Not too bad

Okay, so I'm doing the BFL diet to the letter. At least, I did yesterday and I plan to today. It takes about 10 minutes in the morning to throw together a sandwich or two, shake up a couple servings of protein drink, and put it all along with a couple oranges into a bag. That takes care of my diet for the day, and it's less expensive than getting a tuna melt and Mountain Dew every day, so that's good. :-) Yesterday I got kinda hungry -- not a lot, but enough so that it was preventing me from focusing on my work. So I grabbed a handful of popcorn, and that tided me over until my next meal.

I kind of wanted "bad" food last night, but there were no cravings or anything, so it wasn't hard to just have cottage cheese or chicken breast with spices instead. After I lifted, I simply ate protein-packed foods until I wasn't hungry anymore, and then I stopped. Pretty simple, really.

Another benefit of eating very healthy foods during the week is that you look forward to the more fattening, tastier food, on the weekend. When you don't get to have it all the time, it becomes more of a treat when you do. :-)

Second week...

Okay, I got through week 1. I noticed two things:

1) The lift-at-night/cardio-in-the-morning thing works out pretty well. Doing cardio in the morning jump starts my metabolism and gives me energy throughout the day (especially coupled with the Betalean). Lifting at night works fine as long as I don't go *too* late -- that also revs me up, making it harder to get up early the next morning for cardio. On Saturday I exercise whenever.

2) My Diet Sucks. Last week I did a mostly-BFL diet for the first 4 days of the week, and then completely let it go from Friday through the weekend. I can't do that. About a year ago, I tried doing a BFL-style exercise program -- I exercised most every day, and my diet was okay, but it wasn't perfect. And ya know what happened? Nothing. I didn't gain weight, but I didn't really lose a whole lot of weight -- maybe just a few pounds. I cannot make a transformation unless I follow the diet to the letter. This means whole grains, 6 small meals every 2-3 hours, a gallon of water per day, and veggies. My grains have been less than whole; my meals have been fewer than six; I don't get a gallon of water and I hardly ever get my veggies. So... yeah. I know what to do. I just have to do it.

On track.

So this is how it's playing out: On lifting days, I end up going to the gym pretty late, and pushing it hard. Then the next morning I'll do cardio before work. It's only been 4 days but this seems like an easy routine to maintain, as compared to my previous "Get to the gym every morning at 7 a.m." delusion, which left me tired for the rest of the day. Never enough sleep with that one. With this plan, however, the rest comes naturally.

I like it!

Chipper YO!

I had a dream last night. I was wandering around a college campus -- I think it was a quasi-Michigan, but that's of no import -- after having driven all night. I walked into a bathroom in one of the buildings, and looked in the mirror. My eyes were leaning to the red side, a sign that I had been up all night. (Either that, or my eyes were traveling away from me at an enormous velocity! Sorry, I'm a cosmology geek.) :-)

But I noticed something else: I looked older, thinner, more... rugged. My jaw line was more clearly define, and my baby fat was gone. I suddenly realized that this was a dream, and this is what I could look like in a few years if I keep working out! Well, I woke up, sluggish, with a recollection of the generalities of the dream, but no specifics. I looked at my alarm clock -- I had set it early so I could do cardio before work. Ugh. I didn't want to go.

As I considered falling back asleep, my mind wandered through the events of the dream. When I got to my looking in the mirror, I remembered what had happened, and what I had realized in the dream. And suddenly I was excited, and eager to go to the gym to make the dream a reality!

And now, after having done 25 minutes of sweat inducing cardio, I feel great. Absolutely great. Chipper, awake, everything.

Something else -- last night, as I was considering whether to go lifting, I looked in the mirror and noticed that my left bicep was starting to show blue veins! This is something my right bicep has shown for about a year, but never my left. Boy, was I excited. :-) It was after 10, but I drove to the gym with a gusto little before displayed by any Schwartz. Got in a great workout.

Things are coming together... :-)

Run, run, gotta run, I gotta run...
Gotta run - woooo-oooo - I gotta run...

Went running last night! Well, jogging. Accordingto my nifty Polar, I was jogging for about 35 minutes, during which my average heart rate was 150 bpm, and I spent 31 minutes in my target HR zone of 128-169! That basically means I burned a lot of calories. (503, specifically). :-)

Now I just have to, well, keep doing it. Actually I was surprised -- it wasn't too hard to go for 35 minutes, and with the HRM guiding me along and beeping when i got too fast / too slow, I was able to exert not too much effort that I burned out, but enough to really make a difference!

Very exciting. :-)

Tired. Damn stupid tired! Cycles! Tired! Crap!

When I don't exercise on a regular basis, I get tired. Very tired. Then, it's hard to get back into exercising because I lack energy. Vicious cycle. I'm sure I've talked about this before. Too much stuff going on. Concerts, reunions, dates, work. No Me time.

I want some me time.