StrongLifts 5x5, Week 6, Day 1

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (50kg)	Squat 5x5 (52.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (55kg)
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (37.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (70kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (42.5kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (57.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (60kg)	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (40kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (32.5kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (75kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (45kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (80kg)

What a rotten Monday. First off,  didn't get enough sleep last night. Secondly when I woke up, I was bloated as hell (scale showed a 1kg weight gain from a couple days ago, effectively wiping out my progress for last week) and then after breakfast I started feeling nauseous.

Despite all this I soldiered on to the gym where I struggled badly. I barely managed to complete my squat reps and then I failed heavily on the overhead press, dropping reps in sets 3, 4 and 5. I couldn't even complete my backoff sets on the overhead without my arms giving out. Holy crap.

Anyway, I left the gym thoroughly depressed and shaking in fatigue. Also, I freaking stink and I smell it right now (sweating plus no shower for some reason yesterday, maybe laziness?)

So here I am sitting at my computer, stewing in my own stink, dripping with sweat and shaking with fatigue thinking to myself, "And tomorrow I get to weigh myself and probably be disappointed."

What a bloody mind trip.

Keto Meal Prep, Week 6

I lucked out this week and my wife had the day off from work, so she took over "prep" duties today, doing both the shopping and the cooking. In fact, I had to hardly do anything, which was nice after having had to pretty much "solo it" for the last 3 weeks.

So far this is going well, but I can tell she's starting to get "antsy" with the meal prepping. She has a much more complicated relationship to food than I do, or at least I think that's the case and she gets "bored" easily. In order to combat that I feel like we need to introduce different varieties of meals into the mix, but it's hard for me to come up with them - I sort of wish she would take the initiative on this one.

Anyway, I did look up a new recipe last week and we tried it out today, basically it's "chicken pizza".

The recipe is pretty simple:

• fry some bacon
• flatten and fry some chicken
• garnish chicken with pizza sauce, cheese, bacon and pepperoni.
• bake in oven for 10 minutes

The hardest thing I think is finding a pizza sauce that doesn't have added sugar, but once that's accomplished the meal itself is pretty good. It does have a lot of calories in it however due to the frying, cheese, bacon, pepperoni, etc. 

Anyway, this weeks menu looks like:

• Breakfast: Bacon and Eggs.
• Lunch: "Chicken Pizza" + vegetables.
• Dinner: Beef Rissoles + vegetables.

Tomorrow is Halloween over here and the start of a new work week. Work itself is getting crazy, but tomorrow is always the busiest day of the week for me. Gym in the morning (continuing with my new training program addition) and Japanese class tomorrow night. I also have to remember to bring some cash with me to class so that I can chip in for a present for our teacher as well as see if I can get her aside and find out if I can hook up some one on one tutoring - more on that later.

I'm feeling pretty skinny these last few days, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the scale says this Tuesday. Wish me luck.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 5, Day 3

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (50kg)	Squat 5x5 (52.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (55kg)
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (37.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (70kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (42.5kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (57.5kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (40kg)	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5 (75kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (45kg)	Deadlift 1x5

Passed all my lifts again, although they are all getting difficult now. It's starting to make me worried obviously... I should probably start using pins soon.

In other news I tried backoff sets today of 60% of my 5x5 weight. I could only make 15 reps out of a target of 30 on the leg exercise and 10 out of 30 on the arm exercises. The minimum recommended is 10, so I just squeaked under that. I'm not too surprised by these results as it's an established fact that my lower body is stronger than my upper body. I wonder if this will improve over time? In any case, I absolutely felt the burn in my muscles and my heart rate really elevated while I was cranking the reps out. It's gotta be good for burning calories because I was sweating like crazy at the end of my workout today.

Sleep???

I'm sitting here wishing I was getting ready to go to bed but my wife is working the second shift at her job tonight and called me saying she wasn't quite ready to leave yet. Too bad for me that this now means I need to continue waiting for her to call saying "come get me".

It's really something that normally I wouldn't mind, but not when tomorrow is my lift day and I need to wake up about 8 hours from now already.

Anyway, I guess it's going to be another night of less than 6 hours of sleep for me. It makes me almost want to postpone the lifts for the weekend but I've been eager to try the backoff sets so I really want to go tomorrow.

Oh well, no use getting upset I think but this is definitely an annoying situation.

"Backoff" sets and muscle hypertrophy and strength gains.

I read this very interesting article about some research that was done testing different approaches to strength training and hypertrophy. For people who don't know what I'm talking about, think of it this way - There are two ways to "grow" muscle. One is through "strength" - basic lifting and force exertion. The other way is through "hypertrophy" basically, just making the muscle "larger" (more fibers).

Now that may seem counter intuitive because many people will go, "But wait dude... doesn't bigger muscles mean more strength anyway?" and while yes, that's true, the take away is that if you focus on just building strength you can get stronger without getting "huge muscles". Think of it as a difference in the density and quantity of muscle fibers in your body.

