2/21/19 morning weigh-in 192.6# Had a little bump back upward on the scale this morning. I think it’s probably water weight, I had 3 glasses of water between dinner and bedtime last night, and I didn’t wake up feeling as dehydrated as I normally do. So, maybe this is a more honest actual weight, since I wasn’t dehydrated. Still, this is my spike for the week so far, compared to 2 1/2 weeks ago where my spike was 197.6#, so I can’t really complain.
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Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder.
Lunch: Large salad = spinach,bell pepper, snap peas, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, cucumber, mushrooms, carrots, radishes, onion, olives, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. 1 can of turkey with Frank’s Red Hot. Last 1/2 giganto-apple.
Dinner: Chinese restaurant. 1/2 serving of Beijing beef. 1/2 serving of General Tso’s chicken. 1 cup white rice.
Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.
Totals for today 2120 calories, 146g protein, 199g carbs, 86g fat. My macros were a bit off today with the Chinese food, but I think the #'s I got from myfitnesspal may have been a bit off. It’s hard to judge something like that, but I’m pretty sure there was more protein and less carbs in the Beijing beef at this restaurant than what the app said. That’s okay, won’t make a huge difference in the long run. Lots of sodium, though, so we’ll see if I end up bloated again tomorrow morning.
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If the scale is moving the food choices are good!
I hate losing weight but it’s good for me right? I was starving today after last night’s session. I ended up eating 4 doughnuts today 
But no regrets
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This is a great tool, but using all lifts might be a bit tricky.
You’ve got a couple of ways to do it.
1: calculate for each main lift
2: calculate for the 4 different days, only counting the main lifts.
3: calculate for all lifts and compare every day to each other.
In fact I don’t think any is particular good, you’re doing 531 and on the 5’s week you’ll move more tonnage than on the 1 week.
If you were doing a 5x5 program it would make a hell of a sense.
One week you do reps of say, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3 then next week the goal would be more than 21 reps, that’s very ease way to see if you’ve gotten stronger.
Calculating several lifts, not so much.
For 531 the best way to see if you’ve improved would be to beat the rep pr for a given weight. It’s easy and it’s motivating to go to the gym knowing it’s squat day last time I had 315 lbs on the back I did 5 reps, I have to do 6. You do that and it’s a good session, curls, extensions, rows, calves raise don’t really matter.
Sorry Steve a long rant.
Yeah, Mort, I may be trying to overcomplicate things since 5/3/1 has a built-in metric for progress.
2/22/19 morning weigh-in 193.4# Higher again today, but I think that’s attributable to no digestive movement this morning, and some water retention. I need to keep the long view on things, and look at progress over weekly average rather than daily. This week’s average will be at least 2.5 lb lower than last week’s, which is as fast as I could possibly ask for.
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I track my workouts in an app for some reason. I guess I like being able to look at the history of each exercise including 1RM’s or e1RM’s. It’s easier than flipping through the pages of my actual training book.
I used to write down the total weight moved but I learned quickly that I didn’t understand it and it didn’t really make any sense. I can move a lot of weight on back day. Just look at my workout from yesterday. I did a lot of reps in a short amount of time. I can’t possibly do the same work with chest or shoulders. I rowed 110 for 15 reps. I can’t bench 110 lb DB’s for 15 reps, let alone follow it with a drop set at 80 and 50.
I think it could be a useful tool but it has to be used on specific lifts or a scripted day where the volume is always the same. If you’re doing the same workout every Saturday and you’re just adding weight to the bar then you can easily track progress by logging total weight moved. But if you’re doing different rep schemes and exercises then I think it’s incomparable from day to day and week to week.
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I’m tracking it just to learn from it really. It does shift related to body part moved. But if you are hitting the same body parts each workout it should be relative
I’m tracking on the Underarmour app as well, but not in as much detail as I do on here. It’s easy to scroll back to the last cycle’s iteration of the same workout and see how many reps I did. I’m going to skip on the math for now and focus on improving my AMRAP sets and raising my training maxxes, and using that as my main metric.
2/22/19 food for today
Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder. 1 navel orange.
Lunch: Skipped, driving to Kansas City.
