Strength in Interesting Places IV: I'm too sexy for these logs

[Obscure Terror]

Nice session.

Beirut;
So it's less like this:

and more like this:

 

[JauntyAngle]

Nice session.

Beirut;
So it's less like this:

and more like this:

Yep.

 

[JauntyAngle]

In Beirut.

Been working far two days. I am interviewing people from 8am to 6pm, and it is knackering. Interviewing well requires building rapport, which in turn requires lots of things - listening and responding well, adjusting your language and style to fit the other person's, being ready to adapt the plan four the interview based on what you think will work. Overall it's just a pretty intense thing - if you do it well anyway.

Beirut has someone fine women. Lots of short skirts, tight dresses. Girls showing off stomach or back. Even in the office I am in, there are girls in tight, thin dresses. Quite distracting.

Overall it remains an awesome place. Interesting, diverse. People super friendly. I really like this place.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Beirut

Haven't logged for ages. I will try to make this fairly quick.

Work went really well, but I was kind of dead on my feet by the end of each day. Everyone was really happy with me, even though they didn't really see any output, and they asked for me to come back to present my final results. Very happy about that as I get a bit more time in Beirut. So I will be back at the end of next month.

My friend came over on the Thursday night, we had a quiet one on Thursday and then pushed the boat out from Friday onwards. Some highlights included:

Friday night in Mar Miakhel. So Mar Miakhel, and the adjacent district whose name escapes me, has the reputation for being the 'hipster' part of Beirut. Literally packed with really cool bars and a few clubs- any one of them would be one of the coolest places in London, IMO. We actually got stuck at the first bar that we went to, because after the first drink the barman asked us if we wanted to do (free) shots. We ended up doing about four free shots each, as well as many cocktails and beers. The barman also offered other people around us shots, and we ended up making friends with them. In the end, I think we drank $100-$150 of booze in addition to the shots- the barman charged us $40. We were shocked, saying "What the fuck, $40?"- the Barman looked sad thinking that we were complaining about how hight it was and said, "I knocked loads of things off!" Kevin, best barman in the world. After that we went looking for and found a club, we danced about 2AM. Not really my taste in music- it was sort of updated funk, but we still had a blast.

Saturday day trip to Chateau Kefraya. Mentioned in the Pub, we took a trip out to a vineyard in the Bekka Valley. Took one of the guys we met on Friday. Delicious fancy Lebanese buffet, delicious wine refilled regularly, a tour of where they make the wine, a wine tasting and trip out to where the grapes grow. It was pretty awesome. Got rid of a brutal hangover. The view:

Saturday night in Hamra. So we were hanging out in our hotel and we met a young Iraqi guy who had to flee Iraq because his father was investigating war crimes and people he was investigating were trying to get revenge on him by going after his family. He was a nice, cool guy, and took us to some to an amazing Falafel place and then to a strip of very cool bars not far from the hotel. They were less international and a bit younger because close to the largest university in Beirut. We went to one where we had the best cocktail I have ever had. Super cool friendly staff too. The bar:

Sunday pool party in Beirut. So we tracked down a hotel that had a pool party, went there. It was everything I hoped it would be- dance music, plenty of alcohol, massive Lebanese muscle-heads with tiny legs, plastic women in tiny bikinis tottering round in high heels. I guess people get there around midday and only stay until 4pm or so, but we stayed for a bit longer. One of the other guys we met on Friday came to join us. We had dinner, went back to the hotel. The pool party:

Sunday night in Hamra. So we went back to the bar we'd been to the night before, because the guy we were with had just moved to Beirut and didn't know the area. Also we wanted to drink the cocktails again. When we got there, there was an Egyptian DJ doing a set, he played for about 6 hours. He was amazing. Very relaxed, hypnotic dance music with some Arabic sounds very subtly interlaced into it. Like an Arabicized verion of "Ballearic" dance music (the kind of thing Ibiza is known for). There was hardly anyone in the bar, so we almost had him to ourselves. Apparently he was off to do a set in some big club in LA the following week. Smashed by the end of it.

Monday day by the pool. Pretty badly damaged by this point. After excellent Burgers for lunch, we found a more laid-back place, more of a regular swimming pool by the sea. We swam out into the Mediterranean out to a raft, swam back. Waves were quite high, more than a metre between top and bottom. You could get up the ladder onto the quay just by timing your approach- at the top of the swell the water took you almost to the very top of a 2m ladder, whereas at the bottom there was some distance to climb. That helped to shake off the hangover.

