Mr. A. - A weekend of activities.

My weekend started off with an off-day, only biking a bit as transportation.

Saturday: I had a small transportation bike ride of 7 km in the morning, and in the early afternoon I started my long bike ride in total the long ride ended up at 83 Km, which I am quite happy with.

There were a ton of hills and a ton of wind which made it quite hard, especially the last 25 km where though both physically and mentally but I managed to pull through.

Sunday: We had our bi-weekly weigh in.

This week ended in a slow but steady progress and I am now down to 76,3 Kg so still 6,3kg’s to go, not as fast progress as I would have liked, but progress none the less!

The activity this Sunday was (unfortunately for me :P) biking: we ended biking around ~60 km, must confess my ass was a bit sore from the day before, but fortunately for me the speed 7 intensity was a bit lower and there wasn’t as many hills or wind as the day prior so that made it quite a bit easier, after the biking we did a bit of circuit training, and a basketball drill.

I ended up the weekend with some homemade burgers, and ice cream as desert, I feel it’s ok to “celebrate” your achievements and reward yourself :-).

Today it's back to the regular schedule!

Mr. A. Just do it!

Everyone have days where you are, tired, lethargic, unmotivated, lazy, and basically you don’t feel like doing a workout, and find a million excuses not to workout.

The solution is pretty straight forward, just do it! Show up to the workout and just attend, once you are there, once you get the running shoes on and get out the door, the workout will work itself and you will get through it, and get all the benefits it provides!

Even if it is not going to be your top most intense workout, it will still be a workout and a step moving forward.

So just do it!

Mr. A. Rescheduling training

I’ll just start off with: "I had a great swim today in total 3 km"

 

• 400m freestyle warm-up
• 200m (12.5m crawl non breathing 12.5m normal)
• 3x (400m crawl arms(pull buoy) +200m breaststroke)
• 100m freestyle
• 4x (25m crawl sprint 25m free)
• 300m freestyle warm-down

 

And now for the actual subject:

  

Due to the Outer snapping hip I have been forced to reschedule my training a bit to lessen the stress on the cords and hopefully reduce the inflammation

 

So the new training plan will be largely based on swimming and then attempt to keep some of the other activities up as well

  

So for now it will look like this:

• Mon: Swimming
• Tue: Boxing
• Wed: Swimming
• Thu: Boxing
• Friday: Free or Swimming or Random activity
• Sat: Biking or Swimming or Random activity
• Sun: Biking / bi-weekly activity

 

I’m not quite set on the weekends yet.

 

This is the initial plan and I will likely have to adjust it depending on how my hip ends up behaving

 

 

 

 

Mr. A. – Old injuries reemerging

So this tends to happen every time I attempt to get back into doing sports, and it has always been what ended up putting a stop to my training, and now it is reemerging.

Outer snapping hip, when fully emerged it appears as a snap every time I take a step and ends up being quite painful, and removes any kind of possibility for running and even walking ends up being painful.

Luckily it has not set in fully but I can begin to feel the snapping sensation, and I know from past experiences that I’m not far off from it getting to be a big issue.

I found some exercises that should, in time, help strengthening the area, and I think going to physiotherapy might be something I should look into

Mr. A. Having Easy ”go to” meals #1

Some days are easier than others, especially when you are trying to lose weight, and having to go shop on one of those days, usually won’t end up with a good result.

To avoiding this scenario I sugest you have 3 “go to” meals you are always able to make.
These should be:

1. Be healthy
2. Be easy and fast to prepare (shouldn’t take more than 20 mins)
3. Should always be in stock at home

This is my own go to meal #1 I will post #2 and #3 at another time

1. Stir fry x egg’s in a wok, with a little oil (I always have eggs
2. Add - Meat Salmon, Tuna, Chicken etc. (I always keep frozen chicken at home just in case
3. Add random veggies you have example. Spinach, Broccoli, tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, anything goes (try to keep a large portion of the total volume of the dish veggies for the health benefit.
4. Keep stir frying, Add, some: salt, pepper, soya, fish sauce, lime, lemon whatever you like, I usually go for soya / fish sauce and if the meet is fish I add lime.
5. Serve with: Rice, noodle or pasta, you can go for wholegrain here if you’d like to make it even healthier.

