Max's Accountability

[Tingjid]

Hey, this thread is simply a blog so that I may keep myself accountable. The goal here is my new diet among other more martial things

I'm going to be trying to eat according to the way it's described in the book 'The Tao of Health Sex and Longevity' It seems such a healthy way to eat and I need to loose weight and get stronger by the 11th of March. That's when I'm testing to Black and 2nd Brown for internal. I've always found the ranking system in internal kinda weird but I'm not gonna complain, Master Jamie keeps giving me more and more internal knowledge so all is well and good in the world of Max.

Anyway, I'm not too conserned about people reading this, cool if you do, and if you have comments or suggestions please don't hesitate. I'm really just putting this out there so that I keep myself accountable and to help motivate me.

I currently weigh, according to the mail scale at work here with my shoes and everything, 223, I'd like to be below 200 by my test and I think that's fairly reasonable, though I don't intend to do anything unhealthy, so if I don't make it, I don't make it, I'm willing to bet I'll be healthier than I am now though. Not that I'm really unhealthy now, I actually work out a lot and eat fairly ok, but my build is a fair amount of muscle that's fairly well toned with a layer of fat over everything. But that layer weighs a lot and it's annoying. Another good piece of motivation is that I've split two pairs of pants in the past two weeks in the same spot, right down the middle of the butt. One was in a horse stance I popped into a bit too quick and the other was a low reverse stance I went in a bit too quick. So my big booty needs to go for it annoys me But in my defense the second pair was a little small to begin with and the first wasn't exaxtly quality, but no excuses! The butt goes! I need to find one of those scales that does the fat percentage also 'cause I'd really like to know a before and after. But I'll work on that.

So the idea here is tryphology or food combinations, eating certain things at certain times only in combination with certain other things or just by themselves. The book explains everything very well and offers a lot of back up for their claims. So right now I'm sitting here eating a bowl of noodles for breakfast with nothing else, not even water. Apparently you should eat things without washing them down for a while, though to be truthful I don't have nearly all the guidelines down yet.

No protien and starches together, no milk, lots of fruits and vegetables and a lot less meat among other things. So anyway, that's enough for today I'll see how things go this first day and I'll keep learning the guidelines for a nice healthy taoist diet. If you've read this then Thanks and if not then Thanks

Oh for those of you that know this diet, I'll be doing some :cough: cleansing :cough: this weekend, mainly of the black grape variety, so that'll be interesting to find out how it goes. Stay tuned this weekend to read about me crapping myself to a healthier, well, me

[Tingjid]

Well this weekend wasn't too bad, I didn't stick to the grape thing 100% I was close on Sunday though, had some noodles to round it out and soak up some Sunday night beer while playing pool But I have had an extremely grape heavy diet for the past few days and I feel great, and it hasn't done much to my digestive track so I don't know if it's lying wait for some extremely inconvenient time or what. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I ordered a scale that does the fat percentage thing, ebay rocks, should be here soon, I'm hoping.

My company is doing a weight loss competition, everyone throws in 25 dollars and the winner gets 70% of pot the 2nd place person gets 20% and the 3rd gets 10%. So I'm down, might as well try and make some money while doing this

I've been eating healthier and feeling better, had some good workouts this weekend, mostly form on Saturday and mostly conditioning on Sunday. Should have done one or two more, but I'll take what I did, I was still pretty busy, had to hang out with my all too cute niece

Well, I get weighed in later today for that competition thing so I'll find out where I'm at then. Had carbs(ramen) for breakfast, gonna have some oranges here in a few hours, a cucumber and some grapes for lunch, some other kind of vegetable thing later on, and then woo hoo some kind of meat for dinner. Other than that, just gotta keep going forward and all will be good...

[Tingjid]

Well, I thought about it and I cheated for lunch and had some McDonalds. My main reason is that I wanted to pad my weight for the initial weigh in for this contest, and I know that makes me a bad person, but a few extra hundred bucks would be nice and who knows the few pounds I'll add may make a difference. Also the other reason was the more and more I thought about it the less and less apealing a cucumber and some grapes for lunch sounded. So I'll tone down everything else for today food wise, have a good workout tonight at class and tomorrow be back on track. So much for just moving forward

[Tingjid]

I absolutely love it when karma makes itself blatantly but gently apparent. Well all my well laid plans to cheat were destroyed yesterday. After lunch I hardly let myself go to the bathroom and I was slamming the water, 4:30 rolls around (the time we get weighed in for that contest) and I’m swimming….so I head to the spot everyone is supposed to be at but no one’s there, so I hang out for 5 or 10 minutes and still no one, so now I’ve pretty much gotta waddle, as quickly as it is physical possible to waddle, to the bathroom and hope no one else is in there. Before I left I weighed myself and I had it up to 227 just from holding things that wanted out. So I go to the bathroom and all was wonderful and I get ready to leave fully disappointed that I wont get to compete like that. And on my way out who should walk in but everyone that’s supposed to be competing. So I got weighed in at 222. Serves me right.

Did rather well on my diet for the rest of the day after cheating for lunch, just had grapes all night. Just before I went to bed I ate a piece of garlic, straight, they say it’s supposed to be real good for you, so I figured I’d try it. Man I tell you what, it almost killed me, but I feel great. I mean it hurt and burned and just wouldn’t go away, I was burping garlic for a bit before I went to sleep and that was not pleasant. Today though, I didn’t get much sleep and I still feel great. I think I’m going to eat a piece before I go running tonight. I’ll try eating one a day for a while and see what that does, I mean besides make me stinky .

