The Fitness Ninja

Alright… I’m slowly putting things back in order.  AND, I’m in better spirits than I was on the weekend.  I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I may never get my old computer fixed and it’s time for a new one anyway (what with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 on the way).  So my brother has helped me pick out some computer kits from Tiger Direct along with a new graphics card which I’ve been reading up on.  Should get it built within the coming month.  No rush as I am thoroughly distracted with Super Street Fighter 4 on the PS3 right now… so that along with Eli, work, looking up stuff for the computer, planning Eli’s Baptism and just maintaining the house has kept me pretty damn busy.

But fear not! I have not slacked on the workouts!  I had to rearrange the schedule around a bit this week due to taking my rest day on Sunday when I had my shit day.  So, yeah, I did Back & Biceps on Tuesday, Cardio Power yesterday and the Angie today.  I kinda liked the fact that I had two days in between Back & Biceps and Chest, Shoulders & Triceps…. my muscles were super sore and needed the extra recovery time.  Maybe next time I do a three month set up, I’ll place the recovery day in the middle of the week to facilitate more of this prolonged resting.  Mind you, today I’m still sore from Back & Biceps so I hope the modified Angie goes well.  Of all the P90x routines, B&B is the one I find the most strenuous.  Just too damn concentrated on one muscle and not enough recovery time.

The other thing I’ve been working on is revamping my nutritional plans so I can melt away these extra pounds I’ve accumulated a little more easily.  I’ve tried to keep the rules simple and easy to follow as I’ve read that small changes to the way you eat are often the ones you are most likely able to maintain.  So here they are:

1.  Stay away from the vending machine!  I’ve been able to resist the snack machine on the 2^nd floor of the building for quite some time but then I found my resolve waver over the last 2 months.  No more! I’ll try not to carry so much damn change on me all the time (not that that matters actually as this thing will take all sorts of bills).

2.  Do not eat from the group work table.  Seriously, with all the treats my co-workers keep putting on this thing, it’s become like a sugar / pastry buffet at times.  I’ll get my revenge though as I’m gonna drop some girl guide cookie bombs on it this weekend (my wife was obligated to buy them from our cute niece… but since she’s also on a fitness kick, no way we are gonna eat them – plus, they aren’t the chocolate covered mint variety! Haha.. j/k.).

3.  Do not eat past 9 PM.  This one was a rule I kept to for a long time but like so many other things that fell away with my complacency … it disappeared.  You might ask, “Why not 8?” It’s because I usually get home from the evening shift around 8:30-8:45 so I still need to eat dinner by then.  No way I’m gonna forego a meal (skipping meals is actually conducive to GAINING weight as it puts your body in starvation mode and lowers your metabolism).

4.  Limit myself to ONE granola bar per day.  I love granola… been having way too many of the bars though.  And that’s an easy way to pack on calories without noticing it as they are so small and easily eaten.

5.  Try to drink more water.   Not getting enough.

6.  Do not order desserts when eating out.  For some reason, I started doing this once I found out about the great mini dessert deal they had going at Kelsey’s Restaurant.  It’s like 3 samplers for $5.99 but the sampler is basically the size of a full on serving. UGH. NO MORE!

7.  Do not go up for second servings. 1 meal = 1 serving.  This one is hard to stick to as I can get so hungry after work.

8.  Do not gorge myself at my mother’s house.  And I used to wonder why I gained so much weight while living there.  It’s like rooming at a Costco / Convenience store hybrid.

Alright, that’s it for now! Hope your nutrition / fitness goals are going well!  And if not… then do something to get them back on track.

Life’s too short not being the person you want to be.

Peace!

Everything feels like it’s been out of whack for the past few days and that’s why I’ve been away from the blog.  I don’t even know where to begin really.  My head feels like it’s spinning from all these minor (and a few major) nuisances in my life.  Things like I feel I have no control over (and yet I probably do).

