Sorry for the lack of updates these two weeks but not a lot has been updated in my regimen since the last post about 2 weeks ago.

RECAP

As I have stated, I have begun adding meat into my diet, a lot more than I had been having during the first 3 weeks of my plan.  For about 2 weeks now I have been taking in 1+lb of steak twice a week and the rest of the days are filled with 4 chicken thighs, to add more protein I include 3 eggs a day, sometimes 4.  
Despite the increase in calories with fattier cuts of non lean meat, I have continued to lose weight.

(Week 3 to End of week 5)

Granted the weight lose is no longer as fast as it was initially, but that is to be expected at this point when your body wants to hang on to its comfortable amount of fat depending on what type of body you have.  Granted it’s also much colder now and I’m sure my body naturally will want to hold onto it more to keep me warm haha

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

(Week 3 to end of week 5)

Continuing to slim down, this time more noticeably in the upper torso area on the chest and the trapezius on the posterior sides of the torso.  This may be in regards of adding in new exercises in my gym workouts (more on that later)
From the looks of it the rate of weight and fat lose may be starting to come down to a halt or very very minimal, if anything I will be gaining weight from this point on.
My PT has been kicked up a big notch with more muscle training for my left leg with releve’s and other exercises, the muscles have begun to grow and slowly getting toned.
As for my torso achieving a more sculpted look, at this point I’m going to guess I’ll me upping the weights gradually to increase the bulk of muscles slightly and more more reps and endurance exercises to tone the muscles so that they pop out a little more.

NEW WEIGHT EXERCISES

Adding to my gym workouts I’ve begun to do some bench press again, something I haven’t done since my high school days…christ. Definitely a big chest workout so hopefully that will bring out my pectorals a little.
Secondly I have added “rowing” workouts to make sure that my back muscles are balancing out all the workouts in the front, lord knows we dancers need to have a nice strong held back.  
The addition of these workouts may be contributing to the slight decrease and compactness to my upper torso compared to 2 weeks ago.

THOUGHTS

I would say so things are going great, its definitely still a challenge as I need to make sure I have time to eat my snacks as well as cooking the meals, and of course I still haven’t stopped thinking about how wonderful a pizza or burger would taste however I am able to pass them off more easily than I used to. 

Mentally everything seems to be fine as I’m very surprised that I’ve been doing this crazy idea for almost 1.5 months now, time sure has flown.  However recently this week I haven’t been able to sleep well or fall asleep for that matter, I’m not sure what it is but something must be subconsciously bothering me as thats usually why I can’t sleep.  Although I will point out that when I began eating meat again I wasn’t as tired and had a lot more energy to do my gym workouts harder and longer.

Other than that we are nearing the halfway mark, another half to go and we’ll see what my body looks like after 3 months of transformational habits.  It’s looking good so far, I thank you all again for your support and keeping me motivated through this project.

God bless

- Jason

It has now been 3 weeks since I have begun this journey and A lot of things have happened that has made it hard mainly the craving for fast foods however that has since subsided quite a bit.  Sure I would love to have a Dominos or Pizza Hut delicious-ness or a nicely wrapped stuffed full Chipotle Burrito, but now I seem to have an easier time avoiding them as I go home to prepare and eat my meals with my lunch/very early dinner being the one I look forward to the most because thats usually when I take the time and make my metabolic soup which has evolved quite a bit since I last showed it.

Metabolic Soup (Final Form)

The main ingredients are still the same, the only thing I have added were some other spices as well cooking method to make the soup nice and clear instead of the cloudy soup if the egg is cooked too quickly in boiling water. In later entries when there are more down times between post I will begin compiling recipe posts for people interested in cooking it themselves.  Maybe even a youtube video of it.

This is the Turkey leg counter part with a completely different way of cooking to achieve this variant of the Metabolic Soup.

PROGRESS SO FAR TIMELINE

I can say all I want about my progress, but a progress report is not complete without visual evidence, I figured Id wait until I got into this a little further before I did that so the progress can be tracked, but here we are nearing a month after another week.

