MoNkeE's IF journal

77.7kg when I weighed myself this morning. However, I did have a massive 1600 calorie meal last night, and there's no way I poo'd all of that out in time for my morning weigh in, so it's entirely possible I could be 77.5kg. Not bad for a week of IF so far!

Can already tell that muscle is slowly pushing it's way back to sunshine, and my strength hasn't been affected for the worse at all. In fact, finally started doing weighted dips, got my Deadlifts up to 82.5kg with good form, and squats to 80kg! :)
 
Nice going, how are you finding the long periods with no food? and are you struggling to cram it all in to your allotted time?
 
It comes and go's. Depends how busy you are and what sort of mood you're in. Some mornings I'm completely fine; especially on a weekend. But others (like today), I go through like an hour of being starved, then an hour of being fine, then an hour of thinking "ooh, not long til food now"! I think your current mood has a huge effect of this tho.

As for cramming it in, yes at times it's difficult. I normally train on a morning, but on most Tuesdays, I have to train after work. So what I do is fast until lunch, have 20-25% of my calorific intake for lunch (normally two pittas stuffed with meat), then train. However, this meant (as last night) that I had to eat about 1600 calories from getting home (about 7:15pm) until 9pm! Two chicken breasts stuffed with pesto, 200g of veg, 3 scrambled eggs, half a tin of mackeral, and two Oat-so-Simples with 30g of whey mixed in later, and I had accomplished that by 8:30pm.

Stuff like that is fine when I'm at home by myself. When I'm visiting my girlfriend at her house, it's slightly weird when we finish our dinner and then say "right, I just have to eat my eggs and porridge, then I'm yours for the night". "WHAT? MORE food?! But I'm stuffed!" ...... "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do......."

On a cardio related note, this is what I do for cardio every morning:
Preworkout cardio: 1 minute walk @ 5km/h on treadmill, 6 minutes running at about 14km/h, 1.5 minute warm-down walk @ 5km/h

Hit the weights for a bit

Post-workout cardio: 3 minute warmup on rowing machine (moderate rate), 4 minutes of tabata rowing, 3 minutes warm-down row

Only hitting about 300 calories according to the machines, but seeing as I do this in a fasted state, it must be doing wonders for fat burning!
 
Okay so I am now offically sold on this after Bennys thread and this. Need to find out more though. I'm a student so don't really have a specific time I train (will this need to change?). What type of foods do I need to be eating? I have whey but no BCAA (don't even know what they are). Can someone point me to an idiots guide for this stuff or if ones not written write it lol :D:p.
 
Okay so I am now offically sold on this after Bennys thread and this. Need to find out more though. I'm a student so don't really have a specific time I train (will this need to change?). What type of foods do I need to be eating? I have whey but no BCAA (don't even know what they are). Can someone point me to an idiots guide for this stuff or if ones not written write it lol :D:p.

www.leangains.com

1: follow link
2: read guides
3: educate yourself
4:????
5: Profit.
 
http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html
There's the full link, seeing as Benny's a big lazy fat man......... ;)

Get some BCAAs, as whey alone doesn't contain the right active ingredients to fully help muscle development during your fast. I've been using whey, but only because I was ill-prepared and winging it - I have since ordered some, so will be starting next week by-the-book!

Ideally, you should get yourself in to a set routine. Now I find sometimes have to change my training times - out of my four training days, 3 take place before work (6:30am), 1 takes place after work (4:15pm) due to my missus living far away. If I train in the evening, I break my fast at 12 noon as usual but only have 20 - 25% of my usual calorie intake. The rest then becomes an epic meal at night!

As for what foods, depends if you're bulking or cutting. I'm cutting, so eating as lean food as I can, try to keep my carbs in check tho. Keeping them around 150g a day would be ideal but you may need to up them on training days. Other than that, I typically have less than 80g of fat a day (normally between 60 - 70g) and a decent amount of protein around the 200g or higher mark. Now some days I've slacked, some days I haven't...... But I've never gone over 2500 calories on a training day, and tried to keep it around 2200 calories on a rest day :)

Either way, the proof will be in the low fat pudding, and will definitely be interesting to see what my weight is at after say, a month of doing this :)
 
So am I!!!!! Unlike some, I like to procrastinate.............

...... Not really sure what point I'm making there :S
 
So am I!!!!! Unlike some, I like to procrastinate.............

...... Not really sure what point I'm making there :S

I'm sorry I'm far too busy and important to talk to you right now. Other than to tell you just how busy and important I am :p:D
 
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cheers monkee, I'm so glad you came on here talking about your love of IF and are the sole reason anyone else would decide to do it. :D
 
I can't take any credit for it mate, BennyC is the one that pushed the idea of IF on to me. And I'm sure he'd give a lot of thanks to www.leangains.com - the lad that hosts that is who gave us a structure to work to and the science behind the theory :)

However, if you get on to this way of living, best of luck to you mate. It really can be difficult for the first few days, but it does get a lot easier! And the end result will be the reward :)
 
Yea I was just winding benny up :p;)

BCAA ordered, research all this weekend, doing big shop on sunday and then start first thing monday. All the best to you and cheers again boys.
 
My BCAA's just turned up today, so next week should start with a bang. Also going to start my Stronglifts routine, seeing as I'm still going well on strength increase at the moment.

Still weighed 77.6kg this morning, but I didn't do a lot of cardio yesterday (legs still knacked from earlier workouts!), but got my bench up to 57.5kg for 3x8 and bicep curls with 18kg dumbells were at 2x8 then 1x4 - which is an increase of two reps over last week. Slowly getting there..........
 
Spending this week calculating my 15, 10 and 5 rep maxes so that I can begin HST.

BennyC really is a trendsetting git.
 
:cool::D

You'll thank me when you have 47" gunz, double D's, tree trunk legs and a back shaped like a dorito.

I said it before that I think HST will be better suited to improve your conditioning & composition which will help as you're currently cutting. Being lighter, stronger and poorly conditioned will probably leave you a bit :/ come the end of your cut. Not that SS is bad at all! just this is more suited personally as you've seen my results.
 
I'm hoping this sort of workout will work well for me. It's a full body work out each session, so whilst I'll only be in the gym 3 times a week, the amount of calories I'll be burning should stay the same or even go up slightly. Really can't see how my calves/abs/forearms day or chest/bicep day was burning much in the way of calories!

Sadly I can't really weigh myself much this week, the scales I've been using are at my home and I'm spending the week with my missus in Leeds, so whilst I MIGHT have some scales to use at the gym, I doubt they'll give me the same reading as mine at home.

At least that's my excuse, I've been a pig this weekend :p
 
Spent last night trying to figure out my 15s whilst also getting used to a new gym with rubbish equipment compared to my usual. Will be down here for my next 3 workouts though, so may as well get used to it! Will stick everything in to a spreadsheet then post it up.

Yes, the weights are going to look pathetic, but I'm still a long way from being strong :)

Just to clarify BennyC:
Say my 15RM for Squats is 65kg. And I've got 6 workouts for 15s ahead of me. Do I remove 2.5kg from each workout going back, so it looks like:
WO1: 52.5kg
WO2: 55kg
WO3: 57.kg
WO4: 60kg
WO5: 62.5kg
WO6: 65kg

I'm just not entirely getting my head around the fact that I'm slowly climbing back up to what my 15RM already is, not improving upon it? Or is the idea that I should be aiming to get pretty close to two sets of my 15RM at the end of the two weeks?
 
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