Archive for June, 2008

Training for the Week of 6/23 – 6/29

Monday, June 30th, 2008

This week was a very healthy week for kickboxing and for eating. I am really starting to fall into the zone, eating healthy protein rich foods, and avoid untimely carbs and unnecessary high-fat snacks at night.

Diet

I am frequently eating eggs, cheese, protein bars, tuna, and chicken. Occasionally I have a McSkillet Burrito for breakfast, ramen noodles for lunch, and a couple cheese balls for a snack. For the most part I believe I am eating well. If I had more money, I would definitely buy more chicken and other healthier food to eat during the day, but for now I have to suffice with a can of tuna and a bowl of ramen during the week when I’m in the office.

Training

Thai Kickboxing: 3 days, 1 hour per session.
Mountain Biking: about 3 total hours spread throughout the week.
Weightlifting: 2 sessions with the Powerblocks for a total of about 45 minutes.

Next Weeks Goals

Maintain kickboxing sessions, although there will be no kickboxing on the 4th of July. Add in two legit weightlifting workouts. I want to actually go to the gym and do some full body training. They will be light workouts so I can get back into the swing of lifting.

I plan to maintain the same general dietary strategy, which is to say “no” to 90% of the unhealthy food I encounter. Ramen will still be consumed, as will McSkillet Burritos for breakfast. When I decide to go hardcore, these two foods will be phased out.

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How to Recover From Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Question of the Week

This question of the week is a question to me, rather than a question to you. Let me know your thoughts on the subject after reading the article.

Let me tell you about a recent conversation with one of my friends over IM. This guy used to lift with me back in college, but he’s working on his own business right now and hasn’t touched a weight in almost a year. So the guy goes out and gets a gym membership and starts training again last Monday.

This is how the conversation went down…

Sore Musclesmy weightlifting friend: yo wtf
friend: my muscles hurt
friend: so bad
me: bwahaha
friend: chest and tris are killing me
friend: since Monday
friend: I can barely move
me: nasty
me: don’t push it so hard the first week back foo
friend: I can’t help it
friend: and I didn’t push that hard
friend: I just did as much as I could
friend: which is not as much as it used to be
me: yeah
me: you prolly did negative reps
me: and pushed out every last rep out of every set
me: and tried to use the weights you used to use
me: haha
friend: haha
friend: whatever I did
friend: it sucks ass
friend: what can I do to recover faster?

(more…)

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The Healthier My Lifestyle The Better I Feel

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Hey this is a blog right? Well here is a personal post for any who are interested. Over the course of the last month I have really stepped back and tried to examine all the bad habits in my lifestyle. One by one I have started to weed out such things as:

  • Eating the wrong foods or too much food late at night.
  • Working instead of exercising.
  • Watching TV instead of exercising.
  • Having an extra Captain’s and Diet when it’s not really necessary.
  • Staying up too late, then…
  • Getting up too early without enough sleep, or…
  • Sleeping in and getting up too late, thereby wasting the morning.
  • Blowing off taking my vitamins.
  • Pumping myself up on energy drinks, then taking double doses of melatonin to fall asleep at night.
  • Choosing Doritos or candy over fruit or low fat meat.

(more…)

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Hey Pencil Legs! Turn Those Calves into Cows

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

Bodybuilder CalfCalves are a weak spot for most weightlifters and athletes. Your average male weightlifter doesn’t put the same effort into his legs as he does into his chest and biceps. Well I am here to tell you that it’s actually easy to develop some meaty ass calves as long as you’re doing your foundation exercises.

Calf Physiology

Bones and Joints

The lower leg is comprised of two long bones, the tibia and fibula. The tibia is the larger of the two and is located toward the middle of the lower leg. The fibula is the smaller bone and it is located on the outside of the lower leg.

(more…)

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Actos Decreases Conversion of Insulin Insenitivity to Type 2 Diabetes by 81 Percent

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

Insulin ResistanceWith the amount of starchy, sugary foods on the market today, we can never be too careful about our insulin sensitivity. Consuming too many high glycemic foods can decrease insulin sensitivity so much that we can develop adult-onset type 2 diabetes over time. Diabetes is bad in so many ways, causing (for example) heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and threatening the health of extremities.

Now there is hope for prediabetics (those with a high level of insulin insentivity). A new study presented on June 9 during the 68th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association in San Francisco, has shown that people in prediabetic state were 81% less likely to convert their insulin insensitivity to type 2 diabetes when treated with a drug called pioglitazone, brand name Actos®.

