Turkey Meatloaf Muffins

Since being off the diet, I've been looking around for good recipes with lots of protein and a relatively low number of carbs.  These turkey meatloaf muffins look pretty good, and after I found the video, I was hoping that there would be other videos from bodybuilding.com models, so maybe I could get lots of really good help.

Unfortunately, I think Jamie is the only one who does videos for her recipes.  She has a few up, and I think this one looks the best.  Honestly, I think the Food Network should do a show just for healthy eating.  I'd watch every episode.  They'd probably give Gordon Ramsey another show instead though because everybody loves seeing him yell at people for being donkeys.

Food stuff

So I'm thinking about what I should write about for this blog, since I'm not going to have any updates on my leg for a while and I'm not going to be able to go for my powerlifting goals until that's all fixed up.

I think I'm going to continue cutting weight and write about that.  From what I hear, it's pretty simple:

I'll be a little more precise than that, but that's what I'll be looking at - foods that I eat and stuff like that.

Update about my leg

So after a few weeks of physiotherapy and now that we can see all the swelling has gone down... I've definitely partially torn my PCL.  None of the physiotherapists understand how it could have happened, so it might actually be an old injury that just got aggravated by other activities I was doing which caused the swelling.

Going to see a doctor next week to schedule an MRI to take a good look at what exactly is happening with my leg.  Hopefully I can get back to doing legs again soon - don't want to look like I just work beach muscles at the gym.

Diet finished a couple days ago

So I finished up the diet a couple days ago, but I've been busy with midterms and assignments so I didn't get a chance to post my "after" picture.  Either way, I went through 16 lbs in 30 days, and I've been back to the gym since haven't lost that much strength.

I still can't check my squats or my deadlifts because of my knee but I did get the go ahead from my physiotherapist to do empty bar, or lighter dumbell squats and deadlifts.

I now need to go and figure out how many plates I need to stack up to get an empty bar at the right level from the ground.  A 45 lb plate is actually made at the perfect height to be broken from the ground to do deadlifts with, so I never had to do this before (I started with 1 plate on each side).  The act of breaking the bar from an unmoving position (a "dead" position, thus the name) is extremely important for deadlifts too because it's the hardest part of the lift, so I'm not going to just lift it without putting the bar back down on something.

I always see people at the gym doing deadlifts where they don't put the bar back on the ground after each rep.  This is wrong.  Those are not deadlifts and they don't work your body the way deadlifts do.  Don't be that guy!

Now to relax, get back to promoting this blog, checking things out at bb.com and going to the gym!

Little mad at monster

So for the last few days I've been really busy with my summer courses and I've needed to stay up late because I underestimated the time that was required to do one of my assignments.  Usually I'd just pick up some smaller energy drinks or have some coffee, but because of this diet, I took another look around Walmart to see if anything matched up correctly.  Lo and behold, I saw this stuff:

Monster's "LO-CARB" energy drink.  Sounded great for a diet where you're trying to watch your carbs, right?  So I bought a pack and over the last couple days I've had them.  They REALLY gave me some energy, so I thought that it must just be a great product.

After drinking the last can, I took a look at the ingredients.

The number 2 non-medicinal ingredient listed was sucrose.  As in sugar. As in a very simple carbohydrate with a glycemic index of 67-68.  No wonder it was giving me so much energy, the "LO-CARB" version of this energy drink is full of carbs.

Probably set me back a couple of days.  Tasted really bad too, not worth the price at all.

Day 25 - new pic

Getting pretty close to the end. Just wanted to give you guys a look at what the difference has been over the last 20 days.

Day 5:

and today:

I've managed to keep up most of the muscle.  Went to the gym yesterday and was able to lift the same amount of weight, but for a couple fewer reps than when I started.  This could be because my muscles just don't have as much energy in them because of the diet, so I'll have to retest after I finish, but everything looks good.  Maybe NO-XPLODE really does help get those extra couple reps out.

Day 22

Had a chance to weigh myself today - looking at 214 lbs - so a good 16 lbs in.  I was hoping to have lost a bit more, but still, 16 in 22 days is pretty decent.  I'm thinking I'll keep up the diet until the end of May at least, but we'll see how things are at the end of next week for that decision.

