It's the end of our first month, and all I can say is, Wow!! It still amazes me what can be accomplished with great commitment, effort, attitude, the right plan, and the right people to support, motivate, and coach you through it. What a difference this first 4 weeks has made for Michael. He is changing and progressing at such a quick rate, I'm not sure people who haven't seen him in a while will even recognize him a few months from now. He is working so hard and has followed through on every single recommendation we've made. In this first month, he has improved his strength and conditioning level tremendously, and has already lost close to 15 lbs. and 4 inches around his waist! We'll do our next "official" weigh in next week, as well as the measurements again for more details on that. Overall, it's amazing how much stronger his legs and core muscles have gotten, and he has actually doubled, that's right - doubled, his upper body strength already from where he started.
So, next week we will start his new workout routine. New programs are all about progression for us. We want to create that variable change in an effective, but safe way to help Michael reach his ultimate goal. Everything we do, every exercise we select for Michael, has a purpose, and is designed to take him to the next step. It's not enough to just throw a bunch of challenging exercises together and make him sweat and burn calories. It takes educated planning and solid rationale to obtain "predictable" results. The better and more safely we "progress" him, the more we can do moving forward. This will mean that exercises can be more advanced and challenging in the future without risk of injury, and the higher the intensity of sets and the overall workout can be. In the next few months Michael will surprise himself by doing things and accomplishing things he may have never thought possible. Now that he's gotten past the initial adaptation and has already starting progressing, we will be going into month 2 with more challenging progressions and exercises. We are also going to decrease his rep range from 15 to 12 so he can handle some of the new exercises better and so we can increase some resistance levels where appropriate to continue to increase strength and build lean muscle. We will be combining the exercises differently as well to challenge his conditiong level more. We're excited to start this next step with Michael, and stay tuned for the updates on his measurements.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Holiday Spread
Hello everyone!
Audrey and I have settled into some good routines for our meal planning, cooking, portion control and food selection. One challenge to portion control was that we had to adjust to is keeping ourselves from overbuying food at the store, especially perishables. So planning and thinking ahead on what meals we are going to cook really helps with that. The next big challenge coming our way is the spread on the table at Easter Sunday.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think I should be able to control my intake, but there is just something culturally imbedded in me that screams “PIG OUT” at holiday meals. Of course, having people who love to cook and eat among all sides of our families probably compounds this phenomenon. I mean, no one makes mashed potatoes and turkey gravy as good as my Aunt Mary. No one. So, come Thanksgiving, must have lots of Aunt Mary’s mashed potatoes and gravy. Then there is my mother’s pineapple sour cream pie, and my mom’s cousin Sandy’s infamous strawberry pretzel cream cheese Jello dessert.
Even the conversations at holiday times turn to favorite dishes we miss made by family members no longer with us. Aunt Juanita’s chicken and noodles are legendary, and I would pay a fortune to taste my Grandma Long’s pea salad or Grandma Crumly’s Waldorf salad again.
In two days, Audrey and I go to her parents for Easter dinner. Boy, can she cook. First, Ann makes this wonderful pineapple peach raisin sauce for the ham. Then there is her ghoulishly delicious macaroni and cheese next to the best stuffing I have ever eaten. I am still hoping one day Ann will let Audrey know how to make her greens. And then, of course, there is Ann’s homemade pound cake with lemon glaze. It is so good; dozens of people have been after her to start a cake business.
So, come Sunday, I realize two or three towering plates of food probably aren’t in my best interest, especially after I met with the doctor yesterday and reviewed my blood sugar and cholesterol test results. However, I am learning how to eat sustainably for life and I do get a “throw away” day once a week as part of my meal plan, so a spoonful of mac and cheese, a spoonful of dressing, and a sliver of pound cake may come my way. After all, holiday time with family is special.