Once You get used to making this dish it can easily be done within 20 min’s and you should always have left over veggies you can use.

I love this, because it’s such a flexible recipe, its healthy it’s easy to make, and it tastes great

Mr. A. - Doing several things at the same time

So i'm the kind of guy that usually likes to go "all in" with this kind of stuff and the one thing i find the most difficult is to increase the amount i'm training while at the same time attempting to limit my intake

Were I to advice other people i would definitely say start with one thing, and slowly build on the other, ie. i would likely advice them to start increasing the amount of training they do, and slowly start improving their diet.

Doing both at once leads to a lot of balance issues, you exercise more so your body needs more energy, but how much more, and you might not want to give it more since you are trying to limit it to lose weight.

I personally find it difficult to figure out how much i need to eat with the increased training, but i keep my focus on the fact that the food needs to be healthy first and foremost, if the weight doesn't decrease than i will have to make further reductions in my eating habits.


I would recommending only working on improving 1 thing at a time at the very beginning, and after you  have gotten into the habit of doing it i would improve on the other aspect.

Mr. A. 8 Tips to eating less

So one of the 9 simple rules from one of my blogposts from last week was “don’t eat too much”.

Eating too much is somewhat hard to decipher, how much is too much, how much is too little, and when you at the same time are increasing the amount you train, it becomes even more difficult to find a good ballance.

Here are some tips to eating less

1. Drink a large glass of water 30-15 minutes before a meal
2. Drink a large glass of water while eating sipping in between bites not just waiting until you have eaten and then drinking.
3. Chew your food extra thoroughly (something I personally need to improve. I tend to just swallow my food
4. Use a smaller plate, a smaller plate will look full faster than a larger plate you will tend to fill the plate up regardless of its size.
5. Take salads/vegies first, they fill a lot of the plate making room for less of the “heavier food”
6. Avoid bringing your pots and pans into the living room, take a serving, and then pack the food away or let it cool off, eat in another room, and don’t go back for seconds, and if your really feel like you need some more to fill your stomach, go for veggies.
7. Pack left overs in potion sizes, instead of keeping the left overs as a big pile pack them into potions and just take one when you need lunch or dinner.
8. take 15-20% less food than you would normally, this should come naturally with the smaller plates

Following these tips might be easier said than done, but i will attempt to follow them as best i can in the following weeks

Mr. A. Sunday rumble - Day report

So as we have officially started i thought i might as well kick off hard this sunday, so i decided to go for 2 training passes today.

Starting with a 4,5 Km Run 50 Km Bike ride and another 4,5 Km Run.

Late afternoon I went to the gym, did around 35 mins of cardio, Some Core muscle strengthening, and a bit of muscle workout as well, low reps(1-6) with high weight.

I want neural adaptations rather then to actually build muscle which would be counter productive in regards to losing weight, but ended up having a few sets go over 6 reps

All in all a pretty damn good day

Introduction: Mr. M.

Hi there I’m Mr M.

Age: 32 | Height: 163 cm /5’4 Feet | Weight 68 kg’s / 150 lbs.

A bit of background:

I've lived most of my life in Copenhagen, and as far as I remember, always been a chubby guy. I didn't do much physical activity, and I remember running at school was the last thing I wanted to do. I've had some initial health issues with high blood pressure. Then, around a year ago, I started working out with Mr. A., and I think it has helped me a lot getting more healthy. Weight wise I went down from around 70-72 kg down to my current weight today.

Goals:

Starting Date: 01/08/2013 || Goal Date: 01/11/2013
Weight goals -- Get below, and maintain sub 63 Kg / 139 lbs and a body fat percentage sub 20%, with a long term goal of around 16%.
Training goals -- Maintain a good training schedule, focusing on increasing core muscle and reducing fat (mainly around waist).

Sports: I would like to play some more squash :).

Inherent problems:

So we all have our own problems we need to work on and here are a few of my “issues”.

Maintaining workout: I am very dependent on others to push me, as my self-commitment is rather non-existent.
Prior injuries: Only have some issues with my left shoulder, when I do too much push ups. Perhaps the arm needs more strengthening. Otherwise, isn't an injury per say.

I have control over sugar intake and can control what I eat to a certain extent. There can be times where I am lazy though, where I tend to buy take away a lot.

