Health Nut

I remember a time when I would go to my local health food store to pick up my protein powder, and I would think "These people are crazy, how can they buy into all this crap?". While I admit, there is a ton of crap in the health world, I am sold on eating pro-organic, and lots of healthy fruits and vegetables.

Good story, huh? Well I just thought I'd give you an update on my healthstyle progress.

I'm still sticking to my regimen of bench press/deadlift/pull-ups. I do two sets of five reps per each exercise, and I wait 1 song in between sets (lol, its easier than looking at the clock) My routine is mainly influenced by Pavel's book "power to the people", its a good book, read it. Anyways, I have a 10 day workout schedule (I work out 5 days a week so it takes 2 weeks to get through a cycle) where I start my first day 45 lbs lighter than my current 5 rep max, and work myself up in weight in increments of five lbs per day. At the end of a cycle I take 3 days of relaxation (no matter what day of the week it is) before starting my next cycle. The next cycle I simply add ten lbs to my first day and offset the weight from there. I'm on my fourth cycle and I've seen my 5 rep max for bench press go from 160 to 165 (i know, I'm a lightweight :D) and my dead lift hasn't really topped out yet, I'm taking it pretty slow, my last cycle ended with 5x245. As far as pull-ups go I started out barely being able to do one body weight pull up (correctly anyways, not talking about chin-stretching pull-ups here) Now I can do a full set of 5 body-weight pull-ups and a second set of 3 or 4. I'm getting closer, once I can do two sets I'll start adding weight to a belt.

On the diet front nothing has really changed either. I am still following the warrior diet principle, only slightly modified. Instead of fasting through the day (which is good for detox) I start my morning with a bowl of oatmeal that has cinnamon/2Tbs flax meal/stevia mixed in. That usually holds me over until lunchtime, unless I worked out in the morning, then I get more hungry earlier. Anyways, once I get hungry I eat fruit, lots of fruit. Not at one time, but through-out the day. Some days I'll eat 6 or 7 bananas, or a bunch of whatever fruit I'm eating that day. If I'm eating bananas I'll eat them two at a time, so as not to overload my stomach, but it only takes about a half an hour for fruit to go through your stomach (that's what they say anyways) so I can eat pretty frequently. I have found that my energy levels are not dramatically affected by what kind or how much of fruit I eat, which makes sense, because fructose (sugar naturally found in fruit) has so low of a glycemic value (on a side note, I have experimented with fruit juices, even though they are 100% juice, they still make me drowsy, I think something changes in the sugar, I'm not sure, but that's my best guess) I'm still working on my evening meals, some days I eat according to the principles of food combining, and some days I just don't care (pizza days ^_^) I usually splurge on friday night, eating whatever I have been craving (like a red bull and a candy bar :D) but the rest of the time I'm pretty good about my portion sizes and not eating dessert.

My weight is hovering right around 162 lbs, which is right where I want it. I started out at one eighty something, thats about a 20 lb difference, not bad for someone who didn't really need to loose weight.

*Edit*

One time I bought five lbs of grapes, and I pretty much ate them in two days. Those days when I was working out (after work) I was not as strong, or energetic as normal. I know this contradicts my previous statement about fruit being equal, but I think the higher glycemic fruits are not fit to be a single source of nutrients, maybe as a snack, but not the only thing eaten through the day. Just yesterday I had a thing of blueberries, two bananas, and two things of raspberries. I haven't felt that hypoglycemic in a long time. I've had pretty good luck with bananas, apples, oranges, mango's, and watermelon. Berries are really good too, I just make sure I eat plenty of fruits along with them.