Workout v4.0 (HIIT) and Diet v5.0

In the Spring of 2013 I decided to focus solely on workouts and diets to promote additional fat loss until I reached a body fat percent that I was happy with. Over the last couple years I had been playing around with my diet enough to realize that for me there are two modes of dieting. One I can eat in manner to maintain strength and build muscle but I will not lose any body fat on this eating regiment. The other is to eat at a caloric deficit to lose body fat, however when I sustain this type of diet over an extended period of time I begin to lose some of my strength. If I had an outstanding genetic makeup like some people (Arnold Schwarzenegger for example) I could use my maintain diet to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously, however that isn't my body type so I have to use different eating methods to accomplish my goals.

At this point I had first decided to change my diet up. Ever since I had got back on track and had converted over to Intermittent Fasting (IF) I had been getting decent results and was steadily losing weight each week. I decided to add one more element to my diet, Low Carb. My goal was to keep my daily intake of carbs at around 50 grams or less and then on Saturday I could eat my fill of carbs to refill my muscles with glycogen. Glycogen is how carbs are stored as energy in your muscles. Glycogen is where your body pulls from first to burn energy, after you run out of glycogen it has to pull from other sources such as fat. This is why Low Carb is effective, because once you run out of glycogen you have to burn fat. However when doing exercise on a consistent basis it is important to have one or maybe even two days with carbs (preferably on a workout day) so that you aren't constantly exercising without glycogen stores in your muscles. Low Carb is an absolutely excellent way to lose fat but it can also cause muscle loss. If I was working out with depleted glycogen all the time due to the Low Carb it will hasten strength and muscle loss. This muscle loss occurs because of burning additional calories from the workouts and constantly eating at a caloric deficit and having no glycogen stores in your muscles causing your energy production from burning fat cells not to be able to keep up. When you get to this state of being energy starved from your fat not producing enough energy your body will start to "burn" muscle. This effect is the same as what happens to starving people and why their muscles are so atrophied. So to avoid my body losing muscle I made sure to have at least one day to refill my glycogen with carbs.

Along with this additional change up I decided to give HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts a try. I had been doing long 30min - 45min cardio sessions, these were the first exercises I changed over to HIIT style. Instead of running on the treadmill, or whatever machine I was on, for those extended durations I would run fast for 1 minute and then do a slow jog for 1 minute to catch my breath. I would repeat this process until I had done 8 sets of running with jogging at the start and finish for warm up and cooldown. This lowered my cardio routines down to 17 minutes. Not only does it save you a bunch of time, but I still got a superb workout because of how much energy I exerted while doing the fast running. If you want to try this make sure you build up your stamina first before just trying to jump straight into HIIT style cardio. Either do steady slow running or begin with shorter run intervals like 30 seconds running and 90 seconds jogging. I also went to a HIIT style of weight lifting called Hundreds. In hundreds You do 10 sets of 10 reps in quick succession with low weight (enough though that it is still a bit difficult to complete 100 reps) then you follow up with like 3 sets of 5 with a heavier weight.

With these combined efforts of low carb and HIIT workouts I felt that this was a good combination for me in being successful at burning fat. I lost quite a bit of additional fat and lowered my weight even more. With this combination of diet and exercise I got down to as low as 191 lbs. Just remember though if you want to plan out a  similar diet and exercise regiment make sure it will be something that is designed for you. You will want to make sure that it will be something catered to your nutritional needs and that the exercise routine will be something your current level of fitness can handle.

Dreams Don't Expire

This PotM (picture of the month) is all about being determined in achieving our dreams. I decided on this picture because I felt it was a good testament to how I feel sometimes. In my particular case I've been working on losing weight, and improving my strength and health over the past 3 years(since I started in 2011). Occasionally I feel like I'm not making progress but then I remember how far I've come and how much I've improved in my strength and health.  I have to take a step back and remember how I am still continuing to make progress (as slow as it may seem at times) and am well on my way towards accomplishing my dreams and if I continue on they will become reality.

I know a lot of people suffer from this dilemma other than myself. It can be numerous factors that cause us to have doubts of being able to reach our dreams and goals. For some people thinking about the sheer time it might take to get to where you want is overwhelming. This can be daunting and make you want to give up because it seems so far away. It is important to have your end goal but if it is something that will take a long time to accomplish remember to set small attainable goals along the way that will help to keep you motivated in continuing towards your dreams and goals. The time it takes to get toward your goal can definitely be daunting at times. If you really sit down and think about it though, whether or not you are struggling towards making your dreams a reality the time will pass by anyway. What better way is there to spend that time than working on accomplishing your dreams or you could let that time pass by anyway fretting about how much time it will take. This was best stated in one of my favorite inspirational quotes, "Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take. Time will pass anyway." by Earl Nightingale.