Anyway, I am doing a strength training program for fitness. I am absolutely growing muscle during this period of time and getting stronger, but it's not hypertrophic muscle development. I am doing a "powerlifting" workout (a basic one, but one nonetheless) and not a "body building" workout.

The article that I linked to at the top of this post goes into some detail about combining strength exercises (high load, 80-90% of your max) with a hypertrophic load (50% of your max until failure) and the results are actually somewhat surprising.

It seems if you introduce what people are calling a "backoff set", basically 50% load of your 1RM at the end of your normal 80-90% load and then do that for high reps (or until failure) you gain not only muscle size, but also increase the rate at which you gain strength.

From the reading I've done it seems that the effect favors mostly developing strength faster with some additional increase in muscle size, or perhaps maintaining muscle size for guys with already hypertrophic muscles. For me, it'd be the former.

I'm interested in this because not only would I like to get stronger as well as develop my muscle size faster, the extra repetitions could be a fantastic way to burn more calories (I'm still trying to lose fat after all!)

So for my next workout this Friday, I'm going to aim to do about 60% of my normal 5x5 (assuming that's already at 80% ish) with an aim at a single set of 30 reps at the end of every normal exercise. This will effectively double the amount of reps I am doing per workout, but I think that after 5 weeks of training my body is probably in good enough shape to handle it.

We'll see how it goes!

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 5, Day 2

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (50kg)	Squat 5x5 (52.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (55kg)
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (37.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (70kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (42.5kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5 (75kg)	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

I'm not sure what the difference was, either I gained physical strength or I gained mental strength or a combination of the two, but I was able to finally surpass the Overhead Press 5x5 @ 30kg today. Some day in the future I would like to 1MR 90kg or so at this weight (about 200 pounds) without a jerk or a throw up of the weight. That goal is right up there with being able to squat 1.5x my body weight and bench 1.2x my body weight. 

Overall things weren't that much more difficult today than they were on Monday. Overall I was feeling stronger this morning than previously. This may be due to the fact that I seemed to have slept relatively okay last night. I went to bed early-ish (10:30PM) and tried to force myself to sleep. I woke up a few times during the night, but always went back to bed instead of getting up. Eventually I hopped out of bed at 6:30am relatively rested. RELATIVELY. I didn't really get a full 8 hours of sleep, but I was in the bed for 8 hours... maybe that's a start.

Anyway, Friday should be "fun". I have a sneaky suspicion that I am going to alternately stall on Rows and Overhead Press at least until I start stalling on my other lifts. I think I'm going to have to start looking into de-loading strategies relatively soon in order to keep my progress up.

Tuesday Weigh-In, start of Week 5

Ah, feels good man.

I managed to hold onto my weight loss from earlier in the week as well as advance it a tiny bit. The grand total for the 4th week is 1Kg, so down to 94.6.

I'm noticing small (very small) changes in my body due to both the weight loss and weight training (lifting). My waist is definitely smaller.  In fact,it's smaller than the smallest loop on my belt. I'll have to buy a new one soon. In addition to this, my "moobs" are still shrinking and I can now feel muscles swimming where my pectorals are.

Speaking of muscles, they are getting both a lot more prominent as well as sore these last couple of days. It's odd actually because it reminds me of how it was during the first week that I started weight lifting. I wonder what the reason for this is. I'm eating the same, I'm drinking a lot of fluids and I'm occasionally taking an anti-inflammatory on my recovery days, but it doesn't seem to be holding off the soreness today (yesterday was a gym day).

I think over all the one thing I am unsatisfied with right now is my sleeping habits. They've only barely improved from where they were prior to me starting this diet and exercise plan. Which isn't saying much because they were absolutely horrible before. 3-4 hours a night max. I'm averaging 6ish now, but I want that up close to 7-8. I'll keep trying.

Anyway, I think the photos this week are showing a general improvement. I'm hopeful that in another 4 weeks that I'll start showing a lot more definite muscle on places other than my legs (not pictured) which were already kind of muscle-bound.

My bellybutton is collapsing in on itself like a black hole!

Still shrinking. Looks like most of my weight is in my sides.

Grand total so far: 2.4kg lost in 28 days. 72 days left to lose 9.6kg. At this rate, I don't think I will be able to hit this goal unless I somehow throw in some extra cardio to flat out burn calories.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 5, Day 1

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (50kg)	Squat 5x5 (52.5kg)	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (37.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (70kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (42.5kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (42.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (45kg)	Squat 5x5 (47.5kg)
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (37.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (65kg)

Gym went okay today. Squat difficulty is ramping up. I'm going to start using the pins just because I want to be safe (and I am a cautious person by nature). That being said, I was able to do all my sets today on all my exercises, which feels good.

I'm going to start going to the gym a little later in the morning. I've been aiming for before 7am, but it seems that so do a hell of a lot of other people. It was very hard to find an open station today to get started. So, I'll push back my arrival time 30-40 minutes or so. I have more time before work than other people do since the gym, my house and the office are all within a 10 minute walk from each other.

