Fitdad Week 8

I enter this week feeling a bit bloated and ashamed at the gluttonous fashion in which I attacked my last ever “cheat meal” before the Miami Pro event.  Gabriel had told me that week 7 was to be my last cheat meal so I wanted to really out do myself and I think I did……2 curries, naan bread, rice, beer and a big bag of chocolate buttons.

Monday I used the bloated gassyness to motivate me and I really smashed the weight training and then went straight into 45 minutes of cycling.  You know what……..?  I actually like cardio now!  It’s unbelievable and it’s all down to Youtube and fitness motivation videos.

I am a massive believer in “mind over matter” and I have found that when watching good motivational videos with a pumping sound track that I can’t feel any pain from the training at all….like nothing….I’m riding along just watching and actually trying to find the burning in my legs that was there before the video started.

You have to try this when you are doing something mind numbing or painful it really works.  If you can get into a video or song that you connect with and that “pumps” you up the pain just goes away immediately.  Try these beauties when you next hit the gym or go for a run in the pouring rain:

And this one (can’t embed):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6OwnNe9nMU

Another thing that I like about doing these steady state types of cardio is that it gives you time to think.  I find that ideas just keep popping into my head covering all subjects and I now always go straight from the bike to my computer to pen the ideas that poured out along with the sweat.  When I open a gym in the next year or so I think all the main concepts will have been made on a static bike!

Food is good now as well.  I’ve been looking for ways to keep the monotonous diet easy and enjoyable and this little tip is keeping me very happy when it comes to making my fish taste good.  I can’t take all the credit as Sian, the owner of Onpoint gym and UK bikini champion, gave me the idea of using stock on food to keep it moist and tasty.

Tasty White Fish Recipe

Add as much fish as you need to as many baking trays as you want, make up a pint or so of chicken/vegetable stock and add lemon juice, chilli, garlic, salt, pepper and coriander.  Pour the stock over the fish, cover with tin foil and whack in the oven at 180 for 25 minutes.  Done.

One thing that is really slowing my progress is lack of sleep as I knew it would.  I average about 5 hours on the good days and even though I feel ok most of the time, with all this eating and training I feel like a zombie.

If this were a client saying that he doesn’t get enough sleep I would most likely tell them that they must cut back on anything they can to get up to a minimum of 7 hours as a tired man is a stressed man and a stressed man will not build adequate muscle or drop the desired fat.

Unfortunately the uncomfortably wriggling pregnant lady doesn’t allow me much sleep and I don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to complaints!!  Got to say that I really am looking forward to the end of this journey so that I can get back to being a “fitdad” that still has his cake and eats it.

Anyway here I stand slowly slowly changing :-/