Dicscipline help

Lots of great advice getting thrown out at you, Shiggy. You think you will show up Monday morning?
(Merry Christmas, Bob
Strength Training, Bodybuilding & Online Supplement Store - T NATION)

I think you will. I think you better, cause I’m not going to come looking for you.

TT is a diet guru and can spell it out for you like shes playing scrabble. I challenge you to heed her (and others) advice, but to take it a step farther and understand WHAT and HOW different parts of a diet affect your body personally.

I dont keep as strict of a diet as I should, heck, when she referenced Lyle McDonald’s, all I read was McDonald’s and had to wipe the slobber off my face before it hit the keyboard. Ok, ok, its not that bad.

Im going to work with TT to try and get a little something extra incentive going. She’s very busy, but we will see…

Digdis, that’s a very good question!

What Digdis is referring to is the fact that there are two times that the body is most insulin sensitive; fasted state (upon waking) and PWO.

Actually, if Shiggy would prefer to do it that way, I have no problem. There’s no leeway on the WO days; I want all of those carbs in PWO. But on non-WO days I like to give people some flexibility. And here’s the deal: Carb choices on NWO days are made from the green veggie category, which are high in fiber. If 3 meals are P+C, that’s only 20-25g per meal, which will not elicit much of an insulin response.

If you, however, are taking in a higher amount of carbs and are looking for the times that your body is best able to process those carbs, yes, I would recommend that you take in the majority in the morning and PWO.

TT, I got Friday numbers, as you suggested: w: 208, bf: %26.5. I’m going to consider these numbers ground zero. I used the caliper five times, and I got 26.2 twice and 26.7 twice, which is how I’m getting 26.5%. The first time I got 25 even, so I’m ruling that one out. I was very careful, using a tape measure to find the spot where to measure from, and I’m getting better at getting more accurate measuring, at least I think I am. I also have a Salter hand-held tester I got at the beginning of this year, and I tried it about seven times and got different results each time, ranging over 3%! That’s money I wish I never spent…

So based on your calculations, these are the numbers I came up with to use for this week: lbm: 153 lbs, 229g protein and 61g carbs/day. Do you agree with these numbers?

I got a little scale at Staples and a heart monitor at Radio Shack, and I have Tribex and 5-HTP on the way that I should have early next week, so I’m ready to go!

One other question, TT…what if I wanted to work out 1st thing in the morning? What would be your recommendations for 1st meal/cardio, etc., or would you just rather have me keep them in the evening to ensure cardio time every morning?

Thanks!

Jeff is definitely on the right track.

If you decide to use “The Furnace”, you’re going to have to mess with it a little bit–cut the pullups out, and just hit the burpees and swings hard. It’s supposed to be a beginner program with little-to-no standalone weight training/cycled weight training.

If you need help, just PM me or start a new thread about “The Furnace”.

If I can just add to Jeff’s awesome list, here:

Sledgehammer work is also great here, shoveling snow, etc. Check out shovelglove.com for some ideas about stuff you can do with a sledgehammer. The greatest part of this is that you don’t have to get shin-splints. If you have a barbell, you can try “The Bear” for some conditioning–do a search for it.

Another option is to just keep walking. Like every other body part, your shins have to adapt to the demands that you’re putting on them. If you’ve not done a lot of cardio in the (recent) past, you’re going to get shin splints. I get them when I start walking more. So you take it easy if you’re still sore, do a couple of light workouts, hard, light, medium, hard, medium, light, etc. Mix it up, and you’ll adapt to the volume in no time, and you won’t get shin-splints any more.

Dan “Long Winded and Content-Free” McVicker

Thanks Dan. That was a really cool and creative link! My shin splints actually come from incredibly high arches and not as much from muscle development. I have orthodics but they aren’t helping too much…even jumping jacks and things like that can bother them. It’s a problem I’ve had for years. But you guys have given a lot of great suggestions and have shown me I can do several McGyver-type of exercises without even going outside. All I have to do is make sure I’m in my target heart rate and I’m off!

There’s a lot of stuff you can do.

You actually might want to pick up a copy of “Heavyhands” if you want to do stuff that’s not too rough but kicks up the heart rate. Dr. Schwartz is in his 60s (I think?) and he can still do one-handed pullups(!) and other, equally incredible stuff. I know it’s kind of queer to walk around town pumping hand weights, but the PRE (percieved rate of exertion) vs. actual heart rate is pretty incredible with that stuff–and he has a bunch of exercises that don’t even require walking.

I got my copy of Heavyhands at a used bookstore, but you can check out Amazon.com for used copies, too.

Oh, and to correct my last post, “The Furnace” was designed to be a standalone program for beginners with little to no extra weight-work. The heavy weight work is supposed to get cycled in after 3-6 weeks of “The Furnace”. I’ve submitted another article called “The Secret Weapon” that describes the kind of training that I’m talking about, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.

Anyway, I’m going to go put my headband on, put on “sweatin’ to the oldies” on my headphones and walk around town with some hand weights.