 < - Starting

< - Week 1

 < - Week 3 (today)

The beginning picture is rather embarrassing to say that somewhere in there was once a dancing body, definitely got a visible layer of love/floatation device/spare tire hanging around there as most people gather extra fat there naturally so it seems. The next place would be my face, the rest of my body while is bigger it shows more in my face if I am out of shape, I’ve noticed this looking through my pictures from childhood to now that if I was chubbers that year, my school headshot would be of the canon ball variety

Week 1 my body went into flushing mode as anything that was bad in there before was beginning to flush out of my system from the intake of more metabolic raising foods and the constant eating just enough process kicked my body into gear. We can see visually that my torso shrank quite a bit as well as my face began taking a less round form from the water weight and some fat being flushed away in that process.  This week was deemed really hard as my post for that week describe how much I would crave fast foods when I passed them.

Week 3 May not be as noticeable in terms of change from Week 1, but you will see in just a sec that there is a difference.  For the most part my body has stay about the same size as week one, with just a very slight reduction in the waste size and face continuing to slim down. With my weight training the muscles are a little more defined however because my protein intake was much lower up to this point my muscle building wouldn’t have progressed as fast, but that will be changing which started today from my grocery shopping. 

 < - Starting

 < - Week 1

 < - Week 3 (Today)

Aside from me loosing perfect 1lb increments with not decimal differences (odd) the big shocker was stepping onto the scale today. Even with less than noticeable results visually I somehow weighed in 3lb lighter than 2 weeks ago, I weight myself another time just to make sure it wasn’t some fluke, and sure enough it wasn’t.
Granted I will not use my weight numbers be a judgement if I’m nearing my goal, rather this is just a supplemental variable for me to keep track and match it with my visual progress.  As we all know muscle weights more than fat so at some point I will most likely stop losing weight and gain some back from muscle mass, especially when my legs gain back the muscle lost from laying in a bed for nearly a month.

THOUGHTS SO FAR

This has definitely been an interesting journey so far changing the way I eat and what I eat paring it with less than cardio workouts has brought me. Writing this post was also the first time I saw the pictures put side by side, I’m definitely happy with the results so far as it seems to be going the way my hypothesis was brought up on.  
However as I said in my last post, my original idea had a flaw in the diet plan that eventually revealed itself nearing the end of Week 1, I had no fat going into me and despite what people say about animal fat, it is now showing through some research that it actually aids in many things including loosing weight itself.  Like anything with the human body, we are able to adapt to anything whether its at the physical level or even at the cellular level, P90x was even developed with the idea that you never let your body get used to what you’re doing.  So this bring me into…

PHASE II

Diet reform as well as introducing newer workouts to go with the old.
As in my last post I detailed on why I’ve begun sleeping much longer than I should have, phase II will be introducing less lean cuts of meat into my diet such as dark meat chicken and steak (Sirloin)  This will definitely bring more protein to my body to repair and build my muscle, all meals will still be eaten through out the day with the bigger meals being around lunch or a very early dinner (5pm).  To start of this plan we got ourselves this -

Introducing the protein meal, steak, eggs and peas, all providing a good deal of protein as well as animal saturated fat that has been lacking in my diet for the last 3 weeks.  Of course this is not going to be my meal everyday as having steak the entire time probably wouldn’t be all that great, I will be mixing in a chicken quarter metabolic soup going on this schedule for the week

Steak > Chicken > Chicken > Steak > Chicken > Chicken > Chicken

As for my gym workouts I will continue with my arm, shoulder, chest/torso workouts but I have also been cleared to start swimming. I used to compete in swimming and its definitely a great workout for the whole body.  I have PT again tomorrow morning and I will hopefully be cleared to start using a reformer so I can begin getting more strength into my left calve as well as the rest of my body.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Today was also the first time I broke a sweat at the gym, I finally can bike hard enough to get a cardio heart rate of 155bpm. Cardio heart rate has been something thats completely missing from my workouts as my achilles did not allow me to move around long enough to get up there, for sure this will power up some faster results. 
As for this sudden addition in my diet, I will keep up with more self checks to see if its effective in terms of energy, performance, weight lose and any physical muscle gains. I will report back of my findings as I’m sure this is going to be a very interesting week as each of them has been. Until then…

Everyone I wish a happy holidays with your family, be safe and have a great one!

- Jason

Sorry for the delay its been a hectic weeks of running all about, but here are some updates.

