Tenacious DM and the Log of Destiny

[stingo]

Originally Posted by DirtyMartini

Hey, our local brewpub has the Duchesse on tap as well. That is a fantastic beer - delicious!

Thank you! I'm proud of all the progress I've made (and that John's made - he is looking fantastic!). It's something I truly feel proud of; I've worked hard for this and have achieved this while really pushing myself. I haven't done this half-assed, which seems to make the results even more rewarding.


Follow-up to the beer last night - I cracked open a 2nd beer and couldn't come CLOSE to finishing it. I got about 1/4 of the way through and started feeling nauseous. Prior to this year, I would have probably ripped through 3 or 4 bottles of it and felt buzzed but not ill. John was in worse shape than I was last night.

We shared our amazement this morning at how tolerant we'd actually become. Beer is a shared passion of ours and we drank a LOT (a couple every night, several on the weekend), trying new varieties and seeking out novelty beer. It wasn't uncommon for each of us to go through a 6-pack or 2-3 bombers on a friday evening... amazing! I don't even want to think of what I was doing to my body - drinking 4-5 pints at the bar on a friday night and downing a bacon cheeseburger & fries. Every weekend.

When I lived down under, wine was one of the cheapest things to drink (a 6-pack was $20+, a 750ml bottle of mid-shelf gin was $45, and a bottle of fantastic local wine was $9 - guess which one I was going to pick). I would go through a bottle on friday & another on saturday... and sometimes 2-3 bottles during the week (drinking half per night).

I'm actually kind of surprised at how easy it was just to give up alcohol (in many ways, it's been easier than giving up some of my favorite carbs, like scones). But more amazed at my actual volume of consumption and how much money I spent on it. Yikes.

I know what you mean - I'm starting to get on the cutting down/out alcohol bandwagon. While the beer I had last night was certainly tasty, I'm sure that on the whole it isn't good for my body.

What's your local brewpub? We've got a newish one here that is offering its first cask-conditioned ale today. It's One Guy Brewing, and that is exactly what it is - Guy (yes, that's his name) owns, brews, and cleans up the place and does everything else in between. The beers though are always fresh and tasty.

[DirtyMartini]

That's cute! One Guy... it was probably a good thing for us to get out of Portland - so many small breweries with damn good beer. It's so tempting to go and see what's new on tap, to see what they've come up with this time. One of my my favorite breweries in Portland (amnesia) made a fantastic christmas porter - Sleigh Jerker. It was so good - appropriately hoppy and malty and chocolatey and very alcoholic. It was one of those beers where you'd tell yourself you'd only have one, then before you knew it you were contemplating a third pint. Dangerous. And then there were the beer bars... if you ever make it out to Portland, check out Higgins' bar. The food is fantastic (being one of, if not "the", birthplace of NW cuisine) but the beer list is excellent. Many belgians on there to choose from.

The brewery near us is called 75th Street Brewing. It's KC's oldest brewery. Their beers are decent, but nothing to write home about. Every once in a while they come out with something above par. Their new APA is quite good, as is their irish red. The rest... I've had better, but I can't complain... the place is a 1/2 mile walk from our house.


In other news, we went on a bike ride today to the community farmers' market (not the big city one) and it sucked. There weren't very many vendors there (maybe 6? 7?) compared to last time, and neither the beef nor the egg lady was there. It was almost all people selling potted vegetable plants. I'm sure it will get better in the coming months. It was nice to get out for a ride, though. I haven't been on my bike in about a year.

[DirtyMartini]

Well, my weekend of rest went pretty quickly. John and I are doing exercise 6 days a week now, which we were doing earlier this year. Today I did 45 minutes of biking:

5 min w/u
15 min HIIT (1 min hi/2 min lo, levels 7/4)
25 min steady-state level 5

It's been so long since I've done anything endurance-related; that 45 minutes was tougher than I thought it'd be. Felt good though.

I start stage 5 tomorrow - yay! I'm excited to get to stage 6. I was looking at it again tonight and it's a lot of my favorite exercises. While I like lower body workouts, I think I just enjoy working out my upper body more. I love my back feeling so strong, my shoulders feeling strong, my arms... I love that I can actually do 3 sets of 8 pushups on the floor now. It's only going to get better!

We started Precision Nutrition last week but it was more like a "ramp up" week since we didn't do any Post-Workout meals & stuck with Anytime instead.

Tonight, we did our first P-W meal and it was all I imagined.



Protein pancakes, baby. Except we forgot the protein powder, so we had small protein shakes with dinner. :P These babies were delicious. We also had a salad prior to the pancakes, but that wasn't worth noting.

So, so good.

[Bytsi]

Noooooo !!! Not food porn on your log too !!!!!!!

I'm trying to diet here, people!

[DirtyMartini]

What is this "trying to diet" you speak of?

"Diet" is a noun, not a verb.

[Bytsi]

Originally Posted by DirtyMartini

What is this "trying to diet" you speak of?

"Diet" is a noun, not a verb.

1000 pardons, please
I am trying to STICK TO a diet (defined as "a way of eating for the rest of my life").

Better?

[DirtyMartini]

yeah, after I posted that, for about an hour I was dying for something sweet. I had a piece of gum & was drinking green tea but all I could think about was something sweet. A doughnut, scone, chocolate chip cookie… I had a can of coke zero, thinking that would help. I think it made it worse. I was supposed to be working on my meeting recaps & design stuff from this morning but all I could think about is how I wanted something sweet.