Anyway, had a good forms and conditioning workout last night. I was there for four hours as is usual for Mondays and Wednesdays, though 1 hour was just straight little kids classes which I love to help out in because they can be a lot of fun, but it’s just not much of a workout. But we had a good 45 minutes of sparring and then about 30 minutes of conditioning and another hour of form. I just got a nice gripper and some hand extendor bands from Ironmind so I’ve been working that whenever I’m in the car, which is a lot considering I drive 45 minutes to work everyday. They’re real quality, I got the lowest Captains of Crush gripper and I still can’t close it all the way, and before yesterday I would have said that I have pretty strong hands, I can’t wait to get past the number one, my hand strength will be up there.

Well back to work for me

[Tingjid]

Well, I had an ok workout last night, mostly just helping out though, meant to go running, but I'm a ******* and 'turf toe'd my left big toe. Not the first time, but man it always just annoys the crap out of me. I wrapped it and feels better, I'll hit it with some iron bone when I get to kung fu tonight so it should heal up pretty quick. Sticking to my diet today real well, infact I replaced the fruit meal I should be having now with a vegetable meal. Good for me, but man not very satisfying. Bean sprouts and broccoli isn't quite the same as anything fruit. I had a lunch of bean sprouts, broccoli, and some lunch meat. That should be lunch tomorrow also. Everything else stayed the same as yesterday.

Plans for workout tonight :
1 hour of Yoga before Kung Fu
Kids Classes.... again fun and enjoyable but not a workout
Sparring about 30 minutes worth, always good
Form work and conditioning - hour and a half

So over all it should be good, I need to fit some time in there to do some I-ching. But I'll figure it out. I officially weigh 218 today, so I'll take improvement

[Tingjid]

Well, my scale came in which is sweet. I officially weigh 215 lbs (hell yeah), with a body fat percentage of.....25%! Well I used to be a big fat ass in highschool, hated highschool got all depressed, ate a lot, went to 250 lbs, none of which was muscle, then I started lifting with my dad, after about a year I was at 190, actually that's what got me into yoga, which got me into meditation, which got me into tai chi, which got me into Kung Fu. I went back up to 220 and I've been here for a while, I knew I still had a fair amount of fat, but it's hard to tell, my room mate thinks the machine is off, but I can see it being accurate. I need to run more, if nothing else this is even better motivation.

Ok so I weigh 215, 25% is fat so I have 53 lbs of fat. Wow....ok say I take it to a 'normal' level of body fat( 8-18% according to the manual that came with the scale) at about 10% to make it easy.... Then I would have to lose 35 lbs of straight fat, putting me at 180... I'm down. Of course that's assuming I don't lose muscle, so I'll have to keep working out (well duh). Man, taking off a 35 lb weight vest right now would friggin rock, though I suppose most of the fat is in my legs and butt. So running will definitely help, I need to stay on my diet and I need to workout at least a little throughout the work day, I've become fairly stagnant at work lately. So that's the plan....

Last night's workout-
Kids classes - usual
Sparring - lots of fun, didn't get enough fights in to be a real workout, but I enjoyed the non-stop as opposed to point, you really have to be the aggressor to make it look like you're controlling the match.
Form - Always good, worked mostly Shao-lin Bird and White Crane, then I got to do a fair amount of Xing Yi, which I love to death but haven't had a chance to practice in a while. So that was cool, and a fairly good workout.

Our lease is up at our school, which sucks, but we'll do what we have to. They tried to raise the rent too much so we have to be out by Tuesday! Definitely a transition period, but we already have a school lined up, Sifu is cutting it down to once a week though. Which I'm actually kind of excited about, I'll have a lot more time to train, but no real place to do it at. But such is the life a martial artist, besides it's only a building, as long as the students keep coming all will be good. And we have a real good core group of students that are very faithful to Master Jamie, so I'm sure we'll lose maybe one or two, at least until we can find a better place to train. That kind of sucks for my Sifu, I hope it's not too hard financially, but I'm sure he's used to this stuff by now, been doing it for a while.

Well anyway, I should stop rambling and get back to work.

[Tingjid]

Been a while, so I figured I'd update, if only for myself

Still loving my diet, officially under one month until my test, Saturday was the mark so I decided to cheat and have some McDonalds. It had been like two weeks since I'd eaten anything like that, especially the combination of meat and starches. I tell you what it bit me in the @ss, literally, it was not pleasant. But all the more reason not to cheat, my body did not appreciate it.

I'm down to 207 lbs and 23% body fat. so I've dropped 2% fat and 8 lbs, 2% of 215 is 4 lbs, so that's another 4 lbs of whatever, though in honesty that's what I weigh in the morning, I'm more like 209, 210 at night. So that might be water and the 23% makes a bit more sense. Still no where near where I need to be, but progress is progress and I will most certainly take what I can get. Diggin the new schedule, I've got a lot more time to work out, I need to take a bit more advantage of it, but I'm getting there.

Usual:

Rice or noodles for breakfast
Fruit, usually grapes around 10
Meat for lunch, usually chicken
Vegetable around 3, broccoli or cucumber, something like that
Fruit for dinner

During the work day I tend to do squats and pushups when I can, been doing a new pushup that's been killing me, works wrist strength hard core.

Night time workout, form, today it was straight form for about an hour(3-4 times a week) and now I'm about to start my ab work, 2 or 3 times a week I've been running 1 to 2 miles. Though that's a bit of an exaggeration, it'll be true this week, I've already ran twice, and I'm going to tomorrow, but last week I only ran once. Anyway, I'm improving my form endurance, not where it should be, or in honesty where it was when I was working out everyday with my budy. It's a lot easier when you have someone to workout with, it's been tough doing it on my own, motivation is harder. Anyway I'll quit complaining And go workout, man today is not a day for working out, that's depressing, but it's not the first year, wait that makes it worse....


edit: Update, so I don't feel like that much of a wuss, I've managed to reliably close the #1 captains of crush gripper with my right, but not yet with my left. Anyway....