Intensity: 10
Diet: 10

I’ve modified the chart. Now it depends on a global table with the protein/fat per gram values for everything I’ll be eating. I got to my “ideal” 70f today, but I don’t like those calories. I’d like to stay at around 1000 cal, if possible, although not ingesting the fat minimum lowers testosterone and generally disrupts hormonal functions. Maybe I’ll aim at 60f (that’s 102 less calories!).

I also doubled the weight of my dumbbells. They’re now at 4kg each. Exercise was intense but not as hard as I expected. Prudence demands I don’t add more weight for a few days.

Speaking of exercise, cycling was good today. I tried to go faster in the same distance, but my average only increased by 0.54 k/h. Not all apps stop measuring when I stop to drink, so that average might be contaminated. May re-check the whole thing at some point in the future.

Also, my caffeine arrived today! This will help with the 4th lap of the Pentagonito I’ve been pining for and may prove useful during cardio. I don’t drink coffee so I’ll probably only take half a tablet. Curiously, local brands also sold 100-unit bottles at around the same price, but each tablet only had 100mg. This means that the imported thing with tariffs and middlemen profits still doubles the amount of caffeine for the same price. I guess caffeine is just that much cheaper in the USA. Weird.

About the food: for breakfast I had two protein scoops and an egg in two pancakes. Lunch was 181g of chicken breast and 208g of avocado. After cycling, in the afternoon, I had a protein shake and I ended the night with a scrambled egg and 88g of chicken breast. This was nutritionally perfect and delicious. I weighted the chicken, avocado, and even dinner’s olive oil for frying (10g). I estimate another 10g for the lunch’s chicken. I guess I’ll be weighing my food after all.

I’ve realized chicken is cheaper than the protein isolate. The powder is 8.34p per sol (currency unit) while the chicken is 12.9p/sol. Chicken breast also only has 36f per kg, now a plus. Eating more chicken and maybe red meat will allow me to reduce the isolate to 3 servings per day, making a 1200g jar last for 20 days.

I had 6 cigs today. This isn’t a smoke quitting blog, so there’s no commitment there, shut up.

ERRATUM – Food charts in D-9 and D-10 aren’t adding the protein and fat of the eggs to the totals.

Intensity: 8
Diet: 10

I went to bed late yesterday and overslept. As a result, I didn’t have much energy for cardio in the morning. I did put up a good fight so I get an 8.

Courtesy of the good people at the bodybuilding.com forums, I’ve erased my doubts about the proper amount of protein I need to eat. I should indeed be aiming at 160p, never less than 140p, and up to 200p without a fuss. More protein is advantageous for fat loss and minimizing muscle cannibalism (and in fact growing them). I was just worried because I had trouble ingesting that much of the powder.

I also learned there’s a minimum fat intake that I should have. It’s 0.4 times my ideal weight in lbs. That means that I should eat around 65f-70f (grams of fat, new nomenclature). When I learned this I went and fried a hamburger. The nutritional table in the back of the bag was convenient. I never thought I’d end up reading those things seriously. I also looked up the fat amount in a 60g egg (6f). I ended up charting the whole thing and realized it made a fine screenshot for this blog, so I think I’ll be doing this from now on. I also looked up the amount of calories per gram of protein and fat (4 and 9 cal, respectively), so now my excel sheet counts my calories too. Apparently I ate a bit less than 1000 cal (nice!). The chart doesn’t include the butter and oil I used as a bed for the pancakes, scrambled eggs and hamburger though. Weighing that feels excessive. Surely it’s not much.

As for how those figures manifested: breakfast was two servings of powder with one egg resulting in two pancakes, lunch was two servings in two water pancakes, and at night I had the hamburger with a scrambled egg and some broccoli (veggies also aren’t counted in the chart). There’s one last protein shake that I’ll be drinking before bed.

Realizing the need for some fat intake has opened the doors for more enjoyment in my diet. I’ve now researched the fat and protein contents of avocado. I’ll be able to have some bacon and more hamburgers too. Good news all around. I had 3 cigs.

Intensity: 9
Diet: 10

For breakfast, I had the usual two fried eggs, but I also added my first protein shake (24g of protein per serving). I found it acceptable in taste, although somewhat difficult to finish: it feels like a lot when you drink it. It was also a bit too sweet for my liking. I assumed my body just wasn’t used to digesting it because I got the runs. I decided on brute-forcing the issue.

Lunch was some pan garlic broccoli recipe I found on the internet that was easy to make, plus another shake with twice the serving in the same amount of water. I was trying to increase the concentration so there’d be less volume to chug, but it felt like a sandy sludge at that point, so I had to top it off with water.

Later in the afternoon, I went online and found out about creative ways to prepare protein powders. I tried making a pancake (just a scoop mixed with one egg) and It came out great. The egg must have done something to the sucralose because it wasn’t sweet in the least, a good thing since I think I’ll get sick of sweet cookie milkshake flavor, plus I get something to chew on. I was thinking of doing this from now on but I’d end up consuming way too many eggs, so I tried making a pancake from a paste of powder and water. This one retained the sweetness, and had the consistency of a soft cookie. I found it to be way easier to eat than the liquid shake, so I’ll probably do this from now on. At night I had another water pancake and a piece of leftover chicken from D-5.