Dinner: J. Gilbert’s Steakhouse: 1/4 of a roasted beet salad. 2 pieces of sourdough bread with about 1 tbsp butter. 1/2 of a rare 18 oz ribeye. 1/2 serving of roasted Brussels sprouts. 1/2 serving of mushrooms with truffle butter. 1 scoop vanilla bean ice cream. 1/2 of a creme brulee. 1 small cafe latte.
Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.
Totals for today 2012 calories, 185g protein, 151g carbs, 86g fat. Macros better today, and 178 calories below baseline. Dinner was excellent, but pricey for me, the wife and younger daughter. Total was $225 for 2 salads, 3 entrees, 3 drinks for the wife (I was driving), and 1 dessert (the creme brulee was complementary since it was our first time there), but totally worth it! My daughter finished hers, but the wife and I both have another meal out of it. Total for dinner alone was 1115 calories, and that was only eating half of the entree and sides, but since I skipped lunch I still came in under on total calories.
I picked there to eat because I read a listicle on the best steak restaurant in every state, and the article claimed J. Gilbert’s was the best in Kansas, so I had to try it. Worth going to, but not often at that price…
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You are making the cut look easy man. Nice work. And I regularly am jealous at the restaurants you have available up there.
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That’s awesome Steve. Man it seems like you’ve been averaging like two lbs per week. Kick ass!
Does higher sodium tend to make you hold water? I’ve always kept sodium moderately high, but don’t seem to have issues with it. I mean I don’t douse salt on everything but definately season my meat well.
I need to be better about detailing and tracking workouts. Guess I haven’t been doing it as my focus hasn’t been on strength. I like the idea of it though. Nice to be able to look back at old workouts that would now be easy I bet
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haha I read though that dinner and said to myself no way you’d be at 2000 cal’s it was actually first there it appeared to me you’d skip lunch.
That dinner looked awesome man.
I had a nice Sirloin steak on the grill yesterday. Love a good steak. I just read that dinner again, that looks so delicious.
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Well, I have to drive at least an hour to get to good restaurants, 1 1/2 hours for the great restaurants in Kansas City. My little town has a decent Mexican restaurant, an OK Chinese restaurant, a lame Americana restaurant, and fast food.
It seems to. The 2 weight spikes I’ve had the past few weeks have been when I ate a few ounces of beef jerky that had about 1000 mg/ounce of sodium, and the Chinese food, which according to the app put me over 2000 mg past my budget. I don’t add much salt to anything, and none to restaurant food, but stuff that comes with a lot of salt gets me. I’m about to do the math and see what my average was this week, so we’ll see where I landed weight loss wise.
I easily could have blown my budget even with skipping lunch. Eating half of all the entree food was my plan from the beginning, but picking the mushrooms and Brussels sprouts as the sides kept me reasonable while still tasting fairly decadent. I could have gone with the loaded Yukon gold baked potatoes and the lobster mac and cheese for the sides, and that would have been another 500 calories even only eating half of each. I also planned to skip dessert completely, but then the waitress gave us the complementary creme brulee, and my daughter got ice cream. I wasn’t going to let anything from a $250 meal go to waste, so I ate 1/3 of the ice cream and half of the creme brulee. I had assumed it was going to shoot me over, but when I put everything into the app I was pleasantly surprised. I wish I’d taken a picture of the table when all of our main courses came out, though.
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2/23/19 morning weigh-in 192.2# average weight for the last week:
2/17 - 193.2#
2/18 - 192.4#
2/19 - 191.4#
2/20 - 191.2#
2/21 - 192.6#
2/22 - 193.4#
2/23 - 192.2#
Average = 192.3#. That’s down 2.4# from 194.7# last week, very pleased with the progress. I’m sure I’ll keep seeing good weeks and bad weeks, but as long as I stay consistent and keep things going in the right direction I’m definitely on track to hit my goal ahead of schedule.
Doing my breakfast shake right now, then training at the rec center in about a half hour. I’m feeling good right now so hopefully it’ll be a good one. Sleeping in felt good.