METABOLISM 

My metabolic raising regimen is working in that it has indeed successfully raised my metabolic rate.  At the one week weigh-in I had lost a solid pound going from 172.2 down to 171.2, I know its not much but its a start, since that weigh-in over a week ago I have noticed that I have continually begun to trim down in certain regions of my body with the waist not going down as fast (but that’s pretty much normal for just about everyone for fat to disappear slowly in this region)

MUSCLE TRAINING

As a dancer I never developed strong arms for whatever reason, even during my breakdancing days I was never the strongest in my crew, I think I relied heavily on my flexibility in those days to balance my weight evenly to take away any additional stresses from my arms when up in freezes. (proving you don’t need to be some beef cake to breakdance as long as you understand your body and balance it accordingly while up in the air, however you obviously need some very controlled articulate abdominal’s so that you can maneuver your limbs accordingly while in freezes)

A majority of my gym exercise’s revolve around the use of free weight dumbells, body weight stuff like push ups, and machines that help assist a few things like pullups. I’m staying away from a lot of major machines, while they do target the muscles, because they do not promote natural motion. All the exercises are mainly to target my bicep, triceps, shoulders, and pretty much the rest of my torso.


DIET REFORM

While on this raising metabolism diet I have found that while it sure does keep my satisfied for most of my waking hours without over eating and still able to have antiquate energy to go about my day with PT and other physical activities. As the week went on I found myself becoming more tired in the mornings and at one point slept for 11 hours straight before I finally woke up….Not normal obviously.  I then was reminded of a documentary that I remembered watching called “Fat Head” (Available to watch for free on Hulu.com) where he mentioned a diet called the “Pritikin Diet” where you limited fats down to 10% of your daily calorie intake.  The later notion from people on this type of diet was that they lost energy as well as became depressed later on.  Granted I did not get depressed as I already went through that after my injury, but I definitely noticed my energy level decreasing and taking much longer to recharge through sleep.

This calls for a reform in my diet plan as some more research had me find that animal saturate fat is not as harmful as we are lead to believe, rather that it actually promotes energy, weight loss, in some cases immune boosting and bring cholesterol ratio to a healthy level.  I won’t go into the details but at some point I will compile the medical journals and studies I researched to why I’m changing my plan.

In the next few days I will be introducing some “non-lean” meats into my diet, specifically sirloin steaks twice or so a week, and either turkey thigh or chicken thigh into my dishes and soup. I will report back in a week or two if my metabolism is still continuing as it is now and if my energy levels come back where I’m not asleep for 11 hours straight. 

BODY FUNCTIONS RETURNING

Before I had mentioned how much salt I take in and definitely more refined Carbs than I should have been taking in.  This weekend I made a very last minute trip down to my ballet company I danced with for the last two years, of course being in town for a short while I had to go back to my favorite cafe’s and restaurants and order my dishes, they not being processed fast foods it would be “better” for me but that doesn’t mean that it was part of my diet plan especially in accordance to the Metabolic ingredients of my foods.  What I did was make sure to divide up some foods as well as just simply sharing the dishes so that I didn’t eat all of it like I normally would have on my own.  The trip I ate out a total of 6 times and to my amazement my body has already changed in the way I processed the higher sodium intake as well as some of the starchier foods.  Where as I used to retain water from the sodium my kidneys are not functioning more properly and pushing the excess salt out quickly.  The starch carbs that would have normally slugged me down did not have any effect on me.  Granted I didn’t eat them in the portions I used to eat them at, but I did notice that my body was more efficient in processing them in and out of my body.

But even so, I do sincerely apologize that I ate out, even though it wasn’t fast food, I still went out of my diet plan, but really if you drove all the way back to your old stomping grounds how can you not relive the places you went to eat (but at least this time in moderation). The only gain to this act is that I now know my body is working more optimally than it was before.

CLOSING THOUGHTS AND WEEKS PLAN

My P.T. has been upped this week, today they had me try and go up on releve on my injured foot, needless to say I’m not ready and couldn’t get off the ground at all without feeling unstable and unsolid.  However going up onto releve with both feet on the ground was easier than it has been and the new exercises i’ll be doing will for sure get more strength and motion back into my left calve.

I will continue my main metabolic diet plan with its ingredients and small meals through out the day, only difference is I will be adding in some fattier cuts of meat here and there on the premise that I can find the meat that are “grass feed” or “free range” only.  I wan’t to keep the meat that I eat as naturally occurring as possible to test the theory from “Fat Head” that “Mother Nature was not stupid”
So I will stay away from meats that are injected with hormones and or feed some crazy diet so that they can be fattened up more than they naturally are.

