Posts Tagged ‘changes’

Learning my body

Written by Josh on August 31st, 2010

Every diet is different and during each diet I’ve learned a little more about nutrition, diets in general, foods, and especially my own body. I think I’ve made a big discovery lately… my body needs fats more than carbs.

For the first half of my diet, I felt great – I had relatively high energy, I was losing weight. I was going 0 carb Monday – Friday and carbing up on the weekend.

About 5-6 weeks ago, I hit a plateau – I could not break the 160 Lb barrier. After a few weeks of trying different things, I had a large cheat meal and then I started adding more carbs back in to my diet. I broke the barrier… but I’ve been struggling the last few weeks and I really couldn’t understand why. A few days were extremely tough. I didn’t understand why I would feel so bad after adding carbs into my diet. Aren’t carbs supposed to make you feel better?

That may be true for some, but not for me… I’ve discovered that my body works better off of fats than it does carbs. When I started upping my carbs, I started lowering my fat intake… and I think that is what has made me feel like I’ve been in a car accident the last few weeks. It makes sense, now, looking back over the last few weeks.

So, easy fix… lower my carbs back down and up my fat again… I feel better already.

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Changes

Written by Josh on June 22nd, 2010

On my last post, I posted random thoughts that were filling my head and stated that it’s hard to ignore them. Well, sometimes you shouldn’t.

Bluffs Classic
Over this past weekend, I did a lot of thinking. I was 10 weeks out from the Bluffs Classic. I really didn’t think I was going to be where I wanted to be to compete in the Bluffs Classic. It was somewhat of a difficult decision to make, because I’ve been working towards competing for this specific contest for 12 weeks already. You always want to better than you’ve done previously – and I just didn’t think I was going to.

Cardio
I haven’t been doing any cardio. I could probably compete in the Bluffs Classic if I really gave it my all… what I mean by that is early morning cardio, late evenings at the gym doing cardio, etc. I’ve done that on my previous diets… and I felt like I was killing myself too. I don’t want to do that during this diet… I’ve been getting lean, slow and steady – and I’ve felt great.

Goals for this diet

  • Better than I was last time
  • Maintain a regular family lifestyle (as close as possible)

Best of the Midwest
So, I’ve changed the contest I’m doing from the Bluffs Classic on August 30 to the Best of the Midwest in Cedar Rapids, IA on October 16. By doing so, I get an extra 7 weeks of diet time – this will allow me to really narrow down and be where I want to be for the contest.

Vacation
As part of the change of contest, I’m allowing myself to go on vacation with my family for a couple of days, and cheat on my diet. Although I really don’t consider it cheating because I’m planning it and doing more for the benefit of the diet than for any other reason. I’ll be dieting for 29 weeks total… I think my body could use a few days reprieve.

I think this change will be good… it’ll really give me the chance to diet down and be the leanest I’ve ever been and I won’t have to kill myself to do it. This will be my third contest – the first one, I did just to see if I could do one, the second – was my first one with my family and everything – now this one, I want to do well in the contest. I wasn’t really planning on doing a bodybuilding contest this year, but here I find myself dieting for one, so since I’m going to put in the work – I might as well make it worth it and give it my best shot.

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