Here are some week 1 stats and pics after 5 days back on SGX.

I started out the week at 137.8 lbs and 19.4% following a so-so weekend with two cheat meals, and today I am 133.8 lbs and 18.7% bf, LOL. I can tell from my pics that I’ve put on some extra fat in the hip and thigh area over the past two months as work got crazy, and now it’s time to take care of personal business again. I didn’t take day 0 measurements, unfortunately, but I can tell you where most of the weight came from–my abdomen. SGX’s diet combined with my dairy boycott this week have miraculously shrunk my gut to normal proportions. Pity none of it came off my backside, hah!

Week 1 Stats:

Weight: 133.8 lbs
BF% (using Omron an athlete mode): 18.7%
Shoulders: 41.5″
Chest: 34″
Waist: 25.5″
Abdomen: 26.75″
Hip: 37.25″
Thigh: 22.5″
Calf: 14.5″
Arm: 11.5″
Forearm: 9.25″

Skinfolds-
Tricep: 10 mm
Suprailiac: 11 mm
Thigh: 14 mm

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Nutrition: SGX Non-Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

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Workout:
10:00 AM HIIT cardio run (4.5-7.2 mph / 0% incline / 15 min)
10:15 AM LISS cardio walk (3.5-4.0 mph / 10-15% incline / 30 min)

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The Awful Truth:
1. Got to bed late again. Will try to correct this tonight.

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Brownie Points:
1. Finished cooking rest of chicken.
2. Made more Orange protein cookies.
3. Dropped off rent check.
4. Hung dark laundry load.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Print out map to CPR certification class for Sunday.
2. Get to sleep before 1 am.

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It is a truth universally–and somewhat abashedly–acknowledged that the common chicken–not fancy supplements, trainers, diet fads or equipment–is what makes the fitness world go round.

Where would we all be without the tons of chicken breasts and egg whites that those humble little cluckers provide to us? Sure, we could eat a lot of fish instead, but that would quickly add up to some major money, and besides, do you have any idea how many little fish eggs it would take to make just one veggie omelette?

There’s always lean beef, you say. Sure there is. And when I have enough money to blow on lean beef that generally runs over $4 a pound, I will start using more of it in my weekly diet.

For now, I am sticking with the chicken.

I spent several hours last night elbow deep in chicken. A few weeks ago Albertson’s ran a special on 10 lb family size bags of chicken leg quarters for the utterly irresistible price of $5. Yeah. It isn’t chicken breast, but um…$0.50 a pound! Who gives a $#*#!!! Besides, I knew I was going back on SGX, and the stats on skinless dark meat chicken work just fine for Swolegenix if not for Body for Life.

My only mistake was tossing the entire bag in the freezer without separating the pieces into more manageable portions. When I pulled the bag out this week to grab one or two quarters for cooking, I discovered that I had a single 10 pound chickensicle in my freezer. ARGH!

So I took the bag out and put it in the fridge to defrost. Day 1 passed. Still frozen. Day 2. Ditto. Day 3. Some loosening of the chicken bricks on the edges. Day 4. Finally! Enough thawing had occurred to permit separation!

