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Thank you Buff, thank you Sean.
The big difference between Gemma and Whey that I've noticed is the total lack of bloat with the Gemma. I'm also still really into the taste and texture of Chocolate Lipotropic half-way into the tub. The lack of aspartame after-taste is still something I appreciate. The taste goes really well with greens powder and flax seed, so it works great in my healthy shakes. It mixes well and tastes great with Dymatize 12-hour fudge brownie flavour, so that has become my regular bedtime shake. I like the way it tastes mixed in with my oatmeal, and I like it mixed up thick and eaten like a pudding.
As a result, I've been drinking shakes far more regularly, and this in turn has made it easier for me to keep up 5 or 6 feedings of protein on a daily basis. I was never a regular bedtime-shake-drinker until this past month. I'm sure that is making a difference in my progress.
In the last month I've dropped 8 pounds of body weight while adding strength. It's difficult to know how much of that I can attribute purely to LG Lipotropic, since my diet has been pretty strict and my training pretty regular since September... but I'm willing to state that I sincerely believe that using your product has contributed to my continued progress and positive results. I'm happy, and I'm impressed. This is a great product.
To sum up: No bloat, tastes great, mixes well, works great in all kinds of combos, and it is contributing to my ability to meet my goals.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to get LG Lipotropic shipped to me in Japan, since it looks like my wife and I will be moving there within the year, and I certainly plan to continue using this protein.
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...And... I weighed in at 251 today, so I'm on the doorstep of smashing another personal goal.
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I went to Vancouver to hear Henry Rollins speak on Sunday. He talked for around two and a half hours. When he was done and I stood up, I could feel the blood rushing to my glutes and upper hams, which had been flattened out against an uncomfortable seat cushion for that whole time. Still, I would have been happy to sit and listen to Rollins tell stories for another two and a half hours. He was never less than fascinating.
Rollins has great stories to tell because Rollins leads a great life. He's constantly on the go, either touring and talking, or traveling to parts of the world that most of us would never even imagine visiting (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria...) and just walking around and talking to regular people.
If you've ever read Rollins' reflections on Iron... you know that it was lifting weights that gave him the courage to begin walking the path that led him to the endlessly fascinating life that he now leads. He looked much leaner this year than he has in the past, but he's still obviously a guy who trains, and trains hard.
Then he gets out of the gym and really lives.
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I got some tremendous news from my doctor yesterday!
The results from my blood tests are in, and all of the values (liver enzymes, prostate enzymes, etc.) that doctors worry might be elevated in people who are on TRT came back either normal or LOW!!
All of the meat and eggs I'm eating, all of the protein I'm drinking, the little bit of test I'm shooting, all of the workouts... and my liver and prostate are totally fine. I'm pretty damned pleased about that.
I'm also totally out of the danger zone now after having been diagnosed as dangerously pre-diabetic at the beginning of the year.
I'm dropping weight while adding strength, I'm off my gout medication and haven't had any kind of flare-up, and I'm feeling better than I have since 2002, when I came back to Canada after having lived in Europe.
I've got some major life changes on the horizon, and I'm not stressed about them at all.
My doc gave me the go-ahead to bump my TRT up to 100mg every 5 days (I've been injecting once a week), because my body is obviously responding so well to the treatment without any real evidence of negative side effects.
Changing my diet to follow Dr. John Berardi's basic principles, getting on TRT, hitting the gym with honest persistance, getting my shakes, greens, and good fats... coming here, getting advice, and keeping this log... it's turned my life around.
I have to sincerely thank everyone on these boards who's offered any kind of encouragement, and there are a whole lot of you. Making such huge changes was heavy going at first, it meant (and it still means) a whole lot to get good advice and hear some kind words.
I've been so nervous about the blood tests that I found it hard to post add to this log... When I thought about my own training, diet, and supps, I couldn't help thinking about what I'd do if it turned out that the TRT was hurting my health in any way. The improvements in my sleep, mood, work, social life, married life, boners, recovery, and intensity in the gym are so great that I think I'd rather have 20 more years living like this than 40 more years of "the old me." What a huge relief it is that my body can handle the therapy.