The kind of gym I need to find

I'd love to just find a gym like this, but I don't know if there's anything like that in my area.

Day 20

I cancelled my gym membership a couple of days ago because I'm tired of their "just use machines and you'll get jacked!" mentality and their soft rubber mats underneath their squat racks.  I'm looking for a gym with bumper plates and some more serious lifting equipment.

I'd stick to my university gym, but the way their benchpress is set up, they're asking for people to get shoulder problems.  It's because of the "J" hook that is being used on all of the benches.  Instead of using a hook that's shaped like this (the proper way):

Part of the bench that holds the hooks ->  ||___/  <- flat area before the small hook that keeps the bar in place when not being lifted

They use pegs that go directly into the bench stand, and so they end up looking more like this:

||/

With no flat area before the hook.  What this unfortunately means is that you must be able to lift what you're benching entirely with your shoulders in order to bring the bar out in front of your chest, since the bar is always going to rest above your head and not your chest.  With a correctly made hook, you should be able to slide the bar out using a small amount of momentum from the flat area, and just be able to push horizontally to get the bar into place.

I believe this is stopping me from progressing with bench press as fast as I should be able to.  Even if it wasn't, I doubt I'm going to be able to lift that much more on just my shoulders, and so it would be safer to find a gym with correctly made hooks and the rest of the gym equipment I'm looking for.

Day 17 - new pic

It's getting kinda harder to see the differences in the pictures recently, but I can tell that my pants are definitely getting looser and I'm starting to get some more muscle "tone" ("toning" the way many marketers advertise it doesn't really exist, it's really having less fat over a muscle).  In a few more days we'll see what's up.

Yesterday I went back to the gym for the first time in a week and a half or so, and it felt great.  I didn't lose too much from my gains for upper body.  I didn't do any lower body stuff still because of the knee.  Going again today, will check the rest of my upper body and maybe even do some cardio.

Day 15 - new pic again

Finally have a new pic to put up.  Looked back at my starting pictures - progress looks good!  We'll see how these next 15 days go, then I'll decide if I'm going to continue cutting or if I should do bulking or whatever.

My knee is getting better, slowly.  My physiotherapist said it was looking really good today compared to last Friday.  At first she thought I may have torn my PCL, but it looks like there may have just been so much swelling that it was some of the swelling that was hanging down instead of my tendon.  I'll know this Friday if I need to get an MRI or anything.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day everybody!  I'm probably going to have to eat more carbs than I should today, but remember: family comes before dieting.  I'm supposed to meet my mom for dinner, but I have a really bad migraine from a lack of sleep (my housemates decided to stay up all night and make a lot of noise).  Taking some advil - I hope it goes away soon.

Day 11 - new pic

Let's get some motivation going:

Day 10 - new pic

Have my physio appointment for tomorrow.  My knee doesn't feel that bad - just stiff and swollen.  It's nothing compared to right after I tore it.

Gonna go have some food - ground beef with a little yellow onion, and mushrooms.  Keep those carbs and their GI low.

Day 9 - new pic

So I went and did some cardio yesterday.  Went down to my housemate's Muai Thai classes.  Managed to tear a meniscus in my knee while I was there.  Going to have to see what to do tomorrow when I go to a physiotherapist.

Day 8 - new pic

Continuing the diet, I've gotten some comments about what I'm eating and I'd like to clarify.

I don't JUST eat meat, cheese and eggs - these foods just fit in with the diet perfectly.  Several years ago when I first started trying out diets like this, the first one that I'd tried was the Atkins diet.  In the diet book I'd found, they recommended that for the first while, you eat a maximum of 3 cups of lettuce, or 2 cups lettuce and 1 cup broccoli a day.  The other thing they said was that you can eat 20 grams of carbs per day.

I'm not going to quite that extreme on this diet.  I know that the Atkins idea was that you shouldn't get huge dumps of sugar into your body because that's what causes people to get fat.  I found out that the GI diet follows a similar idea, and that they've taken a closer look at how foods affect your blood sugar levels.