This was supposed to be a terrific weekend as I had Saturday off from work and the weather forecast was pretty good.  To be honest I don’t remember much from Saturday other than the wife, Eli and I went over to my mom’s house to have dinner with my parents as my dad was up visiting from Rochester.  As usual I stuffed my face with all the snacks lying around my mom’s house (she buys them in bulk at Costco I think) and her home cooked meal.  We got home late, around 10, but I was determined not to deviate off my schedule so down I went to the basement to knock out Chest, Triceps & Shoulders.  I was dead tired and sleepy going into it, but as usual once I got going things perked up.  I fell short a rep here and there on some of the sets, but it wasn’t too bad considering how tired I was.  The weights were pretty much unchanged from last week’s attempt.  Amazing how difficult any straight arm exercise can be even with something as light as 5 or 10 pound dumbbells.  Tony’s right in the sense that you don’t really need much more than that to feel the burn.

Sunday is when a lot of my real troubles began.  I think it was actually rooted in a discussion on Saturday night when the family was talking about HD TV and getting a HD box for the cable service we have.  I’m not a TV watcher at all preferring to get all my entertainment from the internet.  My wife, however, has a lot of shows she loves to watch.  Plus, there was the argument that our nice 48 inch HDTV which we bought a couple of years ago was wasting away in the basement as all it was used for was occasional gaming and the daily use of exercise DVDs.   So we decided on Sunday to overhaul much of the furniture in the living room and basement.  The wife and I carted everything back and forth to make space for the TV, I hooked up the HD box we got from Best Buy and then lugged the SUPER HEAVY OLD SCHOOL TUBE TV to the basement.  Fucker’s only 27 inches but I swear that thing is a 150 pounds.  It is BRUTAL to pick up.

Here’s the horrible part.  In moving all the electronics around downstairs and upstairs, I did something to FRY my desktop.  It would be too long a write up to tell you all the diagnostics and attempts I have made to get it fixed (and not that anyone would care), but suffice it to say I think the thing is totally screwed.  I can’t even get it to run in safe mode anymore and on the few occasions I can actually get it into Windows, I get hit almost immediately with a blue screen of death.  Reading up on the symptoms, I seriously think it has something to do with the memory.  I opened up the case and swapped some of the RAM from one slot to the other (I read on a site that might help *shrug*) but nothing has changed.  Friggin’ drives me nuts.  I was hoping to get a lot more use out of that computer.  Worst of all, the hard drive has a TONNE of files I’ve accumulated over the 5 years I’ve owned it (music, games, movies, documents, comics, anime, etc.).  Ironic thing is, I kept telling myself at the start of this year that I would purchase an external drive to back it all up at some point, using the Best Buy gift certificates I got from my birthday and Christmas to pay for it (these went instead to getting the HD box I don’t really care too much for).  Do I sound bitter? Yeah, I guess there’s a little bit of that in there too.  Last year I bought a stereo with the Best Buy gift certificates I accumulated.  A stereo I hardly use as I just plug into the iPod or laptop when I want to listen to music.

*Pounds head into desk.*

I was so upset and tired from trying for hours to get the computer fixed that I didn’t do Max Interval Plyo yesterday.  Felt shitty for not doing it, but already felt shitty from the computer thing so… *shrug* it wouldn’t have changed anything I guess.

To add insult to injury, for some reason I was compelled this morning to weigh myself.  I haven’t done that in a while and figured I should.

143 lbs.

FUCK.  I haven’t been in the 140s in I don’t know how long.  I was so pissed off… but in a way I kinda expected it.  Despite all the exercise I’ve been doing, I’ve been feeling a touch more sluggish recently during some of the routines and it’s because of this bit of extra junk in my trunk I think.  I can feel it around my abdomen.  But that’s me to a ‘T’… I sabotage all the hard work I do because I can’t resist friggin’ all the chocolate Easter eggs at work!  I’ve been opting for more desserts after eating out, pig out at my mom’s house whenever I go there, and I snack throughout the day at times I know I shouldn’t be (and when I’m not even necessarily hungry).