I promptly sliced open the bag and kick started Maggie’s Chicken Entree Production Line by seasoning two skinless sections with salt, pepper, and rosemary and nuking them on 70% for 15 minutes for use in chicken salads. Another 1.5 pounds was skinned, removed from the bone, and transformed into some Moo Goo Gai Pan (minus the Moo Goo or mushrooms) following a recipe from the Weight Watchers Take-Out Tonight cookbook. The next half pound got marinated in pepper, salt, egg white, and cornstarch and was tossed into the fridge for eventual conversion into Kung Pao Chicken with Broccoli from the WW Stir Fry to Szechuan cookbook. Two more pounds got scored with the skin still on and marinated with just pepper, salt, and basil for some lovely baked chicken legs with black bean sauce from the Wei-Chuan One Dish Meals cookbook. (Side note–if you love Chinese food and easy preparation, try to snag a copy of this out of print cookbook. It is the BEST Chinese cookbook ever, and if you simply substitute cooking spray for oil and Splenda for sugar, almost every recipe can work for Body For Life or similar bodybuilding-based programs. Amazon has a few third-party resellers who carry it for under $4. I could literally live out the rest of my life with just this one cookbook for Chinese dishes.) The remaining chicken was encrusted with salt, pepper, soy sauce, parsley, and garlic for the Thai Street Vendor’s Chicken recipe from a cookbook I have owned for a while but haven’t used–Serve It Forth edited by fantasy author Anne Mcaffrey. The entire book contains recipes submitted by sci-fi and fantasy authors, and this particular recipe stood out partly because the author has the same first and last names as my boyfriend Chris. LOL. I plan to toss the last two batches of chicken in the oven at the same time tonight while I do my upper body workout in the living room, and quickly stir fry the Kung Pao chicken for dinner tomorrow.

So let’s do some math. 10 lbs of chicken = 160 oz = 4 oz x 40 servings ===> Now take that $5.00 I spent on the bag and divide by 40, and you get $0.125 per serving of protein.

:claplow:

Gawd, I love getting a deal on chicken. It makes my splurge on $2.99/lb tilapia seem more forgivable.

And cooking has got to be the most useful but underrated life skill ever. My monthly budget for dining out is only $25 (and often doesn’t get fully used) because nothing turns me off from a $10+ restaurant meal more than knowing I can make something even better at home for under $0.75 a serving.

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Nutrition: SGX Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

===========
Workout:
12:00 PM LISS cardio - Treadmill walk (3.5 mph / 10% incline / 40 minutes)
7:00 PM SGX Upper body/Back

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The Awful Truth:
1. Went to bed at 2 am. Sigh.

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Brownie Points:
1. Made some fresh Thai peanut butter salad dressing.
2. Bulk marinated 6 lbs of chicken and cooked 4 lbs.
3. Made non-dairy, high fiber protein bars with new ATW protein powder, PB, and Fiber One.
4. Put extra boxes into storage closet outside.
5. Tidied up balcony garden stuff and transplant Tumbling Tom cherry tomato seedlings to hanging basket

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Short-term Goals:
1. Finish cooking rest of chicken.
2. Make more Orange protein cookies.
3. Drop off rent check.
4. Hang dark laundry load.
5. Print out map to CPR certification class for Sunday.

SGX is chugging along smoothly on this fourth day. I’m taking some hits on my energy level when it comes to high intensity cardio, but lifting and LISS cardio are fine. I’ve decided to do 20 minutes of HIIT cardio as part of my T/Th/Sa cardio sessions along with 25 minutes of LISS to fill in the time gap, but Tuesday’s experience during the HIIT run portion of my workout drove home the need to cut back my interval speeds a bit while I’m on this program. I have a lot less glycogen to work with on non-training days on SGX than I do when I’m eating BFL (40/40/20) or BFFM (50/30/20) style, so I have to parcel out my resources more carefully.

The at home leg workout yesterday was pretty good. My grip still isn’t keeping up with my leg strength, however, so I had to do my dbell squats with some relatively light 40 lb dumbbells vs. the 135 lb Olympic bar I use at the gym. However, the dumbbells let me drop lower than the barbell normally does, so I got some good muscle activation in my glutes and hams out of it. I also subbed lunges for the leg curls that were on the program. As I have not done any lunges in a while, I woke up this morning with a very sore bum indeed.

I went to the gym last night for cardio and found the place mobbed as usual by the after work/school crowd. Bleah. I wanted to get on one of the high incline trainers that go up to 30% incline, but all of them were in use. I settled for a regular treadmill and did a combination steady-state run at 0% incline and 6.5 mph and incline walk at 3.5 mph and 10% incline. For whatever reason, I was sweating like mad yesterday during cardio and looked like a total, dripping mess by the time I hopped off the machine. Most of the people there didn’t even look like they were working up any kind of sweat at all on the treadmills. Did they think they were getting anything out of their human hamster time when they weren’t even out of breath?

