HealthyFitGuy.com

Well, today’s workout was fairly uneventful.  My triceps feel like jello, but that’s about it.  Nothing else much to say about it.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 32 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Tricep Curls - 20lbs/side - To Failure

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Veggie Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread - Cucumbers, Sprouts, Lettuce, Tomato
Small Greek Salad

Dinner:
Large Greek Salad
Spinach Pie

Snacks:
Banana
Half a Cantaloupe
Grapefruit

Tags: exercise, Healthy Diet, lose weight, nutrition, weight loss

Today’s workout was really good. I ran 2.01 miles on the treadmill in about 32 minutes or so. I normally only do 30 minutes of cardio, but I was on the treadmill and I was thinking about something and I lost track of time and just kept going past the 30 minute mark. I’m not going to complain. It’s getting really easy to run on the treadmill now, which makes it more enjoyable.

For strength training I’m following my new workout plan I started yesterday. Today it was time to work on the biceps. Holy smokes. By the time I was done, I felt like I ran a marathon with my biceps.

Here’s what I did. I lowered the weight down to 20 lbs and used my Bowflex to do bicep curls. I did slow and steady curls going up and down really slowly, which really gets them burning. At a certain point they really started to burn with pain. That’s the whole point of this type of workout, to really focus on the single muscle you’re working out and to go past the pain to bring the muscle to near-failure. That’s what stimulates it’s growth. This is done with a light weight, not a super heavy weight. You just keep going up and down as normal, except really really slowly.

Once the burn was really unbearable, I kept going for a little bit longer and then it kind of just faded into the background. It’s like the pain started to go away, but I couldn’t lift the weight anymore at that slow speed. So I stopped for about 30 seconds and just wiggled my arms to let the blood circulate through the muscles. I waited another 30 seconds to let the muscles just rest a bit and then went and did probably about 20-30 really rapid bicep curls feeling the burn getting really intense. When I didn’t feel like I could do any more, I pushed myself to do 10 more.

At the end, it really felt like my biceps ran a marathon. Here’s the weird thing. After a few minutes they felt energized. Very strange. I bet tomorrow they’re going to be as sore as my pecs are today.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 32 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bicep Curls - 20lbs/side - To Failure

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:

Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.

Dinner:
Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.
Bowl of Organic Tomato Soup

Snacks:
2 Bananas
Organic Apple
Half a Cantaloupe

Tags: biceps, Diet, exercise, losing weight, nutrition

Today I did something a bit different for my workout routine.

Firstly, I pushed myself a bit harder on the treadmill and ran 2.01 miles in the 30minutes on there, instead of the usual 1.75 miles I normally run.

Secondly, I wanted to change up my strength training up a bit. Instead of doing bench press, bicep curls and triceps curls on the same day, I decided to try a slightly different muscle building technique I learned the last time I was working out. Basically it involves doing one muscle group, in this case being my pecs. What you do is you basically push that one group of muscles to failure instead of just doing three sets of a certain number of reps.

You pick a weight that’s a bit easier to lift than your normal weight for doing your sets, and what you do is you go up and down with the weight really slowly, concentrating on that one muscle group you’re working out. You basically take like 3-8 seconds to lift the weight and then 3-8 seconds to lower the weight without pausing at either top or bottom of the lift. You’re basically just moving the weight up and down really slowly without relieving the muscle of strain at the top and bottom by locking your elbows.

What this does is that it pushes your muscles to fatigue really quickly and you keep going until you basically can’t lift anymore at all. Once you get to the point where the muscle is pretty much unable to lift any more, you kind of hit a stopping point where you’re TRYING to lift the weight and your hands are shaking but it won’t budge anymore. At this point you lower the weight slowly and then you’re done. DON’T DO THIS WITH FREE WEIGHTS without a spotter. I’m using a bowflex so if I can’t lift any weight anymore I can just lower it without getting injured.

Once you do one muscle group like this, it will burn like crazy and you’ll feel it the next day. You then give that muscle group a whole week, YES 7 DAYS, to recover. So tomorrow I’ll be working on a different muscle group. I’ll pick 7 exercises and try this out for a while.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bench Press - 110lbs - To Failure

Breakfast:
Pacific Brand Organic Tomato Soup

Lunch:
Veggie Sticks - Cucumbers, Carrots, Celery, Cherry Tomatoes, with a bit of dip
Baked Vegetarian Spring Rolls

Dinner:
Seafood Salad - Wild Salmon, Grilled Praws, Shrimp, Greens, Crispy Noodles, Avacado, Sprouts, Papaya

Snacks:
Organic Grapefruit

Tags: Diet, exercise, Healthy Diet, strength training, workout

Well, it’s day 8 since I started my diet and I’ve lost 7.4lbs so far. I’m really excited about this. It’s good to see progress when you’re working hard.