Dan “The Headband” McVicker

Shiggy, Dan McV really knows his stuff. He always takes the threads he’s hanging out on and contributing to up a few notches!!!

Well, I have to say that even though I haven’t spoken to you in a while, you sure haven’t let any grass grow under your feet!!! All the things you got are vital/critical tools. I’m not one to send people off to buy out the store, but I use my HR monitor and digital scale on a daily basis. Just couldn’t imagine trying to do what I do without 'em.

So we’ve got hard numbers and you’re off and running. Measuring with calipers will get easier and easier (and ever more consistent) with time.

You ran the numbers perfectly, even the 61g of fat per day. So protein requirements per meal are 38g.

The tribex is a good move. Cortisol and T are made from the same parent hormone. When you’re under stress and cortisol is high, there’s that much left to make T. Increasing T will not only make you feel better (and help you build more muscle), it will make less substrate available for cortisol production.

Save the morning for putting yourself into fat burning mode. That’s an every day event. Workouts should be done later in the day. Doing cardio first thing fasted state and your eating patterns are like a one-two punch. It’s like hot apple pie and ice cream. Oops. Sorry, but that’s probably not the best analogy. (grin)

If I haven’t explained it before, when you wake in the morning, liver glycogen stores are low. You start your cardio, use up available blood sugarn and further deplete liver glycogen stores. At about 20 minutes or so, you’re tapping into fat burning. Once you finish cardio you eat your first P+F meal, which elicits no insulin response. Until you spike insulin and so long as you’re eating at a slightly hypocaloric (below maintenance) level, you’ll stay in that fat burning mode for a good 12 hours. The cardio will stimulate incrased production of an enzyme called Hormone Sensitive Lipase, which is the rate limiting factor in the mobilization of stored body fat. So that’s why I have things structured the way I do.

So cardio every morning, yes, yes, yes!!!

Do you have a good workout program in place? Lots to choose from here on T-Mag, even if you have a home gym (though it might be a very nice home gym! (grin))

Check in with me next Friday and let me know how you’re doing.

Terry, Dan, and all who have helped, thanks for getting me on the right track! TT, I will stick with your suggestions, cardio in the morning and workout at night. Now that I have the scale and heart rate monitor, this coming week will be my first structured week. I have signed up with Fitday to make tracking the daily numbers easier.

The workout I am currently doing is Berardi’s that was just written in #286. This was my first week in the second phase, so seven more weeks in this phase to go. I chose this program because the olympic moves are completely new to me and I thought I it was time to get going on them. I actually do have a decent home gym, too: Nautilus rack with a Hoist bench and about 400 lbs with the bar, which is more than enough for me right now. The weights have handles which makes them useful for various forms of cardio, too. Since I have other injuries (and why ART is high on the list in the near future), and am trying to avoid more, I’m taking these olympic moves light and slow. My last piece to help with this is I need a mirror so I can watch my form. What I figured I would do after this workout is go to one geared towards fat loss (Fat to Fire, EDT, etc.).

So thanks again for the help and I’ll check in by next Friday!

The workout sounds good!!! I can see you’ve put some thought into the matter.

If I can just speak about nagging injuries, aches and pains for a quick second. I’m so glad you’re making it a priority. I started lifting at the age of 44 for the first time in my life. Lots of little aches and pains, a sore shoulder that never got better, things I lived with and worked around.

A few weeks ago I went to a physical therapist that came highly recommended. He did a full assessment, ROM, posture analysis, comparing the strength in certain ROMs bilaterally, taking note of what “hurt.”

He put together a program for me. And I’m in the process of fixing a bunch of little problems that cumulatively have been causing my injuries and chronic problems. In less than two weeks I experienced noticable pain-free ROM with my one problem shoulder. I’m thrilled at how quickly I started seeing results.

In my case, lats are weak compared to traps. The right trap is tighter than the left causing a very slight head tilt and a shoulder that wants to rise when doing side lateral raises. Pecs are tight, causing my shoulders to round. There are a few other things, but you get the idea. With the exercises he selected for me I’m correcting some shoulder instability, hyperlordosis (excessive lumbar curvature), tight wrist flexors (which are responsible for my tennis elbow). Just a bunch of stupid little things. But I consider the PT rehab I’m doing to be the single greatest investment in my (painfree) lifting future. I also plan on going for some ART in the near future. I see the PT and ART as being highly complementary.

So, yes, Shiggy, make your rehab a priority. I can’t encourage you strongly enough in that regard!!!

TT, glad to hear you are making progress dealing with injuries. It’s nice to get rid of something that nags you day after day! I have a few injuries, some that have been a problem for many years. I’ve read a lot about ART here and definitely will pursue that in the near future. I’m trying to get things on track one step at a time, and make 2004 my rebuilding year!

TT, tomorrow will be my first day doing a detailed food log. I saw on another thread that you recommended NOT counting fiber in the total carb count. Do you recommend that for me as well?

Fiber is a subset of Total Carbs. I recommend that you subtract fiber from total carbs. You’ll get a good bit more carbs (volume-wise) to eat when choosing from the green veggie variety because of the high-fiber content.