Thanks for your support everyone,
God bless,
Michael
Audrey and I have settled into some good routines for our meal planning, cooking, portion control and food selection. One challenge to portion control was that we had to adjust to is keeping ourselves from overbuying food at the store, especially perishables. So planning and thinking ahead on what meals we are going to cook really helps with that. The next big challenge coming our way is the spread on the table at Easter Sunday.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think I should be able to control my intake, but there is just something culturally imbedded in me that screams “PIG OUT” at holiday meals. Of course, having people who love to cook and eat among all sides of our families probably compounds this phenomenon. I mean, no one makes mashed potatoes and turkey gravy as good as my Aunt Mary. No one. So, come Thanksgiving, must have lots of Aunt Mary’s mashed potatoes and gravy. Then there is my mother’s pineapple sour cream pie, and my mom’s cousin Sandy’s infamous strawberry pretzel cream cheese Jello dessert.
Even the conversations at holiday times turn to favorite dishes we miss made by family members no longer with us. Aunt Juanita’s chicken and noodles are legendary, and I would pay a fortune to taste my Grandma Long’s pea salad or Grandma Crumly’s Waldorf salad again.
In two days, Audrey and I go to her parents for Easter dinner. Boy, can she cook. First, Ann makes this wonderful pineapple peach raisin sauce for the ham. Then there is her ghoulishly delicious macaroni and cheese next to the best stuffing I have ever eaten. I am still hoping one day Ann will let Audrey know how to make her greens. And then, of course, there is Ann’s homemade pound cake with lemon glaze. It is so good; dozens of people have been after her to start a cake business.
So, come Sunday, I realize two or three towering plates of food probably aren’t in my best interest, especially after I met with the doctor yesterday and reviewed my blood sugar and cholesterol test results. However, I am learning how to eat sustainably for life and I do get a “throw away” day once a week as part of my meal plan, so a spoonful of mac and cheese, a spoonful of dressing, and a sliver of pound cake may come my way. After all, holiday time with family is special.
Thanks for your support everyone,
God bless,
Michael
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Meal Plan: Week Three
This past week or so was mainly focused on building consistency with everything we've worked on up to this point. As Michael also mentioned in his video blog, he's been working on buying products with higher quality ingredients. Again, just because a product's label makes it sound great and healthy, doesn't mean that it is. As Michael mentioned, plenty of healthy sounding wheat breads are actually made from "enriched" flour, which essentially means processed, and can be just as bad as white flour. Any of these will wreak havoc inside your body, triggering your hormones to store more fat. Michael's done a nice job working on this, and the difference we see in his journal with better protein and carbohydrate selections is outstanding in comparison to where he started. Michael was already very good with his water intake and limiting high calorie, high sugar liquids, but we have him tracking this as well. He is drinking water with every meal and snack time, as well as throughout his workouts. Overall, Michael had another very good week. Even his "cheat meal" was pretty good: A cheeseburger made with 90% lean ground beef, on a whole grain bun, with ketchup, pickles, onion, and homemade baked french fries as his side - oh, and water to drink. Since he's been doing so well, I thought I'd share some examples of good meals in a day of Michael's nutrition, taken directly from his Food Log:
Breakfast - 1 cup 1% cottage cheese, 3/4 cup fresh pineapple, and 1 slice of whole grain bread. Water.
Snack 1 - Shaklee "Cinch" shake. Water
Post Workout - Shaklee "Physique" (an excellent post-workout recovery shake with high quality protein and carbs).
Lunch - Stew made of chicken breasts, cannelli beans, tomatoes, onions, and celery, 1 slice of whole grain bread. Water.
Snack 2 - Shaklee Cinch Meal Bar. Water.
Dinner - Talapia in skillet w/olive oil, brown rice risotto, arugala w/dijon/lemon juice/olive oil. Water.
Hopefully, everyone can see again that you don't need to starve yourself to lose weight. In fact, by eating like he has in this journal example, Michael is already significantly losing weight, inches, and bodyfat. Michael and his wife are excellent cooks, which has helped them still create good variety while staying healthy at the same time. It definitely has required planning, and better discipline in choosing good foods and portion control, but in no way does it leave Michael "deprived" of anything. Plus, the significant increase in his activity level does require enough of the "right" calories to fuel and support it properly in order for it to be effective. All in all, another great week. Keep up the good work!
Breakfast - 1 cup 1% cottage cheese, 3/4 cup fresh pineapple, and 1 slice of whole grain bread. Water.
Snack 1 - Shaklee "Cinch" shake. Water
Post Workout - Shaklee "Physique" (an excellent post-workout recovery shake with high quality protein and carbs).