Not much else to update today. Japanese class tonight. We must be getting close to the end of it. I'll have to review my textbook prior to class. It's funny, but I spend more time using other resources (anki for example) than my text book.

Tomorrow is weigh-in day, wish me luck!

Keto Meal Prep, Week 5

Just a small weekend update today -

We are now entering week 5 of our keto meal prepping. That means... we've done this for an entire month now. It'll be interesting to see what the scale says this upcoming Tuesday, huh?

Anyway, I decided that I didn't want to really bust my arse trying out new recipes this week, so I recycled a couple of classics. The menu looks like:

• Breakfast: Bacon and Eggs.
• Lunch: Chicken and Veg.
• Dinner: Beef Rissoles and Veg.

The only "innovation" I did this week was to mix up how I prepare the vegetables. Previous weeks I was slicing and dicing up onions and green peppers (capsicum) for the vegetable sides and then sauteing them and serving them with steamed cauliflower and broccoli.  This week I decided to do something different and I bought all frozen food (no chopping). We used 1.5kg of mixed cauliflower and broccoli (steamed) and then I put 500g of spinach and 500g of onions (sliced) into a very, very large pan and sauteed them with butter until the water reduced. The entire thing was mixed together (with some extra butter and salt, pepper) and then plated into each meal container.

Frankly, it was a hell of a lot easier to prepare and it tastes pretty good too. The mix of the onions and spinach for some reason is really appealing. I think it'd make a good side or garnish for a large white fish. I'll have to try that out in the future.

In other news... Japanese study is still progressing (well). My brain is hemorrhaging from all the knowledge I am shoving in it and tomorrow is gym day. I'm a tiny bit worried about weighing in on Tuesday because yesterday on our "off day" we went out with friends and I had a couple of beers. Calorie wise, I did awesome for the day (I watched like a hawk) and my total carb consumption should have been below 20 grams, but you know how it is... I'm still worried that somehow this will screw me up.

Oh well, nothing to do but press on!

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 4, Day 3

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (50kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (70kg)	Barbell Row 5x5

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (42.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (45kg)	Squat 5x5 (47.5kg)
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (37.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (65kg)

Bombed the Overhead Press again, although I did get 1 set in further before I started failing (I missed the last rep on the 4th set and the last 2 reps on the 5th set). I was hoping to be able to make it to at least the 5th set today before I bombed, but alas it was not meant to be. I'll repeat the exercise at the next interval and if I don't get it, I will de-load 10% for the 4th attempt and go from there.

Squats went okay, but in contrast to earlier weeks I can feel the strain in the weight. Oddly I think it's helping my form - I had almost no pain at all today in my knee. Looking back on it, I suspect that I might have been over compensating by both leaning forward and not keeping the weight evenly distributed on my feet (hence the knee pain). Today went much better.

The Deadlift... it seems like the stupidest exercise to me. Right now I just do all my reps right after another without resting and it's over in a flash. I suspect that over time this will change as I keep adding more and more weight to it, but for the time being it's not too hard.

Overall, still going strong (no pun intended) on this program and looking forward to next week.

Anki Flashcards and Hell in your Brain

As you can guess from the title of this post, I am having a love/hate affair with my Japanese flashcards, well to be honest, it's mostly hate at this point.

The problem, I think, stems from the fact that I may have leapt into the flashcard learning program without being properly equipped with the tools to learn the content quickly. Let's be honest here, I only have a few weeks (barely) of Japanese instruction and the content of those classes are rather laid back with only a bare emphasis on grammar.

That may not sound like a big deal, but read these sentences (in English):

Go take a run.
He ran away.
She is running home.

Now imagine trying to work that out for a Japanese verb without having the faintest idea of how to conjugate them.

Every language has it's rules, as well as it's exceptions to those rules, but when it comes to my Japanese I have only the most basic concept of what these rules are and they're primarily around the sentence structure and use of a small amount of participles. I guess my hope at this time is if I keep using the flashcards, keep listening to the words and keep reading the sentences, that I'll start to become familiar enough that when I do get taught in class, I'll at least have some experience to rely on to aid in learning.

Anyway, as frustrating as I find it right now, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was improving. I am. Just not as easily or as quickly as I would like.

Anki, by the way, keeps track of your session to session answer rate (obviously since it cycles the frequency of cards in the deck) and it allows you to print out a report of your progress. Mine is attached below:

I'm glad I put that screen shot up there. Maybe I'll come back to it in 6 months and be impressed with how much progress I made... Or maybe not!

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 4, Day 2

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (35kg)	Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5
Barbell Row 5x5 (40kg)	Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (42.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (45kg)	Squat 5x5 (47.5kg)
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (37.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (65kg)

It was a fairly productive day at the gym. Workout went fast today for some reason (faster than normal). I might not have been resting enough in between sets, not sure, but it didn't seem to impact me too much.

