Day Eighteen - Overeating

I got about 2600 calories in this evening. I'm starting to take a liking to avocados in my salad. I had a huge ham sandwich on a bagel with a bunch of provolone. That was delicious.

The avocado put my mono-unsaturated fats way above the RDA. That brings up a question I have to research. Mono-fats are the good fats but I imagine you can eat too much of them too. I'm guessing the RDA on mono-fats is quite low but I'd like to get a good idea of whether I'm eating too much of them. I tend to doubt it as I've seen some people say they drink fish oil and/or olive oil to get their fat intake to 50% of the daily caloric totals. I'm no where near that as on high-fat days, I may hit 40%, and usually around 35%.

I also had the lowest bodyfat reading I've ever registered for an afternoon reading, 15.1% I think I might get some calipers so I can give myself a more accurate body fat reading. These scales are good for measuring trends but that's about it.

Oh, here's a good article for starters on Oils, fats, etc.

Most cardiologists and nutritionists sing the praises of high-mono oils like olive and canola because monos are especially vital in heart health—keeping damaging LDL cholesterol low, while boosting levels of cholesterol-clearing HDLs. But our hearts are not the only beneficiaries. In countries where high-mono fats predominate in the diet, rates of some cancers are remarkably low. No wonder plant geneticists rushed to develop high-mono hybrids of safflower and other traditionally low-mono oilseeds, by boosting their content of heart-friendly oleic acid. High-oleic sunflower and safflower oils are now widely available, and high-oleic corn oil isn’t far behind.

This one from the Harvard School of Public Health sums it up just about the way i thought:

Detailed research -much of it done at Harvard - shows that the total amount of fat in the diet, whether high or low, isn't really linked with disease. What really matters is the type of fat in the diet.

Seems that if you're getting mono-fats, don't worry about how much.

Day Eighteen - Undereating

I had coffee with milk, my multivitamin, and a latte for lunch. In the afternoon, I had one banana. I find that mostly during the day I am very thirsty. More thirsty than hungry. I've read in several places that the body sometimes sends hunger signals when feeling thirsty. I wonder if my body has adapted to the fact that I eat very little during the day and has foregone the hunger signals for those of thirst. Because I honestly can't tell you the last time I felt an uncomfortable attack of the "hungries". Even before I eat my evening meal I'm not really ravenous, I'm just pleasantly hungry and content in the fact that I can eat as much as I need to in order to satisfy my hunger.

I know I'm not dehydrated. I drink between 32-64 ounces of water during every workout plus another 32 ounces of iced tea throughout the day. Lipton's Cold Brew tea bags are pretty cool. I don't want to know why they work so don't find out for me or tell me. It'll ruin it for me if they get tea to brew in cold water by, say, feeding it to third-world goats and having young children pick the semi-digested leaves out the dried goat turds.

Day Eighteen - Exercise

I did 10 intervals on the elliptical machine this morning 1 minute sprint followed by 2 minute normal pace. I took my heart rate from 130 during the "rest" phase to 170 in the sprint phase. This is the first time I monitored heart rate. I was just curious but you can see the benefit as it took a little over a minute for my heart rate to drop from the peak to around 130 again. So instead of a 30 minute workout at 130 BPM, I'm getting a 30 minute workout with about 10 minutes at 130 BPM and 20 minutes between 130 and 170 BPM. Big difference.

Then, just for the heck of it I did some Hang Clean sets. For some reason the trapezius is one of my favorite muscles and hang cleans are a good exercise for it, better than shrugs.