Overall, it was spectacular. Can't wait to get back. There are a tonne of places worth visiting, all about an hour or so out of Beirut. I can see myself visiting regularly.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Exercise catch-up

Okay, so I wasn't able to exercise at all in Beirut. Getting into a gym wasn't really realistic as they tend to do long-term membership only, but I could have done something in my room. Oh well, I suck.

While I was in Beirut the stars aligned and I truly decided that I want to lose some weight/body fat. By "truly" I mean that I decided I will do what it takes to really lose weight- diet strictly, up my conditioning, accept any negative impact on my lifts.

The plan that has emerged is every day to cycle between an upper body press, upper body pull and lower body exercise, and do one secondary exercise. Not high volume, so should be done in 30 minutes. Then conditioning. This is what I've done so far:

• Wednesday. 4 sets of 3 bench press @85kg; 4 sets of 8 chins; 30 minutes on stationary bike.
• Thursday. 4 sets of 3 front squats @90kg (full ROM); 4 sets of 8 landmine press @42.5kg; 30 minutes incline walk
• Saturday: 5 sets of 3 front squat @90kg (full ROM); about 40 minutes random messing around with Oly; 30 minutes on random cardio machine
• Sunday: 3 sets of 3 bench @85kg, 3 sets of 3 @82.5kg; 3 sets of 10 preacher curls @35kg; 30 minutes' swimming

I am on an austere diet: breakfast is a protein shake, lunch is some type of salad, dinner fairly normal (but still much smaller portion than normal and not much carb). It's making the workouts quite hard, which is one of the reasons why I am not doing much conditioning and the weights are light.

I am using the Fitness First Platinum here in Amman. It is great. 2 power racks as well as a squat rack. All of the Cross-Fitty type stuff, a pool, and even an Oly platform and bumpers. I am going to mess about with Oly stuff as my secondary exercise on squat day because it is fun. I plan to use the pool a lot for my conditioning.

I am only going to follow this for two weeks, then I go home. I don't want to starve myself in Thailand, so I will just do everything I can to get back to doing two sessions a day. If I just clean up a few of my habits while I am there, I will not gain weight or even lose a little weight even if I eat fairly normally and drink regularly too.

Oh, and a note on the front squat. So I am determined to switch to doing full squats only. It does make them quite a bit harder, especially after a couple of reps. But I am okay with that. I don't think it will take too long to get back to where I was.

 

[Obscure Terror]

Might be worth moving your carbs around to immediately before and after your workouts to keep the fuel available for the sessions. Should help maintain energy during training.

Then steak and veggies later on for eatin'.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Might be worth moving your carbs around to immediately before and after your workouts to keep the fuel available for the sessions. Should help maintain energy during training.

Then steak and veggies later on for eatin'.

I might do that... in so far as there are any carbs to move around. Other than carbs from a little bit of tomato, half an avocado and the milk in my coffee, yesterday's carb intake was about 30-40 grammes of pasta. Maybe I will eat a piece of fruit before I go to the gym or something like that.

 

[Obscure Terror]

Banana & orange after training. Or some toast & jam/peanut butter afterwards maybe. Or fresh bread with honey on, damn right.

As austere as your diet is, it's totally OK to put some easy sugars into your mouth after lifting. In fact it might be even more productive as you will feel better in the gym.

Plus we want you to be doing sets of 100-110kg on your front squats while having abs.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Or some toast & jam/peanut butter afterwards maybe. Or fresh bread with honey on, damn right.

That's probably not happening. I wouldn't really do that when I am not dieting, let alone when I am.

I might see if I can eat something before the workout. Afterwards can wait for dinner.

We want you to be doing sets of 100-110kg on your front squats while having abs.

A noble goal-let is be so!. The weight won't be an issue, but the abs will be much harder. I've only been fairly close to that once in the last three years, and that required similarly austere dieting and lots of conditioning for a month. I reckon I would have needed to go on for another month to get all the way there. Maybe a bit less.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Monday gym session

• Chins: 5 sets of 10 @ BW
• DB row: various weights
• Back extensions: 2 sets of 20 @ BW
• Conditioning: swimming, 35 minutes

Not bad.. gym felt pretty normal and the swimming felt a tonne better than yesterday. Easy most of the way through and in the last five minutes my energy level actually increased. I probably could have gone on for a little longer. Will swim again today, as it is a lot easier to do after squatting and pretending to try to Oly lift.

