Week 3

Cravings for sugar, starches and bad carbohydrates are starting to fade away as I have been sticking to my diet strictly without many cheat meals. However, cheat meals do play a role in my weekly routine. When you get a cheat meal, it helps to keep you sane. Therefor helping you stay with the diet or plan longer. If I were to never cheat, I would be craving badly everyday and eventually my will would not be able to defeat the sugars calling my name. So every week (usually on leg or back training days when my body needs the most calories) I will include a cheat meal or two into my routine. This could be made up of chicken wings or pizza. Just make sure it doesn't go to far. A bowl of ice cream and slice of pizza is adequate and then its back to the chicken, turkey, salmon and mixed greens for another 3-4 days. It is hard but the end result and lessons learned are well worth it.

My routine

Starting in the new, I will be starting to cut down the excess fat and water I gained over my bulking phase. The goal is to reach 200 with a body fat % of less then 9%. I am currently sitting at aroun11-13% and 205. In order to reach my goal, I will need to increase my lean protein sources for the day to maintain muscle mass while restricting my caloric intake and cycling my carbohydrates on a daily basis.

My new nutrition routine is a modified carb cycling routine developed by Brandan Fokken. A bodybuilding.com sponsored athlete. I have been inspired by him for a while and decided to include his nutrition approach into my every day life. It follows a 7 day cycle where carbs are cycled from no carbs, low and high.

Monday: No Carbs
Tuesday: Low Carb
Wednesday: High
Thursday: No
Friday: Low
Saturday: High
Sunday: Low

Cycling carbs will increase the metabolisms efficiency long term. You see all these diets preaching low carb diets forever. Carbs are the enemy they say. The problem with these diets is that when your body is depleted of carbs long enough, your metabolism starts to get smart and fat burning slows to ensure your body stays in survival mode. When you throw a couple high carb days into the mix, your body has to rev up the metabolism in order to burn the nutrients down. Shocking your body on a daily basis is the key to losing fat long term. Cycling carbs also ensures you have glycogen stores for your workouts.

My fitness Intro

Start of new year and with every new year comes a new resolution. Last years resoultion was to put on as much size as I could in the year. With that accomplished I started at 180 and got to 220. This was a combination of the right training, nutrition and recovery methods. Friends helping along the way and motivation staying at its peak, I was detirmined to stay on course for my goal and I ended up being very satisfied with the results.

This years resolutions are:

1. Complete my personal trainers exam and build a client base
2. Reach 200 lbs under 9% body fat.

 Right now I am studying the personal trainers course outline and study manual for the test in a month. The test requires me to complete a 100 question multiple choice and case study exam with the added section of a practical exam where I train somebody from a scenario. Hopefully I can pass with flying colours and start making a job out of a passion I have. That would be great.

As for my second resoulution, I currently weigh around 205 lbs and 11-13% body fat. Nutrition and training have been modified to support some weight loss while maintaining muscular strength and size I have acquired over the past year. Carb cycling and HIIT training will be added to my routine for enhanced results.

I look forward to blogging my experiences and progress over the next couple of months.