Thank you all for your support, I truly appreciate it on this journey,

Jason

Thank you so much

Temptation’s have slowly progressed especially tonight.
On my drive back home I pass 10 potential places of fast foods that I would crave simply cause they were there, but tonight is usually my movie night in which I would pick up a Pizza and Soda and veg out to some movie.  Needless to say all my mind thought about was the taste of such delights, but alas I have a plan to keep and my conscience won’t allow me to lie in my blog even though I don’t know who may be reading this as I go.

By day three I already feel noticeably different from the lessening in calorie intake as well as the salts.  I feel rather flushed and unclogged through-out my body, however I feel that since this is a sudden change to my routine that my body today has felt more sleepy than it did from day 1.  I may sleep an extra hour tonight just to replenish and not push my body too fast in its healing.

Walking slowly becomes a little easier each day however by the end of the day it’s still worn out and I don’t walk as fluid, but this will just take awhile of course.

As for my continuing exploration and evolution of my “Super Metabolic Soup” it is slowly becoming more and more solid as a stand alone meal.  I realized yesterday during my stage 2 that 1.5 jalapeno boiled into the soup broth was much too much!
Stage 3 today the broth is becoming more delicious however with the lack of any salt in this concoction it feels lacking for my taste buds so I’m trying to make it more spicy (not in the hot sense necessarily). Tomorrow I will attempt to make it a slightly more filling soup by adding in 100% organic whole wheat noodles, I’ll report back on how that goes.

Until then, have a good night everyone 

Super Metabolic Soup (Stage 1)

Protein Fiber tasty Oats

It has begun, after going to bed at midnight waking up bright and early at 7am, for people I’m sure that’s not a big deal but I am in no way a morning person by any means. 

SUMMARY

Today began with a bowl of rolled oatmeal with some high protein and fiber cereal mixed together followed by a PT appointment to which all of the exercises were too easy, but alas I should probably do as my trainer says so that I don’t progress too quickly.
After my short session I took down a banana and headed off to the gym to do some weights, light cardio on a straight bike, and some stretching. 
An apple later I am back home to wash up and relax and work on some projects before I headed off for the evening to my engagements, but not before I had some pasta from the night before.  Just arriving back home I began to experiment with a concept that I will soon make a name for, but for now its just a “super metabolic soup” (More details later)

THOUGHTS

Because I am eating many small meals through-out the day, about once every 1.5-2 hours, I found myself in an constant state of hunger of stomach churns only to quickly be remedied with a small portion of my meal, but hunger would return within the hour.
Putting food into my system so many times through out the day was not a big problem what I found to be difficult was to keep continuously drinking water.  I definitely did not meet the recommended H20 quota, nor do I know if I took in 2000 calories today…I definitely ate less than I normally would as snacking on meals allowed me to satisfy my hunger more regularly rather than sparsely through-out the day.

ROCKY THOUGHTS

Driving around I found myself craving just about everything I have sworn off, pizza, burgers, tacos, they were around me taunting me to reason a way to taste it, but I have stood firm so far and kept thinking about my “super metabolic soup” haha (yes details is coming up in a sec)

FOOD OF THE DAY

- Protein Fiber tasty Oats (Breakfast)

Simple and easy and literally takes maybe 3 minutes to make, 2 of which are because of the microwave. 

Simply take your rolled oats, put it into a bowl, add milk, nuke it for 2 minutes, add some Whole foods 360 protein crunch of your choice and VIOLA!  You now have yourself a nice high fiber and protein breakfast that will surely keep you full most of the morning, not only do the oats fill you and are good for you but the added crunch of the cereal gives it a nice good satisfying texture. The cereal has a very low sugar count, only 10g per serving, giving your morning oatmeal a pleasant light sweet flavor, much better for you than a pack of instant quaker apple cinnamon oats

- Super Metabolic Soup

I was once told that “you are like all asians, taking it to the extreme” …
I’m not exactly sure how I should take that, but I guess you can’t blame them for thinking that when here I am…taking soup to the extreme.

How extreme? Not too extreme I don’t.

The concept of the soup is based on many of the things from the list of metabolism raising foods, taking just about half of them and creating one meal.