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2/23/19 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 2 day 2 Deadlift primary/Bench secondary
Warmup: Barbell complex x3 with chinups 1/1/1
Main giant set:
Deadlift:
5x45# +2 power cleans
5x95# + 2 power cleans
5x135# + 2 power cleans
5x185#
Work sets
5x245#
5x285#
Switched to mixed grip
10x325#
Bench:
10x45#
5x65#
5x95#
5x115#
Work sets:
5X145#
5x165#
5x185#
Chinups: 2/3/4/5/6/7/8
Accessory giant set:
Front squat: 5x135#, 5x155#, 5x185#
Dips: 15/15/20
Barbell rows 155#: 15/15
Conditioning: 3x400m run intervals, 2:00 rest between intervals. Splits: 2:11, 2:03, 1:56.
I thought 325#x10 was pretty hard, until I did the 5x185# bench and 8 chinups right after it with no rest. Felt very Crossfit, I was completely gassed. Had to take a couple minutes before the accessory giant set. Also, forgot the BB rows on the first round of the accessories, so did 15 reps the other 2 rounds to make up for it. Also, no belt to suspend plates for dips at this gym, so I just did more reps of unweighted dips.
the 400m runs felt better than last time, and the last 2 intervals were faster than the fastest interval last time, so I’ll take that improvement. Plus, I’m now able to sustain better than an 8:00 mile pace for 400m, which is a nice milestone. Not impressive for any serious runner, but good for me.
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That sounds even more awesome, when you’re down to you target weight, you should treat you and your family once again.
325 x 10 DL Awesome Steve.
And a great workout to be honest really impressed.
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Except in CrossFit you still had 9 rounds for time to finish the workout.
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True, but with all the work-up sets that was the 7th round. I forgot to time things, though… I’m still considering throwing in some of the Crossfit ‘girl’ workouts as finishers instead of doing the treadmill or running some days, but I haven’t been brave enough to try it yet, because honestly I’m pretty winded by the end of my accessory giant set anyway, so LSD conditioning or intervals with rests are suiting me just fine right now.
Well, I might do one of the two next time I go, my usual go-to at a steak or seafood place is one starchy side and one veggie side, when I’m not trying to lose weight. I just figured I got enough starch with the sourdough bread, and Brussels sprouts and mushrooms are 2 of my favorite things to eat, so it wasn’t exactly a sacrifice…
325x10 was friggin’ hard as part of a giant set, but it’s good to see that I can still express some strength while doing conditioning-focused work, at a caloric deficit. We’ll see how these next few cycles go as the training maxxes go up.
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2/23/19 food for today
Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder.
Lunch: Leftover homemade chicken fajita bowl = chicken breast, bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, black beans, corn, cheese. About half the size of the dinner bowl I had Wednesday. 1 navel orange.
Dinner: J. Gilbert’s leftovers: 1 piece of sourdough bread with about 1 tsp butter. 1/2 of a medium rare (after reheating) 18 oz ribeye. 1/2 serving of roasted Brussels sprouts. 1/2 serving of mushrooms with truffle butter. 1 8 oz glass of whole milk.
Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine. 30g plantain chips. 30g mixed nuts with sea salt.
Totals for today 2152 calories, 198g protein, 149g carbs, 99g fat. 38 calories below baseline, before the exercise adjustment, 872 calories below baseline with adjustment. I was way low before my snack, and I didn’t want to be that low going to bed on a training day, so I grabbed some mixed nuts and plantain chips to jack up my calories by another 300. I still want to moderate my weight loss so that I’m not losing muscle. Today was a do stuff around the house and eat leftovers day, and both sets of leftovers were still delicious.
I also got some 1 arm loaded carries in, cleaned my aquarium out, 25 gallons removed, 30 gallons added back in (lots of evaporation this time of year), 1 5 gallon bucket at a time.
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2/24/19 morning weigh-in 191.4# Empty, but not too dehydrated. Rested well last night, feel good this morning. Today is a day of rest and recuperation, just some more work around the house. Oh, and I have to go out to my daughter’s house and bury a cat that passed away last night… 
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Sounds like a damn good lunch. Do you have any particular weight / body composition / measurement goals you want to hit for the T-ransformation challenge?