A world, yours for the taking

Fingers crossed, jet lagged has been conquered. After a day of fighting to keep my eyes open at 4 pm and struggling to close my eyes at 1 am, I think I have fought off that evil beast.

Stationed in a futuristic utopia where everyone drinks coffee (there are thousands upon thousands of coffee shops here), the floors are heated (talk about central heating) and cars ride on elevators, I look forward to adapting to Korean life. People here are more addicted to their cell phones than you can imagine. Hopefully that will turn out well for my hunt to find a nice case for my Korean made Samsung S3.

Tinmanfish

I spent my first day at castings, and figuring out how to buy groceries. My natural habits are to eat healthy, but this will undoubtedly be reinforced as the only foods I can ensure are gluten and dairy free will be fruits, veggies, meat and rice, oh and buckwheat noodles. Interesting isn’t it how that’s essentially what we all should be eating anyway. There is the odd food with English ingredient list, like the peanut butter I found for $7, but I can’t live without peanut butter.

I haven’t continued to as of yet, but with my gym literally at my doorstep and castings not typically until mid-afternoon, I will likely be doing more 2 a day exercising. In the meantime, I am in a new city with so much to explore, there is no harm is walking for a couple hours as I aimlessly lose and find myself in this large city.

Jagerbombs at the theatre 

This past weekends adventure brought me to a temple, an aquarium and none other than an opening weekend visit with my old buddy James Bond. 

Whoosh!

This sounds pretty much explains the last 24 hours of my life. Sitting waiting, I found ways to keep myself entertained at home this past week. My work visa arrived on Friday, and an email was promptly sent out to inform my agents and to get things rolling.  Of course there was the issue of time change and a weekend.

 

While waiting, I shoveled the walkway of snow, cleaned the kitchen multiple times, and of course went on a few glorious walks with Diesel. I am going to miss that fella. Then Tuesday night arrives. An email with some details, then a phone call, then a final email. At 9 pm Pat and I spoke and my flight was set. By the time all was confirmed through the airline it was closer to 10 pm, I would be departing for Seattle in 8.5 hours (that’s 6:30 am). My father had offered to pick me up and take me to the airport at this ungodly hour. I really appreciated that, its nice to have that support network available, as I know not everyone does.

I guess with your flight leaving soon, packing is usually a good idea, followed by a bedtime snack I finally got to bed at 1:30. Subconsciously I think I knew if I was gassed heading into nearly 24 hours of travel I could sleep on through most of it.  Security and customs were a breeze and took maybe 10 mins total, my beard must not appear very threatening.

Brrrrrrrrrrrr. Okay I don’t know how the lyrics go of the Dash 8 Turbo prop go but this morning was my first experience on such a plane. Every time I closed my eyes however I could imagine the black and white videos you watched in Social Studies and History classes of the B-52 bombers. This little plane delivered me towards a 7 hour layover in Seattle, coffee shop central.

I have never been comfortable with sleeping in an airport terminal (safety wise), so I worked hard to keep my eyes open before I could get my Tokyo drift on during the 11 hour flight to Narita (joke courtesy of dad, followed my many other inappropriate puns related to exhaust). 

Let’s take a look at what I have done to keep myself nutritionally satisfied.

3 am: 2 scoops protein and 2 packs Nature’s Path Flax and Oats

7 am: Clif Bar

9 am (Seattle time so add an hour): 3 eggs scrambled with Dungess crab and Dungess Shrimps, and about 4 little hashbrowns

12 pm: 5 Dark Chocolate Covered Macadamia nuts (my caving to some sweet cravings

3 pm: Slices beef with rice noodles and vegetables and 1 glass of merlot

8:30 pm: 4 pcs of almond cluster crack

My goal of getting sleep has worked out pretty well. My section of the plane is nearly empty so I laid across the 3 seats in the middle and dozed off, first an hour then our meal, and my post feeding 5.5 hour nap.  I have successfully killed 7 of my 11 hours in this plane so far sleeping, not bad.

With 2 and a half hours to go, I am going to immerse myself in Sons of Anarchy.