Squats are getting harder, Barbell Row was difficult, but after stalling so much early on I am still advancing. Bench Press is still easy/trivial to do at that weight.

The only thing I am noticing is that there is some slight straining on my right knee and right hip when I am doing squats. I can feel it still although it's very very slight. I think my squat form is good, or at least not sloppy and all over the place and I did correct it early on, but I'll go and examine more videos and try to work it out. The last thing I want to do is injure myself .

On this point I think I will get to the point in the next couple of weeks where I am going to have to start using some safety equipment for my lifts. It's a constant worry of mine, my gym isn't really set up for safety on the bench press, although I can find some safety pins for the squat rack easily enough - of course, squat at the weights I'm using... well I'd probably just drop the dumb thing off my back because it's not really that much of a load (even if it pissed off the gym staff).

Oh well, I'll work on it and maybe think about another gym... but this one is so convenient because it's just down the street.

All that being said, progress is still progress. I'm slowly gaining muscle and I can even feel it and see it now in my arms and legs. I really wonder what this will look like in terms of both numbers and body change by the end of my 100 days.

Tuesday Weigh-In, Start of Week 4

It was not a great weigh-in for me on the scale. I didn't go backwards, but I didn't go forwards either. I suppose maybe I hit a plateau? Or perhaps I was just retaining too much water? Or it could be the fact that I was up until 3am the night before?

Who knows?

One thing I am sure of, it's not my diet, and it's also... probably not the truth. The scale didn't move at all, but over the last week I have noticed a serious change in my waistline. I wear a suit to work every day, which means fitted shirt, pants and belt. All three of those things are smaller than they were before. In fact, the shirt I wore today was straining against my stomach just a few weeks ago and as of today, I have room again in it and my belt, is on the last (smallest) loop.

Anyway, there's definitely something going on here that I can't really account for yet. The one thing I am certain of is that my calories in is less than my calories out, which is easy enough to confirm since I keep a religious food diary.

21 days of progress. Nothing dramatic so far.

Side views are probably better as you can see my gut shrinking slowly.

Tomorrow is gym day, so I'm going to try to get some early rest tonight and hit the weights early in the morning. I'll keep the momentum up through the week by sticking to my meal prep plan and gym plan.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 4, Day 1

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (35kg)	Squat 5x5 (37.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (40kg)
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (30kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (55kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (35kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (42.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (45kg)	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (37.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (65kg)

The workout was okay, but as expected I ran into difficulty with the Overhead Press. I was able to get the first two sets up no problem, but then I missed the last rep of the 3rd and 4th set and the last 2 reps of the final (5th) set. Obviously it's not a matter of "strength" deficiency, since I can get the weight up no problem - it's purely endurance. I just don't have enough to keep going for the full 5 sets. Thankfully, endurance is something that I think goes up faster than strength, so I may even get this on the next pass through.

Tonight is Japanese class, so I need to finish off my homework sometime at work today (heh, thankfully it's not much). I've spent the last week learning Japanese vocab with Anki, so it's not like I'm slacking, just diverting my attention. Anyway, I'll do a full Japanese post sometime later, like maybe tomorrow, with some Anki results for the last few days.

Keto Meal Prep, Week 4

Last week's chili was pretty good, but we decided to switch it up this week by attempting to make a "casserole" type dish. Truthfully, it came out a little bit more like meatloaf - but not as firm (no bread in our "loaf" obviously since we are doing keto).

The taste however.... is awesome. I made it purposely spicy and creamy and it's just... wow. I love it. It's like heroin. Hopefully the wife will enjoy it  too.

Menu for this week:

• Breakfast: Bacon and Hard-boiled eggs.
• Lunch: Chicken Thighs and veggies (with butter). We don't seem to tire of this.
• Dinner: "Spicy Spinach Casserole".

I ran out of vegetables after plating up lunch. LEL.

Spicy Spinach Casserole.

1KG Ground Beef + Taco Spices (brown and spice).

1 Brown Onion, 1 Green Pepper (sautee with butter)

1 Handful of red chili's and jalapenos (add to the above vegies and sautee)

Mix in a bowl with:

1 can of diced tomatoes.

300ml sour cream.

240g cream cheese

300g of mozzarella cheese

Add spices (cumin, paprika, "cajun hot spices").

 

Cook for 50 minutes on about 180 degrees Celsius.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 3, Day 3

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (35kg)	Squat 5x5 (37.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (40kg)
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (30kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (55kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (35kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (42.5kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5 (32.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (37.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5

Again I somehow managed to conquer all of my exercises today. Squat remains good, but I am starting to feel the weight now, or to put it more accurately I can feel the resistance more than before. Bench Press is far too easy as it has been since the beginning. I'm waiting for this exercise to mature. Finally, the dreaded Barbell Row is starting to get to me. I was struggling with the final rep of each set today. I did them, but they were not easy. 

Overall the body feels good. No real soreness that lingers, no pain during workouts. I seem to have adjusted to this training regime pretty good. 