So… what am I going to do about it?  That’s a good question.  I hope to curb my eating but I need to set up a plan.  I’m too tired to write it out right now… I’ll list some of the pointers tomorrow.  But here is the end goal:

I want to be back at 135 by the time my son is baptized on June 20 and all the relatives are around.  That’s roughly a little under 2 months from now.  Gonna weigh myself once at the end of each week in order to keep a sharp eye on my eating patterns and goal.

Because my computer was fried, the wife and I left Eli with my mom and went shopping this afternoon for a) a small computer desk to fit into the living room and b) a new desktop computer.  Didn’t get either as a) Ikea had nothing we liked or would fit our budget / living space and b) my brother has found a better model to buy regarding the computer than what I had initially found.  Actually, he found a model at the store I was at but I didn’t have the details and want to look it over before committing to a purchase (as I’ll be out like a 1000 bucks for it).  Thank God he knows about computers as I can just go to him when I find my own understanding is lacking.

I got home and tackled my Max Interval Plyo.  Had to keep taking breaks through it as I felt I was just burnt out from everything that happened this weekend.  I’m glad I only have to that workout once per phase during this hybrid as I hate it with a passion.

There was tonnes of other small annoying shit that happened as well but I don’t want to recount those as I’m already starting to get pissed off again just writing all this (i.e. not being able to work out comfortably in the basement as everything had been moved around and the system I regularly use for working out was now gone).

I hope that whomever you are, you had a much more satisfying weekend than I did.  I also hope I get into better spirits as the week goes on.

Shit… just looked at all I wrote… sorry for the long as rant.

Alrighty… thank God today is a rest day as my body is feeling kinda pooped.   See, yesterday was kinda catch up day what with me skipping Cardio Abs on Wednesday night when I did the Angie.  I tacked it on top of my regularly scheduled Pure Cardio workout early yesterday afternoon AND ON TOP OF THAT… the weather was so good I decided to pull out all the stops and run home again for a second time this week.  I started off slow and drained, thinking to myself “What have I gotten into? I can’t make it home being this sore…” but then 5 minutes into it I felt fine and sailed home smoothly.  My legs are pretty achy tonight though, but nothing a good rest can’t take care of.

So… yeah I feel like I got a pretty decent dose of exercise.  Good thing too as I treated myself to 2 large oatmeal raisin cookies at work and had another cookie and dessert square today at work… seriously, this building is the kiss of death for trying to stay on top of nutrition.  To balance it out, my wife has been trying some low calorie recipes.  Last night, we had salad and chicken parmesan that amounted to about 500 cal. or so total.  Pretty delicious for being a low calorie take on a high calorie classic.

In other news… ugh, there is no other news.  I’m exhausted from work.  I’m gonna have some frozen yogurt, granola and play video games / surf.

Peace out and enjoy the weekend! YOU DESERVE IT!

Yeesh… extra long day at work.  To top it all off, didn’t get much sleep last night as Eli decided to play in his crib rather than sleep… UGH.  I felt like I was a zombie for most of the day.

Speaking of Eli, he wasn’t able to do his second audiology exam again.  Despite being super tired at the clinic, he refused to go to sleep.  Hence, they could not proceed with the test to gauge the level of hearing loss in his left ear.  Seems like we’re going to have to make a special trip out to one of the larger city hospitals like Mt. Sinai in order to get his test done (where they might administer a sedative to get it finished… hmmm I dunno how I feel about that.  I’m sure I’ll have a tonne of questions for the doctor).

Around 9 tonight I got up the initiative to do my modified Angie.  Went well as I was able to do all 10 circuits in about 50 min. give or take.  I’m leaving the Cardio Abs until tomorrow as it was already too late.

Alright, peace out!

I wonder what he can hear.

Did Yoga X today… man it was frustrating as hell.  I dunno what it was but I was just tripping up all over myself.  I could not stay in any of the balance poses to save my life.  It got so bad that at one point when I stumbled out of half moon I yelled out “FUCK!”.  Hahahaha… the essence of peace I am not.  I practice  a little known branch of yoga known as “The Angry Ashtanga”.  Basically, it cleanses the soul through mindless and loud cursing while attempting to do balance poses.  At least that’s what I tell myself.

