*This week is all about peak week, so bear with me… I may lack my usual brilliance and wit, as I ingest increasing amounts of water, and complete crazy amount of sets/reps in the gym. If you are wondering what is this peak week insanity, read about it here.
I am officially naming this project Operation Smoke & Mirrors…
NUTRITION:
Today, water intake drops further, carbs go up, and fat stays low. Modify your intake as follows:
Eat 5 meals.
NO veggies or fruit.
Add dry carbs amounting to 2g/lb of bodyweight, divided amongst your meals (or 1½ to 2 cupped-hand portions per meal).
Eat 1 serving of lean protein (equivalent to 20g, or 1 palm of protein) per meal.
NO added fats with meals.
Drink 1 cup (250mL) of water.
Limit salt content in your food.
If desired and not contra-indicated, add a herbal diuretic.
TRAINING:
As with yesterday, there is no training today. Still too tired to miss the gym. Also, Wednesday, as my designated day from hell, is often an off day anyway.
I saw this on Facebook this morning… Yeah… Forget training like my evil twin. I feel like the stronger fitter evil twin. Ok, I don’t know about stronger – still kind of dragging my feet. But definitely evil. Cranky. BITCHY. Do not eat apples in front of me, if you know what’s good for you.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:
I find it odd to be cooking for the sake of individual nutrients vs. flavour. We are eating chicken breast for protein, sweet potato for carbohydrates. No added fat. No added anything.
Carb days are less exciting than they sound. I mean really! If someone told me I’d be eating 300g of carbs a day, I’d be jumping from joy. Until the rest of the rules comes in. No added salt. No added sugar. No added fat. Ummm….. Great. Options include: white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and rice cakes. Also dehydrated bananas if you care to put in the time and actually make them.
Today’s carb intake is twice of that yesterday. I only reazed that late last night. Yesterday went well, but I went to bed thinking “two times that? really?”. Among things that may suck today, Precision Nutrition lists bloating and fullness. Yeah. No kidding.
I mashed up two large sweet potatoes yesterday. Normally, this would be four servings or so. This morning most of that is gone. Wow.
I’ve noticed this before, but the specific macronutrients you consume make a huge difference in the kind of “full” you get. The carb full feels much heavier than a protein full. It just… sits there. In the pit of the stomach. I mentioned the feeling of lightness after “lean + green” meals few days ago. Yeah. That’s gone.
My throat is dry today. Big surprise. Three three-hour lectures today and half a cup of water. This is like a challenge from Survivor. Contrary to what you may expect, I have not been craving water as much as a hot frothy thick milky beverage. Latte. Hot chocolate. Something. Oh, the delirium. Another crave item – full fat greek yogurt with raspberries and raw cacao nibs.
It feels weird to be this full, and to see more definition at the same time. Usually, the lean days and the fat days look and feel the same way. In this case, my body feels like it’s a fat day, but looks like it’s a lean day (on crack). Physically, this is a really weird feeling. I’m feeling kind of permanently flexed. I’m more than 24 hours away from the shoot. Will I see more definition? Holy cow. It’s kind of unbelievable for the body to be doing what it’s supposed to be doing. I mean you kind of expect it to, but when it does, it’s still pretty amazing. Science is cool.
At the end of today, I am about 4 meals away from a beer. I think I am also eating more than I’m “supposed to” per plan. It may be the case of eating, since I can’t drink. I’m also just craving a different flavour in my mouth. Anything that is not a sweet potato. As much I am not really enjoying the carb load, I would still rather do this for a month straight than to repeat the 8L of water a day experience. That sucked more. To keep things interesting, I am trying different colors of potatoes… Sigh…
The spray tan has dried to a lovely orange finish, and yours truly feels like quite a carrot. Speaking of carrots… I would love one. On a bright side, I am getting my make-up done tomorrow. There has been a lot of pretty going on for the shoot. Way more pretty than normal. LOL.
An article caught my eye this morning. One of the writers at Offbeat Mama started telling her daughters she was beautiful. The author acknowledges how often it is to recognize beauty in others, yet fail to do the same for ourselves… “It’s easy to see that they’re beautiful”,she says of her children.
"I see it behind their eyes, the calculating and impression. I see it behind their shining brown eyes, how glad they are that I believe I am beautiful. They love me. To them, I am love and guidance and warm, soft blankets and early mornings. They have never doubted how wonderful I am. They have never doubted my beauty. How confusing it must have been for them to see me furrowing my brow in the mirror and sucking in my stomach and sighing.”
When I was ten or twelve years old, my mom asked me if I thought my dad was handsome. “Of course”, I said. “Well, of course, he is, because he is our dad, but do you think he is objectively handsome?”, she corrected herself. I couldn’t see the difference.
I have enough social psychology crammed into me to know that physical beauty is often quite objective. We say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the truth is, the same people are rated as physically attractive everywhere in the world – large eyes, smooth skin, symmetrical features. But it’s when we move away from the physical beauty alone, the things start to make sense again.
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius. It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring”, says Marilyn Monroe, the quintessential woman.
Well, that I am. Absolutely ridiculous…
And yes, of course, dad is handsome. And YOU are beautiful today. Tomorrow. And a week from now. And so am I.
Signing off, Solo
FOOD LOG:
meal 1: 5 eggs whites 3/4 cup sweet potato –> I mixed up the whites with potatoes and pumpkin spice and blasted it in the microwave black espresso –> if you thought I’d give up the one coffee, you are crazy.
meal 2: 4oz chicken breast 2 rice cakes 1/2 cup sweet potato
meal 3: 4oz chicken breast 4oz ground turkey 1 cup white potato 1 rice cake *Ummm… Not exactly sure what happened here. Moving on.
meal 4: 3 rice cakes 1/2 cup sweet potato 4 oz ground turkey
meal 5: 3 rice cakes 4 egg whites mixed with 1/2 cup sweet potato and pumpkin pie spice and vanilla extract, nuked in microwave 2 tbsp of ground turkey