As planned, I stopped by the front desk on the way out and asked to cancel my membership. It turns out that Gold’s has a 30 day notice policy, so I will still have to pay for another month of membership, and I won’t have to turn in my keycard until September 15. Oh well….I guess I’ll just make the most of my remaining Gold’s time. The Powerblocks will pay for themselves eventually, and now I have a portable set of weights I can take with me when I go hang out on the other side of town for the weekend.

I just discovered another negative to evening cardio aside from the utterly crushing sense of despair one feels when one realizes that one must perform 45 minutes of $#$!@# cardio after a long day at work instead of getting to go home and vegetate with one’s cats and a game of WoW–extended bouts of cardio keep me up for a few hours. I got home and literally couldn’t sleep until 2:45 am. I did the dishes, washed two loads of laundry, cleaned the tub, watered my plants, played with my cats, went grocery shopping, cooked a few meals, ate, reorganized my protein powder collection, sang some karaoke, did some pull-ups, read half a book, flipped through 5 different cookbooks for chicken thigh recipes, and tossed out some old el cheapo aluminum non-stick cookware from my Army days.

Yeah…evening cardio must be kept at a minimum from this day forth. I can’t be spazzing out like this every night. It makes it impossible to get up in the morning, and that just leads to more heinous evening cardio. :crazy:

On top of that, I woke up with completely crazy Anime Boy Hero hair this morning because I went to bed with my hair still damp from my shower. As if my crazy mop of half frizzy, half straight hair wasn’t nutty enough on its own…sigh. Evening cardio just blows in all ways.

:medusa:

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Nutrition: SGX Non-Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

===========
Workout:
7:15 PM LISS Cardio - Walk (3.5 mph / 10% incline / 45 minutes)
8:00 PM P90X Abs

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The Awful Truth:
1. Didn’t get to bed until 2:45 AM because I was still hyper from late evening cardio. :wig:

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Brownie Points:
1. Did cardio after work.
2. Cancelled gym membership (active until September 15, 2005)
3. Picked up more Essensia peanut butter (extra crunchy-yum!), turkey patties, tilapia filets, veggies, and ketchup on sale at Albertsons.
4. Cleaned the bathtub.
5. Did the dishes.
6. Did the laundry.
7. Transferred 5 flavors of protein powder to smaller containers (old cottage cheese and FF yogurt containers) and put the huge canisters into the kitchen cabinets to make my counter top look nicer.
8. Threw out a big pile of cardboard boxes.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Make some fresh salad dressing.
2. Bulk cook chicken.
3. Make non-dairy, high fiber protein bars with new ATW protein powder, PB, and Fiber One.
4. Put extra boxes into storage closet outside.
5. Tidy up balcony garden stuff and transplant Tumbling Tom cherry tomato seedlings to hanging basket.

The first time I did SGX, I started out pretty gung-ho, but was undone by an extended period of crunch hours at work and the disastrous introduction of catered buffet style dinners at the office every night. The dinners themselves weren’t bad, though loaded with salt, but the fact that really rich, tasty, FREE carrot cake was provided at least three times a week totally killed any hopes I had of actually losing scale weight while on the program. Candy, pasta, chocolate, cookies–no worries, no temptation. But carrot cake, well…I caved in more than I’d care to admit.

So there it is–the true secret to my upper body bulk in spring was mounds of catered carrot cake (and the FGX training program and PWO shakes and probably the LISS cardio vs. the BFL HIIT I was doing before.)