Diet stuff

Diet held up yesterday- no breakfast (other than a scoop of protein powder on water), a chicken salad with a tiny bit of quinoa, a small bowl of bolognaise sauce also with a tiny bit of quinoa, no snacks of any sort. I only really feel hungry around 12PM, because at that point in the last 17 hours I will only have consumed one scoop of protein powder, plus coffee. I will probably let myself have a small bowl of yoghurt with a little fruit and muesli before or after the gym today, mainly for a bit of nutritional variety.

I made a semi-rough estimate of calories consumed yesterday. I got calorific values for all the ingredients of the meals I ate and tried to estimate the weights when needed. The outcome was 1,305 calories. According to Lyle MacDonald, if you are 'fairly active' you need 27.6 cals per KG of lean mass, which means that maintenance for me is 2,205. So if what I ate today is representative then I am doing about 900 calorie a day deficit. That's under 4 days to lose a pound. I don't remember how he defines 'fairly active' and 'very active'. If I am actually 'very active' then maintenance becomes 2,557 calories and deficit is about 1,200 calories. Holy shit. That's 3 days to lose a pound.

From what I read, you are not meant to have such an large deficit. On the other hand, fuck it. Let's see if I can do this. As I said, it's maximum two weeks. If it works (or really, if I can stick to it without being miserable or having weird mood swings) I will pick it up again in November and do it for long enough to get abs.

 

[Obscure Terror]

The trick will be keeping that calorie intake that low while maintaining a decent protein intake to spare muscle mass. You're essentially doing a protein-sparing modified fast - this is essentially what Lyle's Rapid Fat Loss diet is, although you're not being as extreme as that book.

I did it for a month once, basically only ate grilled meat, green vegetables and protein shakes. I lost 8kg in 3.5 weeks then had to quit, and put maybe 2.5kg back on.

 

[JauntyAngle]

The trick will be keeping that calorie intake that low while maintaining a decent protein intake to spare muscle mass.

Yep, it's not super easy. Even two scoops of whey comes close to 300 calories, which comes close to 25% of my calories for the day. I guess I will have to be careful with beef and steak- extra fat will make it very easy to go over on calories.

 

[Obscure Terror]

Another option would be a BCAA supplement during and after workouts. They're lower calorie and there's good evidence they help promote muscle sparing, especially if you've got gaps between meals. Plus they're tasty and pretty cheap, although carrying powders through airport security might not be best advised given your already extensive security concerns.

 

[MIDMOBOX]

Diets are for losers.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Tuesday

Gym

• Front squat (full ROM): 6 sets of 3 @90kg
• Pretending to do Oly: about 40 minutes, worked up to a few 50kg power snatches
• Conditioning: 40 minutes on stationary bike

It was okay. Front squats felt a lot more steady. Oly was fun but I should probably deadlift since that way I can move a little weight. Pool was full so I couldn't swim.

Diet

• 1 scoop of protein for breakfast
• Medium sized steak and salad (carrot, half tomato, half avocado, two desert spoons of cooked Quinoa, balsamic vinegar)
• Skimmed milk late and milk in a few coffees
• Small bowl of Bolognese sauce and a spoon of cooked Quinoa
• About 100g of yoghurt with a spoon of muesli and a few berries

Not bad. Very likely in the same calorie ball-park as the day before. Still feeling good as of this morning, not feeling like slipping.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Wednesday

No gym yesterday. I was feeling a bit man-fluey and also achey in the knee. Everything feels good again today, hopefully it was just a small thing from hitting the gym 6 days out of 7.

Kept to the diet: scoop of protein for breakfast, salad and a boiled chicken breast for lunch, 175g of poached salmon and some seared vegetables for dinner. No snacks, no other calories except milk in my coffee. Oh, no, tell al lie- I ate two blackberries. (The fruit, not the smartphones.)

 

[Obscure Terror]

It's probably worth taking a multivitamin while dieting, just to cover your bases on micronutrients and keep away the man flu.

 

[JauntyAngle]

It's probably worth taking a multivitamin while dieting, just to cover your bases on micronutrients and keep away the man flu.

Noted. Usually I don't bother but with so little total intake I can see it would be easy to miss out some micro-nutrients.

 

[Obscure Terror]

It all depends what is in your salads I guess, but it would still be tough to get a good balance.

Dieting; it's like starving yourself, for looks!

 

[JauntyAngle]

Dieting; it's like starving yourself, for looks!

If there was ever a good reason to starve yourself, this is it.