Week 20 – Sick and Tired – Yep, actually sick and it made me tired!

Hi gang!

I had no energy this week. I noticed it early on, about Monday. I got up late (here in New South Wales, Australia, last Monday was a public holiday) and had a birthday and a stack of family things happening, so I thought I’d give the gym a miss. I woke up early on Tuesday, but just didn’t feel up to going. I’d developed a sore throat and swollen glands. I thought I’d catch up on Wednesday, but again, wasn’t feeling so good and Today (Thursday) my throat is worse, and it’s gone to my chest. I don’t feel good and as soon as I’ve done this, I’m going to go and lie down (it’s 5:30am here).

Now, I weighed in this morning and I’m down to 96.7 kilos ( 212.74 pounds) and 19.15% bodyfat. I’m moving closer to my goal every week. If you check my chart, you’ll see the line gradually moving down, and that’s one of the things that keeps me going. I have 6.7 kilos to go and 3 percentage points of body fat to lose. I’m so close I can taste it!

This week is going to be interesting. I’m going to need to cut back on my calorie intake, so that my reduced activity, while I get over this cold, still allows me to burn fat. That’s OK, because at my current calorie level, and eating six times a day, I still feel like I’m eating way too much. But I know I’m not, because I’m still losing bodyfat. I like it!

I found a little key that makes the whole process easier. My wife mentioned that I always seem to be cooking, and that’s because I’m eating every three hours. I found it useful to have some cold turkey, or chicken, in the refrigerator so that I could make a sandwich easily and take care of a meal like that. But what I did yesterday was the best move so far. In the morning, I took one of my recipes for Chicken Stir Fry and multiplied all of the ingredients by four. I then weighed and measured them out and cooked four servings all at once. Then I took ziploc baggies and weighed out and sealed the four portions and put three of them in the freezer. The one that was left, I ate. This meant that I didn’t have to cook for the next three meals. The meals were ready, weighed, portion controlled and macronutrient balanced. It was a good thing.

The next step is to cook maybe three or four dishes at one time and then I can have variety throughout the day. I just open the freezer and reach for a ziploc bag of whatever food I fancy. By the way, in case you’re wondering, there were a total 650 grams of lean chicken breast in the four meals, 600 grams of cooked brown rice (which I cook in bulk and then keep in the refridgerator) some mushrooms, broccoli, corn and peas. I also added some sauce to taste. I stir fried the meal using canola oil from a spray can (to reduce usage) and seasoned with a little salt. Voila! Tasty, nutritious and pretty darn cheap! The chicken cost me $AUD9.99 per kilo.

I hope you find this useful. By the way, I’ve written an online calorie calculator, and a food database with over 7000 food items. A meal planner is working, but I want to personalise it so that each user doesn’t erase the last user’s stuff. All of this will come online soon, but I found out that the server it’s going on doesn’t support PHP (the language I wrote it in). Now I have to learn Javascript so that I can make it work. Great. I can’t wait. Is my enthusiasm showing?

Ok, time to suffer in private. It’s a good thing to know that colds and flu will go away in a relatively short time, and then I’ll be back in the gym, building the muscles that will help to burn more fat. Maybe I’ll have a ‘coming out’ party for my abs. Or maybe not. You never know.

Till next week,

John.