ARP Week 3

As I sit here sipping some raw milk and watching the Celtics seemingly forget that the playoffs started tonight, I figured it was time for an update.

  

Pics show a slight improvement since those taken two weeks ago.  A bit more delineation in upper ab region, and the tape measure is now fitting snugly at 33 and 1/8th inches, down roughly 3/8th of an inch.  

Still not anything to write home about, and not anywhere NEAR what I would feel comfortable showing up at the beach with (see 'pinch' pic below), but I'm on the right track with plenty of time, and several more alterations in diet at the ready.  

Speaking of diet, everything went according to plan this past week, except for one meal.  I felt 'flat' after training shoulders and arms on Friday (i.e., didn't feel like training stimulus offered appropriate degree of 'pump' relative to demands), and as mentioned previously, I tend to 'deflate' without adequate carbs.  So for one night I relaxed my standards and enjoyed some spinach and ricotta ravioli, along with a bolognese featuring grass-fed beef.  It was quite a lot of food for one sitting (two packages of ravioli, entire jar of marinara, one-pound of beef), and it put me into a pretty good food coma following ingestion, but I felt more muscularly 'full' in the day following.  Ideally this carries over to this week's workouts as well.  

ARP Week 2

Not a whole lot to report on this week.

Tape measure hasn't budged at the waist, so I didn't bother with pics. I do feel a bit tighter in the upper ab region, but perhaps two weeks between photos will show this better.

Diet was PERFECT this week with regard to my guidelines. In addition to those foods listed in Week 1's post, I added 3 cans of Zevia - the sugar-free, stevia-sweetened diet soda - because the warm weather lent itself to a cool treat. And thankfully this particular treat has no effect on blood sugar, which means it won't set off a chain of events that would result in additional body fat.

Seen above is one of my cooked meals for this week:

• 2 grass-fed hamburger patties
• 2 over-easy eggs per burger
• Several slices of bacon on the patties
• Several slices of cheese (not raw cheese - what's the point if it's going to be heated?)
• Red onion, ketchup

Abdominal Reclamation Project; Week 1

Beach season is only a few months away, and this year as I prepare myself to soak up the vitamin-D offered by our friend the sun, I've decided to document the process in pictures. It's been two summers since I've had what some would call a chiseled 6-pack, with delineation all the way down to the lower ab region. My goal is to work towards that look again this year.

I haven't decided if this is to be a weekly or bi-weekly procedure; I'll figure out the best method along the way. At first, I do think pictures will be less frequent as changes won't be as noticeable until body fat down is brought down to 'acceptable' levels (i.e., acceptable for ME to take my shirt off compared to previous years). There will be no stepping on any scales, nor the taking of any further measurement or data collection (e.g., body composition testing). I'm simply using my abdominal appearance as a guide. The process will end around the last week of June.

These first pictures were taken on Sunday 4/15/12 after two weeks of cleaner eating. As seen below, some delineation is visible, but only in the upper abdominal region; this area always holds less body fat than the lower region.

Starting April 2nd, all junk was removed and will remain out of my diet except for special events. As unhappy as I am with my abdominal appearance (it's much worse in pictures than in mirror), it's actually down 1/2 inch since late-March, to which I can credit no more pizza, chili, beer, etc. My ideal appearance will probably require my belly button measurement to lie somewhere between 31 and 32" (33.5 currently).

Clearly, there is plenty to pinch. Eventually, there won't be.

My weekday meal plan will consist of the following through April:

• Raw Milk; up to a quart per day
• Raw Beef; up to a pound per day
• Raw Eggs; up to a dozen per day
• Raw Honey; approximately a tablespoon along with beef meals
• Raw Coconut Butter; approximately a tablespoon along with beef meals

For meals that are not raw, I'll stick with a mainly starch-less selection of foods. These will mainly occur on weekends:

• Bacon & Eggs (COOKED); eaten once or twice on weekends
• Cheeseburgers (COOKED); no buns eaten once or twice on weekends
• Other beef/poultry/pork
• Once per week include carbs in form of sweet potato along with cooked dinner (I need carbs to maintain muscular fullness, particularly when not ingesting large quantities of raw milk)

I'm not counting calories, I'm simply keeping food choices to those that won't negatively affect blood sugar. Eventually, depending on how things progress, I'll reduce the amount of food eaten. But I'd rather wait for that and see what I can accomplish based solely on the above guidelines.

Finally, regarding exercise application, I WILL NOT BE PERFORMING ANY CARDIO. If I happen to stumble upon some recreation with friends, then so be it; but it will not be for body fat loss. Resistance training workouts will continue as usual (3-4 sessions per week, each body part targeted once per week, no more than about 2 hours of exercise per week).