lifting – STOPJABBAINGON

OPERATION SUMMER BODY – TURKEY WRAPS

Posted on August 13, 2015August 20, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

When people talk about being on a diet, the first thing that usually springs to mind for most is…..BORING FOOD

However, that really doesn’t have to be the case. You don’t have to spend your time munching on a bag of beansprouts or nibbling on a raw carrot.

I’ve spoken a lot in my vlogs & previous blogs about my current diet. Mine consists of my calorie intake being broken down to my macro intake. I have created a spreadsheet to calculate my daily intake for protein, carbs and fats so I know I’m staying on track, each and every day.

When it comes down to dieting there’s one important rule to remember. It doesn’t matter how you’re taking in the calories, as long as you’re not taking in more than you need too. One thing Julian from Titanium Fitness told me as we worked out my diet was, if you want to do it all in one hit you can do, and if you want to eat it all at the end of the day, you can do that too. Your body will take in the nutrients exactly the same way. Although I must say, if you can take in my current loads of 350g protein, 180g carbs and 97g fats in one go…..you’re a far better person than I am 🙂

So, todays vlog is about my meal this evening. I like to keep my food interesting, otherwise I’d drive myself crazy. Today I decided to make Turkey wraps, mainly because it was the first thing that came out the freezer when I opened one of the drawers.

Ingredients:
400G Turkey “excellent meat, high in protein and very low in fats”
1 Onion
A hand full mushrooms
Some mini broccoli
Salad
Tortilla Wraps

First, I browned off the turkey in the frying pan, using coconut oil rather than normal cooking oil.

Once I’d done this, I added in some of my favourite herb and spices to give the meat a little extra flavour. Personally, I LOVE TURKEY. However, my wife, she’s not the biggest fan, so I need to make meals with it a bit more interesting for her pallet.

Spices I used to make the Turkey a little more interesting

I then added in the vegetables (onions, mushrooms & broccoli) and let it all steam and cook together, blending in the spices and flavours of everything together.

While this was happening, I then made up a simple salad of leaves, cucumber & cherry tomatoes and gave them a light olive oil dressing.

Finally, I warmed the tortillas up in the oven and served everything up on the table with a selection of sauces to be used in the wraps.

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million times. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOUR CALORIES / MACROS come from. As long as you keep track of them and make sure you don’t eat too much of a certain thing (i.e. going over on your carbs) then you’re fine. However, you do need to know where you want to be on calories, otherwise you’re just eating without knowing what your body requires.

The final meal was fantastic, and yes, my wife enjoyed the turkey….so much so, she didn’t even realise it was turkey until I told her.

So, what are your favourite meals to make while you’re working on a new diet? What do you do, to keep things interesting on your dinner plate?

SUMMER BODY – WEEK 2

Posted on July 10, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

Well, week 2 of operation “summer body” thanks to Julian at Titanium Fitness in Newbury, is on us from tomorrow. For those of you who don’t know the process I’m going through, click here for last weeks blog for you to get up to date.

So, now everyone know’s what’s going on, how has my last 7 days been. Well honestly……really hard work. I’ve dropped down a simple 200 calories off my carb in take and it’s made hitting my other numbers on proteins and fat’s really quite difficult, especially as I’m trying to do this diet on a bit of a budget, due to me being self employed at the moment.

So my current diet break down consists of:

350g protein per day, 212.5g carbohydrates per day & 115g fats per day.

However, the hard work I feel is paying off. I’ve had some excellent gym sessions this week, including a PB in the shoulder press on the hammer smith machine of 60kg per side plus the arm weight, and this was done at the end of the session and still for 8 reps, so I’d hazard a guess and there being much more left in me to go heavier soon.

Also, I lifted a new best on the hammer strength inclined chest press as well of 55kg per side plus arm weight and along with those personal bests this week, my general day to day sessions have just felt like they’ve gone really well. The carb cut down has meant I’ve felt tired mid afternoon and wanted to just have an afternoon nap, but, I’ve usually made myself a fruit blender drink and that’s given me a perk up I needed with natural sugars, to keep me going until dinner time and then bed.

One of the big things with this diet is you have to be so careful with your intake. One wrong item and it throws the numbers out of whack, so yet, I can have a choc bar, but, it’s wise not too as everything will be harder to achieve on the numbers front. So instead, I’ve been eating far healthier and no snacking or crap, not even any crisps “which are my achilles heel”.