Although I’ll go into more detail as to what my diet is later on, I’ll share a few points to the philosophy I’m following.

It is basically based on not allowing foods that are “crap” to pass my lips, and instead focusing on eating foods that nourish my body. As long as a food is good and nutritious, I can eat however much of it I want. I do not count calories or try to portion my food. If I’m hungry I eat. Anytime I want. I just eat nutritious food, that’s all.

For example. Here are some foods that are on my “crap” list that I haven’t eaten for the last 8 days:

Crap Foods:
- No Pop of any kind, I used to be addicted to drinking 2-3 Coca-Cola cans every day
- No Concentrated Fruit Juices (I only drank 2 glasses of Tropicana Orange Juice in the last week)
- No White Sugar
- No White Rice
- No White Flour Products (Pasta, Breads, etc.)
- No Beef, No Chicken, No Pork, Fish Once or Twice a Week is OK
- No Eggs
- No Milk (I used VERY small amount of Ranch Dressing I have left-over two or three times this week)
- No Other Dairy Products (ie. No Sour Cream, No Cheese, etc.)

The basic premise is to eat at least 80-90% water rich, alkalizing vegetables at my meals, either raw or steamed/stir-fried, with 10-20% denser foods such as beans, legumes, nuts, sprouted grain flatbread, etc.

Nutritious Foods:
- All Kinds of Alkaline Veggies (Green Lettuce, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Green and Red Peppers, etc.)
- Some Starchy Veggies in small quantities, such as potatoe’s
- Some Fruits, the less Acidic the fruit the more I can eat of it. For example Cantaloupe, Melon, Grapefruit and Apples are better than Banana’s, Oranges, etc. The lower the Glycemic Index the better.
- All Nuts are OK except for Peanuts.  Pumpkin Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Pine Nuts, Almonds etc. are good. Still trying to find real RAW Almonds, not the fake RAW ones form California.
- Drinking 6-8 Glasses of Alkaline Water / day (I put pH drops in my water as well as Lemon)

Supplements:
- I’ve taken a few Kre-Alkalyn Creatine Pill Supplements
- I’ve taken a few Innerlight Supergreen’s Capsules
- Both of which, plus some Innerlight Multivitamin and Minerals I want to start taking every day.

That’s the basics of what I’m doing.

Tags: Diet, Fat Loss, health, Healthy Diet, nutrition, weight loss

Well, it’s been exactly 7 days this morning since I started on my diet. I’ve lost just under 6lbs in that 7 day period. Not bad at all.

For todays workout I decided to take it easy on the treadmill, only running about 1.47miles instead of 1.75miles, but I bumped up my Squat and Calf Raise weight up to 280lbs from 260lbs. It felt fine. I’ll stick with this weight as long as my knee doesn’t hurt tomorrow. Oh yeah, I just remembered about my slightly tweaked knee. Somewhere along the way the pain just went away and it’s totally fine now.

Breakfast:
Salad - Greens, Cucumber, Dried Cranberries, Pine Nuts, Small Amount of Dressing

Lunch:
Apple

Dinner:
Roasted Veggies - Young Potatoes, Brocollini, Zuchini

Snacks:
Organic Grapefruit
Apple

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.47 Miles Ran

Strength Training:

Squats: 280lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Seated Calf Raises: 280 lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets

Tags: Diet, fitness, health, nutrition, working out

Nothing too out of the ordinary to report today. Except that it was the first time I went out to eat since I started my plan. I ended up enjoying a nice salmon dinner. Even though it wasn’t the perfect meal as far as my diet is concerned, it was fairly healthy. I would have ordered a salad, but I didn’t like any of the options they had on the menu.

My workout went fine, except that I had to do it at 2:00am in the morning because I ended up staying up late to watch a movie. However, I’m proud of myself for not allowing myself any excuse to miss a workout - even if it’s 2am in the morning.

Here’s what the workout looked like:

Cardio:
Treadmill Run for 30 minutes -1.75 miles - 269 calories burned.