I got through the stress of waiting to hear the results by hitting the gym, going to concerts, watching a ton of MMA, and coming here to argue about MMA with guys on the board.
I'll post more in the next couple of days: Reflections on the changes coming up, thoughts after having seen Neil Young in concert, a couple of recipes and ideas for how to mix Gemma protein with food...
:greet
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So six days ago I was back in Vancouver to see Neil Young in concert. He's looking pretty old now, and I guess that makes sense considering he's been around since 1945 and has lived pretty hard for most of that time. The guy has been a touring musician longer than I've been alive, and I'm 43 years old! The people in his band carried clear evidence of many years on the road, as well. Still, they blew the roof off of GM Place. There wasn't even a tiny hint of anyone going through the motions. These were not business people trying to bleed a few more dollars out of the nostalgia market. These were driven artists and performers, doing what they dearly love to do.
Thinking about that, and reflecting on Natenator's "Does Anyone Ever Get Tired of This?" thread, I've come up with the following:
If you want to keep loving what you're doing, you can't ever let it become a chore. Obviously, I don't mean to suggest that you should not work very, very, very hard at it... but I do mean that you have to get some enjoyment out of it as well. You can't ever let it become "just" work.
One of the ways to do that is to mix things up once in a while: Neil Young sometimes tours with Crazy Horse. Sometimes it's just him and his guitar. This time around, it was family and old friends that he's been playing with for years (His wife Peggy, old crony Anthony Crawford, Ben Keith, Rick Rosas, Chad Cromwell). He's got an insane number of songs to choose from, and he mixes his set list up every tour. During a single concert he'll shift from all-out rockers like Cinnamon Girl to acoustic ballads like Old Man and back again. He doesn't just do the same thing over and over again.
It's like us in the gym. We've got so many exercises to choose from, but it's all too easy to fall into the rut of just doing the same thing all the time. Switching from doing bench presses all the time to doing more pushups, blast strap work, and cable stuff on the Cybex machine has got me all excited about working my pecs again. When I get tired of that, maybe I'll switch to dips or something. There are a lot of ways to get your muscles to grow.
There are so many ways to train, but a lot of guys are so focussed on high-volume work that they never go high-frequency or high-intensity. A lot of guys are so into high intensity that they never do multiple work sets for one bodypart. There are a lot of training styles that work... but most of them only work for a limited time. Switching things up in a big way can renew both your growth and your enthusiasm.
I'm sure that Young takes breaks from time to time, where he doesn't sing a note or pick up a guitar for days at a time. If you're not peaking for a contest or something, you can probably take the occasional break yourself. Just don't make the huge mistake I did and allow your break to expand into a couple of years of lazy living.
The musicians that Young plays with may not be the technically greatest players in the world, but they are the people who bring out the best in his songs and the people that he loves to work with. In the same way, if you want to love training, you need to find the place that suits you and surround yourself with people who get what you're doing and support you in it.
Finally, Neil Young blew the audience away by doing an incredible version of the Beatles' A Day in the Life as his encore. It was totally unexpected, but it worked like a charm. Sometimes, you just have to break the mold. For me, keeping this log is something brand new and it's inspired me to be consistent with my training and diet in a way I never expected. Taking a new protein, and having my shakes on a daily basis has probably been a huge contributer to me being able to keep adding strength as I the drop fat.
I'm excited about training, and I'm excited about dieting. I want to keep that going.
I'm never going to compete as a bodybuilder or powerlifter. I'm never going to be a professional strongman. Still, I want to keep training hard and eating right for the rest of my life. I'd like to go into the gym when I'm in my 60s with the same energy and passion that Neil Young has when he takes the stage in his 60s. I gave up on it and let myself go once, from 2004-2007. I ate whatever I wanted and only exercised once in a while and with very little intensity. I ended up a 300 pound sack of goo, with gout and kidney stones and a bad back. I never want to go there again. If I want to stay on the right track, I've got to keep it fun and keep it interesting.
It's a life-long battle. After all... rust never sleeps.
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Had a nice workout today. I went to the local pool, because my wife likes to swim while I'm lifting, and we can meet in the hot tub afterward for a soak. Nice stuff.