In other news, today at work was kinda somber as people had been let go. There were a bunch of meetings to talk about “restructuring”.  I couldn’t go as I was stuck with certain duties that did not free up my time.  *shrug* I figure if something is important enough to worry about, the people I work with will be talking about it and I’ll just pick it up from them.  In any case, the less I think about it, the less I have to worry and I can just focus on whatever is at hand (and I need to do that as work is getting sooooo busy…).

In order to clear my mind, I decided to run home after my shift.  It was a beautiful night… cool and dry with plenty of light to see by.  I was lucky enough to hit a bunch of red lights so I was pretty fresh throughout most of the run.  My legs are sore now but they should be ok by the time I attempt the Modified Angie tomorrow.

I leave you with this gem I found on one of the websites I frequent.  Much more effective than the original Nike ad I posted a few days ago.

Alright… so I’m safe from the lay-offs … for now.  I didn’t get one of the dreaded phone calls this morning so my job is safe for the time being.  The reason I say this is because there is a system of “bumping” in place in the organization I work for.  Basically, anyone with more seniority than me who has lost their job will have the option to move into any other position that they are qualified for if it is taken up by someone with less seniority.  There are more rules to it, but that’s the basic premise.  Strangely, they estimate that the bumping will probably take a couple of weeks to settle through.

I’ve got one small thing going for me in that the position I hold has always been kinda looked down upon.  Also, I am a part-timer so I don’t get the most hours (although amongst part-timers I probably have one of the higher hour totals).  I dunno… I can’t think and worry about it anymore.  I’m just going to keep going to work until they tell me to stop (which hopefully occurs when *I* want to stop).

In fitness related news, late this afternoon the wife, Eli and I all decided to take an hour long walk along the lake this afternoon.  The weather was wonderful but OMG, the gnats were out in full force.  I guess this must be breeding season for them as there were clouds of them wherever we walked.  To make matters worse, they got stuck all over my sweater… EWWW.

HUNDREDS ALL OVER MY SWEATER!

We then went to the mall.  I had 2 soft tacos from Taco Bell’s Fresco low calorie menu.  These are basically the only thing I ever get from the Bell nowadays.  I figure they’re a pretty good compromise when I have a craving for Mexican fast foods as they have less than 7 grams of fat and only 180 calories per taco.  I think the caloric reduction comes about from the fact they have no cheese or cream.  I don’t miss either one so all-in-all they’re not that bad.

Almost as gross as the gnats! Just kidding...sorta.

When we got home, I tackled Back & Biceps.  Darn thing took almost an hour and fifteen minutes as I had to keep taking breaks.  Using 30 pound dumbells and a 20 pound dip belt burnt down my arms pretty fast.  My form throughout was decent but I had to lower the weights to 20s when doing the static arm curls (as per usual) and then again when entering the hammer curl series at the end.  Right now, they’re totally dead which is to be expected.  Thankfully, I opted to tackle ARX earlier in the day so I didn’t have to do that on top of the workout.  I think I’m going to do the abdominal work pre-emptively earlier in the day from now on as then I can give it my all (being “fresh”) as opposed to being exhausted when attempting it.

Gonna enjoy a small treat of yogurt and granola! Peace!

Wow…  I haven’t done Chest, Shoulders & Triceps in ages and I did this workout on Saturday night after my shift at work.  I remember starting Phase 2 back in November and realizing how much tougher the routines seemed over the Phase 1 P90x stuff.  It’s still brutally hard even now.  I find a lot of the push up moves I do falling between the ranges of 15-20 (with the exception of 1-handers which I can only do 10 of each side) and on this first ‘refresher’ day I decided to opt for weights in between 10-20 pounds mostly (10 for a lot of the straight arm stuff, using 30s for presses).  It was a barn burner and I felt sore in my chest and triceps throughout the today.