This soup contains:

- Water
- Jalapeno peppers
- Onion
- Broccoli
- Ginger Powder
- Ground turkey breast 
- 2 eggs

- add some saracha and garlic powder for some light but bold flavor 

Boil these ingredients in that order turns you a very nice light soup thats actually not too bad for a start, but definitely room for improvement in terms of bringing out more flavors. The soup combines many metabolism raising ingredients as well as keeping the salt levels down that you usually get from canned soups, make this a decently health choice with vegetables and protein

Disclaimer: I am in no way a great writer of any kind, I apologize for any major grammar error, misspellings, as well as poor body structure of my posts.  Thank you

Hello,

My name is Jason, I am a professional ballet dancer who recently sustained a complete tear of my left achilles tendon.  It’s been nearly 3 months since the incident happened which ultimately lead me to having surgery to re-attach the tendon.

Since then I have gone through several mind states: 

1. Optimism 

2. Anger/Frustration

3. Depression

and now

4. Determination

In 3 months I have noticeably deteriorated in health from losing hair, less energy, fat build up, all of which began to appear between my anger and depression. At the time, unable to really cook well in the kitchen with crutches and a foot raised at all times, I began eating more fast foods than I ever really would have wanted while I was actively dancing.  But now that I am finally out of my walking boot and starting PT, its time to lock down and kick some ass to get back in dancing shape!

…One additional challenge though

I would not say that I’ve ever looked like your typical male ballet dancer in that while I was decently thin and not overweight, I never looked ripped due to the last layer of fat that I just couldn’t get rid of.  That is all to change.

REGIMEN 
———— 

Along with my regular PT exercises/session as well as addition workouts that I will do where my left foot does not need to be used actively,  I will completely convert my diet from what it was during injury and even in general.

1: No more fast foods (not even subway)

- We all know fast foods are bad for us but that still doesn’t mean that its not tasty as hell sometimes if not all the time.  In my recent trip to Charleston I realized that I never truly had a craving for fast foods while I was down there.  Sure I saw the McD’s and Wendy’s around, but they looked SO out of place next to all the beach like shack/cottage eateries that I had absolutely NO desire to go there, not once.  However on my trip back home in the car i would see them on the road next to typical buildings that are not that of near the beach and I had nothing but cravings…Interesting huh?  I somehow managed to avoid them because I knew it was time to stop.

2: Introducing Metabolism boosting foods

- Sometime in high school I had CRAZY metabolism, I could literally eat what I wanted and it never effect me in anyway. I wasn’t really an athlete then, but I still maintained a relatively normal weight.  Doing any search around the internet you’ll see lists and studies of foods and regular diets that will help raise your metabolism. 
My so far foods I’m introducing are from here 

3: Eating habit 

- We’ve all heard of the “eat smaller meals spread through-out the day” rather than eating 3 big meals.  Its another way to maintain a steady metabolism through the day but sometimes its harder to do because you have to find those times in the day to eat.  I believe most people say to split it into 4-5 little meals, I will aim for more than that closer to 6-8 buy eating small proportions of meals/snack throughout the day.

This will be especially challenging for me because my friends who know me, know I can pack away A LOT of food whether I’m hungry or not, I am not kidding. Don’t believe me? This is what people have witness me eat in one sitting.

Combo #1

6  Wendy’s Burgers
2 Large fries
1 Cup of Chili 

Combo #2

2 Subway Footlongs
1 Chipotle Burrito
*or vice versa

Combo #3

5 taco bell burritos
2 Wendy’s Burgers
2 large fries 

Gross I know…

4: Sugar? Salt? gotta GO!

- People who know me know that I LOVE salty foods and snacks. Salt while is necessary for normal body function, in excess can lead to the body to retain more water than needed thus causing the cover up of your muscles that you may want to define while on the stage. 
I’ve never really had a big sweet tooth by any means but that doesn’t mean I can’t cut out foods that may have more sugar in them like cereals and energy bars. Any and all sugars I get in my body will be mainly from fruits.

5: Others

- Some other things that will probably be good for me like getting to bed earlier and waking up earlier.

TIME FRAME: 3-4 Months

The Dr’s have given me the time frame that I will most likely not be able to go back to my regular performing dancing duties until March or so. This will be my marker for this project body/health transformation.

This blog I hope to use as a journal of my quest in not only healing, but creating a body that I want for the rest of my performing career in the most healthy conscious way possible.  I will keep you all as up to date on what I do as well as progress pictures.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long spiel, I hope that you will join me and encourage me in this long process that has already taken me away from what I love the most so far in my life.

Thank you and god bless

- Jason