 Another thing that can be a big deterrent for people is if they run into road blocks or failures. Sometimes these setbacks can be a huge hurdle to get over, but more than likely we will run into them somewhere in life whether it's our goals / dreams in being fit and healthy or our success in relationships or success in our careers or any aspect of life where we set goals for ourselves. What matters when we run into these roadblocks is that we pick ourselves back up and shake it off and learn from our mistakes. If we learn from our mistakes we can then also realize that it isn't the end, that we are still alive and there is still time to work towards our dreams. Just because there was a bump in the road doesn't mean our dream has to end.

Hopefully this PotM will provide some motivation if you are having doubts about how long it will take or you are encountering setbacks in your path to your dreams. Just as this picture says there is no expiration on your dreams, as long as you have the will to keep on pressing towards it you can and will accomplish it.

Plateau 3 and Changing to Diet v4.0

In October 2012 I had another run in with a plateau which was my third encounter with this hindrance. At this point in time I was now down to about 215 lbs from my original starting point of 270 lbs. I had been making excellent progress but yet again ran into an all too familiar roadblock. This particular plateau was my longest to date and was mostly due to my own fault. Since I had been making such good progress I got very lax with my diet and was cheating quite frequently. It all started with a trip to Las Vegas in October and continued on through the holidays into the new year. Granted this is a hard time of the year for anyone to stay true to their diet but I was most definitely not making my best effort. Even after the new year I had let my cheating continue on for quite some time afterward. I also slightly tried to justify my cheating by thinking that it was ok since I had gained some muscle and would burn more calories naturally, which is true but the excess I was eating was far too much for a successful diet. I really wasn't making any headway on my weight loss and had even gained a few pounds.

Another reason my cheating was in excess and that I wasn't keeping very good track of my diet was because at my job, during this time, I was provided a free lunch. I would usually try to mentally keep track of what I was eating but more often than not I'm positive that these meals only added to the excess in my diet since I wasn't 100% sure of the total calories I was consuming. At this point I had realized I needed to stop being lazy and get back to a regimented way of eating that would be easy for me to follow and keep track of my caloric intake. I had to remember that cheating happens (sometimes more frequently than we would like) and even if it does it doesn't mean that my success had ended I merely needed to buckle down and get back on track and my good progress would return.

At this point in time I had been looking into intermittent fasting as an option to help me better organize my eating habits and eating schedule at the time. Intermittent Fasting (IF for short) isn't a diet so much as a way of rescheduling your eating habits. While doing intermittent fasting it is still necessary to count calories and make sure you are getting appropriate amounts of protein, carbs, and fat for your nutritional goals in your particular diet. The basic idea behind IF is that you consolidate your eating to a certain window of time so that you put yourself into a "fasted" state for 16-20 hours per day. Being in a fasted state longer than 8 hours has many benefits such as lowering insulin levels, and increasing leptin and glucagon which all aids in fat burning as well as increases in natural growth hormone and testosterone (in men only) which helps build muscle. IF however isn't a miracle method to lose weight and build muscle but it will aid in weight loss and muscle gain with proper nutrition and exercise. The other benefit to IF is that it can give you more flexibility with your eating schedule and more time to do things other than cook or prepare food 3 or more times a day.  There are three methods to go about IF the first is a 16 hour fast with an eight hour eating window. This is probably the most popular method that people use because with the 8 hour eating window you can have two meals that are slightly larger than if you were eating 3 meals a day (still within your caloric limit though). The second is a 20 hour fast with a 4 hour eating window where you have 1 large meal with a few small snacks during your 4 hour window to meat your caloric goal.  The last method of IF is where you eat normally 3 meals a day and 1 or 2 days a week (max) you do a full 24 hour fast. So if you had dinner at 7pm on Thursday you wouldn't eat until 7pm Friday.

The method of  IF I chose to do is the 20-4 split. This provided me with lots of extra time not having to make breakfast and lunch, and since I was skipping my lunch at work I could more carefully monitor my nutrition at home where I was making everything. The other benefit for me in going to this method/schedule of eating is I like to eat a bunch of food and this provides me the ability to eat one big meal that leaves me feeling full. Eating three small meals a day was very difficult for me because it always felt like they would never fill me up and I would wind up snacking on things sometimes because I didn't feel full. It took me a little while to get used to the new schedule of eating once a day. After about a week I became accustomed to the new schedule, but that first week was a little bit hard when I still got my normal hunger cravings at the times when I used to eat. To get through the first week I made sure to drink lots of water to help keep my stomach full during the day. With this new schedule of eating I was able to get my food intake more under my control and it was a big help in getting back on track to weight loss. If these benefits look like they would help with your particular schedule or eating habits I would recommend looking into IF to see if it would be a good fit for you.

