Project Ripped

This morning when I woke up it was straight to the the weigh-in to find out what progress I have made. Progress is once again slow but steady and I didn’t do my 15 minutes of exercise as I had chosen to go out for a good cycle this morning instead.

This week my key statistics are:

• Weight: 13 st. 2.5 lbs. (184.5 lbs.) - 1.5 lbs. loss in the last week
• Body fat abdomen pinch reduction of 4mm (46mm down to 42mm)

My body fat is reducing week on week and I have some exciting progress to chart next week in my 6 week review. My body fat pinches are reducing and although my photographs don’t show it well I am losing fat.

After having a fruit smoothie I topped up a couple of water bottles and set off on my road bike. I had a go at riding part way round the Isle of Man TT course. I went from Ballaugh to Ramsey and then up the mountain climb. The climb was slow and hot. There was another rider out on a mountain bike so I followed him up. He looked like he had done it before so I used his pace as a guide. My bike was probably a bit faster with lower rolling resistance but he was clearly fitter than I was.

There was a big climb involved in the ride. I had gone from sea level in Ramsey to 400 metres above sea level at Brandywell. Hardly the Tour de France but challenging all the same. The day was lovely and there was very little wind. At Brandywell I turned right and headed back to Kirk Michael and then on to Ballaugh. The loop was 25 miles in length and it took me 1:51 hours. My plan is to cycle the full 37.75 miles around the course by the end of the Summer.

I spent the afternoon in the garden seeing to my vegetable patch. Our brassicas are at risk from caterpillars at the moment so we had to install a bigger net than the one we had been using up to now.

Looking at my side I can again see that my torso is starting to look less swollen and leaner than it was at the start of the project. My waist is so much larger than I want it to be but each week it is getting smaller and I am sure the changes will be permanent.

The overhang at the front of my shorts is getting smaller which is good news. I think I could do with a bit more muscle in those arms though.

Those bulges around my waist are starting to show signs of reduction and the skin folds are starting to appear lighter, and therefore less deep. I want to see those folds disappear by the end of phase 1 in 7 weeks time.

Having a ripped muscular physique seems so far away but by persevering I am sure that by the end of Phase 2 my body will be both healthy and ripped.

I didn’t get to bed  until late this morning. It was about 2:00 am. and I hadn’t been out anywhere, I was just  enjoying the feeling of not having to get up for work for the next month or so. So, I stayed up watching a bit of TV, reading ‘Raw Magic’ by Kate Magic Wood and browsing some of my favourite websites.

I managed to sleep in until just after 9:00 am. and when I did wake up naturally I went on the cross trainer for 15 minutes on the interval programme at level 1.

I have purposely had a bit of a lazy day today. I have done a little pottering in the garden, had my hair cut and not a lot else. My legs feel a little tired from the cycling and workout yesterday so I thought it best to leave it until tomorrow to before I go for another cycle.

Late afternoon I tried Cacao Nibs for the first time. I tried the drink from Raw Magic called Goji Orgasm which consists of Goji Berries, Cacao Nibs and Almonds. It was nice but I can’t help but feel that there was an alcoholic taste to it. I don’t drink much alcohol but there was a definite strong taste. I guess this was the Cacao Nibs.

In the evening I did my abdominal exercises. I am following the exercises from ‘Essential Abs’ from Men’s Health. For the first four weeks I followed the level 1 exercises and now that I am into my second four weeks I am following the level 2 exercises. The level 2 exercises are a lot more difficult than the level 1 exercises and at the moment I am struggling. I am sure that after a few more sessions my abs will adapt. In level 2 there are 6 abdominal exercises and 1 back exercise.

Weigh-in day tomorrow and today sees  me completing 5 weeks on my phase 1 programme.

Today was my last day at work before the Summer break. I now have 6 weeks until I teach in front of a class again and it is a break that is welcomed after a full school year. People always joke about teacher’s holidays but they don’t appreciate the stress that is caused by being in front of several groups of demanding youngsters every day. Don’t get me wrong, the job is very rewarding but it does take a lot out of you.

This morning I woke at 6:30 am. and I got together a few items of clothes to put in my cycling back pack. There is not a lot of room so it really was just a change of footwear, underpants and a t-shirt. I had a piece of fruit and set off by about 7:20 am. I took my mountain bike which is normally quite a bit slower than the road bike but I surprised myself by getting to work, about 9.7 miles away, in 39:20 minutes. The last time I cycled to work when I was on my road bike I did it in about 41:00 minutes. So, something is going well. Either I am lighter, fitter or both. The route has many hills so fitness and weight make a big difference.