Crazy Catabolic Carb Complex 2 – The results and wtf happened with Pics

Category	September 6, 12 Results	October 19, 12 Results	Change
Weight (lbs)	172	169.4	-2.6
Fat Free Mass (lbs)	153.3	150.5	-2.8
Fat Mass (lbs)	18.7	18.9	+0.2
Body fat %	10.9	11.2	+0.3

As you can clearly see, I look leaner physically. As a matter of fact my muscles appear larger. So why is my body fat up, my fat free mass down, lets take a closer look and see what may change these numbers.  And yes I know the lighting and angle is a little different but you work with what you have got.

Body fat percentage I feel like is something worth touching on. My change in body fat % is rather small, a variance of .3% or 0.003. This value based on the % change is 2.75%. Either of these numbers being used does not provide a significant amount of data to be statistically significant. Bummer right, my change is within the percent of error. 

How about that fat free mass now? Well you will notice that both my weight and my fat free weight dropped this time and my fat stayed mostly the same. At first glance it would appear that I lost roughly 2.5 lbs of muscle. With some insight and review of diet over the past week a relatively easy explanation is available.  Right here is where I explain the crazy carb complex.

Geeky science brain is trying to take over but lets take a basic review of carbohydrates. Carbs or CHO (nutrition shorthand) are the most basic form of energy we consume, providing 4 cal per gram, all calories must be changed to CHO before we can use them. By stoking your bodies fire with exercise, it increases your bodies need for CHO. When CHO run out like a keg at a frat party we go to find more hardcore sources of energy. In comes fat and protein, the nutrients get sent to the liver to be converted to none other than CHO.  Still following?

If you are consistently exercising as I have been, your body goes to an extra effort to store these CHO in your muscles (aka Muscle Glycogen). In order to store the extra CHO your body needs to hold onto more water. I can’t recall exactly but it is somewhere to the tune of 3g water for every 1g CHO. 

Fade in and out to a scene of me chomping on salads and asparagus this past week sans rice. Yup I cut out close to 4 cups of complex carbs per day. While I didn’t fall flat on my workouts, the water weight my body normally stores was released. The result a 4 lb drop.

The pieces begin to fall into play now. I lost 4 lbs when I cut out carbs, therefore my lean mass dropped. Since lean mass is muscle, water, bone, hair, skin, etc. I saw a decrease. A decrease in muscle mass is what is known as catabolism (anabolic being addition, catabolic being taking away). My theory being that my body fat should be lower, I felt leaner and looked it, so I decided Friday to experiment with returning my carbs to normal. Not all the carbs were complex, as a matter of fact, I had my first can of pop (A &W Rootbeer) in who knows how long.  Then this morning upon returning to the gym for my morning workout I stepped on the scale, tipping in at 175 lbs.

6 lbs in one day, the only change being more carbs confirmed what I had believed. Dropping carbs didn’t necessarily help burn fat but caused my muscles to hold less CHO and in turn, less water. Obviously fat didn’t increase overnight, so lets look again at those initial numbers.

Fat mass – 18.9 lbs

Today’s weight – 175.6

Normal CHO body fat % - 10.7

While it really doesn’t make a significant difference, it does confirm for me that over the past 6 weeks, I have added 3 lbs of muscle. Unfortunately I didn’t achieve my goal of under 9, I did learn about how my body reacts to CHO and refreshed some of my nutrition vault. I will have to start analyzing my exercise program and see what I can do to tweak it for the better.  

Lastly check out my new shades. They are the Oakley Plaintiff Infinite Heros. 

Crazy Catabolic Carb Complex Part I - The diet and exercise

Son of a gun. I had an entire preliminary post typed up and it’s gone. Well I am going to do my best to summarize what I had previously written. All of this was pretty long winded so I am breaking it into a total of 3 posts. 

After coming back from Thailand I had lost weight (mostly muscle). All summer I had been working to put that back on and lose some of the extra padding. Through a good diet and amazing workouts I feel like I have achieved this. With the eve of my departure to Korea looming, I successfully went through one last push.

6 weeks ago I strapped myself into a bubble and had my body composition analyzed. Yesterday, just like Felix I found myself floating in a tin can. The space capsule so happily referred to as a bod pod. My results didn’t come back as expected, but luckily science once again can explain it. 

Stay calm and geek on. I have a good understanding of how foods affect our body and will try my best to explain. But before that as with all science experiments lets look at the methods of procedure.

Diet

Keep in mind I was bartending most of the summer so things are slightly skewed. Then this past week changed.