Hearthstone - New Blizzard Game

Hearthstone is the one of the newest games being developed by Blizzard. Currently it is still in beta testing, so if you want to play it you need to have a battle.net account and apply to be accepted to the beta test. It seems like it is fairly easy to get into the beta if you are interested. When I applied for beta access to Hearthstone it only took about 2 weeks for me to receive a reply that I was accepted. Hearthstone is a fairly easy game to setup and install since you just download the game right off the battle.net site. It is a small game in size at just under 2gb, but large in gameplay.

Hearthstone is a game based off of their TCG (trading card game) that is set in the universe of their very popular World of Warcraft. The premise is very simple with two people (or 1 person against a computer opponent) that face off against each other with two decks to deal damage to the opponent and reduce their health to 0. Each player selects the type of deck they play based upon 1 of  9 different hero classes. The 9 different classes are druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, and warrior. Each hero has a different set of abilities and spells that are available for use in their decks as well as a unique ability that each hero can use at any time. Each player starts with 30 health,1 mana, and 30 cards in their deck.

On the first turn depending on whether you go first or second you draw 3 or 4 cards (second turn gets 4) and draw one additional card each turn until the end of the game. You also start off with 1 mana and earn 1 additional mana each subsequent turn up to a maximum of 10. Your mana is used to "pay" the cost of the cards in your hand so that they can be put in play, the more powerful the card the more mana it will cost. As an example say on turn 5 (you will have 5 mana) you could play 1 card with a cost of 5 mana or 2 cards one 2 mana and one 3 mana. Spending your mana like this will deplete your mana to 0 till the end of the turn. At the beginning of turn 6 you will gain 1 additional total mana and it will refill. There are two basic types of cards that use up your mana, minions and spells. Minions come into play and remain in play until the end of the game or they are killed. Minions have a printed value of attack and life and typically can attack once per turn. Minions are good to have because they can attack the enemy hero multiple times as long as they are alive or they can also become the first line of defense to stop incoming physical damage to your hero. Spells can do a large variety of thing such as buff heroes and minions, debuff heroes and minons, deal damage or heal heroes and minions. Damage dealing spells are useful because they can bypass minions that protect your hero and attack them directly.

Depending on what you want to do with your deck and what hero you play you can build decks in numerous ways. There are hundreds of cards to choose from (you don't start off with this many but will accrue more as you play) which make the number of combinations almost endless for deck construction. Just as a few examples you can make decks focused on buffing minions, offensive spells, healing decks, minion swarming, aggro decks (defensive), or control decks (debuffs and counters) and many more. You start off with 9 preset decks for each hero type and as you play and level up the different heroes you get 20 bonus starting cards for each class. After you collect enough cards you can go into your card collection and build your own custom decks for each class. As you play against other people and gain more levels and experience you will occasionally be rewarded with coins that you can use to purchase "packs" of 5 cards to further expand your collection. Along with leveling up you will get quests to accomplish and each quest you complete will reward you with more coins that you can also use to purchase additional packs of cards. If you are impatient you always have the option to spend real money to get packs of cards faster. There is also a disenchanting system to turn extra cards that you don't use into arcane dust. This arcane dust can then be saved up and used to craft specific cards to help progress your growing card collection.

This game to me was a very easy game to pick up and learn. I also liked it because there are so many variations of decks you can construct and that you could encounter playing other people. It can suck you in for hours or you can hop on and and play one game in 15 minutes for a quick bit of casual entertainment. And even though this game is a very quick to pick up the learning curve is almost infinite with how many hundreds of cards there are and the endless possibilities of constructing decks. Even after very many games you can run into someone with a deck style you have never seen before and learn something new. Having this much of a learning curve really helps with keeping the game interesting even well into the "end game". For additional detailed information about Hearthstone please check out this page  http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/9882328198.

Overall I found the game to be great fun and think it will have a bright future once it is released. I am not 100% sure but I do believe once it is released it will be free to play. I think that Blizzard will be looking to make money off of the micro transactions from the purchases of additional card packs in game. I also think that Hearthstone would be an excellent candidate for a smartphone or tablet port on the Google Play or iTunes market places. With the ease of use and the mouse only nature of the game play, which will be very easy to use on a touch screen, I think they are setting it up to be an easy crossover into the mobile gaming market.

As a side note to Hearthstone it seems that Blizzard is going to a battle.net launcher system. If you have played any of the newer games from blizzard like Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, or WoW you will be familiar with how each of them has it's own laucher that takes care of making sure the game is up to date and launching the game. The new battle.net laucher is an all in one laucher that takes care of all the games that blizzard produces in one consolidated program. If you are familiar with how Steam works it is very similar with the exception that battle.net will only support Blizzard games. Who knows though maybe in the future Blizzard will expand to offer games from 3rd parties as well through their battle.net system to become more like Steam as an online distributor of games.