(more…)

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Exenatide Study Brings Good News for People with Type 2 Diabetes

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

Exenatide for Type 2 DiabeticsIf you are one of the more than 21 million people in the United States and an estimated 246 million adults worldwide who have diabetes, specifically type 2 diabetes, here is some excellent news for you. There is a new drug called exenatide, which when given weekly injections over the course of a year, has lowered glucose levels in diabetics and has assisted with weight loss, as shown by a recent study.

If you want to know how to treat insulin resistance so that it doesn’t develop into type 2 diabetes, read this article on how Actos decreases conversion of insulin resistance to type 2 diabetes by 81 percent.

Exenatide, aka “exenatide once weekly”, appears to also improve fasting plasma glucose and glycated hemoglobin (A1C) when administered twice a day using a product called Byetta. Byetta is the version of exenatide that is currently available on the market.

Dr. John B. Buse, director of the Diabetes Care Center and chief of the division of endocrinology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill said in a prepared statement…

(more…)

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Digg Killed Project Swole

Monday, June 9th, 2008

Recently I have succumbed to a couple of front page appearances on the popularity website Digg.com. Though I had the WP-Super-Cache WordPress plug-in enabled, my server crashed. Twice. The problem is that my sites have been hosted on shared servers, and the CPU resources (and possibly memory) were consumed, crashing the systems.

First I had to move from Host Gator to The Prime Host, and now I’ve had to move from The Prime Host to one of my friend’s VPS systems hosted at HostForWeb.com. Now I’m looking into getting a dedicated server over at eSecureData.com and loading up the software manually. Whatever it takes to keep the Digg gators at bay I guess.

Unfortunately Project Swole does not make any money, so I might institute a PayPal donations button here shortly, although I don’t expect anyone to actually use it. I don’t want to add any additional advertising to the site though, so I’m going to have to figure out a way to support this. Not quite sure what I’m going to do yet.

Digg vs Project Swole
Digg vs Project Swole

So anyway, if you plan on sticking with Project Swole through all of this Digg mayhem then I thank you immensely. Although I am extremely busy with my personal life right now, I am definitely going to try to keep posting regularly. The information should still be worthwhile, as I plan to tackle more specific and hardcore topics than stuff like “10 Ways to Diet Better“. If you stick around long enough, you are in for a treat.

That’s it for now, I’ve gotta get back to work.

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Technorati Authority Experiment

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

The goal of Project Swole is not just to publish useful content for people interested in health, fitness, and nutrition, but also to proliferate that information throughout the Internet. Browsing Digg the other day, I came upon a site conducting a link experiment. I have no idea what this has to do with Technorati, but just because I’m curious as to how far it will spread, I am going to jump on the bandwagon and track it.

What the Heck Am I Talking About?

The stuff I am supposed to post is as follows:

(more…)

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10 Ways You Can Stop Dieting and Change Your Lifestyle Eating Habits

Friday, June 6th, 2008

Red AppleWhen you look into the mirror what do you see? Perhaps you see a cupcake. Perhaps you see a pear that can talk. An apple maybe? A watermelon? Or perhaps you see walking toothpick. No matter your aesthetic malady, if it can be fixed with diet and exercise.

So often I’ve seen folks try to diet by immersing themselves in fad diet strategies. They use Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, The Zone, Hollywood diets, Low-Carb, Low-Fat, the list goes on and on. Read some reviews of a couple fad diets. The problem is that when dieters go off fad diets, 90% of them gain back whatever they lost and sometimes more! I want to address that issue and provide some tips on how you can generally eat healthier for the rest of your life, rather than abusing fad diet after fad diet.

Starting a new diet or exercise program should not be taken lightly. If you are severely overweight, severely underweight, and/or have any medical conditions, you should always consult your physician prior to drastically changing your eating habits and performing significant weight bearing tasks. Now I would like to outline a number of basic rules for building the foundation of your new dietary plan.

Rule #1 – Permanent Changes

I avoided using “The Diet” as a subtitle of this section for a reason; this is not a diet. I repeat, we are NOT starting a new diet here. These are the permanent changes that need to be made to your lifestyle eating habits. From now on when I use the word “diet”Âť I am referring to your lifestyle eating habits. For example, right now you might say that your diet consists of Coca-Cola, donuts, cheeseburgers, and ice cream. In the future you will say that your diet consists of Crystal Lite, beef jerky, lean beef and chicken, and a protein bar.
(more…)

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One Small Victory Reported in the War On American Childhood Obesity

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

After a 25 year increase, it seems that the percentage of obese or overweight children has plateaued. This news offers us some hope that perhaps the future of America will not be riddled with diabetes and heart disease.

Fat KidOne expert, Dr. David Ludwig, has commented that even though he is encouraged by these findings, “it is still too soon to know if this really means we’re beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.” Another expert maintains that there is at least a small level of optimism about these results.

Study Results

(more…)

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