I also tested my ketones today. Still producing them, but only on the second level out of five. When I am working out the meal plan for tomorrows meal prep I will look at increasing the fat content of the meals across the board as I suspect I am eating a bit too much protien. 

Anki Flash Cards

I'm three days into the Anki deck experiment and so far I'm... appreciating that it's working.

I wish I could be more positive about it, but I've come to realize that while I definitely am learning, I've got a huge amount of time left ahead of me until I start putting together any semblance of a Japanese vocabulary. Just tonight I spent about 50 minutes drilling flashcards non-stop and I made what I consider an amount of progress so small that it might as well be a "drop in the bucket".

I'll keep at it and follow up later with a larger post once I've tracked my progress some more. Maybe I'm just suffering a bit right now because I'm starting from almost zero and once I start building up my vocabulary things will snap into place faster than I expect.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 3, Day 2

Today was another cushy day at the gym. All exercises on the short program completed, although I have to confess that I made a slight mistake. I don't know why, but I had math failure (people who know me will be shocked at this) and added an additional 10kg onto the Deadlift exercise. I still completed it, but I wasn't supposed to get to that weight until almost 2 weeks from now, at least according to the plan.

I think I will stick with the recorded weight below however and continue to work up to 65kg "naturally" so that I don't miss any potential gains due to the compound nature of the exercise by skipping up a rung or two.

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (35kg)	Squat 5x5 (37.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (40kg)
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (30kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (55kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (35kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (30kg)	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5 (60kg)	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

Overall I'm still going strong on this program. Let's see what happens with the infamous Barbell Rows when I go to do my next workout.

Anki decks and vocabulary for Japanese

Today I looked into various tools to learn Japanese vocabulary. I started off checking out Memrise a couple weeks back, but found that it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Since then, after some more research I've hit across a free program called Anki It's basically a multi-media flashcard program, but it seems to be very popular and has a lot (and I mean ALOT) of Japanese decks built for it.

I'm going to start using one that comes highly recommended by people looking to improve their Japanese vocabulary, called the Core 10k.

Now, I'm a little hesitant about this for a couple of reasons. First - It's going to take me a long time to memorize not just the words, the meanings and the characters for each word, but even at a fair clip of about 10 new words per day, it'll take me a bit under three years to memorize 10k words!

That may sound like a lot of words, but when I compare that figure to my estimated English vocabulary of 35k words, I start to get more than a little concerned that even after years of studying I may still effectively sound like an ignoramus when I open my mouth to speak Japanese.

Anyway, I'm going to get cracking on to this as soon as I can. Hopefully I can break this down into decent sized chunks based on some semblance of Japanese literacy averages, with the aim towards conversation more so than writing. I reckon that even though I may know tens of thousands of words in English, my usage of them in day to day conversation is actually sparse. Hopefully the same holds true for Japanese and if I focus more on verbs and adjectives rather than nouns, I may be able to explain what I mean even if I don't know specific words.

Wish me luck.

Japanese Class

We resumed Japanese class on Monday after the week off due to the holiday. It went pretty smoothly. We have some nice people in my class and the one I sit next to is kind of weird, but funny. She's good people and we get a long well which is nice because it's awkward to learn a new language if people are too embarrassed to be foolish (and wrong).

The only great revelation to date is that we had a quiz and I did pretty good. I only missed 2 things on it - I forgot the word for "hat" (booshi) and I "misheard" a single digit that the teacher said in the listening test.

I have some homework this week, nothing major, just writing a few sentences. I'm going to review my current vocabulary from the book (perhaps even create a vocab list to study) and keep testing myself on hiragana/katakana. I'm doing very well on the later, I'm ahead of the class in memorizing both, so let's keep it up.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 3, Day 1

After Monday's disaster I picked up all the pieces and trudged forward with my lifting program. The gym was busy this morning even though I made it there by 6:30 am. It's nuts how hard it can be to find a bench or a rack in the morning. Since the gym is just across the street from the office I am working at, I'm almost considering seeing if I can go mid-morning for an hour, but I'll have to find a shower, bring a change of clothes, etc, etc.

I guess I'll keep going in the mornings (for now).

Anyway, it was another good workout for me. I don't know if it was the extra day of rest or if it's just the results of getting stronger, but I breezed through my sets today including the dreaded Barbell Rows.

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (35kg)	Squat 5x5 (37.5kg)	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (30kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (55kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (35kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5	Deadlift 1x5

The next workout is Thursday instead of Wednesday due to the schedule screw-up at the start of the week. I'm not looking forward to the dreaded Overhead Press. It was hard as hell last time and I barely got through the set. 

One other thing I noticed is that I'm doing better at taking a full sized rest in between sets and that's helping me get through them without breaking form. Also, my squat form seems to have improved a bit. There weren't as many twinges as last time doing my sets and they were far softer. However, I think I need to work on my Barbell Row form a bit. It feels like I am doing the exercise slightly wrong. I need to watch more videos and practice.

