Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

I’ve decided to post every month how things are going. See my previous posts on Fat Loss Calculations:

Initial Fat Loss Calculation post – Update Post – The I got it wrong post.

The short version is that in January I weighed 206 pounds (14 stone 10) and had a belly (not waist) of 43″ at the belly button, giving a body fat calculation of 30%. In Febuary I started Crossfit, and in March I started on the Zone Diet.

Now 3 months later (1st May) my weight is 200 pounds (14 stone 4) and my belly has shrunk 3 inches to 40″ exactly. This gives me a body fat calculation of 25% percent. Bare in mind, I’m not in this to lose weight, but to change shape and get fit. So I’m more interested in fat loss than weight loss.

A little maths then: a 5% reduction in body fat, at 5% of 200 pounds, make 10 pounds. But I’ve only lost 6 pounds, meaning I’ve put on 4 pounds of muscle too. 😀 When I first looked at this, a thought occurred: “5% reduction in body fat” doesn’t sound like much does it?? However, look at it another way: 5 out of 30 is a sixth, or 17%. So it’s more accurate to say I’ve lost 5% of my weight in fat, or 17% of my body fat. That sounds much better. 😉

I’ve already gone down a jeans size and a notch on my belt, but this weekend I had to go down a second notch on my belt (to a notch not used in 10 years!) in order to stop my trousers falling down!

I don’t think this is bad for 3 months effort. Actually, it’s not been a lot of effort really (well the Zone Diet isn’t, Crossfit certainly is!), I still drink too much wine, and still eat chocolate and ice cream. In fact, I’ve discovered that a Finger of Fudge is just 2 blocks of Carbs, which makes an excellent desert. 😀

Here’s to another 3 months, and losing another 5% of my body weight in fat.

Hmmm 2 chocky bars and a bottle of wine last night.  Not exactly Zone friendly, but nice for a treat all the same.

Here’s a question then: when over eating on carbs, what’s the best approach from a Zone perspective?  Is it to just ignore it and get back on the zone diet at your next meal?  Or is it advisable to actually eay more, specifically protein to balance the carbs?  Is it ok for example to have a bar of chocolate, if you also have 2 blocks of cheese, say?  Or is it ok to have a bottle of wine, if you also have 6 blocks of fish?

It’s an odd concept, that eating more could be healthier for you, and to be honest I’m not sure of the answer…..

In other news, had a rest day at Crossfit yesterday, shoulders are feeling it these last 2 weeks.  Tuesday was 5 lots of 5 reps of Thrusters for max weight.  Thrusters are when you put a weighted olympic bar on the front of your shoulders, do a squat, only you stand up as fast as you can, driving the bar off your shoulders and you then push the bar over head till your arms lock, then return it to the front of your shoulders.  Thrusters are a particularly hard thing to do technically as it requires changing grip whilst the bar is in mid flight, and I find that my limiting factor is the grip and my wrists.  Anyway, I managed to get up to 55kg for 5 reps, which I was quite pleased about.

Also, I’ve turned the Notify plug-in back on (see all the funny icons below), the idea is that if you like this post, and you subscribe to one of the social bookmarking sites they relate to, you can simply click there and it will make your life easier.  Enjoy!

Friday April 20th

5 rounds of:
5 Shoulder Presses
10 Push Presses
15 Split Jerks

Using a 35kg bar, this was a tough one. I think by the 4th round it took me 5 mins to do just the 5 shoulder presses! I managed it, but in a very slow 32:31 (when compared to everyone else, many on lower weights). Chatting with the coach afterwards, he explained that compared to my squats and stuff, I’m weak on the shoulder exercises, so this was made deliberately heavy to help increase my strength. I guess I can live with that.

Saturday April 21st

Deadlifts: 3 reps – 3 reps – 3 reps – 3 reps – 3 reps – all for max lift.
Front Squats: similarly 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 for max.
Note each set of 3 has to be done consecutively, with only a moments rest.

Now we’re talking! This is the sort of workout I love, for some reason I appear to be relatively strong with heavy leg exercises (I assume from spending my teenage years as a sprinter and jumper at school), so these routines allow me to do well and make me feel I’m not always back of the class. I guess we’re all vain in our own little ways. My weights:

Deadlift: 100 – 130 – 140PB – 130 – 110

3 x 140kg Deadlifts is a beast, I was happy with this though, my 1 rep max is 150kg.

Front Squat: 70 – 80 – 90PB – 100PB – 80

Previous PB was 80 for 3 reps, so I was very pleased with a 20kg increase. I now have bruises on my shoulders though. 100kg is a lot of metal to have resting on your shoulders for a minute or so!