I have been eating, a lot of tuna (can’t stand the stuff, but it’s great for high protein and low fat and carbs), turkey, turkey mince, chicken and salmon too. Just be sure, if you’re going to do a diet like this, you must include everything, even those juices etc you’re possibly drinking each day, they’ll contain carbs and fats you had no idea where there. A great website I use for nutritional information is Nutrition Data.

So, onto the important stuff. I started this week weighing in at 93.4kg, and after a week on lower carbs I’m currently down to 92.2kg, so that’s a loss of 1.2kg. This means I stay on the diet for another week at least, as I don’t drop any further calories until my body plateaus.

(Next week I’ll give you an idea of a days diet)

What do you think, has my body shape changed in the last 7 days? (P.S. Sorry for the mess on the bed 🙂 )

Front Facing - Week 2 — Front Facing – Week 2

Side Facing - Week 2 — Side Facing – Week 2

Let me know how your summer body diet is going in the comments, I’d love to hear any of your hints and tips to help my diet along and hit those numbers.

Chat next week,

Simon

TUESDAY 16TH JUNE 2015 – CHEST SESSION

Posted on June 16, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog

So, it was chest fun this morning. Just went for major repave. So much so, I forgot to keep a note of how many reps and sets I did this morning. I can honestly say though with seated incline, smith incline, flat bench, cable flyers low, cable flyers high and tricep chest based push downs I completed about 10 sets on each exercise.

We didn’t go too high on the weights, mainly because we where knackered but we kept the intensity high and hard.

Sometimes, it’s not about the numbers but more about getting the session out in the first place.

Do you always keep a copy of what you’ve done in the gym session wise?

It is wise to do so obviously, so you can see improvements etc, but sometimes, well it’s just not that simple, like with my session today.

Monday 15th June 2015 – SHOULDER SESSION

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

Good Morning,

Hope you’re all well and had a fantastic weekend. So, I’m sorry, I’ve been very remiss the last few weeks getting my training posted up for you to take a look at.

We’ve been switching things up a little to really try and get some higher rep work out, using heavier weights and also trying to work on my diet a little too.

My maintenance calorie intake is 3304 a day, however, I’m in a process of trying to lose a little of the fat right now, especially around the love handles area, and at 38 years old, it ain’t gonna go easily.

I’ve lowered the fat in take I have every day and I’m generally trying to just snack less on crap, which isn’t easy when you pop into a coffee shop, grab a green tea and then see the CAKES.

Anyway, on to this mornings training session. We’re working on pyramid reps starts high, working down, back up and back down again every set.

SEATED LATERAL RAISES: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,6,6,6 reps
SEATED FORWARD RAISES: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,6,6,6 reps
SEATED REAR DELTS: 10,7.5,5KG 8,8,8,6,4,6,8 reps
SEATED DUMBELL PRESS: 3 X 15 @ 20KG

It’s only 4 exercises, but with that number of reps I certainly got a good sweat going on so decided to cool down on the bike rather than go for any real extra calories burn. I ticked along for just 15 minutes as I know I have a hard cardio session coming up at lunch time.

How’s your summer body training going? Are you getting the results you’d like, maybe you need to switch things up a little bit in your diet or your training plan.

Training 27th May 2015

Posted on May 29, 2015 by simonscholes in Blog, Sport

As it was a bank holiday weekend we missed our usual Monday international chest session day. This meant we moved the session to Wednesday AM and after a shoulder session on Tuesday we knew this would be a difficult session.

Essentially it was like doing a pre exhaust exercise before the main compound movements.

So we cracked on, and I was frankly in bits.

Inclined Dumbell Chest Press: 4 x 8 @ 35kg Flat Dumbell Bench Press: 4 x 8 @ 35kg 1 x 8 @ 30kg 1 x 8 @ 25kg 1 x 8 @ 20kg 1 x 10 @ 17.5kg Cable Flyes: 1 x 12 @ 12.5kg 1 x 10 @ 15kg 1 x 6 @ 17.5kg 1 x 15 @ 10kg

Finish off with some core:
Machine crunch 5 x 15 @ 55kg
Roll Outs 2 x 10
Weighted Cable rope crunch 3 x 20 @ 55kg

After doing this session we’ve decided to move our shoulder session to Mondays and chest to Tuesday. The main reason being is it not only shakes up our sessions a little and keeps the body guessing, but, we also found the weight wasn’t needed to get a good pump as the shoulders where out of the equation when it came to lifting, hence why the weights where kept so low.