Health Challenge Week 2

Well, thanks to APAT Cardiff and lack of access to a kitchen the healthy and regular eating took a bit of a back seat. Simply impossible to follow a paleo diet and eat 6-7 times a day being away from home. Especially difficult if I'm sat at a poker table for multiple hours a day as it was at the weekend.

Tom at Winning Health Solutions uses Charles Poliquin's BioSignature Modulation methods. BioSignature is all about correlating where someone stores their body fat with their hormonal profile. Fat caliper measurements from 12 sites around the body are taken and from the results I then get offered recommendations on nutrition, supplementation, and training. My results from the first two weeks of the challenge are below:

Note: As these are manual measurements there is clearly a margin of error, perhaps from sweat making it difficult to grab the fat, or Tom's technique altering slightly week to week (i.e. between week 2 and 3 he adjusted his method of taking the hamstring measurement). The main aim is for the sum of the 12 sites to be on a downward trend over the next three months.

As I store fat on my chest and abdomen I fit into the insulin and cortisol types (see hormonal profile link). As part of the weekly assessment Tom will give me a suitable task dietary wise to follow rather than bombard me with everything I could do. Last week was to eat 6-7 times a day, each meal to include 200g of animal meat. Failed miserably at that, couldn't get more than 5 - lack of organisation, money and laziness all to blame. As stated above, travelling for poker makes this aim near enough impossible, therefore this week's suggestion is to continue focusing on eating regularly where I can. If I go to a casino take some dark, thin-skinned fruit such as blueberries in with me if I can. If I order from a menu, choose the least-worst option (I do this already - steak and eggs is my favourite anyway!). In situations where neither of the above are possible, then he's asked me to consider BCAAs as a supplement in lieu of eating actual food. Before yesterday this would've been a no due to the expense, but I will probably give it a go - hope I can take some on the plane to Las Vegas!

Due to my hormonal type my body is 100% affected by what goes into it, so the responsibility is mine. I'm unlikely to see a significant decrease in weight during the first three months of training, but I'm looking forward to seeing a steady decline in body fat and a steady increase in lean mass.

Workout wise I am continuing to follow the Gironda protocol, eight sets of eight reps over six different exercises. Last week was 30 secs rest between sets, this week is 20 secs and next week will be 15 secs. Thoroughly unpleasant. Upper body was covered yesterday, with legs today. I'll book in an arms session Thursday or Friday, and for the first time I'll be able to attend a strongman session on Saturday to hit the optimum number of training sessions for the week. The workout tracker on BodySpace is still unavailable (apparently was only going to be down for 24 hours - that was 10 days ago) but I'll post a summary once it's back up and running.