Tuesday Weigh-In, Start of Week 3

Well, despite yesterday being a loss at the gym and despite me having a beer (a single beer!) on Saturday to celebrate Oktoberfest, I still managed to lose weight this week.

I say that like it's a miracle, but in actually it shouldn't be. After all, my calories in vs calories out is running at a deficit and the ketogenic diet and meal prep makes keeping my hunger under control a snap, so I'm not going out and snacking.

Anyway, the results this week are great. From 96.6kg to 95.6kg, or a full 1kg of weight loss, which is within my optimal scenario for the plan I am following.

I think today also marks the first day in this program where I am able to visibly notice a small difference in my body shape. If you squint really hard at these pictures and compare them to day 1, you might see it too.

Day 15 - Slightly less flabby man-boobs. Slightly.

Day 15 - Tummy slightly less protruding.

Honestly, I knew I was losing weight even without the scale or the photos. My belt got looser over the last week or so, which is always a good indicator of weight loss for me since about 80% of the fat I carry is around my waist (I have a classic "spare tire" shape).

So, result so far: 15 days into, 1.4kg down. 85 days to lose 10.6 kg.

Monday Fucked Up Everything

Okay, maybe everything is a little dramatic, but this has been the shittiest single day of this entire program so far. It all started the night before, on Sunday. If you've been reading my posts you'll probably remember that I have bouts of insomnia and I've been working on trying to sleep more. Well, last night I had one of my worsts, on the back of another night where I couldn't get to sleep.

It started probably because my wife has been working second shift and I've been picking her up from work around 11pm the last two nights. This naturally shifted my clock later I think than I have been sleeping the previous couple of weeks. Then on top of that, when I finally tried to lay down, I just stayed there in bed, awake, for about 2 hours.

Ultimately I got up, puttered around on the computer, then went back to bed sometime past 3am.

Today was supposed to be my workout day, which means I am supposed to get up at 6am to hit the gym. Well, that didn't happen obviously, and as it is, I'm sitting here at work right now feeling brain dead and tired. I really don't want to be here (I want to be sleeping instead!) but there's just nothing for it.

On top of all this, I can't even do my workout today at all because after work I have Japanese class until around 7:15pm and then I have to rush home to take my wife to work (she's doing an overnight shift now) by 8:20pm. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll have time to grab my dinner from the fridge and shovel it down before I'm out the door tonight, but I'm still eating past 5pm which I don't like to do.

So, as you can see, today is all sorts of fucked up. I need to figure out how to recover this, or at least prevent this from happening again. There isn't much I can do about having to drive my wife back and forth to work since she doesn't have a license, but I need to put more effort into getting a handle on my sleeping situation. I think I'm going to make a hard and fast rule of no caffeine/stimulant type foods or drinks past 6pm and I'm going to try and cut back during the day as well.

This is going to be harder than you might think, not just because I am addicted to diet soda, but because I quit smoking a couple of years ago and frequently use nicotine gum to curb my smoking cravings. Add those two things to my naturally poor sleeping habits that I've had since a teenager and I've got my work cut out for me.

Anyway, the goal tonight is to be in bed no later than 10pm, up by 6am and to the gym. No caffeine past 6pm. No nicotine gum past 6pm.

MUST SLEEP.

Keto Meal Prep, Week 3

I'm pretty happy with how things turned out last week, but if I'm honest the sausages were a bit of an underwhelming meal. Nothing wrong with them, just nothing right really. Could be the brand of sausage I was using (it was from Woolworths, so yeah...)

This week I've decided to slightly switch it up. We're bringing back the roasted garlic chicken thighs (yum) and adding a new meal to the mix for dinner: Ketogenic friendly chili.

The chili itself consists of

• 300 grams of Chorizo sausage.
• 2kg of beef
• diced tomatos
• tomato paste
• garlic cloves (crushed)
• about 1 onion
• about 1 green pepper (capsicum)
• chili spices (my personal blend)

When we plate it up to serve after reheating we'll add a small dallop of sour cream and some cheese to melt on top of it. Overall it should weigh in at around 500 calories with garnish and less than 7g of Carbs (we are splitting the above recipe into 12 portions).

Chili... of a sort. 

It may be hard to tell from that picture, but it's mostly meat! It's in a crock pot on my counter right now and I have about 4 more hours to go before I can dish it out.

In other news, I've been keeping track of our grocery bill through these last three weeks and I estimate that once we get past the start-up costs (a lot of containers and kitchen tools), I am spending approximately 15 dollars a day to feed 2 people. Now, depending on where you live that might sound like a lot, but here in Australia... that's not a bad deal at all. Particularly since we aren't purchasing cheap bulk food like macaroni, pasta or rice and with how heavy our diet is in protien and meats.

