Yesterday I had the realization that the massive amount of food I’m eating is preventing the muscle soreness I expected from working out so hard. That led me to another realization this morning.

It wasn’t intentional, but looking back I haven’t been fully exerting myself the first few days. Knowing what lie ahead, I think I’ve held back a bit to make sure I had enough in the tank for the following day. Waking up with extremely sore legs then having to get on the elliptical would have been rough, so while I’ve been pushing myself, I don’t think I’ve been giving it my all.

With concerns about soreness now set aside, I’ve amped up the weight during training. And as today was a big beefy muscle group like my back, it was good timing. I lifted heavy the entire workout, and it felt good. Kicked my butt, but felt good.

Of course, proper form and injury prevention are still top priorities. Getting hurt could put an end to this whole crazy challenge, so I’ll keep it safe. But here’s to turning up the throwing around of heavy iron!

Cafeteria Volume, Prison Variety

lunchladyI’m getting better and better at the food prep. Tonight in a little over an hour, I prepared 3 days worth of food. Eighteen meals total, weighing in at a total of about 30 lbs. I feel like I work at a zoo, just shoveling piles of food into the gorilla pen.

But while I’m perfecting the quantity of food, I have to work on the quality. All of the food I’m preparing is good, but it’s been prepared exactly the same way. I can’t do that for 30 days. For the next three days, I’m mixing up the chicken recipe, going with shredded chicken breast from the slow cooker instead of the seared cutlets. Eating out of bowls at work and not needing a knife and fork should also speed up the meal breaks. With that happening every two hours while working, that’s important. I still need to come up with something for the steak as well. Maybe a twist on carne asada. Shredded chicken bowls, carne asada. I’ll eventually just be running my own personal Chipotle.

Daily Stats

Yesterday was Arms Day, so it was a much shorter, lower intensity workout than today. My heart rate was about the same, but today took longer. I was definitely huffing and puffing more, so it’s surprising that isn’t really reflected here. All told I burned a little more than an extra 100 calories compared to yesterday. Consider I’m consuming close to 5,000 calories, I’m running a daily surplus of around a 1,000 calories.

stats-day4