I like food.

I think that one of the reasons I like lifting so much is because I like food.

Back when I first started to lose weight I used the whole “eat less, burn more” way of thinking.  To me a calorie was a calorie.  I ate a lot of the 100 calorie snack pack thingys, ate carbs ’cause I liked them, and avoided a lot of meat because it had fat in it.

It wasn’t until I read The New Rules of Lifting for Women that I really started to learn about nutrition, and about how our bodies treat, and need, carbs, fat and protein.  Since January I’ve been following  40:30:30 carbs:protein:fat balance to my food, and making an effort to eat as clean, or whole, as I can.  Yes, I certainly still eat the things I really want when I’m really craving them, but I find that a diet higher in protein is a really good fit for me.

I also like that I get to eat often.  I usually eat 5 meals a day.  Breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner.  Workout days get a post-workout recovery shake, but I don’t really think of that as a meal.

Today’s workout was  good, but long, one.  I did the first workout of Stage 5 of NROL4W.  This stage is the same exercises as in Stage 3, but with 3-4 sets of only 4 reps.  The idea here is to use a weight on each set that is challenging for the 4 reps.  The first workout is usually a lot of figuring out what to use, so I upped my weights several times in most exercises.

Here’s my set up for a few things.   My gym is kinda ratty.

So is my copy of NROL4w.  I like to bring the book with me for reference the first time back through an exercise, in case I want to check up on form details.

My big accomplishment for today was making it all the way through the full body weight matrix.  That thing is evil.

It consists of the following, all with just your body weight:

24 squats

12 lunges, each leg

12 jump lunges, each leg

24 jump squats

You’re supposed to time yourself, rest twice the amount of time it took you to do it, then DO IT AGAIN.

What, you don’t think that looks tough?  Try it.

Today I did the full BW Matrix in 5:06, did my rest, then did a half Matrix in 2:11.  I should have done the whole thing again, but by that point I’d been at the gym for nearly 2 hours, and I was just ready to go home.

That’s the only crappy thing about Stage 5.  4 sets of each exercise (there are 7 of them) with 120s of rest in between each set means a lot of time at the gym.  The program calls for 3-4 sets, so I think when I’m doing this on weeknights I’ll do 3 sets, and maybe save the HIIT or the BW matrix for the next day.  We’ll see.

That’s about all.  Today is Father’s Day, so we’re heading over to my mom and step dads house for ribs.  They make amazing meat products, smoked, BBQ’d and usually with homemade BBQ sauce.  And, since I burned through a whopping 912 cal during my workout, I think I’ll indulge a bit.