Sunday April 22nd – A much need rest day. Crossfit calls for a rest every 3 days so your muscles can recover, and boy do you need it!

Monday April 23rd

Tabata Kettle Bell Swings – 16kg for me – double handed swing from between your legs to over your head.
5 min rest
Tabata Ball Slams – You life a basket ball full of sand right above your head, throw it on the ground and drop into the squat to catch it on the bounce. As it’s full of sand they only bounce once, and only about 3 inches off the ground. If you don’t catch it on the bounce, it doesn’t count.
5 min rest
Tabata Row – row and count the calories burned in each 20 sec period.
5 min rest
Tabata dumb bell snatch alternating arms each round (15kg) – Basically the dumb bell hangs between your legs, and you have to get it above your head (arm straight) in one go.

Tabata-tastic! A “Tabata” exercise works like this: you do work for 20 secs and count your reps, then you rest for 10 secs. That’s 1 round. Your “score” is your worst round. No point doing 15 on your first round if you can’t keep that pace. Today we were doing 10 round Tabata exercises, so they take just 4 mins 50 secs to complete, but believe me, it feels a whole lot more. So the above was less than 20 mins of exercise with 15 mins of break in total, and I can tell you everyone was completely exhausted, no one spoke for several minutes afterwards.

My worst rounds for each exercise were: 8 – 8 – 7 – 5, giving a total of 28. Not bad, not great, but a lot of fun. 🙂

Brad Fallon is a serial entrepreneur who is launching a new site call FreeIQ. The basic premise is that you can uploaded informational videos, eBooks, audio etc of how to do stuff. Other users will rate the videos so you will get peer reviewed content, sorted by category.

Of course being Brad, there’s going to be a money option here too, so there will be premium content that you can buy, but this too will be peer reviewed. In fact, the review system is called “ReviewRank”, hmmm I wonder where that idea came from? Probably the same place the starting page layout design did too. 😉 Still, if you want to be successful in life, emulating one of the worlds most successful company’s doesn’t seem like a bad approach to take does it.

I’ll be watching FreeIQ to see if it gains the critical mass it will need for success.

I watched a shocking bit of TV the other day, about Manuel Uribe, who is (or was) officially the fattest man on the planet, weighing in at about 1/2 a ton, or more specifically: 1,200 lbs, 87 stone or 550kg! Not surprisingly, he hadn’t left his bed for 5 years! This is he:

Faced with certain death, a local news crew advertised his plight and put out an appeal for help. Surgeons from all over the world offered him free surgery for this, that and the other (Gastric surgery and all that). All highly risky (given his size) with a significant chance of death on the table. However, he was also visited by dieticians from around the world, including representatives of the Zone Diet in Mexico.

Amazingly, Manuel Uribe decided to forgo the offers of surgery, and opt for the Zone diet. Out were his Tacos and Pizza, and in was adequate protein, low glycemic index carbs, with a dash of fat. E.g. sliced meat, or omelettes with a load of veg, a staple of the Zone diet. Now that he’s not getting fatter on excessive carbs and fat, and for the first time getting enough protein, guess what? Manuel Uribe has lost 400 lbs (180kg / 26 stone) in 12 months! That’s a third of his body weight, just through eating!

If ever there was a test case giving proof that the zone diet works, then surely the fattest man on the planet losing 1/3 of his body weight in 1 year has to be it. But strangely, I bet he doesn’t win Weight Watcher of the month. No no no, that would be the wrong message to give out: “eating less carbs”, surely not! We can’t have radical unscientifically proven fad diets like that going about. What do you mean it’s a balanced diet that works in harmony with the bodies hormones and reverses the high sugar = obesity, heart disease, diabetes and premature death diet of the 20th century?!?

The sad reality is that most people are blinded by the official party line that fat is bad and carbs are good. If that’s the case then why is obesity and all it’s related ills now at epidemic proportions? A recent study in America stated that of kids born in 2006, at current rates, 1 in 3 would be a diabetic in their life time. ONE IN THREE!!!!!! I was shocked by that.

There is a simple truth, that you need to take away from this post if you are at all concerned about your weight or health: “Fat doesn’t kill people, carbs do.” The Zone diet will change your life, it could even save it.

This last weeks workout highlights:

Mon 16th April

Gah, this was a disaster for me:

Run 430m, then 10 rounds of:
5 Pull Ups
10 Press Ups
15 Squats
then another Run of 430m

I appear to have dinged my shoulder from Saturdays heavy dumb bell work, and had to bail on the pull ups after the 7th round. This workout looks well easy, but 20 mins continuous work is not what I’m best at. You’d think how hard could it be to do 10 press ups right? Well after the first 60 or so, it gets damn hard! My time for this was a poor 23 mins exactly.