As I am happy with my current amount of muscle mass, I am going to keep my cheats down to one meal a week and keep all junk out of my apartment. For me, SGX’s emphasis on macronutrient combining and meal timing is rough enough that keeping certain foods around–even though they are on the authorized food list for BFL–would send me into a 10 pm carb raid if I knew I had Kashi Go Lean Crunch in the kitchen. :tongue:

So far things have been going well this week. My energy level is pretty good; I have yet to bonk out like I did the first time around in week 1 from the diet change, particularly on non-training days, and my brain seems to be functioning at normal capacity. As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve already dropped nearly 2 lbs of water weight bloat in just one day, and the removal of dairy from my diet has kept it from coming back. My arms feel harder with less excess flabbage in the tricep area, and my lower abs aren’t doing that annoying water retention pouf thing anymore. Reintroducing creatine in the form of the GNC Creastack creatine/l-glutamine stack doesn’t appear to be making me gain much water weight so far.

What I HAVE noticed is that I’m cold. The other people in my office are wearing pretty much the same thing I wear–snarky, humorous t-shirt with jeans–but they are perfection comfortable. I have to layer on a sweatshirt to keep from shivering, and my hands are still cold. While this could be partially due to the literal gallon of cold water I chug down before 7 pm, I’ve been drinking nearly that amount for months now and have only noticed the shivery jitters this week since I restarted SGX. It’s a bit disturbing to be truthful. I am taking two of the recommended supplements for the program at the moment, too, so those might play some part in the shivers.

Conversely, at night I am so warm that I have resorted to sleeping with just a sheet over me instead of my usual summerweight quilt. This is with the A/C dialed to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

The things I do in the name of fitness research!

I think I will actually do my cardio in the morning tomorrow as recommended (I’ve been doing it during lunch or in the evenings this week) and see if that keeps my body temperature higher during the work day. The extra warmth might be the spur I need to get my butt into bed at a reasonable hour every night and back out of it when my alarm goes off at 6:30 am.

I’m off to do my first SGX leg workout this cycle. Be back with a report on the sets and my first ATW chocolate mint PWO dextrose shake in a bit!

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Nutrition: SGX Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

===========
Workout:
12:00 PM SGX Leg workout
7:15 PM LISS Cardio - Walk (3.5 mph / 10% incline / 45 minutes)

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The Awful Truth:
1. Dug into some Fiber One after work, but kept the damage down to 1 cup, which is a whole lot of fiber (30 g), but not much in the way of absorbed carbs (20 g) or calories (128). God, I love that cereal.

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Brownie Points:
1. Suffered through cardio yesterday.
2. Didn’t spend any more money!

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Short-term Goals:
1. Make some fresh salad dressing.
2. Bulk cook chicken.
3. Make new shopping list for SGX menu.
4. Do the laundry.
5. Clean bathroom.
6. Make non-dairy, high fiber protein bars with new ATW protein powder, PB, and Fiber One.

I did something pretty bad this weekend.

No, no, it’s not about food.

It’s about money.

I’ve been coveting a set of Powerblock selectable weight dumbbells for a while, and while I was on the other side of town this weekend I took a little trip over to a fitness equipment store near the Oviedo Marketplace mall that carried said Powerblocks. I only meant to LOOK at the things and try them out, but, to make a long story short, the store owner offered me 10% off the $349 price tag and the next thing I knew I was loading up my car with a set of Powerblock Elite dumbbells.

Yes, it was something of an impulse buy.

Yes, I have a perfectly good gym membership.

Yes, I can get by without such posh dbells.

But no, I won’t take them back. They are my preciousssssssssssss.

While taking up less than one cubic foot of storage space, I now have the equivalent of 16 pairs of dumbbells (2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 17.5, 20, 25, 27.5, 30, 35, 37.5, 40, 45, 47.5, 50 lbs). Between my new Powerblocks, a stability ball, the mini cycle, and the cardio, cable, and lever machines in the fitness room at my apartment complex, I can do just about any exercise that doesn’t require a barbell, so I am going to drop my Gold’s Membership for about 10 months (which should pay for the Powerblocks) and just workout at home with a combination of free weights and the P90X program. I’m planning a move to my own condo or house at the end of December anyhow, so I’d most likely have to find a new gym at that point anyway. I figure that I can take advantage of the free fitness room through December, and then go on a full cycle of P90X at the beginning of January (or–gasp!–run OUTSIDE while it is still cool) to tide me over until I decide if another gym membership is needed at the end of March, when the New Year’s crowds have thinned.

