Day13

Today ive decided its time for a change this week, There are two reasons for this, Firstly im carrying a small shoulder injury which isnt getting any better. The second reason is that ive begun to slip away from my schedule.

So what am I going to change?

To get around my shoulder injury I am going to stop all lifting of weights for 1 week and instead I will fill this gap with extra cardio and concentrate hard on my ABS. I hope that 1 week will be enough to allow my shoulder to fix its self.

The second change is with my nutrition and timing, this will be more of an experiment and may not be fixed but my thought are thus. It is said that you can burn far more fat from the body by doing cardio before breakfast. I will be having a go at getting in my thirty minute bike ride to work and then eating my tub of breakfast at work. 

There is a third change that I may try and that is to use my thirty minute dinner break to get an extra ride in. At the moment I go out walking but I dont think that this is burning enough calories. This will also be done on an before food so will show if the above theory works for me.

The day 13 pics below show that there isnt enough progress yet with 80 days to go.

Think Strong.

Day12

Not much to say tonight as its Saturday and im having the night off.

Anyway here are tonights photos.

take it easy.

Day11

Its been a good week with 5 full days of cardio which is 75 real miles of cycling.  
Today I had my weigh in which was great news. I was only down 1.4Kg but my BF was down by 3.2%. This means ive lost fat and put on muscle. This has given me a really big push and I shall be going at this with all my strength. Tonight I had a good workout which wasnt as rushed as it usually is. I very nearly managed 5 wide arm pull ups which is 4 more than i could achieve 10 days ago. It would be great to do a set of 10 of these and I will be able to do this in the next 3 weeks.

Below are todays pictures and below that are pics of my meals today.

Take care.




Breakfast is the same for me every morning.
coffee.
branflake + skimed milk



Meals 2, 4 and 5 are large salad with chicken or tuna or crab meat.
I use soya sause for the dressing and cook chicken in curry or chilli powder.



Meals 3 and 6 are protein shakes.
No pics of this.

Day10

Ive got to say that im happy to have got to day ten and im pleased with the effort ive put into this shred. I have a lot of respect for the other shredders who have been going at this for a lot longer and I can see that the dedication required to fulfill Cardio, Nutrition, Weights, Photos and Blogging is tremendous. You really have to live this shredding business to achieve great results. Well done to all of you.

As for me Ive started to wain a little but mainly because at the end of each day I dont see that ive managed to achieve a daily difference. That said I look at what ive done each day and I see 1 hour of cardio a fixed nutrition plan, and aching muscles. Perhaps im expecting too much too soon. 

My biggest stumbling block is a mental one. Because I dieted all of last year successfully I was incredibly tied up with loosing physical weight. In the last 10 days ive put on weight which is totally against my previous experience. If I think about it properly then small weight gains is perhaps what I expected and this is down to muscle gains. What I have to do is have utter faith in what i am doing and see in two or three weeks time that I have had a significant fat loss, in the region of 2 - 3 % would be great and will keep me on track for the following 70 ish days.

A real positive is the slack around my waist when i put my trousers on today.

here are todays pics.....

Be Lucky.

Day9

Back to strength today. Having a single good meal last night and a good nights sleep Has me feeling strong again. 
My cycle ride to and from work was much faster than yesterday and I felt good all day.

I did well on nutrition and got a good work out in today. Tired now so here are todays picture.

Day8

Hi all,

Its been a funny day today, I had a bit of a body crash this afternoon, Not much of one but I felt that I needed some extra calories. My symptoms were - Tiredness, Slightly low, slight headache and Inability to concentrate fully. Ive taken it easy and had a good evening meal which has made me feel loads better. Unfortunately i had to cycle home (7miles) which really took it out of me but I havent done too many weights tonight. A good nights sleep is in order.

I think that because this is the start of my second week im still trying to get my nutrition right. The last thing I want is to drag my calories too low and start burning muscle instead of the fat. Hopefully I shall have my nutrition sorted in the next couple of days.

Below is day1 - day8 pic.

Stu.

Day7

Hello everybody,

Managed to get my 1 hour cardio in again and it was great, Unfortunately Ive found a problem with my diet and that is that im not getting enough carbs earlier in the day and so by the time i get onto my bike, im finding my self without energy. I then find myself eating the rest of my daily carbs in my last meal which means that im not tapering my carbs. So as i have found this is a problem I shall be fixing it by adding a small potato to each of my early meals tomorrow.

I measured my BFI today and wow what a shock ive dropped 4% in the first week. Obviously this isnt true and although when i measured my self 1 hour later i had gone up a bit the reading was still way down on last week. 
I will try again later in the week but i think that im probably more like 18 to 19%.

Below are todays photos, I still cant see a difference in them but when im training, i can definitely see a difference in my fat levels, I cant say for sure but I think its going the right way.

See you tomorrow.

Stu.

Day6

Hello,

Another good day on nutrition today, Ive eaten all but one portion of my tasty soup and so that will be for tea tomorrow night. Two salads with chicken are prepped and in the fridge which will be meals for 2 and 4 and a protein shake in between. 

Ive also had a good workout with a cycle ride earlier in the day and I finally managed to do proper dumbbell lunges for the first time. I think i have the hang of them and the pain in my legs must be a sure sign.

Things of temptation today have been biscuits, muffins and some Christmas cake. Ive passed on all of them.

My in laws have decided that they will be going on a diet from tomorrow and were asking questions about what I was eating. I wasnt sure that I should give them the details of my current diet and exercise regime. Instead the system that I used last year of eating smaller portions of better foods and increase exercise sounded the best idea.

Below are day6 photos, Im not sure if there is alot of difference to be seen yet but Im still on the program full hartedly.

Feel the burn, its great.
Stu.

Day5

Hi all,

Its early days and im still finding out just how this cardio and weight training is effecting my body fat percentage. Having not dieted this way before means that I dont have a full referance of what should be happening. Last year I lost 45lbs but In the first week of January I had lost 7 lbs. I now Know that this would have been a fair amount of body water but I was suprised this morning to see that I hadnt lost any weight. Im not woried about this because my goal here isnt to loose weight but instead loose body fat and increase muscle, nontheless its still seems strange. I am very positive about how things are going and I feel strong. 

Today I impressed myself with two sets of 12 dipps. This is an exercise that im not fond of
but if I can start to get a good numbers in then its one that I will be working on. I still am unable to do a single wide arm pull up but I will be 
working on this over the comming weeks.

My diet today has been lots of protein and a fantastic vegatable soup which 
I knocked up last night. 
Two birdseye chillies means that no body else in the house will be eating any.

I think im going to go and get another workout in, or atleast a couple of sets of dips and some squats.

Looking forward to the days ahead.

take care.

Stu.

Day4

My arms dont hurt today,

Im just having trouble lifting them to type.

I had my first reward meal today, Mexican. It was brilliant. Although my blog suggests that im only on day4, I have actually been eating clean since 27th Dec. After Christmas I felt I needed to detox a little before getting into the fat burning routine.

One thing that im not sure about is if I have had a reward meal and dont feel hungry for the rest of the day, then should I still try to get my 6 meals in or should I let it go for the rest of the day?

Having had a good meal ment that lifting my dumbells felt much easier and I managed 12 dips straight off when I had only managed 6 previously.

All in All after 4 days im feeling good and im very glad im doing this.

Take it easy,

Stu.