Mail Bag: Nutrition and Ab work. January 21, 2010

Today is Mail bag day.  I received the following response from Adil regarding some questions on my training plan that I posted on 1/13/10.

2010/01/20 at 9:51am

“Hey Michelle,
This is an awesome workout, and very detailed. I also like how you are doing 2 days of upper body, and 2 days of lower body.
I would also like to know what is your diet like that is because when it comes to eating I am terrible. I will tend to stay with the high protein, low carb diets, but that drive me insane and I start losing my temper with everyone.
Additionally, I also like the Cardio format you are using, because it is the same one I do. I will tend to be on the treadmill for about 40 minutes with one minute walking, and one minute running. What do you do for your ab workouts; I tend to do them after my cardio.
Thanks
Adil”

Thanks Adil for posting your response and for your excellent questions.

First regarding diet, I am following Precision Nutrition which is a comprehensive program by Dr. John Berardi.

It’s not a diet, rather it is a nutrition strategy that can be adapted based on an individual’s goals and unique dietary needs.  I highly recommend you check out their website.  In addition Dr. Beradi has written extensively for Tmuscle and you can also check him out on the Fitcast.

Ah those pesky carbs:  I am assuming, and I absolutely could be wrong, but when you say low carb, you mean that you are including veggies and fruit into that equation. If this is the case, no wonder your diet is making you nuts.

Precision Nutrition is not a low carb diet, it is a Controlled carb diet  if your goal is fat loss. This means that you are getting your carb calories from copious amounts of veggies and fruits, aprox 10 servings a day, that equates to 5 cups and starchy carbs ie: grains, bread, potatoes etc ONLY after a training session.  Therefore, my suggestion is if your current diet is hard to sustain, start eating more veggies and fruit, mostly veggies and see how you feel. And check out the precision nutrition website.

ABS: Before I answer your question about abs I have to address the general issue of ab training.   First and foremost a flat stomach is a function of diet.  Doing a gazillion crunches and leg lifts will not give you a flat stomach. There is no such thing as spot reduction.

Personally I feel most people put too much time and energy in abs training.  One of the most popular classes at our gym is a 30 minutes abs class. There is no reason for anyone to spend 30 minutes doing abs.  In fact, if time is money then you just made an investment with negative returns, and who in their right mind would knowingly do that.

I know what you are thinking, if a 30 minutes abs class is a waste of my valuable time, why do they offer them in my gym?  The reason, because that’s what members want.  Gyms are in the business to make money not necessarily to deliver results.  Can you get healthy and fit in a commercial gym? absolutely, if you do your homework.

If you are looking for the biggest bang for your  for your training buck, you’d be better served by doing a well constructed 30 minute full body or split body ie: upper/lower done in a circuit fashion that concentrates on the big compound movements with supplemental work for abs, arms build into the circuit.

So Adil, getting back to your question about what I do:  I don’t like bunching up my ab/core work in one segment.  It’s boring and if I leave until the end I won’t do it.  Instead  I build the work into  my program.  Primarily concentrating on  the big compound lifts: squats, dead lifts, lunges, overhead pressing standing not seated, bench, rows, chin/pull ups with supplemental work for smaller body parts such as arms, shoulders and abs/core incorporated into my circuits.

The ab/core work I do is predominantly to develop greater stability and force production enabling me to lift more weight: Currently I am doing the following exercises:

Excellent article by Eric Cressey: 5 Programming Strategies for Quick Results: demonstrating the following:

Pallof Press: anti-rotation, stability

Ball Rollouts: stability

This article by Chris Shuggart: The Evolution of Ab Training: explanation of:

Full Contact Twists: Power

And the following do double duty:

Pushups: chest, core

Close grip pushups: triceps, core

I hope that answers you question, and thank you for reading a Knitted Brow.

Be well Train hard

Michelle

It’s Friday: First week down feeling great January 8, 2010

It’s Friday and the end of my first week on this program.

So how did I do?  Well, I’m doing well.  I feel really good. It always amazes me how much better I feel when I eat properly, I have more energy, I sleep better and my mood is better.

As promised here are my weight and bf stats for the week:

Mon: 111lbs  24% bf

Tues: 109.8lbs 23.7%bf

Wed: 110.3lb 23.9%bf

Thurs: 110.2lbs 22.6%bf

Fri: 111.2lbs 22%bf.

Now according the abovet my weight is holding steady but I’ve dropped 2% body fat. To be honest I don’t know that I’ve dropped that much, the changes could just be mostly due to fluid, BUT I do feel like there has been movement and my body is responding and I am encouraged by this weeks numbers.

Now what have I been eating you want to know.  That is a very good question but I’m not going to bore you with everything I’ve eaten this week.  I will say this, I have eaten 1 starchy carb a day in the morning.  This is my favorite breakfast and I really look forward to it: 1 slice Ezekiel Bread, with 1TBS of Teddy’s all natural peanut butter and 1TBS of Polaner all fruit.

OK, to be honest according to the strict guidelines of Precision Nutrition: you are only supposed to eat starchy carbs within the 1-2hours window AFTER a workout session, however as I stated before IF I find this is hampering my progress I will change my breakfast.  So for the most part I am eating one starchy carb a day EXCEPT on training days I may have a second portion of starchy carbs ONLy after my workout if I feel I need it.  I did do that on Tuesday and Thursday.  So basically this week it looks like every other day I felt physically that I needed the extra.