I’ll be kind of sad to give up the atmosphere of the gym, but being budget-conscious comes first. I’ve only been using the gym for their free weight selection; I never take any of the classes as I am Ms. Anti-Social Fitness Bitch when working out. If I need motivation, I’ll just head to a mall, beach, or I-Drive and take a look at what average Americans are becoming, and contrast that with the photos in my latest issue of Oxygen.

In regards to SGX–I will take starting pictures and measurements tomorrow morning so I’ll have a baseline for comparison in 4 weeks. I’m also testing out my custom Handbase workout module that lets me track BFL, P90X, and SGX workouts and cardio all in one program. So far, so good. I’m using the default interface, which is somewhat spartan, but perhaps I’ll create some data entry forms that will make things easier as I go along. Gotta do something between lifting sets, right?

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Nutrition: SGX Non-Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

===========
Workout:
12:00 PM HIIT Cardio - Run (20 minutes)
12:20 PM LISS Cardio - Walk (3.5 mph / 10% incline / 20 minutes)

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The Awful Truth:
1. Had some Kashi Go Lean cereal for meal 6 instead of planned meal. Calories remained on target.

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Brownie Points:
1. Dropped from 137.2 to 135.4 lbs since yesterday despite going back on creatine and munching cereal at 10 pm. Ah, the joys of SGX.
2. Not feeling too groggy yet from diet change.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Make some fresh salad dressing.
2. Bulk cook chicken.
3. Do the dishes.
4. Do the laundry.
5. Clean bathroom.
6. Make non-dairy, high fiber protein bars with new ATW protein powder, PB, and Fiber One.

Yeehaw! My latest All The Whey order has arrived, and I am so addicted to the orange whey blend flavor it isn’t even funny. This protein powder tastes like a liquid Orange Creamsicle with just plain cold water. Add a scoop of dextrose to it for a postworkout shake and it tastes even more supercalifragilisticixpialidocious.

Most of the time, artificial fruit flavors, especially citrus ones, give me migraines, but no such problems with ATW orange. I only bought a 2 lb canister this time around, but I can tell you now that I’ll be going whole hog for the 5 pounder when this one runs out.

The ATW chocolate mint is quite tasty as well, but it may be just a tad too minty for me straight with water. I will give it a go with some dextrose on Wednesday when I train again, perhaps with a teaspoon of baking cocoa tossed in to up the chocolate factor. I haven’t tried my vat of ATW vanilla yet, but my sister says it is not so bad when mixed with water and used as a sub for milk with Kashi Go Lean cereal, or, in my case, my new love, Fiber One.

For those of you who didn’t catch my post last week, I am embarking on another round of Swolegenix for the next four weeks. Since I agreed not to reveal the specifics of my custom diet plan when I bought my program from Chris Janusz, I won’t be posting my meals or macros again until I switch over to Leanness Lifestyle (aka BFL with tracking and extra cardio) in four weeks.

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Nutrition: SGX Training Day Menu
(Details omitted by request of trainer)

Daily Supplements: multivitamin with iron, calcium 500 + D, 1 T. flaxseed oil or natural peanut butter, 1 t. GNC Creastack
Water: 16 cups minimum

===========
Workout:
12:00 PM SGX Upper body/Chest workout
8:00 PM LISS cardio - Incline treadmill walk (3.5 mph / 10% incline / 45 minutes)

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The Awful Truth:
1. Diverged from planned meals 5 and 6 by chomping on some Balance Go Mix instead.

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Brownie Points:
1. Stayed on plan this weekend instead of going completely nuts before starting SGX again.

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Short-term Goals:
1. Defrost huge bag of chicken thigh and leg quarters.
2. Make some fresh salad dressing.
3. Bulk cook chicken.
4. Pick up new weight bench.