Lunch - Stew made of chicken breasts, cannelli beans, tomatoes, onions, and celery, 1 slice of whole grain bread. Water.
Snack 2 - Shaklee Cinch Meal Bar. Water.
Dinner - Talapia in skillet w/olive oil, brown rice risotto, arugala w/dijon/lemon juice/olive oil. Water.
Hopefully, everyone can see again that you don't need to starve yourself to lose weight. In fact, by eating like he has in this journal example, Michael is already significantly losing weight, inches, and bodyfat. Michael and his wife are excellent cooks, which has helped them still create good variety while staying healthy at the same time. It definitely has required planning, and better discipline in choosing good foods and portion control, but in no way does it leave Michael "deprived" of anything. Plus, the significant increase in his activity level does require enough of the "right" calories to fuel and support it properly in order for it to be effective. All in all, another great week. Keep up the good work!
Monday, April 6, 2009
Trainer Notes: Week Three
Well, week 3 was all about blood, sweat, and tears. Alright, maybe just the sweat, but the rest sure makes it sound "tougher."
It was a week focused more on intensity, however. As mentioned previously, the first week or two are much more focused on adaptation and increasing the volume of the workouts. This was the first week where we were able to increase the intensity more during each workout. Exercise technique was fine tuned and tweaked even more and resistances increased on almost every exercise again. While Michael definitely felt the cumulative fatigue setting in from the week by Friday, he also showed the amazing resilience and adaptive ability that our bodies have. He's already doing things now that would not have been possible for him even a couple weeks ago. As crazy it will seem to him, though, next week will be the last week on his current workout program. Adaptations start to occur a little quicker now, and to avoid any plateaus along the way, we need to stay ahead of the curve. This will mean progressing and changing key workout variable like reps, sets, resistance levels and types, tempos, rest periods, and many more to ensure that the body is always trying to meet the challenge of a new stimulus. It will also help Michael from getting bored and worn out from the same exercises and routine over and over again.
We also had our first 2 week "weigh-in" at the beginning of the week, and after 2 weeks, Michael had lost 9 lbs.!! Great job, Michael! As we've already discussed with Michael, the scale weight actually isn't his or our ultimate barometer for his success in this program. Yes, it is important for him to get his weight into a healthy range, but it will come along with our focus on some other very important factors. Our main focus right now is to actually decrease his body fat percentage, which tells us the balance of lean weight and fat weight he has. The other is to decrease his overall inches, but this will also come along with decreasing his body fat percentage, as well helping him maintain good strength and muscular tone as the fat burns off. Right now, we want Michael to maintain or build upon his lean mass for its contributions to calorie expenditure and increased metabolism, and then focus solely on decreasing the fat weight. This will be a lot healthier for him in the end and also make it easier for him to maintain the weight loss long term. So, while the 9 lbs. he has lost already is great, it may be even more in fat weight if he has gained some lean weight. In a couple more weeks we'll do another weigh-in, but will also re-measure his body fat percentage, which will be even more exciting to see how much true fat weight he has lost.
It was a week focused more on intensity, however. As mentioned previously, the first week or two are much more focused on adaptation and increasing the volume of the workouts. This was the first week where we were able to increase the intensity more during each workout. Exercise technique was fine tuned and tweaked even more and resistances increased on almost every exercise again. While Michael definitely felt the cumulative fatigue setting in from the week by Friday, he also showed the amazing resilience and adaptive ability that our bodies have. He's already doing things now that would not have been possible for him even a couple weeks ago. As crazy it will seem to him, though, next week will be the last week on his current workout program. Adaptations start to occur a little quicker now, and to avoid any plateaus along the way, we need to stay ahead of the curve. This will mean progressing and changing key workout variable like reps, sets, resistance levels and types, tempos, rest periods, and many more to ensure that the body is always trying to meet the challenge of a new stimulus. It will also help Michael from getting bored and worn out from the same exercises and routine over and over again.