I arrived at work by 8:00 am and used a fan to cool myself down prior to having a training day. We made quite a bit of progress on planning for the new AQA A Level in Computing. There were leavers presentations and speeches and then we finished at 1:00 pm.

On the way home I chose to ride along the old railway track from St. John’s to Ballaugh. I cycled along the main road until I came across the track and then I stayed on the track pretty much the whole way apart from a few small stretches where there used to be tall bridges but now there is nothing, so I had to go up and down some steep banks. The track was quite bumpy and tough in places. At one point I got a little stuck going through a bog and had to put my foot down and right under a deep muddy puddle. Yuk!

About 2/3 of the way along I got a slow puncture so I had to keep on stopping every couple of miles to pump up the tyre again. I know slow punctures are a pain to fix on the track because it is difficult to find the hole so I chose to just pump up and ride on. The total time for the ride home was somewhat longer at 1:22 hours. I really enjoyed this track and hadn’t been down it, for the whole length, in 15 years. I must do it again sometime.

I had my customary hours sleep around 5:00 pm.

This evening I did my resistance training on the Bowflex. Progress was as usual with either extra weight or 2 or 3 extra reps being added on most exercises. I thought I would have been a bit tired after the two cycles today but it looks like I wasn’t. I may use this fact in the future as I have been avoiding aerobic exercise on resistance exercise days apart from my 15 minutes exercise upon waking.

I woke up with the alarm today at 6:30 am. I had managed to get to sleep by just after 10:00 pm. last night so got a decent amount of sleep. Upon waking I went for a ride on my road bike along the usual Ballacrye and The Cronk route and took 17:15 minutes. I had a race against a few rabbits that ran out on to the road this morning. They managed to stay ahead of me for about 40 to 50 metres before jumping back in to the hedge. How fast can a rabbit run? These ones were going at about 22 mph. The cycle was a bit windy this morning. I only normally get up to about 17 or 18 mph. on the flat but I had a bit of wind assistance so felt I was cycling without any air resistance.

I was a bit disappointed when I got home from work to find I was once again extremely tired. I lay on my sofa and woke up 90 minutes later feeling very heavy and sluggish. I can’t get my  head around why I still needed sleep this afternoon after having a decent night’s sleep last night.

I thought it is worth talking a little bit about my diet. I know many people that are on a similar programme to what I am doing count their calories and stick religiously to schedules and so on. I have chosen not to do this. I know that I need a calorie deficit to lose fat. I also know that I need a balance of carbohydrate, protein and fat for my body to function effectively. I have chosen to eat a predominantly raw diet in order to meet those goals and to boost nutrient intake. I don’t eat exclusively raw foods as living with my wife, who doesn’t eat this way and therefore makes it challenging at the moment. So I do have the occasional chicken breast, piece of quiche or smoked salmon.

For the past four weeks I have had a fresh fruit juice or smoothie for breakfast. The theory is that the body is still trying to cleanse itself after a good night of sleep and a big breakfast hampers this process. I double up on the smoothie and bring half of it to work with me to drink mid-morning. I have been putting it my flask and adding a couple of ice cubes. At lunch I go to the school canteen and choose whatever looks like a healthy option. I don’t over eat knowing that I want to keep my calorific intake to around 500 calories for this meal. I don’t work it out but guestimate it based on experience.

For my evening meal we have a salad picked fresh from the garden with something else. This could be quiche, vegetable bolognese, or something similar. With this we have a freshly juiced vegetable juice. This juice is to provide us with lots of fresh enzymes that are lacking from cooked food.

Before bed I will normally have another fruit juice with a scoop of protein powder to ensure my body had enough protein to repair any muscular growth during the night.

I am looking at raw recipe books at the moment and I am looking forward to experimenting with some of the recipes while I am off work during the Summer. I will report back my findings in the blog.

I also supplement my diet with additional things which are good for me but I will talk about that another day.

Tomorrow is an INSET training day at school. Today was the children’s last day in school. So I plan to cycle to work tomorrow. It is about 10 miles on a hilly route on the road and depending on the weather I may try and cycle back along the old railway track. The track will take longer but will be more interesting as I haven’t cycled down it for about 15 years

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I woke before the alarm again today but once it went off found it increasingly difficult to get out of bed. It must have been 20 minutes before I could muster the energy to get out from under the sheets. Walking to the  bathroom I could feel stiffness in my feet and lower legs. I don’t know why, but I guess I felt it more with the direct contact with the ground.

I promptly went out for a ride on my road bike and did the Ballacrye and The Cronk route in a comfortable 18 minutes.

After coming home from work I have felt quite tired. I don’t think that I got to bed as early as should have last night with one of the kids up late and perhaps I am not getting enough sleep. I will make a point of getting to bed for 9:30 pm. this evening.