Speaking of which, most of today was spent lethargically travelling in the car.  See, a very close friend of ours asked us to be the godparents of her second daughter (we were, incidentally, also the godparents of their first daughter).  Thing is, she lives about 2 hours away.  The service was at 11, we needed to get there by 10:30 in order to talk to the minister about god-parenting stuff so we took off at 8 just in case we met with traffic.  Oh jeez I was beat as  I decided to do all the evening feeds last night as my wife was going to do the driving in the morning (figure she needed to be alert).  I was nodding off in the car on both the ride there and back…

Side note: regardless of how tired I feel, I refuse to sleep while someone is driving.  I have this weird fear that if I fall asleep, I won’t be “ready” for an accident if it happens.  Totally illogical I know as whether or not I am nodding off (barely aware of anything happening around me anyways) or if I am fully awake, I doubt I will ever be ready for the split second it takes for an accident to happen.  I think part of this stems from all the years my dad drove our family around.  The guy is notorious for not checking his blind spots.  He’s never gotten us in an accident but man oh man we’ve had some close calls.  To this day, whenever I am in the passenger’s seat I still double check the blind spot for whomever is driving when they change lanes.  That’s how paranoid my dad’s driving has made me about being in a car.

Where was I? Oh yeah, we got to the Church in plenty of time but it turned out we didn’t even need to speak to the minister.  Strangely, we weren’t even mentioned as godparents throughout the entire service.  It was a United Church (my family is Roman Catholic) so…*shrug*… I dunno.  Maybe they don’t have the whole position of ‘god-parent’ or maybe this minister just forgot? I don’t fully recall what the ceremony was like the last time we did this for our friend and her first child.  Fortunately, the service today was pretty good.  Maybe it’s because it’s such a small congregation or maybe it’s because it was United, but the minister was super friendly and “neighbourly” with all the parishioners.  The church itself was located right in between two houses in a residential district (you’d miss it if it weren’t for the steeple on top) and the hall inside was barely the size of my living room and kitchen combined.  It was *that* small.  He called on people by name throughout the service and chatted them up even during his sermon.

Why am I telling you all this? I dunno… it’s on my mind and it’s better to think about this than about the layoffs this week.  *Damn it!*

When my wife, Eli and I got home, I took care of some chores (garbage day tomorrow!) then crashed.  I slept for like THREE HOURS! RIDONKULOUS!  I am paying for it now as its 12:30 EST and I am totally awake.

I got up at 8:30 PM from the nap.  Dragged my butt to the basement at 9 to do Max Interval Circuit, proceeded to get by ass kicked by Shaun T., then had a very small dinner of an apple, protein drink and granola bar.  I was still super full from all the junk I ate at the reception after the baptism.

Another side note: The reception took place in our friend’s grandparents’ basement.  Their house is one of those old war time bungalows that probably sprouted up in the 50s.  Very crowded, small and musty… has a tonne of bric-a-brac everywhere… things you would envision old people owning [whatever this might be... too long a list to describe].  Thing is, *ALL* their decor dates back to the 70s.  It was surreal! I felt waves of nostalgia throughout the entire time I was there… heck, her grandparents even refer to the Internet as “a phone connected to the TV”.  Out of touch but very cute!.

Speaking of eating…. I HAVE TO REALLY RE-COMMIT TO MY NUTRITION.  My eating has gone down the shitter.  I’m gonna blame it on the stress I’ve been feeling at work.  I just find myself being able to justify more and more of the junk I put in my mouth (like candy, chocolate, donuts, cookies, chips) by saying “Oh yeah, I’ll workout like crazy later!”.  I know better and realize this is a lie.  You can’t out-exercise a shitty diet as there are just way too many calories in junk food.  Maybe I’ll start recording what I eat again… that kinda helps put my daily caloric intake into perspective.

I just don’t know.

Alright, enough of my rambling.   Peace out and good night!

PS I’ve updated my “About Me” page!

Ah… rest day… so beautiful you are.