Mr. A. Weigh in’s + events:

We finally decided the bi weekly weigh ins and they are going to be every 2’nd Sunday starting the 11’th of august and ending the 3’rd of November, were the 3 month period will have ended.

Every weigh in will be accompanied by an event were we go train / experience something new together.

The event is put together by one of the participants, and it is pretty much open to any kind of activity, being a more hardcore workout, or a fun sport that none of us have tried before.

For the 11’th I am going to be in charge, and Mr. M. And Mr. G will have something to look forward to.

If you have ideas for activities you are more than welcome to post a comment

Mr. G. - Warm Up, Slow Start but Nice Food.

It's already August the 2nd. where I had planned to write more about what happened the day before. However, the 1st. was what I would call a very slow start. It all started and ended with myself doing 2x30 pushups for the day and that was about it :-P. The day before, on the 31st, I biked around 10km, which is pretty much nothing - 2 rounds of around 5km :).

The Lunch Dinner Stuff
On the 31st of July, I consumed stone baked oven pizza with pepperoni and another with some piglet pork. So there went any "exercise" for that day :).

On the 1st of August, for dinner I ate meatballs and vegetables with Thai curry and rice. With it being very good, I definitely could have eaten more of it, had I cooked even more :). Thus after this, I decided to gobble on some leftover homemade coleslaw salad, which consisted of cabbage, carrots and a little mayonnaise. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures, so look for images for the near future.

And All The Others
For the morning I had oatmeal and cranberries with milk. Throughout the day, I basically snacked on almonds with cranberries mixed with it. Let's just say I'm quickly running out :). I ended up also eating a box of cookies :).

All in all, a slow (possibly bad) start but expect things to pick up soon. :-)

Mr. A. - Lunch in the canteen

One of the problems I face is at work, it’s normal in Denmark to have a canteen at the workplace for lunch, and our canteen gets food from an external company.

Here is an example of one of the not so good days:

• Slices of pork fillet served with potatoes tossed in butter and herbs this cheese cream with flavors of orange and thyme
• Finely sliced ​​cabbage tossed with white wine vinegar, cinnamon, raisins, baked hazelnuts and lemon topped with lemon balm.
• Selection of cheeses with honey glazed nuts.
• Bread with love
• APPLICATION: Asian inspired chicken salad, Hunter Sausage with chornichons and parsley Roasted beef with remo and roasted onions 
• ADDITIONAL: Italian salami with cherry tomato and rucola Boiled Beef with Horseradish Cream Chest

Even though they make it sound good most of this have added something to make it a no go.

• Pork is fine, unfortunately it is especially really fatty pork - No go
• Potatoes are fine, unfortunately they soak them in butter and cream cheese – No go
• Cabbage salad would have been great, if only they had the white wine vinegar on the side instead of premixed. – Depending on how much vinegar - Go/No go
• Selections of cheeses. - No go
• Bread with Love, The rye bread is fine – Go, the white bread - No go.
• All the applications are pretty much a - No go (the Asian inspired salad had loads of dressing in it).
• The only thing there that was acceptable is the roasted beef but only if you opted to take it without the remo and the fried onions. - Go

So what is a starving employee to do if he wants to live healthy, well either you

A: Pick and choose, luckily we do have separated raw veggies and usually there are some stuff that is not on the menu and with the added rye bread and a piece of fruit you can get a decent, but very uninspired meal.
Or
B: The second option is to bring food from home

For now I am sticking with A, but with the food so often being unhealthy I have thought about changing it to make food myself, the problem is it would end up costing more, and might end up being just as limited / uninspiring as what the canteen offers, also the time it takes to prepare in the morning etc. is time I rather be sleeping :-)

If anyone have any experiences with making food from home bringing it to work I would love to hear your thoughts.

Project Officially Started!

The project has now officially begun, after having passed the midnight mark into the 1st of August. Though some decided to start earlier to get "warmed" up, the whole point was to start tracking from today.

The dates for weigh ins and all the lovely metrics are yet to be determined. But once this has been decided, we expect to perform bi-weekly weigh ins and a weekly weigh in to gather a little bit more data. As we progress, we hope to create some graphs to reveal an image of our progress.

Stay tuned for more reports on weigh ins, exercises, drills and most importantly food and diet :).