I mean, really, at $2.50 a meal, we're really saving some money. You can't even buy a decent sausage roll at the servo for that here and we're eating way healthier than that.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 2, Day 3

Today went pretty good. I managed to conquer all of my sets without too much difficulty. I did notice a couple of minor things however:

• My left hamstring was feeling a little tight or pulled when I was doing squats. I'm going to look into why this might be. I felt like my form was pretty good.
• I don't think I've been resting enough in between sets. A good example was during my Overhead Press - I rested about 60 seconds between set 3 and 4 and struggled with set 4, then I rested 90 seconds and managed to complete set 5 with ease. 
• My Deadlift form does not seem right. I feel like I'm doing something wrong and I know I am rolling my feet when I lift, which is wrong.

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (35kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Bench press 5x5
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (55kg)	Barbell Row 5x5

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (27.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (30kg)	Squat 5x5 (32.5kg)
Overhead press 5x5 (22.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (25kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (25kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (45kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (50kg)

All in all I feel like this is progressing pretty good. No idea if I am getting stronger yet since I'm fairly certain this is all weight that I could have lifted prior to starting the program (with the exception of the Barbell Row, obviously because I failed on that one twice!) Supposedly all the exercises and the order has a "synergistic" effect on each other so I should steadily see gains across the board. I'm super curious to see what happens now and I'm wondering what weeks 6 or 8 will look like.

The scale is a total dick

Well, the post title pretty much says it all. It seems like no matter what I do the scale refuses to budge downwards over the last three days. I don't really understand what the reason for this, but I can only think of some possible scenarios:

• I'm eating more calories than I think I am.
• I've got some sort of underling health issue that I'm not aware of.
• My body is just being weird because of the weight training and it'll sort itself out eventually.

Personally, I want to rule out the first point. I'm meal prepping and not really deviating from the plan that I set out at all. Under that assumption I ought to be eating about 1,500 calories and under 5 grams of carbs per day. The ketostix bear this out as the last time I tested just a couple days ago, I was fully into Ketosis, which means, fat burning.

The second point - underlying health issue bothers me. This could be a variety of things. Nothing really showed up on my last health check, so I don't know where to proceed on this. Maybe I need to book in a doctors appointment for next weekend? It'd be good if it was someone who specialized in medicine for middle aged dudes...

The last point is more of a "I have no idea?!?!" I mean, it's possible that all sorts of strange things are going on with my body right now because I went from being entirely sedentary and over eating to being on a strict ketogenic diet and working out three days a week at the gym. If this is the case, then I should see some regular pattern appear within the next few weeks as my body adjusts to my new routine... although I would have thought that this would have manifested as extra weight loss instead of just "staying about the same".

The only positive news I have on this front is that I can confirm that my waistline is slightly smaller. Even if the scale isn't really budging, the belt loops don't lie. My dress shirts and my belt are both a tiny bit looser. I'll grasp onto that to try and keep my motivation up as I continue through this week.

After all, I have 2 workouts and 5 days to go before my next weigh in. I'll just focus on staying diligent throughout that time.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 2, Day 2

Everything went well today. I finally beat the Barbell Row, in fact it wasn't even much of a contest. All of the weights went up smoothly, I felt like my form was good and at the end of the workout I left knowing I could do more. I think these are all good signs.

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Bench press 5x5 (27.5kg)	Overhead press 5x5	Bench press 5x5
Barbell Row 5x5 (32.5kg)	Deadlift 1x5	Barbell Row 5x5

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (27.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (30kg)	Squat 5x5 (32.5kg)
Overhead press 5x5 (22.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (25kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (25kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (45kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (50kg)

My sleep last night was not good. I only got about 6 hours. I need to go to bed earlier if I am going to wake up at 6:30, especially since it takes me so long to fall asleep in the first place. On the plus side, I did find that a simple adjustment like ear plugs makes it far easier for me to fall asleep than normal.

Lack of sleep is going to be my downfall. Proper sleep is important for a whole heap of things - hormone regulation, weight loss and recovery after exercise. I need to put more effort into restricting my caffeine use and forcing myself to go to bed earlier.

Tuesday Weigh-in, Start of Week 2

Hopped on the scale today and it was somewhat disappointing. First off, let me state, that I did lose weight. I'm down to 96.6kg after 7 days, or a 400g loss. What's dissapointing is that earlier in the week I had weighed myself at 96kg even.

Now, I have no excuse for the mysterious spike this morning. I didn't eat anything off the plan, I didn't over-eat (calories were firmly around 1600/day), I exercised at the gym lifting weights 4 days and even more curiously, I tested my ketones today and they came back positive. So as far as I know I'm doing everything right.

So, why the disappointing result? The only thing I can think of right now are - water weight gain (I did drink an outrageous amount of liquid yesterday, plus it's the day after a big muscle workout) and that I may need to do more cardio to raise my basal metabolic rate. In any case, I'm going to repeat last week's activity strictly and then see if the results get better or not.

If I do have a problem, like a hormone problem or other related issue, then at the very least I will have a detailed log of my activity to discuss with a doctor thanks to this blog.

