DAY 4 - Tissue Remodeling/Low Carb

Weight = 166.0 (Didn't see that coming...down 2.5 LBS from yesterday)

WORKOUT

Holy crap! What a workout today was! Honestly, I didn't do very well with it and I STILL managed to get my butt kicked. I found out I'm way out of practice with free weights. I had no clue what weight to use when beginning each exercise so it was definitely a guessing game. I also had a minor incident (which could've been major!) with weights and bar while trying to do calf raises. Almost broke a sanitary pipe in the basement!

The basic principle of the Day 4 (and 5) workout is to stretch your muscles to provide the room they're going to need to grow later in the program. To do this, within a particular muscle group (biceps, for example) you alternate doing high-rep sets with heavy weight between the contracted (top part of a curl) and the stretch (bottom part when your arms are fully stretched) and work just that small part of the movement...over and over. After that, you do two high-rep sets with a light weight to really pump blood through the muscles. Wow!

As I mentioned, I wasn't very good at picking a starting weight. I typically chose too light which forced me to do a lot of reps. Not really a problem but the workout lasted over an hour...not particularly good. I also fumbled around changing weights, too, which cost me time. On Day 5 I'll be much more diligent at planning ahead and pre-setting the exercises.

DIET

After eating moderate carbs on Day 3, it was back to low carb. I pretty much ate the same things as on Day 1 except that I cut the portions down to get the calories to come out around 1,200. Amazingly, I wasn't too hungry. I think the fiber supplement is helping with that along with the relatively high percentage of fat (olive oil, nuts, coconut oil) I'm consuming.

To sum up, it was cottage cheese and almonds for breakfast and pre-bed snack. Two meals during the day were spinach and arugula salads with olive oil, walnuts, and 3 oz of either chicken (pastured, of course) or beef (grass-fed, of course). Mid-day snack was 1 C of egg whites with salsa and some wilted spinach. Post-workout, I had a shake that consisted of blueberries, a peach, protein powder, and about 30 g of glutamine (an amino acid).

The diet on Day 5 gets interesting so stay tuned!