After the couple of days off I am returning to my midsection programme this evening. I am now going to start a more advanced workout that uses 6 exercises instead of the 4 I have been doing. I will drop down to 12 reps for today and add another rep each workout.

I am also pleased to note that when I woke up this morning my sore throat had gone. Traditionally I have suffered from colds and the like for at least 4 or 5 days. So it looks like my immune system may be on the up.

I am really looking forward to getting some quality sleep next week.

I seemed to wake up just before the alarm at 6:30 am. this morning. It took me a while to get out of bed but I promptly went down and spent 15 minutes on the cross trainer at level 1 on the interval training. Although my legs felt less tired than they did 3 days ago they were far from fully recovered. There was still a bit of resistance in them at the start of the exercise. By the end of the 15 minutes I felt fine and was fully warmed up for the day.

After work I came home and did my resistance workout on the Bowflex. I am pleased with my progress as I am still able to add either 2 or 3 reps or go up a weight each workout. This progress is going to slow down at some point but I am enjoying it while I am making rapid gains. Now that the workout is finished by body feels fully fatigued and good for nothing. This is one of the reasons I had moved my workouts to late evening but today I felt working out straight after work.

I got a sore throat last night. Nicola has one too so I know it isn’t just me and that it must be some sort of virus or infection. Normally sore throats and colds last for days so I am hoping that with a healthier diet this will be over a little quicker. I also got a mouth ulcer on the inside of my lower lip yesterday. This was unexpected as I thought that my diet may prevent them.

Hopefully if its dry in the morning I will get out for a cycle. If I can I will try and get an early night tonight.

This is the second of my two rest days after 4 weeks of exercising every day. I still woke up at 6:30 am. and I still needed the alarm today. This afternoon I noticed for the first time that I am getting a bit more energy in my legs when I walked up the stairs and didn’t have the fatigued feeling that I have experienced recently.

Today is our wedding anniversary. Nicola and I have been happily married for 7 years, although we have now been together for close to 16 years.

Tomorrow I will return to my daily 15 minutes exercise every morning. I will monitor the situation as regards my energy as I would like to increase this to 20 minutes at some stage, possibly after the 6 week point. I also have my normal scheduled resistance workout tomorrow which has been operating on a 1 day on 2 day off cycle since day 1. I shall be reviewing the resistance workouts after week 6.

As a school teacher this is my last week at work before the Summer break. Friday is an INSET training day and we finish at 1:00 pm. After that there is 6 weeks break before I return to classroom teaching. I need to make a decision soon if I am going to enter the ‘end to end’ mountain bike challenge in September as I will need to start putting in some longer rides (of 3 to 4 hours duration). My main concern is that I may not have enough energy and that I will need to start experimenting with increasing my food intake and secondly that I may lose any muscular gains due to training the body for endurance and not strength. My natural state is to be a sprinter and I find endurance events tough. But I guess that is what makes such a challenge worthwhile.

I want to spend the 6 week break trying to regain some of my health. I will for the first time in years have the opportunity to sit down and plan out some meals, to take some time to rest and to get some quality sleep – be it night, day or a combination of both.

This morning when I woke up at about 8:00 am I took my weekly measurements. I am pleased that I am still making progress. This morning I didn’t do my 15 minutes exercise as this is the first of my two rest days to give my legs a chance to recover after 4 weeks of daily exercise.

This week my key statistics are:

• Weight: 13 st. 4 lbs. (186 lbs.) - 1 lb. loss in the last week
• Small reduction in waist measurements
• Body fat abdomen pinch reduction of 6mm (52mm down to 46mm)
• Increase in chest measurement from 43″ to 44″ – increase of 1″

My first observation of this week is that I only lost 1 lb. of weight. At first I was a little disappointed but when I took a look at my body fat composition it appears that I have put on 1.5 lbs. of lean mass in the last week so, in theory, I have lost 2.5 lbs. of fat and gained 1.5 lbs. of muscle giving a net weight loss of 1.5 lbs. I think that my muscle gain may have been mainly in the chest and back giving me a slightly larger chest measurement today.

The big thing I wanted to do today is take a look at my photographic progress and see what changes I can observe during these first 4 weeks. I thought it would take about 4 weeks to see any significant change so today I expect to see some. Here are my photos.

The past few weeks I have been a little disappointed with my front and back shot comparisons as the changes seemed subtle. I had never done a side shot comparison. So today for the first time I am taking a look at my body from side.

There is a big reduction in the swelling in my torso. The depth of my torso seems reduced and the overhang at the front of my shorts doesn’t appear as pronounced. The depth of my upper body from chest to back appears to be narrower, when in fact the measurement has increased. This must be due to the increase of muscle in this area with the reduction of body fat.

