein shake (179)
Dinner: turkey sausage sauce, cheese, whole wheat pasta, salad w/dressing (657)
Late Snack: protein shake, fruit salad (275)

So I got home at 3pm to find that the firewood guy had helped my mother move the wood and stack it. So, having no excuse not to, I did a workout. Although, I’m not sure that beer is a good pre-WO snack.

I started off with 3 mins cardio (walking/jogging on the spot), the prescribed warm-ups, and then did:

Power Training - Strength Training (weeks 7-9)
Workout A5 (9 of 10)

1: Snatch Pull - 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5
2: Clean-grip Deadlift - 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5, 135t/5
3: Single-leg Supine Hip Extension - 5, 5, 5, 5
4: Push-ups (incline) - 5, 5, 5, 5
5: Bent-over Two-point Dumbbell Row - 35e/5, 35e/5, 35e/5, 35e/5
6: Push Press - 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5, 65t/5
7: Chin-ups (band assisted, attempts) - 5, 5, 5, 5
8: Cable Woodchop - 10, 10, 10, 10
9: Four-point Plank - 45sec, 45sec, 45sec, 45sec

Total time: 75 mins
HR monitor: 462 cals, Max: 155 (88%), Avg: 120 (68%)

I almost talked myself out of this workout. I’m going to base Sunday’s workout though on how the elbow feels tomorrow. It didn’t feel sore during the workout, and it seems about the same now. However, if it’s not at least the same tomorrow I’ll likely drop Sunday’s workout. I had a decent amount of energy for this (although I kept the deadlifts lighter this time as well).