Need to wash that mirror, don't I?

I really can't tell any difference yet!

Anyway, the plan for this next 7 days is to repeat the last 7 days strictly and then compare before making any adjustments.I still have 93 days left to go to drop 12kg (11.6kg now)

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 2, Day 1

I felt pretty good when I woke up this morning, slightly sore but nothing like previous days, so I was looking forward to this workout. It was the shorter of the normal routines, so it went pretty fast and the results were overall good - I passed all the lifts.

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (20kg)	Squat 5x5 (22.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (25 kg)
Bench press 5x5 (20kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (20kg)	Bench press 5x5 (22.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (40kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (27.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (30kg)	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (22.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (25kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (25kg)
Deadlift 1x5 (45kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (50kg)

The only real commentary I had about today is that I think my squat form has improved (finally) and that I was really feeling the struggle towards the end of the last set on the Overhead press for some reason. Oh well, Wednesday is the Barbell Row, the bane of my existence so far. Let's hope I can conquer it and move up a rung.

It's a day off today, so time to relax a bit and study my Japanese some more, but first let's have a multi-vitamin (I always bloody forget) and a shower.

Ja na (じゃな)!

Sleep Update

Just a small update today. Nothing major going on this Sunday (the wife is at a flea market and I'm at home surfing the web).

The only real notable thing is that I finally managed to get a full 8 hours of sleep. The only caveats were that I went to bed later than I would like (and hence woke up later) and that I used ear plugs for the first time.

I'm going to try to go to sleep earlier today (I am cutting back on caffeine consumption and seeing if that helps) so that I can wake up around 6:30am to hit the gym by around 7:00am. This would be normal for me on a monday since my work doesn't start until 9:00am and everything is very close together (within walking distance).

I am convinced that sleep is necessary to lose weight, even if I have to force myself to sleep more despite not feeling particularly tired (I reckon I am actually fine and perfectly awake with 6 hours of sleep on average). We will see if I am vindicated on the scale this Tuesday.

Keto Meal Prep, Week 2

We're on the final prepped meal from last week today (dinner) with tomorrow being our "free day". Free day is a relative term, we're not going to go off keto for that day, instead we're just going to have a little bit of variety at will. I'll probably get a kebab plate for dinner, or maybe some korean chicken with kimchi. I'm still day dreaming about it, hah!

Anyway, overall the wife and I were satisfied with the meals. They kept well, were still tasty when we reheated them and overall the entire process made it easy for us to make the "right choices" during the week when we were dieting. 

This week we did our prep today instead of on Sunday. The menu is mostly the same, but we dropped the chicken (which was fine) and switched it up to sausages.

Pork Sausages! 

We've got 2 pork sausages with sauteed onions, green pepper and garlic and a side of vegetables. This will probably become dinner for the week and our previous dinner meal (the beef rissoles) will become lunch. Breakfast remains hard boiled eggs and bacon for this week, but I'm considering switching it up to keto-friendly "egg breakfast muffins" for next week. We've made them before and they're delicious and easy to keep/store.

Current Menu:

• Breakfast:  2 Hard Boiled eggs, bacon.
• Lunch:  Beef Rissole, sauteed garlic, onions and peppers, steamed veggies.
• Dinner: Pork Sausages, sauteed garlic, onions and peppers, steamed veggies.
• Snacks: 15 almonds as needed.

StrongLifts 5x5, Week 1, Day 3

This was a busy Saturday all around. One of the first things I did this morning was run over to the mall and purchase a couple of 1.25kg Olympic plates so that I can keep the weight increments on my workout plan in order as well as a weight lifting belt. The belt over all seemed to work really good (no back pain) and the workout was fine too, but I'm still struggling with the barbell rows.

Week A

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (20kg)	Squat 5x5 (22.5kg)	Squat 5x5 (25 kg)
Bench press 5x5 (20kg)	Overhead press 5x5 (20kg)	Bench press 5x5 (22.5kg)
Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5 (40kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)

Week B

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
Squat 5x5 (27.5kg)	Squat 5x5	Squat 5x5
Overhead press 5x5 (22.5kg)	Bench press 5x5 (25kg)	Overhead press 5x5
Deadlift 1x5 (45kg)	Barbell Row 5x5 (30kg)	Deadlift 1x5

You'll notice that once again I failed at completing the Barbell Row. I did, however, get much further along this time than I did last time I attempted it. In fact, I'd say I had about the perfect form until the absolute final rep of the last set where I just couldn't get it up without getting out of form. Disappointing to say the least. I tried to take a break, reset and then attempt the set again, but it went worse than it did previously. I guess I'll just have to take another stab at it next Wednesday.

Despite the failure at the Barbell Rows, I'm overall still happy. My body is improving, I can tell, because I am less sore after each workout and recovering faster. That being said, I have been sore every day since Monday. I guess that's a combination of both being older as well as out of shape. I can't wait until this starts to normalize a bit more.