But tomorrow, onto phase 2 of this hybrid! And that means I’m going to start doing the dreaded Back & Biceps routine I find so damn difficult followed 2 days later by my modified Angie.  I don’t know how it will pan out.  Part of me thinks my arms will just be way too sore to do the two with only a 2 day separation.  We’ll see… if it tanks this first week I’ll change it up in the following week so that Back & Biceps is the first weight training workout of the week and modified Angie is the last.

In other news, come Monday everyone at my work place will know who has been laid off.  Grrr… it has everyone stressed including myself.  I was brushing it off before but now that I’ve seen e-mails and memos being sent out regarding protocol for being laid off… it’s hitting home.  But what can I do? I can’t stop them from choosing me.  I’ll just wait it out and see what happens then go from there.  That’s all I can do at this point.

I’m gonna chill out and spend some time with Eli and the wife.

“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.”

Sorry today’s entry is so short! Just got done doing modified Yoga X… now onto some running around before work.  Gotta go to the church to get my son’s application for his baptism in then the bank, blah, blah, blah.

Maybe some Japanese for lunch? Yum!

Peace!

Hmmm… last night the weather was terrific.  About 15 celsius I think with a very light wind.  As such, I decided to run the 8 km home from work.  Felt great, moved at a brisk pace throughout, got lucky and caught the red lights when I felt I needed a break.  Upon getting home, legs were tired but not overly sore.  More importantly, NO BLISTERS! THANK GOD!  I made sure to lay down some bandages on the foot that gave me trouble last week before hand though for some extra protection.

I honestly think I should read up on proper running form.  Not that I think mine is terrible, mind you, but it could probably use improvement.  It’s been over a year since I started running  (this post talks about how everything started with the treadmill) and I’ve learned a lot from people who do run just talking to me about what good form is about.  Paramount amongst the tips I received is to not heel strike so as to lessen the impact on my body and to lean forward a little when running.  Landing the mid / front portion of my foot is still something I have to consciously keep in mind when running, same with the leaning.  I do think that my decision to do all of Insanity and this new hybrid bare foot has done wonders to strengthen the muscles in my feet (which are so often cocooned in protective layers of  rubber and plastic).  Hmmm… come to think of it, I should probably pick this book up….

… as my one friend kept raving about how revolutionary it was with regards to running form.

The running was great but the sleeping through the night was yet another battle.  Eli woke up for a feeding at 3 and I never was able to get my body back to sleep.  Felt restless and just tossed and turned.  Work probably also has something to do with it as I feel as I am just not getting any breaks where I work.  We have tonnes of stuff to do and look after especially in light of the impending lay offs at the end of this week.  In order to compensate for all the budgetary cuts, it feels like more work is being loaded onto less people… I shouldn’t complain but man… it can drive one absolutely nuts.

Dear God, I hope I don’t lose my job.  Twice in the space of less than 3 years would really, really suck.  The event has everyone stressed out at my building and rightfully so.

Once I got home from work today, I had a snack of frozen yogurt and granola.  Sooo good! Then I surfed a bit and just had to take a nap.  It refreshed me but also left my head super groggy. Around 8PM I hauled my butt downstairs to get Core Cardio & Balance out of the way.  It was a decent workout but because I still felt like I was half awake, moving through some ephemeral soup, I feel like I didn’t give it my all.  Probably around 80%.  C’est la vie.  Tomorrow is modified Yoga X and I hope I can bring the proverbial ‘IT’ as Tony Horton would say.

Last but not least, Eli went for his second audiology test today.  Poor kid.  He’s not allowed to eat or sleep prior to the test as he needs to sleep DURING the test so you could imagine how cranky he gets leading up to it.  They have to stick a bunch of electrodes and weird gel on his head to read brainwaves or some such.  Well, he wasn’t having any of it and despite being super tired and hungry, he refused to go to sleep at the clinic.  My wife says he was just “over-tired” and thus was wired instead.  *SIGH* She’ll have to go back next week to try again.  This test is to assess exactly the level of hearing loss he has in his left ear.  I pray to God he has some partial hearing.  That would be immense!

I love that little boy so much.

So round.