Looking at the front shot I can see that the overhang at the sides of my waist appear different. There appears to be a defined area at the sides. The bulge on my left hand side (right in the picture) also appears to have reduced in size overall, although it looks worse as it is now protruding.

Looking at the back the bulge on the right hand side of my waist appears to have reduced in size. The bulge on my left hand side has reduced at the bottom leaving an odd shaped protrusion higher up. My waist now has an asymmetrical look. It may just be wishful thinking but the crease on the right hand side of my back appears to be slightly lighter than on the day 1 photo. I would love those creases, and the bulges, to be gone by the end of phase 1 (8 weeks to go).

The nice thing about Saturday is that I don’t have to get up at 6:30 to get in my exercise, shower and smoothie breakfast before I head off for work. It would be great to let the body wake up when it has had enough rest but this morning, like most of the weekends for the last few years, I was woken up by the kids climbing all over the bed needing some attention.

After waking I promptly went for a ride on my road bike and covered my standard Ballacrye and The Cronk route in 18:50 minutes. As I was cycling I could see marshals preparing to close the back roads for the Manx International Rally that has been on yesterday and today.

I realised that today has been 4 weeks since I started phase 1 and is a time to celebrate. This has been the most successful start to any transformation programme that I have been on in the last decade. It is still too early to see any major improvements to my health and physique but changes are starting to happen. The process of having daily photographs taken, writing the blog and becoming publicly accountable have given me the consistency of motivation to continue. Whenever I have had a ‘bad’ day, and we all have them, I have continued because I don’t want to be seen to fail just because I am a bit busy or feeling a bit tired.

I know I am about to have two rest days now and my legs are looking forward to it. My legs have been the only victim of the last 4 weeks. I have been aware that they have been progressively becoming more tired as each day went on. I don’t know if it is the exercise, the calorie deficit in my diet or a combination of the two. What I am hoping for is a chance for my legs to recover and the muscles to take on some energy.

This evening I performed my resistance exercise on the Bowflex. I am still making progress each workout and my muscles now feel exhausted on my single set workout. I had a big smoothie on completion to try and get some energy and protein back in to the muscles.

I have bought a few books on eating raw food off Amazon and I shall be trying these out over the next few weeks. The idea of eating raw and taking in nutrients and enzymes makes a lot of sense to me from a health improvement point of view.

Measurement day tomorrow and I am looking forward to seeing if I have made progress over the last week.

Before I went to bed last night I got a very painful sensation in my upper right back. It became a shooting pain whenever I turned my head. I guess it may be a torn muscle from the cycle but it didn’t manifest itself until long after the cycle. It made getting to sleep difficult as whichever way I turned my head I would get the shooting pain. I took some pain killers and ibuprofen before trying to get to sleep.

When I woke up this morning the pain was still there but not as bad as the previous night. I spent 15 minutes on the cross trainer on the interval programme at level 1. Although a bit tired I didn’t suffer any pain in the back except for when turning my head.

At work today I was part of a ‘Super Learning Day’ we put on for the Year 7 students. It was a great day, and week for that matter, but the demands of whole week had taken its toll and many teachers including myself are we are now all exhausted after putting so much in to making ‘Enrichment Week’ as success.

Other than my upper back ache I thought I should mention a few ailments I have had over the last 4 or 5 days. My health has been pretty good over the last four weeks but just this week a got a sore on the skin just below my nose. It has been extremely painful and had an infection in it. On the inside of my lip I can feel an ulcer type lump at the location of the sore. I have had sores like this many years ago and I attributed it to eating certain types of nuts. However, I have managed to eat nuts for the last year with no sores or side effects. I have started to eat some cashew nuts so this may be the cause but I am reluctant to stop eating nuts altogether.

I have had a few cases of the runs over the last few weeks and I think it may have been when I ate some Goji berries. I can’t believe that these berries are the cause, at least I am hoping they are not the cause, so I will continue to eat them periodically and monitor the effects.

And today I have a terrible pain in my stomach. I don’t know if it is an infection or the lunch I had at the canteen. The canteen food is normally good but I only had a 30 minute lunch slot and didn’t choose the healthiest option. I have also started to get a slightly sore throat and I think a sore larynx from so much talking to the groups today.

During the photographs Nicola noticed an unsymmetrical effect in my torso. Looking at the photos I can see that my torso is bulging more on my left hand side (right hand side in the photo). I am unsure why it is bulging on that side but will keep my eye on it.

Sunday and Monday will be my end of four week cycle rest days and I aim to recharge my body, especially my legs, for the next four weeks of phase 1.