I never used to crave sugar like this. Sometimes I’d want something sweet, but not usually. Carbs were my craving – scones (those are sweet, but not like cake or cookies), chips (cheetos), salty pub fries, crackers (wheat thins!), pringles, nachos.... I guess now that I’m not really getting the sugar from those salty carbs anymore, I’m reduced to craving sugar period.

It totally sucks.

[kfisherx]

Girls, you can get rid of the cravings in two ways. One is to get your macros right for you. But that is hard. The other way is to make cheater sweets that are good for you. Right now my favorite is cottage cheese chocolate pudding. I know it sound gross but blend non-fat cottage cheese until it is smooth and like pudding. Add 100% coco (I use dark chocolate) and stevia (or your favorite sweetner). It has a bit of aftertaste from the sweetner but it works against those cravings and what isn't great about the macros in non-fat cottage cheese?

[fengshway]

ok YUM on the portland beer. our girl tri group raced in portland last year--blue lake in july. it was the same weekend as the brewers festival. I bought those little wooden coins to purchase what I thought were "tastes"--except some of them were 9 percent alcohol. haven't been that drunk since college, and it wasn't on purpose! was in the porta potty trying to remember how to zip my jeans. fun times. did a 10 k PR that weekend, sub 60 min!!!

[DirtyMartini]

Originally Posted by kfisherx

Girls, you can get rid of the cravings in two ways. One is to get your macros right for you. But that is hard. The other way is to make cheater sweets that are good for you. Right now my favorite is cottage cheese chocolate pudding. I know it sound gross but blend non-fat cottage cheese until it is smooth and like pudding. Add 100% coco (I use dark chocolate) and stevia (or your favorite sweetner). It has a bit of aftertaste from the sweetner but it works against those cravings and what isn't great about the macros in non-fat cottage cheese?

Yeah, unfortunately, I eat that stuff too and it doesn't seem to help. We make super-shakes with sugar-free pudding mix, I eat cottage cheese with blueberries, I eat dark chocolate, I put sugar-free flavored syrups in my coffee..

When it comes down to it, I just seem to crave stuff. I did when I was eating whatever I wanted, and I do when I'm managing my food intake. I don't know if it's mental or what. Most of the time I can just roll my eyes at it and ignore it and be satisfied with tea or a peanut butter protein bar or what have you... Sometimes they come with a vengeance and nearly break me. But given a little time they pass.

I did have a dream about eating cake, though. I was eating some sort of glacee with cake that had a custard filling. And there was a festival outside my house, and someone gave me a free The Doors sweatshirt (and I don't even like them). And the city set up snow-making machines so you could ski on our street.

That was fun.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally Posted by fengshway

ok YUM on the portland beer. our girl tri group raced in portland last year--blue lake in july. it was the same weekend as the brewers festival. I bought those little wooden coins to purchase what I thought were "tastes"--except some of them were 9 percent alcohol. haven't been that drunk since college, and it wasn't on purpose! was in the porta potty trying to remember how to zip my jeans. fun times. did a 10 k PR that weekend, sub 60 min!!!

I grew up a couple of miles from Blue Lake Park Seems every other year they were shutting the lake down due to bacterial overgrowth.

That brewers festival is interesting. John and I went last year and were disappointed. It was SO crowded and everyone was falling over drunk. We were expecting something more like a "get to talk to the brewers about making beer" type of thing. Not a bunch of frat boys yelling WAZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP across the portapotty lines. Should have known.

But yeah, I echo your YUM on the portland beer sentiment. I miss it. A lot. But it's probably better I don't have constant access to it.

[DirtyMartini]

Today's workout. I do like this one, minus the bodyweight matrix. I tried to do all more weight on this workout than I did on my Stage 3 A4 workout. Almost made it!

Stage 5 - Workout A1
One-armed dumbbell snatch
4x4x30

Dumbbell single-leg Romanian deadlift
4x4x30e

Barbell bent-over row
4x4x85

Dumbbell single-arm overhead squat
4x4x15/30

Dumbbell incline bench press
2x4x30e
2x4x25e - arms just plain tuckered out at this point

Plank
120s - 3 touches
120s - 2 touches
120s - 4 touches

Reverse wood chop
3x4x40

Body-weight Matrix
3:37 bleh.

didn't repeat. wanted to die.

[Bytsi]

Your weight increased a lot - you did great!!! I'm liking 3A more than 3B (so far - scheduled to do 3B for the 2nd time tomorrow)... I can see why the BWM was tough - you did a LOT before it!!!

[DirtyMartini]

Yeah and I think the cardio from Monday wore me out a little too. My muscles were a little weary Tuesday morning but that dissipated later on in the day (till my workout :p)

Cardio scheduled for tonight on the bike... I am going to stick to the bike this week and figure something out to add in some variability. I like the bike because I can read my book when I finish my intervals.

[Mahler]

Well, after hiding my eyes from the food porn, I discovered what a great job you are doing with your workouts. Nice increases across the board.

[DirtyMartini]

Thanks Mahler! I set the bar high for this stage but am really going to like it with the high weight & low reps. Still, I can't WAIT for stage 6.