The average local egg weighs 60 grams. According to the internet, that translates into 8p (8 grams of protein, new nomenclature). If that holds true, I ate around 168p today, not counting the chicken. I was trying to aim at 200p, but that got really difficult. According to what I’ve read, I need to eat enough protein to replenish broken muscle from intense weight lifting, so as to have the body rely on fat burning as the main source of energy while minimizing muscle consumption. Thing is, I do not know just how much protein I should be consuming per day. Reports vary and my particular circumstances are different from available information. It’s possible that the 200p number was for hulking men who needed a lot of muscle mass regenerated. Regardless, it should be between 100p and 200p. This also means I’ll run out of powder sooner than I thought. It’s going to get expensive, so this strategy of living on protein powder might not be tenable for the full regiment.

On the afternoon I went for my second cycling day. I made three laps around the Pentagonito (“little Pentagon”, the army’s HQ). The four apps worked this time, averaging 12.77 km in 52:28. The burned calories vary wildly according to each app that estimated it: one says 120, the other 542 and the last one 252. I don’t know what to make of that: I put my age/weight in all of them.

I had no cigs today!

EDIT – I had one cig today.

Intensity: 9
Diet: 10

Perfect diet! What a good day. I haven’t mentioned it, but I’ve been taking a daily multivitamin since D-1. This is because I’m mostly just eating lettuce and lean meat. I also bought my first ever protein supplement shake, in the form of isolate whey (cookie flavor). I hope it doesn’t taste like cement as I’ve heard it does. From tomorrow onward, I’ll be having the shake and probably little to no meat.

I’ve read that muscle consumption happens in around equal proportion to fat burning during weight loss. This is counter-productive since I’m also lifting weights, and less efficient for fat loss. Apparently you can redirect the body’s efforts if the muscles need repair. You can do this by 1) weight lifting a lot of weight and 2) making sure to eat enough protein and BCAA’s (branched chain amino acids). On Monday I’ll be fetching my additional weights to make it more extreme, and from tomorrow on I’ll be having those shakes, because meat alone would get expensive (and a bit fatty). I’ve also gotten some broccoli, which I’ve read helps.

I’m pretty proud of my new diet highscore: I didn’t even have an apple. For breakfast I had two eggs and for lunch and dinner I had lomo saltado with lettuce (staple local dish, stir fried loin with fries and rice. I only had the meat). I forgot to take a photo, sorry. I also gave up on the idea of weighing my food. It’s too much hassle and there’s no benefit to it. I had 4 cigs today… I have to cut it with the cigs.

One last thing: I’ve discovered the joys of diet soda. Now that it’s been almost a week with only the occasional apple to console me, it feels amazing to have something else I can treat myself with. Label says it has no sugar, carbohydrates or fat, so I shouldn’t need to regulate it. It actually tastes great now and not disgusting like before.

Intensity: 10
Diet: 9

Yesterday I fell badly with the pizza and coke. After I gave in with one slice, the shadow got its hold on me and I ended up having another and 3 cigs. I dreaded today’s scale, mostly because since D-0 (day 0, new nomenclature) every measurement had been lower than the previous day and I thought the pizza would ruin that streak. Turns out it didn’t, but I was nonetheless determined to rise from yesterday’s failure with renewed effort.

I can say I did great, with near-flawless diet and a perfect workout score. I ate two fried eggs for breakfast, one apple mid-day, baked chicken with lettuce for lunch, another apple in the afternoon (this second one cost me the one point), and a repeat of lunch for dinner. No sugar at all. I did have 2 cigs.

On the afternoon I decided to go cycling. I had four tracking apps to test, but they all ended up being interrupted by battery management while the screen was off. I’ve fixed it now, and as a plus my clock timer now sounds off from standby. I do know that I ended up cycling 7.9 km in 35 minutes though. I’ll be cycling three days per week from now on, to add some cardio to the weight lifting days.

EDIT – I forgot to take a photo this day. I took it the next one. I’ll have to add an asterisk to the video.

Intensity: 9
Diet: 8 6 4

Today was the second cardio workout. It went well: I did a lot better than day 2.

Breakfast was 2 boiled eggs, but I gave in to temptation and added a small glass of sugared chicha. I also had an apple during the day. Lunch wasn’t ideal: it was milanesa (fried breaded chicken fillet). I did serve only a tiny scoop of rice and a bunch of lettuce and tomato, though. I sprinkled salt and olive oil on the lettuce to make it more tolerable. Dinner was the same but without the rice.

All in all it was a good effort, though a bit greasy with the frying, plus I’m ashamed of the breakfast chicha. I ‘m considering starting to weight my food and taking pictures.

Today was also the first afternoon free of headaches since day 0. I don’t know if the symptoms are caused by nicotine withdrawal or sugar withdrawal. I’m a nicotine addict and a tea enthusiast. I average 10 cigarettes per day and between one and two L (litres) of tea with sugar. I’ve always hated water, so I’ve lived on tea ever since my parents stopped forcing me to drink milk as a kid. I stopped drinking tea on day 0. As for cigarettes, I had three on day 0 and one per day since, including today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have none.

The nutrition plan is to try and eat only lean meat and veggies and cut all fat, carbohydrates and sugar. This is limited to what’s available, though, since I live with family and I don’t decide on the cooking.

EDIT – I just had a slice of pizza and a glass of coke. Diet score reduced by 2 points. 😦

EDIT 2 – I also had a cig.

EDIT 3 – Another slice of pizza and two more cigs, score reduced by 2, down to 4.