Monday, October 29, 2018
December 1, 2018 Prep
OK, so I'm entering the NASA New Mexico Christmas Regional. My goal is just to beat my previous lifts. It's a drug free powerlifting event. I figure that's good for me.
I decided to add one more HIIT sprint. So now I'm doing 5 sprints. I hope it helps me burn off some more fat. My A1C is 5.1, which is really good. To be clear the fat loss is so I can lift at 148 lbs. Otherwise I'm in the 165 class and I'm definitely not strong enough to compete there. So, I'll have to see how I respond to weight loss while lifting.
Last week I had lots of family stress. I had three people in my family going to the emergency room last week and lost lots of sleep. I am behind on some of my side work. Hopefully I catch up quickly. I'm eating more salad. If I do a "typical" day I have 3 scrambled eggs, 2 slices of bacon, a banana, and a couple of handfuls of nuts with water for brunch (sometime between 7 and 2), and then for dinner usually some salad with lemon, and a banana.
I had lost 4 pounds the week before and zero last week. So I'm behind and hopefully I can get to weight a couple of weeks ahead of time. That will give me a good idea on where I'm at. Today I had a work lunch, lucky they only provided salads. So I went ahead and got full on three plates, then had chicken, salad, and a banana for dinner. I did break down and have one cookie and one Reese's at lunch.
Tomorrow I'll know how I'm doing and if I need to fast for the day.
So I've added about 12 minutes of total time on the bike per week and my weight workout will be very basic.
I'll be doing
5-10 minutes on the bike to warmup. Then simple full body workout after that.
I'll do one set of 5 with 135lbs for each exercise, then 3-4 sets at the workout weight. I won't be able to lift 3 days a week each week. I'm not going to worry.
Week 1 (This week, I'll only get to lift twice because of an out of town family event.)
Squat set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x175
Bench set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x150
Deadlifts set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x190
If it feels easy on day 1, then I'll add one set on day two for 5 total sets. One day three for the last sets I'll do a 5+. That means if I can do more than the 5 reps with the lift then I'll max out. This will let me know whether to go up 5 pounds or 10 pounds (or more on any lift for the following week).
If things go perfect I'll squat 185, 195, 200, 205 for sets of 5 by Turkey Day week. For bench it will be 155, 160, 165, and 170. Deadlifts will hopefully be 200, 215, 230, and 240. Actually for "perfect" bench it would be 155, 165, 180, 190. That will be tough. I'll increase by feel and will be doing a lot of checking in with myself and Lee from The Power Plant.
As of today I'm at 160.2lbs. A bit left to go!
KEEP GRINDING!
ABOUT THE BLOG:
I decided to add one more HIIT sprint. So now I'm doing 5 sprints. I hope it helps me burn off some more fat. My A1C is 5.1, which is really good. To be clear the fat loss is so I can lift at 148 lbs. Otherwise I'm in the 165 class and I'm definitely not strong enough to compete there. So, I'll have to see how I respond to weight loss while lifting.
Last week I had lots of family stress. I had three people in my family going to the emergency room last week and lost lots of sleep. I am behind on some of my side work. Hopefully I catch up quickly. I'm eating more salad. If I do a "typical" day I have 3 scrambled eggs, 2 slices of bacon, a banana, and a couple of handfuls of nuts with water for brunch (sometime between 7 and 2), and then for dinner usually some salad with lemon, and a banana.
I had lost 4 pounds the week before and zero last week. So I'm behind and hopefully I can get to weight a couple of weeks ahead of time. That will give me a good idea on where I'm at. Today I had a work lunch, lucky they only provided salads. So I went ahead and got full on three plates, then had chicken, salad, and a banana for dinner. I did break down and have one cookie and one Reese's at lunch.
Tomorrow I'll know how I'm doing and if I need to fast for the day.
So I've added about 12 minutes of total time on the bike per week and my weight workout will be very basic.
I'll be doing
5-10 minutes on the bike to warmup. Then simple full body workout after that.
I'll do one set of 5 with 135lbs for each exercise, then 3-4 sets at the workout weight. I won't be able to lift 3 days a week each week. I'm not going to worry.
Week 1 (This week, I'll only get to lift twice because of an out of town family event.)
Squat set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x175
Bench set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x150
Deadlifts set 1, 5x135, set 2-4 5x190
If it feels easy on day 1, then I'll add one set on day two for 5 total sets. One day three for the last sets I'll do a 5+. That means if I can do more than the 5 reps with the lift then I'll max out. This will let me know whether to go up 5 pounds or 10 pounds (or more on any lift for the following week).
If things go perfect I'll squat 185, 195, 200, 205 for sets of 5 by Turkey Day week. For bench it will be 155, 160, 165, and 170. Deadlifts will hopefully be 200, 215, 230, and 240. Actually for "perfect" bench it would be 155, 165, 180, 190. That will be tough. I'll increase by feel and will be doing a lot of checking in with myself and Lee from The Power Plant.
As of today I'm at 160.2lbs. A bit left to go!
KEEP GRINDING!
ABOUT THE BLOG:
This blog started years ago to talk about self-care and weightlifting. It stopped for a few years. It was restarted when I was told that I was diabetic. I had an A1C of 9.3. A1C is an estimate of your blood sugar level over the last 3 months and 6.5 is pre-diabetic, and usually over 7 is considered diabetic. In March I was re-tested and my A1C was 5.0. That's below pre-diabetic (so, essentially non-diabetic). It was nice to have my doctor say, "you used to be diabetic." I'm still working on improving my insulin sensitivity and not thinking I'm out of the woods yet. My September 2017 retest came back with and A1C of 4.9. March 2018 test came back with 5.2 A1C. My September 2018 test came back with 5.1 A1C.
Weight wasn't my goal though it changed with everything. I started at 195 and after three months I was at 155. My lowest since this has been 142 and I've gotten back up to 165 and weight is changing again.
The results were from diet and exercise. Here is a quick summary of how I responded to being diagnosed as diabetic. I'm going to post this review every so often. Mostly when I post the blog to Twitter or Facebook.
My lifting approach was to gain muscle to help with insulin sensitivity so I focused on compound exercises mostly (deadlift, bench, squat, overhead press) with some other things to round out such as pull-ups and bicep curls. I'm currently doing a 3 way split.
Between now and the end of November I will be focusing on Strength. I went up to 5 "sprints" for cardio. I'm listing my goals in my general PRs page
