"Tell Kate she might want to get her own apartment for a few days."
Those words came from Mike Foley, my nutritionist and a very knowledgeable, motivating man. As I had reported in earlier posts, I had begun to hit a wall with my diet. This was expected. What was not expected was the dip into, nay, dive into calories that I have experienced in the past few weeks.
Gone were the days of 12 ounces of chicken and 10 ounces of beef. Gone were the salads that I had grew to enjoy so much at the end of the day. Say hello to a cup of broccoli and two cups of Egg Beaters. For some of you that may sound like a lot of food, but to me it barely made me not hungry any more.
To say that I was testy, would be a HUGE understatement. If Kate didn't want to get her own apartment, I wanted to get one of my own. I was an ogre. I hated everything and everyone. Guess it makes sense when you take 1000 calories out of your diet you become grumpy. (Kate didn't move out, but did call me a few names. Give you a hint, one of them rhymes with cash mole.)
However the dive in to my caloric pool worked. Eight pounds in a week. Poof like some mystic form of fat magic, it was gone. It's actually not magic. It's the basic premise of weight loss. Caloric output greater than caloric intake equals weight (body fat) loss. For those of you who are math nerds allow me to make an equation for you: CO>CI=-W(BF). Or something like that.
As for my training, high volume is still ruling in the gym. Working my butt off for more reps and trying to keep the weights high. Not the easiest thing losing weight and keeping strength. One can only serve two masters for so long before something has to give.
I knew getting into this that my strength was going to suffer, but I didn't think it would effect me mentally as much as it did. For someone who -for a long time- considered 8-10 reps as "high reps" doing anything above 12 just down right blows, and the weight that I put up for those reps is significantly lower than the PR breaking numbers I had put up in years past. Aesthetics are wonderful but a bruised ego hurts for a while.
This brings me to my next point. It was something I knew for a long time but I am finding more and more that people need to check there ego at the door when they walk into the gym. Everyone is there for themselves, not you. So, believe me when I say nobody is watching you workout. If you do something impressive, maybe they are, maybe. But if you're constantly trying to do something impressive, nobody cares. So you can stop looking around after you drop the dumbbells that were too heavy for you in the first place. Excessive grunting is just annoying for everyone in the gym, it makes you look like a tool and is a sign of a low IQ. If you don't know how to do something, ask. You want people to look at you at the gym? Doing bicep curls on the leg extension machine is one way to do it.
These are just some of the things that drive me nuts. I'm no better than any one else, and neither are you. I applaud you for coming in the gym, the hardest lift of all is your butt off the couch, but don't make my gym time suck because you want to show the cutie on the stretch mat how much you can bench. Chances are she can do 135, on the Smith, with a spotter too.
Maybe I'm still a little grumpy from my diet change...
Til next time.
-Brann