Mixing the two ideas, I try to have between 1 and 3 cups of low glycemic index vegetables a day, along with the meat, cheese and eggs.  Other foods that I find work on this diet:  mushrooms, onions, tomatoes (in moderation, GI is 15) and zucchinis (also in moderation with GI of 15).

Day 6 Keto - new pic up

Day 6 into keto, eating sausages and cheese like they're the only thing in the world.  I counted the calories I was eating yesterday, and at 170 cals per sausage, and 120 cals per quarter cup of cheese, I'm still ate 2490 calories yesterday.  That's also the least I've eaten since I've started.

I don't understand how some people can say that it's just food boredom or something that lets keto diets work.  This is about 600-700 calories less than I was eating when I was bulking and I'm pretty sure my BMR is somewhere around 2700.

Some people.

First pic up!

So it's day 5 of my keto diet, and I have my first picture up.  This is my start:

Now that I look at it, I may have bulked a little too hard towards the end of last semester, haha.  Oh well, the keto diet in the past has helped me lose ~1 lb per day.  Based on the fact that I really was overeating at the end of last semester and I've stopped taking NO-XPLODE, I should be able to reduce my weight pretty quickly (because of the reduction in creatine).

Going for 30 days (day 5 now) I should be able to get down to my goal weight of 205.  If I don't reach it by then, I'll take a closer look at my diet, and lose the rest using a lowered calorie 50% protein, 30% fat, 20% carbs diet with 500 calories less than my BMR.

Next post I'll go into more detail about what I'm eating while on this diet.

Updates - pics tonight

So I went to GNC today, and the first guy I talked to said they didn't have callipers for measuring body fat percentage, and that they didn't have any tape measures for measuring other body part.  When he asked his manager if they had any tape measures in the back, the manager pulled out callipers for bf%... Sometimes I wonder about that place.

Still looking for a tape measure.  Goals are still about weight and bf% right now (cutting) so I can update about that.  If anybody knows where I can get a good 1 hand tape measure, please let me know!

Updated my body space and my goals for now:

• Weight down from 230 to 205
• BF% down from 18.6% to ~10%

And my summer goals:

• Bench up from 245 lbs to 260 lbs
• Squat up from 209 lbs to 315 lbs
• Deadlift up from 280 lbs to 405 lbs (a stretch, I know)
• OHP up from 135 lbs to 205 lbs

After I get my weight down, I'll probably do measurements for my body (chest etc.) and have other goals there.  For example, while I only want to get to 260 lbs for my bench, I know that  I'll want to do more flys and dumbell press to make my chest look more proportionate. 

The main reason I'm keeping the barbell bench so low is because my gym doesn't have very good hooks for their benches, and so I need to press up before I can get the bar into position.  This isn't good technique for bench press.  I'm thinking of switching gyms for better benches - I'll need to look into what's available around here.

Bodyspace

So I set up my bodyspace on bb.com (didn't know they had a blog area, wouldn't use it anyway it's kind of ... clunky).  BUT I am going to use it for pic uploads and stuff.  Gonna keep the two somewhat synced - but you can see some of my goals there.

http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/DDOSson/

Pics go up tomorrow!

Where I'm at

Currently:

230lbs
5'10"
Not sure of body fat % (might get something to measure if I go bb.com for my next supplement order)
23 years old

I'm also on a keto diet - gonna look to stay on for 30 days.  I'm already 3 days in, but I'll see what I can do for a camera to take some pictures so I can see the difference.

After I take some pics, I'll give some idea of what I'm unhappy about aesthetically too.

Not all business

So after blogging for a few days about my business ideas, I've noticed that I've started to follow a lot of people who aren't necessarily "business oriented" or "computer science oriented" and that's because I have other interests than just my business ideas.

I've decided that I'm going to make a couple more blogs to separate everything out and to keep me going with some of my other projects.

THIS blog, is going to be about my body-building/body-aesthetics routine.  I'm not going to become a big body builder, and I'm more interested in how my body looks than how big my body can get.  I'll post a bit about where I'm at in a bit, but right now I'm going to go start another blog about my nerdy-gamer-programmer side and explain what I'm doing for that project.