Abs

March 25, 2008 After The Diet, Changes, Goals No Comments

Today in the mirror while stretching my arms up to do something I caught some definite stomach definition. Top two abs are peeking through as they say. Yes! I’m on track too my current body fat percentage is about 12% which is about right for seeing what I’m seeing.

So I said I’d see what I wanted to do at 12% and what I want to do is keep losing body fat and maintaining muscle mass which is what I’m doing at the moment. I’m dropping very low amounts of muscle each week for about a kilo or more of fat and I’m happy to continue doing this until I’m at 10% which should be well within the time frame I set.

The Future After The Diet

February 13, 2008 After The Diet, Goals No Comments

I’m here at Wednesday night in the second week of the transitioning stage and I’m just thinking about what I’d like to do moving forward after this coming Sunday. I’m planning what I’m going to eat, getting an idea of recipes I could make and setting a regime and target for the four weeks after that.

Diet

This isn’t diet as in the Velocity Diet but diet as in the food that I’ll be eating, calorie restrictions and PCF splits etc.

The first thing I wanted to work out was how slowly I’d like to lose this remaining weight. I would like to do it at a rate of 1kg per week. Some people will say that’s too quick and 0.5kg a week is a good amount but I’m picking 1kg and we’ll see how it goes strength and lean body weight wise.

The guidelines I’m using are to have at least 1g of protein per lb of body weight and to keep carbs at about 100g not including fibre. The rest of my caloric intake will be from healthy fats and that’s what I’ll use to yo-yo my calories between workout and non workout days.

I’ve worked out that on non-training days I want to eat about 1650 calories and on training days I’ll eat 2250 calories for a one hour weights session. On non-training days I’ll stick to 100g of carbs and on training days I’ll add 40g of carbs. I’ll consistently get at least 1g of protein per lb of body weight and the rest of my energy needs for the day will come from healthy fats.

What I’ll Mostly Eat

I’ll be eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of fibrous vegetables to get me full for very little carbs. So good ones are eggplant, broccoli, brussel sprouts, sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage and I’m already eating most of these every day. I’ll also be using sweet potato and pumpkin a bit and onion is a great flavour for most things. Portion sizes of each vegetable will probably be about 150g except for potato and pumpkin and the like and I’ll have two to three portions per meal. That’s a lot of veges, and it’s very filling.

Other salad type veges I’ll be eating a fair bit will be lettuce, tomato, olives, mushrooms and celery. All this stuff is easy to prepare and fills you up for a while and energy content is virtually nothing.

For protein I’ll be eating lean beef, kangaroo, chicken breast and fish, I’ll be mostly eating chicken and kangaroo though but beef can be quite lean if you get the right cuts and fish oil is very good for you. Portion size for most meat will be about 150g though fish will more likely be 200g and I’ll be having meat three times a day. The fish will range from fresh fish to tinned fish such as tuna and kippers.

I’ll be having a protein shake probably twice a day sometimes three depending on activity. I’ll have one first thing when I get up in the morning and probably one before bed.

For healthy fats I’ll be eating avocado, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, nuts, fish and olive oil.

So meat, vegetables and protein powder will make up the majority of my food intake. Other things that I’ll be using though will be yoghurt, cottage cheese, milk, fruit juice and fruit, some grains. All of this stuff will be in small amount though.

Things I won’t be eating very much at all, if at all, will be bread, fatty meat and pasta off the top of my head.
Goals

So at this stage the goal from this point on is to lose about 1kg per week, if I go faster than that then I’ll begin to increase calories to compensate. My overall goal is to be 93kg by the beginning of April, but I will be pretty happy to get under 95kg by then. That gives me six weeks to lose 6kg to get the goal or to lose over 4kg in six weeks to be happy.

My longer term goal is to be 92kg or less by my birthday, which will be in 10 weeks. That gives me 10 weeks to lose 7kg and if I’m not on track by the beginning of April of being below 95kg then I will do another V-Diet run to get there.

So that’s the picture moving forward. At 92kg I will be about 12% body fat. I’ll consider what I want to do at that point but I think when I get there I’d like to get into the 10’s. That’s a goal not worth considering yet though.