The actual weight room isn't anything spectacular. In fact, there's only one Olympic bar in the whole place. Usually, though, no-one is using it anyway.
Today... well, today there were two other guys in there training seriously. There was a guy who looked to be a bit older than me, who was doing some Olympic-lifter type training. There was a guy who looked to be younger, who was genuinely huge and ripped, in tremendous condition. The younger guy was using the barbell to do upright rows, so I asked if I could work in. He said that he was already working in with the Olympic lifter. The older guy, hearing this, invited me to join them so I did. It was pretty nice. A lot of the time, where I live, I am pretty much the biggest and strongest guy in the gym. In this case, the younger guy was WAY bigger and in MUCH better shape, and the older guy was pound-for-pound a whole lot stronger that I've ever been. It was kind of inspiring.
Also, both guys were friendly and helpful, but not chatty or distracting. All three of us trained pretty hard. It was more or less a perfect workout atmosphere. The older guy gave me some really helpful tips on my form in the clean. I complimented the younger guy on his traps, and he said that he hardly ever works traps and shoulders, because he's focussed on keeping everything in proportion. I figure that, if you're going to have one body part that grows too fast, shoulders would probably be the best one.
It was cool just working in, too. The weight on the bar was a bit less than I usually use for the clean & press, so I just did a few more reps than usual. I got a great pump out of that. Sometimes it's nice to mix things up a bit.
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Went shopping for groceries, here's what we got:
2 club packs of chicken breasts
1 club pack of chicken thighs
5 cans of tuna
2 tubs of cottage cheese
2 tubs of yogurt
2 dozen Omega 3 eggs
2 cans of black beans
1 kilo bag of frozen French style green beans
1 kilo bag of frozen Oriental style mixed veggies
2 kilo bag of frozen blueberries
1 bag of fuji apples
1 bag of red delicious apples
3 pounds of onions
1 bag of baby carrots
10 avocados
2 pineapples
4 bottles of high fiber V8
1 bag of oats
tomatoes
cauliflower
cucumber
Just looking at that list makes me happy. When my wife and I were wrapping the chicken before freezing it, I understood how lucky I am to have someone like her that supports me in my goals.
Those groceries, my protein, some olive oil, some greens powder, fish oil, and flax seed...
I'm good to go.
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One of the great things about the LG Gemma protein is that it mixes in quite nicely with other stuff. I like to mix it in with my oatmeal, with yogurt and berries, with cottage cheese and fruit (about 1 scoop per cup works well), with cold coffee... for whatever reason I didn't like it as much when I mixed it in with yogurt and oatmeal at the same time. With everything else, though, it works just great.
Here's something to try as it gets colder, kind of a protein nog:
Mix up two scoops of protein, a cup and a half of water, a big pinch (half teaspoon) of cinnamon, and a little pinch (quarter teaspoon or less) of cayenne pepper. It's really good, probably better that you'd think.
And here's a healthy frozen treat, kind of a bodybuilding version of fruit gelato:
Fill a food processor about 2/3 full with frozen berries. Add three scoops of protein. Turn on the processor, and add a tiny bit of water as it blends. Don't make it runny, though. Scrape the sides down and process it some more. This one is amazing!
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I've been working a couple of new exercises into my routine, just subbing them in for other things once a week or so. I find that it helps me to keep my interest and motivation high, which is really important to me these days.
For example, Doing cleans and presses from the floor for 5X5 has become my favourite exercise and a staple of my whole-body routines. I've seen some real improvement in my delts and traps, and it really gets my heart going as well.
From time to time, though, I like to do one-arm dumbbell hang cleans instead. For those, I start with the 'bell hanging by my waist and my knees slightly bent, I straighten my legs while explosively pulling the dumbbell up in an upright-row type of motion, then I snap my elbow down under the 'bell, and press it over head. I do 6-8 on each side, and I don't rest until I've done both shoulders. It's a killer. I can barely make 8 reps with 60-pound dumbbells and I really feel it the next day. It seems to beat the crap out of my entire shoulder girdle.