On this program you are allowed to “cheat” 10% of the time, which for me is 3x’s a week. It’s preferable to plan you cheats in advance as the more prepared you are the easier it is to stick to the program.  I plan on having a cheat meal on Sat. evening as this is traditionally the one night a week where both Dale and I are home together and we like to order out.  I also plan on having a cheat probably mid-week either Wed or Thursday.  So that is 2 planned cheats and the third will be a wild card to allow for unplanned events.

here is what I ate on Wed: a non training day and Thursday a training day.

Wed:

6am: 1 slice Ezekiel bread with PB&J

9am: 1 egg omelette with 2 slices Canadian bacon, green pepper, onion and 1/2 oz cheese

12pm shrimp with asparagus and a little pesto

3pm: green apple with 1TBS of PB

Dinner: Classy Chicken: recipe from Gourmet Nutrition cookbook: chicken, veggies

1/2 cup wild blueberries.

Thursday: training day

6am: Ezekiel bread with PB&J

8am: Protein drink: 1 scoop protein powder and water

11:30am Lunch post workout:

Classy chicken leftovers, 1/2 slice whole grain bread from Cosi and baby carrots.

Worked from 1-5 not able to really eat but managed to sneak in a snack of 2 slices of Canadian bacon and babby carrots.

Dinner: sauteed shrimp with green peppers and onions AND had my mid-week cheat Cooked up some noodles to go with it.

I think I did really well this week. Believe it or not I have not been craving sweets.  I was surprised that yesterday I was feeling like I really needed the extra carbs.  Also, if I’m being completely honest, I’m supposed to have veggies with every single meal but as you can see I have not.  I’m trying to work around that by nibbling on veggies in between, ideally I should be eating 5 cups of veggies a day.

As it’s 8:30am and I need to get ready to go train and then work at the gym from 1-9 I won’t be posting my  workouts today.  I will save that for next week.

Until then please share how you’ve done.

Michelle

All the nitty gritty details fit for print: Body Recomposition project January 4, 2010

Happy New Year everyone

Well we are 4 days in and so far so good.  I took pics which will be posted below, but first I want to provide some stats as well as answer some questions.  I actually started on Sat but I’m giving my starting weight and BF as of today.

Height: technically 4′ 11″ and 3/4 but let’s call it an even 5′ as if I stand with perfect posture I can eek out an extra 1/4 inch.

Starting weight:  111 lbs

Starting Body fat 24%

Both body weight and BF were from my Tanita scale.  I will also be posting BF calculated by the caliper method, which is more accurate than biometric impedance.  One of the trainers at my gym volunteered to do this for me on a monthly basis.  I want to use both methods as I am curious at to the difference in results between the two methods.

Although conventional wisdom states that you should only weigh yourself once a week when trying to diet down, however since I’m not trying to lose a great amount of weight, I will be weighing myself almost daily to track trends and make adjustments.

Age: 45 : I was debating on posting my age because I am currently looking for a new job and if any prospective employer does a search and finds this post they will see my age,  But you know what I don’t give a blanketty blank blank (shouldn’t use profanity for the a fore mentioned reason)  If you don’t want to hire me because of my age you are an idiot and I don’t want to work for you anyway.  BUT I digress, I want to include my age because I don’t buy in to that old-fashion notion that just because we get older that we can’t get stronger and have a healthier and better looking body than we did in our youth.  Also, that age is NOT an excuse for getting fat and dumpy.

This would be a good time I think to post the pics: Taken Jan 1, 2010

Goal: To be between 16-18% body fat by April 1.

I do not have a goal for weight as I really don’t care about my weight. WHAT you say who doesn’t care about weight.  Well the thing is I’m comfortable with my actual weight which is perfectly normal for my height and this isn’t a weight loss project it’s a body recomposition project which means I am attempting to lose fat while maintaining or even gaining some muscle.  Therefore the less weight I lose while dropping body fat the better.

Why do I say between 16-18% rather than a flat number.  Good question because I don’t know how my body is going to respond and at what point I will like how my body looks.  I may find that I’m totally happy with how I look at 18% and not want to go down any further or I may say I like it but let’s see what 16% looks like.

Nutrition Plan:  As I posted before I will be using Precision Nutrition.  I’ll admit I have not been perfect as I have made one minor concession and that is to my breakfast. Technically on this plan if you are trying to lose fat/weight you only eat starchy carbs after a workout.  I love my Ezekiel bread with pb and j for breakfast, so I will continue to eat that BUT it will be my only starchy carb source for the day Unless I workout, I may have one more serving of starchy carb.  I realize this may hamper my progress a little but we’ll see how much. If I do think that it makes that much of a difference after 2 weeks I will get rid of it.

Now let’s see if I can figure out how to include a link to the precision nutrition website. Ok well I can’t figure it out so it’s time to schedule an appointment with my friend AMY who is an awesome web developer and get a lesson.

Training: I have decided to do a 4 day upper/lower body split. Concentrating on building muscle/strength but with some circuits and metabolic and prehab work thrown in.  This will make sense when I actually post my workout routine.  for cardio which I hate, I will do between 20-30 minutes of various intensity intervals depending on how my body feels, the modality ie: treadmill, elliptical etc to be determined as I feel.  One or 2 days of slower steady state cardio for about 40 minutes.

So that’s all the nice details for now.  Tomorrow I will post my training sessions from today and tomorrow and in the meantime if anyone has any questions, comments about what I’m doing, or if you want to share your physique transformation journey with me, please I’d love to hear from you.

Michelle