I had a bunch of "bad" eating over last weekend, want to hear about it?
Sort of like a last "who-ray!", if you will, before it was nothing but protein smoothies for 2 days.
Did it as a little test to see the effects of consuming mostly junk food, but keeping calories controlled over a weekend going into my 2 days of micro-fasting.
Bethany's cousin, Katarina, was in town, and she's the one that plays the main character in our music video.
How many Eau Claire gyms do you know of that have their own music video!? Pretty cool, right? :)
She lives in Minnesota and comes to visit for a few days from time to time, and when she does, it ends up being a lot of eating out, watching movies, eating junk food, and drinking down a few bottles of wine... (well, the girls do that drinking stuff, I didn't on account of don't want to lose a full day of productivity being hungover & feeling crappy 🥴
I know, one of the things I have to accept with getting older is can't handle alcohol like I used to :) )
Anywho, starting Saturday morning until Sunday night, here's a nice little list of everything consumed:
2 bowls of Lucky Charms cereal (my favorite… and apparently Workout Hero Beast Randi’s too! Hi Randi! 😁)
Big bowl of oatmeal with raisins
Lunch at Firehouse Subs where I had their large Thanksgiving Dinner sub. It was delicious but WOW did the price of subs ever go up!😲 It was good but that thing was $15 by itself, and about the size of what would be a $5 foot long from back in the day. Won’t be going out for subs very much, yikes!
Bethany’s Uncle owns an apple orchard, called AVEnue Orchard and has a huge bakery of goods they sell at their shop along with apples. Bethany & Katarina were craving caramel apples so we drove there to pick some up. Long story but they didn’t have any ready and so to make up for it, her Uncle sent us home with a big tub of caramel and a bag of apples and said, “Sorry about that, here you go.”
I love caramel apples and it reminds me so much of childhood memories… so I might have had a few too many sliced apples dipped in caramel 🙂
That’s not all we left the apple orchard with though… we also had a few cookies, cupcakes, and caramel popcorn too
Big breakfast Sunday morning consisting of hash browns, eggs, and bacon
nachos, chips n’ salsa, Chex mix, popcorn, and the aforementioned caramel popcorn during the Packer game (and after)
a couple bowls of ice cream over the course of the weekend
Donuts
Candy
Okay, couldn’t resist 2 glasses of Ashley’s wine – one of her many talents is making wine and hers is AMAZING!!
Pizza
Totaled up, it was probably 2500-3500 calories day, so not crazy high --- but felt way worse than it was since it's so different from how I normally eat.
My maintenance calories is right around 2500 so I would have to eat way more than that, day after day, to gain some significant weight.
It was like my mind already had sort of "mental guardrails" in place and it took deliberate intention to eat this way.
I weighed 169 going into that weekend, and by the time I weighed in again Monday morning, I was up to 173.
... With all the processed stuff, and especially some salty chips and popcorn, it was 100% water weight.
Then came my 2 days of Micro-fasting and having just protein smoothies. My own version of the 5:2 Protein Diet I talked about last week.
In case you don't recall or missed that email, its a popular diet going around where you simply eat normal 5 days a week, and then for 2 days you just have 2 Protein shakes a day for a total of 4.
That's a bit too boring for me so I big time "dolled them up". Here's all that went into my blender:
about 5 cups of frozen veggies – broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, brussel sprouts
handful of spinach
about 5 whole tomatoes
1 scoop Vanilla whey protein
2 tablespoons of wheat germ
2 tablespoons of chia seeds
1 thing of orange crystal light drink enhancer (otherwise with the veggies and tomatoes the flavor was a bit too disgusting even for me 😂)
lots of water
After a few rounds of blending and continually adding water to get it to a good consistency, it made around 100oz of smoothie.
Just so you know, it wasn't the best tasting thing I've ever had...
... and that's where using those packets of crystal lite drink enhancers come in.
Bethany has a bunch of those Mio squirt thingys you can put into water for flavor, and I used those too, just so you know.
I simply poured those 100oz of smoothie into 5 different shaker bottles and stored in the fridge (Bethany is always giving me a hard time with all the shaker bottles I have, so for once they all came in handy! 😂 )
Those 5 were my "meals" all day Monday and I simply drank one every couple of hours. Same thing for Tuesday. This would be another form of my "Micro-fasting" protocols you might have heard me talking about before.
Now for the results...
I was strangely the most hungry on Monday. But every time I downed a smoothie, it went away.
Tuesday I felt just fine and it wasn't until Wednesday morning after waking up that I was really hungry. That morning I had my first bit of normal real food and chewing, and it was awesome.
It was a bowl of oatmeal and it was so cool how it woke me right up with energy. It's like my body was all like, "REAL FOOD! YAY!" :)
As I suspected, Over the 2 days, I was running to the bathroom to pee like every hour to the point I was getting pretty mad about it.
So when I weighed in Wednesday morning after 2 days of Micro-fasting, I was really pleased with the weight loss...
... down about 5 pounds total to end at 168. Remember, my normal weight was at 169 prior to gaining water weight, so 4 pounds of that loss was water and 1 pound of pure fat.
Considering I was in a calorie deficit of a couple thousand calories a day, this makes sense with 3500 calories making up 1 pound of fat.
This 5:2 Protein Diet is like a "blunt instrument" towards your weekly calorie deficit goal and pretty effective if you don't mind having your calorie intake be really simple and boring for a couple of days.
One other thing...
... I did notice a nice little jump in energy, especially that first day Wednesday when it was back to normal eating, which is cool.
I'm at my goal weight now, so I probably won't be doing this every week considering I'm #alwayshungry ...
... probably just on Mondays if I should ever overdo over a weekend again. ;)
Well, that's all I got for you, Workout Hero.
Should you have any questions about doing something like this, let me know.
Till next time,
May you stay on the Path of the Workout Hero because your awesome future awaits!
Your Guide & biggest fan, Mr trainer man Erick
P.S.
With how windy it was last week, I wanted to tell you a pun about it... but it blows :)