Breakfast: (11 am)

1 cup blueberries, 1 banana, 2 tbsp peanut butter, 2 cups unsweetened almond milk, 2 scoops protein powder (30 gram protein)

2 slices Gluten Free bread

Post workout shake: (2 pm)

2 scoops Muscle MLK

Lunch: (3 pm)

2 cups brown rice or quinoa or GF pasta

8 oz cooked MFP (meat, fish or poultry)

2-3 cups vegetables (usually carrots or asparagus as they are my favourites)

2 tbsp hummus or guacamole or tomato sauce or goat cheese

Snack: (8 pm)

Clif Bar (chocolate mint is awesome, same with peanut toffee buzz)

Snack: (11 pm if I can sneak it in)

1 oz almonds or pistachios or 1 cup grapes)

Bedtime dinner: (2-3 am)

8 oz MFP

Rice crackers (Maggie’s Organice ones) or 2-4 slices GF bread

2 oz goat cheese

Big Salad

Then this past week, I have changed my workouts and also the diet, limiting carbs a little.

Breakfast: (10 am)

1 ½ cup cooked oatmeal with 1 cup blueberries and 1 tsp honey

2 scoop protein powder or 3 eggs with guac

Post workout shake: (12pm)

2 scoops Muscle MLK

Lunch: (1 pm)

8 oz MFP

3 cups vegetables

2 oz goat cheese

Snack: (4pm)

1 cup carrots w/hummus

During workout shake: (6pm)

2 scoops Muscle MLK

Dinner: (8pm)

Half a chicken

3 cups vegetables

Maybe a little goat cheese or hummus or guac, depending on how I feel

Snack: ½ pint raspberries or carrots and hummus and 2 oz nuts

Workouts:

I can’t find one of the older workouts right now, will post it later, but here is an example of morning Metcon (metabolic conditioning) and evening strength from this past week.

Metcon:

Dynamic Warmup (10 minutes)

Run 1 mile (approx. 8 minutes)

Chrissy Kettlebell workout:

20-25-30-35-40-45 Kettle Bell Swings (16kg)

30-25-20-15-10-5 Burpee pushup Tuck Jumps (superset no rest)

Stength:

10x10 Bench Press (#135) every minute on the minute

4xMax Bench Press (10RM or 185) R=60 sec

10x10 Cable Flys (#23) every minute on the minute

4xMax Cable Flys (10RM or 185) R=60 sec

3x10 Floor Flys (#30e)

3xMax Pushups (superset) R=90

3x25 pistol crunch R=60 sec

300 crunches R= as needed

Or here is another one

In my next post I will detail the results and interpret them a bit.

Mmm Bacon

 I love bacon, honestly who doesn’t? Certain religions, some silly ones like vegetarians, and vegans, or those that refuse to eat red meat (even though bacon is technically a white meat). But Canadian bacon is a breed of its own. So delicious its like heaven coating your palate as you bite in and enjoy this delectable treat. 

While in Toronto I was able to enjoy some treats I haven’t had in a long time or ever had on some occasions, Canadian bacon was just one of those beloved dishes I haven’t had in a while.  At the Brownstone Café, I was able to have a Gluten Free pizza, that was good, although not spectacular. The pizza was far too doughy (which is a surprise for gluten free) and the portion was ridiculously large with ridiculously little topping.

At heart I love a good cocktail and after reading on the in flight magazine a group of us decided to make a stop at the black hoof cocktail bar. My personal taste profile highlights smokey and strong drinks based primarily around Cognac, whiskey, brandy, bourbon and rye. So here I graced my lips with their Boulevardier.  I enjoyed it, but it was far from the list of my favourite cocktails, the long lingering finish left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

A few days later we decided to indulge in the renowned “Bar chef”.  It is easy to walk by this establishment and not bat an eye as from street view there is little more than a black door and curtained windows. Once inside this speakeasy, the ambiance is beautiful and whispers in your ear of a good time. In a class of its own their house infused bitters, syrups and liquor speak to the dedication to a cocktail. Opting for a seat at the bar we were promptly greeted by the bartender with menus as he returned back to shaking. We chose the bar to watch the artists on their easel and it was certainly worth the experience. Both of us enjoyed our drinks, my self diving into a Symphony #5 which consists of gin, vanilla cognac, dill bitters, rosemary syrup, a chartreuse rinse and a orange blossom spritz.