Good question! (grin)

Excellent! One other question I just thought of…on non-w/o days, you recommended the last 3 meals having 20g of vegetable carbs. Since I’m subtracting the fiber count from this, that could end up being a mighty big plate of spinach (according to Fitday, 10oz cooked and drained is about 5g of carbs after fiber is subtracted). Can I/should I eat starchy carbs with vegatables as the dominant source of carbs, or should I just pile high the spinach to get to 20g after the fiber count is subrtacted?

Shiggy, well, you’re a better man than me if you can eat 20g of what’s called impact carbs (total carb grams minus fiber grams). LOL!

I’d like to see you get the majority of carbs from different green veggie sources (different than spinach, that is, and different in general). Take a look at broccoli, asparagus, green beans and squash and some of the others I listed. Spinach is the perfect carb for one of your P+F meals. Remember that according to Berardi, you can have up to 5g of fat in a P+C meal without negative implications, and you can have up to 10g of carbs in a P+F meal.

I also like mushroom, lettuce/salad and pickles for P+F meals for the same reason; the carb count is so low.

Thanks TT…I had broccoli normandy tonight (primarily broccoli with zucchini, yellow squash, carrots and cauliflower)…I could barely get to 20g without subtracting fiber! The plate was piled high!

Today has been my first day using Fitday. It’s been really cool…I’m glad I spent all that time last night putting the customised foods in so that I could just fire it up today. Already, I’m getting accostomed to how much and what kind of food I need to put on the scale to get exactly what I need. Fitday is cool because it totals as you go, so you can look at what you just ate as well as how far you are from where your daily total needs to be. As you guys have mentioned to me, the work of tracking it is rewarding because you know exactly what’s going in you and over time can manipulate it as needed. I’m looking forward to burning through this holiday week!

All right, end of this week’s results:

W: 207 (loss of 1 lb.)
BF%: ??? I am really struggling getting consistency here, somehow even more than last week. I spent an eternety trying to get results, trying to get the exact measurement spots by using a tape measure, and was struggling getting accuracy. I’m going to use an average of 27%, putting me at 151 lbm, and needing 226 g protein and 60 g fat. Now this % is higher than last week’s, but I definitely did not gain fat. I had absolutely no Christmas binge eating and workouts were stronger, so I’m going to trust that one pound loss was almost, or all, fat and hopefully I will be able to get much more consistent measuring over the next several weeks. I also have a Salter handheld tester that I reformatted to my new stats…I got more consistency using it this week, but the percentages were much higher than the Fattrack (it put me in over 28% while the Fattrack had me between 26 and about 27.5). Anybody use either of these devices and have any tips?

The other thing I have to work on is tracking the heart rate. Looks like I went too cheap on my heart monitor…I got one for 10 bucks…you touch it with your fingertip and I get a lot of “retry” messages or drastically different readings. I think I slowed down/stopped to try to get a reading to often and thus took myself out of the heart range…in fact, I’m not even sure I’ve gotten any accurate readings, so I don’t know what pace I should be at for my target zone. That’s something I’ll have to probably look for a higher quality monitor in the near future so I can be sure I’ve got the cardio going in the right direction.

Shiggy, yeah, getting an accurate BF% on a week to week basis is going to drive you crazy. That’s why I pay to have my BF tested via DEXA at the beginning of a new program and upon completion. I like to see how much LBM I gained (hopefully) and how much BF I lost (hopefully). An accurate BF% allows me to learn how my body responds to different variables and tweak my programs.

My vote goes for paying someone you trust to measure your BF once a month with calipers. Make sure it’s the same person and that they’ve been doing it a while and have maybe worked with BB competitors. Just make sure they’re not using a one- or three-point test. We all tend to store fat differently on different areas of the body.

What you could do for yourself is to use a tape measure to measure a few key areas of your body. Definitely measure your chest and the widest point of your waist at the very least.

I’m happy with the one pound. I know you wanted more, but it takes the body a couple of weeks to settle into new eating patterns. You’ve put a lot of new things into place and have invested a significant amount of time into weighing, measuring, counting and tracking and recording your food intake. There are new eating patterns and cardio you’re doing. I think it’s a fabulously successful week.

Between you and me, I’d prefer to calculate the numbers a bit on the high side and adjust downward after two weeks than to start too low, lose weight way too fast and potentially lose LBM.

Good job, Shiggy!!! You survived the first week, and you’re still with us. (chuckling) Seriously, that counts for a lot.

Thanks TT. I was thinking that because I am struggling getting an accurate BF%, I may have actually lost more than one lb. of fat this week, because my readings may not have been accurate last week. My clothes are fitting better this week…there are noticable differences that I can see and feel this week. So I figured I would humbly accept the numbers over the next few weeks as a guide, whichever direction they go. I’ll do my best to get an accuate reading each week and pay close attention to what the scale shows.

What do you think I should do as far as calculating protein/fat needs? Should I accept the new average, or should I stay with last week’s numbers?

If I were you I’d just stick with the plan for at least another two weeks and let those calipers collect a little dust in the meantime.