We also had our first 2 week "weigh-in" at the beginning of the week, and after 2 weeks, Michael had lost 9 lbs.!! Great job, Michael! As we've already discussed with Michael, the scale weight actually isn't his or our ultimate barometer for his success in this program. Yes, it is important for him to get his weight into a healthy range, but it will come along with our focus on some other very important factors. Our main focus right now is to actually decrease his body fat percentage, which tells us the balance of lean weight and fat weight he has. The other is to decrease his overall inches, but this will also come along with decreasing his body fat percentage, as well helping him maintain good strength and muscular tone as the fat burns off. Right now, we want Michael to maintain or build upon his lean mass for its contributions to calorie expenditure and increased metabolism, and then focus solely on decreasing the fat weight. This will be a lot healthier for him in the end and also make it easier for him to maintain the weight loss long term. So, while the 9 lbs. he has lost already is great, it may be even more in fat weight if he has gained some lean weight. In a couple more weeks we'll do another weigh-in, but will also re-measure his body fat percentage, which will be even more exciting to see how much true fat weight he has lost.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Meal Plan: Week Two
For this past week, we worked on just slightly expanding upon last week's concepts. It can often take more than one week to really develop good consistency with 'Basic Balance' and proper meal frequency. Therefore, we still kept this as an important focus, but also introduced a new helpful tool in beginning to manage hunger and portion control. For most of us, our many responsibilities and hectic schedules make it difficult for us to really get in touch with or pay attention to our actual biological needs for food. Because of this, we worked on implementing what we like to call a "hunger scale" before and after each meal. By doing this, Michael can start to become more aware of either how hungry he is or how full he gets. The idea is to avoid extremes on the scale by never letting yourself get too famished and not eating until you are stuffed full. This can definitely help portion control, and maintaining balanced meal frequency will help avoid the extremes, but also important is the awareness it creates about how you use and actually need food.
Michael's also still working on meal planning and preparation using the 'Master Food List' we created last week. Finally, in our most recent nutrition session, we discussed and worked on reading food labels properly. Food companies are the ultimate "masters of disguise", as they use eye-catching packaging, and trigger words like "fat free", "heart healthy", "No trans fats", "all natural", "nutritious", "essential vitamins and minerals", "Dr. approved" , and more, to get you to buy their product. Plus, they manipulate things like the serving size to work around FDA guidelines in order to classify there product a certain way. There are too many examples of this to even mention, but the important thing as consumers is to be armed with the right information to read between the lines in order to make the best choices. With Michael, we focused on cutting through the clutter to select the best products based on the right percentages of proteins, carbs and fats in comparison to the total calories per serving, and how to look for the products with the highest quality ingredients. Along with the work we've already done on the Master Food List, these tools will hopefully aid him in making the right choices where it counts first - at the grocery store. The better choices you make up front and bring into your home, the easier it is to avoid tempation, because the bad foods simply aren't there for quick accessibility. I know it's a simple concept, but I also know that most of us often look for complicated solutions to our problems, when we are often overlooking that one simple answer that would stop it from becoming a problem in the first place. Just some 'food' for thought. Next week we will address some additional items, so stay tuned...
Michael's also still working on meal planning and preparation using the 'Master Food List' we created last week. Finally, in our most recent nutrition session, we discussed and worked on reading food labels properly. Food companies are the ultimate "masters of disguise", as they use eye-catching packaging, and trigger words like "fat free", "heart healthy", "No trans fats", "all natural", "nutritious", "essential vitamins and minerals", "Dr. approved" , and more, to get you to buy their product. Plus, they manipulate things like the serving size to work around FDA guidelines in order to classify there product a certain way. There are too many examples of this to even mention, but the important thing as consumers is to be armed with the right information to read between the lines in order to make the best choices. With Michael, we focused on cutting through the clutter to select the best products based on the right percentages of proteins, carbs and fats in comparison to the total calories per serving, and how to look for the products with the highest quality ingredients. Along with the work we've already done on the Master Food List, these tools will hopefully aid him in making the right choices where it counts first - at the grocery store. The better choices you make up front and bring into your home, the easier it is to avoid tempation, because the bad foods simply aren't there for quick accessibility. I know it's a simple concept, but I also know that most of us often look for complicated solutions to our problems, when we are often overlooking that one simple answer that would stop it from becoming a problem in the first place. Just some 'food' for thought. Next week we will address some additional items, so stay tuned...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