Strength Training:

Seated Lat Rows: 80 lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets
Rear Deltoid Rows: 80 lbs x 8 reps x 3 sets
Dumbbell Shoulder Presses: 25 lbs/side x 8 reps x 3 sets
Big Rubber Ball Sit-ups: 25 reps

As for diet, here’s what I had:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Salad - Greens, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, dried cranberries

Snacks:
Grapes

Dinner:

Went out to Earls Restaurant. Ordered a bowl of Edamame beans as a starter. Ordered Salmon Dinner - Salmon, mashed potatoes, steamed asparagus

Today was a pretty good day for my workout. I had a lot more steam on the treadmill so kicked it up a notch. Did a bit of burst running. Instead of my usual 1.75miles ran in 30 minutes I ran 1.87miles. Not a huge difference, but I felt that my lungs have been adjusting to the running much better now and I’m hitting a longer wind when I do my run.

I also bumped up my strength training weights just a bit.

Bench Press: 110lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Bicep Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Tricep Reverse Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets

For food today I had the following:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, radishes, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, avocado, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Snacks:
One Organic Apple
Half a Melon

Dinner:

For dinner we had some wraps. Inside the wrap was fried up green peppers, onions, garlic, portobello mushroom and zucchini.

Tags: Diet, exercise, health, nutrition, workout

Well, I’m pretty sure the flu is gone for good.  Didn’t hit too hard.  I attribute it to the cardio exercise and eating healthy.  Yaaay!

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, baby spinach, green onions, red pepper, radishes, cherry tomatoes, avacado, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Dinner:
Veggie Chicken Breast with Pesto Sauce, and Big Salad

Snacks:

Organic Grapefruit

Today’s workout consisted of the following:

Cardio:

Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.75 Miles Ran

Strength Training:

Squats:
Set #1 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 260lbs x 8 reps

Seated Calf Raises:
Set # 1 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 2 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 3 - 260 lbs x 8 reps

Tags: Diet, health, nutrition, workout, Workout Log

This morning I was sneezing like crazy on my way to work. I am pretty sure that flu is in me. However, I am fighting that sucker. I felt some more stomach cramps after lunch today for the majority of the afternoon but then they subsided. I don’t feel too bad right now. I had a pretty good workout.

I reduced my weight for the shoulder exercises as I felt last time I wasn’t doing them to proper form due to picking a weight that’s a bit too big. I reduced my seated lat row and real deltoid row to 80lbs (from 100lbs) and my dumbbell shoulder press to 25lbs (from 40lbs). I felt a lot better with those weights.

Here’s what the workout looked like:

Cardio:
Treadmill Run for 30 minutes -1.77 miles - 271 calories burned.

Strength Training:

Seated Lat Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Rear Deltoid Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Dumbbell Shoulder Presses:
Set #1 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #2 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #3 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps

Big Rubber Ball Sit-ups: 25 reps

As for diet, here’s what I had:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Stir-fry leftover from yesterday. However, I only ate about half of what I brought with me as my stomach wasn’t feeling well.

Snacks:
One Organic Grapefruit

Dinner:

Pita Wrap with saute’d green peppers, onions, zucchini and refried beans. It was an experiment I did, wasn’t very good.
Big Salad - Lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, radishes, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, pine nuts, dried cranberries, and a tiny bit of dressing.

Tags: Diet, exercise, fitness, health, nutrition, weight loss

I’ve decided to start a list of Health and Fitness Blogs of people blogging about losing weight, working out, eating healthy, etc.

If you know of any such Blogs, including your own, please leave a comment with the info for it providing the following details:

Name of Person Running the Blog, Name of Blog, URL. So for example for this blog that would be:

Paul Piotrowski, HealthAndFitnessGuy.com, http://www.healthandfitnessguy.com.

If you would like your blog included in the list, you are encouraged to post a copy of this list on your blog as well, although it is not mandatory.

Health and Fitness Blog List
————————–
Paul Piotrowski at Healthy Fit Guy.
John at John Is Fit.
John Stone at John Stone Fitness.
Edwin Casimero at My Health Blog.
Jennette Fulda at Pasta Queen.
Scott Bird at Straight To The Bar.
Russell James at Whatzz Up Sport.
Rob at Endurance Ninja.
Jim at Run Fat Boy
Anthony at Streangth Systems.
Ellie at Diet Block.
Louise at The Daily Fitness.
Lauren at Laurens Fitness.
Mehdi at Strong Lifts.

Leave a comment to get your Health and Fitness Blog added to the list.