Tues 17th April

Back Squat, reps of 5 – 5 – 5 – 5 – 5

Ah, this is more like it. Right up my street. I haven’t done a 5 rep set before with Backsquats, so these are all PB’s really:

80 – 90 – 100 – 110 – 120

The 120kg was very hard, and I almost went for 115kg instead, glad I did though.

Thurs 19th April

21 Hang Squat Snatch
21 Knees to Elbows
Run 430m
15 Hang Squat Snatch
15 Knees to Elbows
Run 430m
9 Hang Squat Snatch
9 Knees to Elbows
Run 430m

I subbed the running for rows, and the knees to elbows (whilst hanging from a pullup bar) were really knee raises. Still, I enjoyed the hang squat snatches, I don’t think I’ve done them before.

I managed a very respectable 14:09 with a 20kg bar for the snatches.

Earlier I popped back to the main Crossfit website, to post an update on my intro post some 6 months ago.

I noticed whilst I was there that back in Sept 2006 I said I was 43 inches round the fattest part of my waist (and was wearing 38″ trousers for it). In other words, my earlier post when I said I used to be 42.5 inches was wrong, and my starting body fat calculation should have said I was 30%, not 29%.

This all means that doing Crossfit and going on the The Zone Diet, I’ve actually lost 2 inches and 4% body fat, not the 1.5″ and 3% I thought. Woot!

Thursday:

Row 500m
50 Box Jump
50 Press Ups
20 DB Snatch (Each arm)
50 Sit Ups
50 Wall Ball
50 Lunge Walk
20 Turkish Get Up
50 DB Swing
50 Double Under

Turkish get ups are funny. Lie on your back facing the sky, pick up 1 dumb bell (I was using 12kg for all dumb bell (DB) exercises above) and hold it out, straight up like a mast, pointing at the sky. Then you have to stand up, all the time holding the dumb bell pointing straight up, without bending the the arm that’s holding it. Then you have to lie back down, again withouth bending your dumb bell arm and keeping it pointing straight up. Only Crossfit could come up with an exercise like this: simple in its design… a painful beast in its execution! Crossfit, oh how we love your like quirks.

Double unders are skipping so that the rope goes round twice before you land, another simple yet tricky and painful Crossfit exercise.

The point behind these exercises though is that they not only build strength and fitness, but also balance and agility. What’s the point of being able to lift a heavy weight say, if you can only do it when it’s connected to a gym exercise machine which is balancing and supporting it for you? Crossfit believes in funcitonal ability, and for that you require poise and balance too.

Friday:
Deadlift: reps of 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1

Shoulder Press: reps of: 3 – 3 – 3 – 3 – 3

Excellent! I’ve been looking forward to Crossfit Deadlifts again for a while, as I was sure I could beat my last Personal Best of 130kg. Here’s what I did:

Warmed up at 5 reps of 80kg and 3 reps of 100kg. Then my lifts were: 110kg – 130 – 140(PB) – 150(PB) – 155(Fail)

150kg (which is 23.5 stone!) saw me staggering around like a fool, trying to hold my balance, which is not really to be advised when you’re carrying that kind of weight. I never dreamed I’d be picking up this kind of weight before starting Crossfit.

I got to a PB of 3 x 45kg on the Shoulder Press, which is a little disappointing, as I’m relatively much better it seems with leg exercises than pure shoulder strength. Need to work on this.

Saturday

This is not for time, 5 rounds (unbroken, i.e. you’re not allowed to put down the weights between exercises) of
5 Dumb Bell Deadlifts
5 Dumb Bell Cleans
5 Dumb Bell Push Presses
5 Dumb Bell Front Squats

After each round, you take a nice breather and then increase the weight. I managed to go through (this is each of 2 dumb bells, so double for total weight): 15kg / 17.5 / 20 / 22.5 / 25, Though the last round was not unbroken. I dropped them a couple of times as they came crashing down from the Push Presses. It’s interesting that doing this with Dumb bells is hard than a weight lifters bar (typical Crossfit that!) which again is to help with independent balance, as the weights wobble around all over the place. I.e. more drunken staggering about, trying to hold them up!

Still, that’s the fun of Crossfit.

I predict this is going to revolutionise Google advertising. Basically Google are jumping on the PayPal bandwagon and offering their own payment processing scheme. All well and good you may think, but the key here is that they are integrating it with Google AdWords (the adverts you see down the right hand side when searching Google).

Instead of seeing a normal ad with a link to a website, you’ll see this grovey logo:

Which should improve click though rates and conversion rates, simply by leveraging the Google brand with your adds. Keep your eye out, you’ll start seeing ads like this for sure.