Good morning everyone!

Up bright an early this monday- not too much to talk about.

Tried a new recipe for curried chicken last night, turned out pretty well:

Chicken – I use one whole baby chicken with bone cut into pieces; you can use 4 boneless chicken breast cut into cubes

Onion – One big, thinly chopped

Ginger Paste – 1 tsp (If you don’t have paste used minced Ginger)

Garlic Paste- 1 tsp (you can used minced Garlic)

Bay Leaf – 1

Cardamom – 1 or 2

Cinnamon Stick – 1

Garam Masala – 1/2 tsp

Coriander Powder – 2/3 tsp

Cumin Powder – 2/3 tsp

Red Chili Powder – ½ tsp or paprika -  1 tsp

Turmeric Powder – ½ tsp

Salt – to taste

Vegetable oil or olive oil – ¾ tbsp.

Heat up oil in a pan in low heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent. Add ginger & garlic paste. Sauté for one min. Now add bay leaf, cardamoms and cinnamon stick. After a minute, add garam masala, turmeric powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, Chili powder, salt and mix together with a wooden spoon. If it looks dry add 1 tbsp water. Let it simmer for couple of minutes (make sure it does get burnt).  

Put the chopped baby chicken (or chicken breasts) into the pan and stir until covered in the mixture.

Cover the pan and leave to cook on a medium-low heat, until the chicken juices come out. Then turn the heat down to low and let the curry simmer for 15-20 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked and you notice a thin layer of oil forming top of the curry. Remove the pan from the fire, curry is done!  

After 5 minutes, sprinkle some freshly chopped coriander leave (cilantro) on the top and you are done. 

A coworker of mine sent this to me- i used way more than 2 pounds of chicken, so I had to double my spices.  Served with white rice- tastes amazing.  The best part about it is that the only caloric ingredients are the chicken and a smidgen from the olive oil.

Starting modified PPL (super modified PPL) this week:

1: Push

2: Pull

3: Legs

4: Off

5: Push

6: Pull

7: off

Why am I only hitting legs once a week?  Quads aren't my primary focus right now.  I'm more worried about my upper body at the moment- trying to grow my chest, traps, and delts.

More to come!

...aaaaaaand we're back

I'm not sure why I start blogs- I never usually follow through with them.

They're really the same as every journal I've kept since I was little... I would write for a week or two religiously, and then I would run out of things to say, or care about.  I always admired Doug Funnie who could write every week, in excruciatingly painful detail.  I know, cartoon world- I digress.

A lot has happened in the past almost 2 years, I have children, I wasn't successful at teaching, I've rediscovered my love for fitness and the lifestyle, and I've moved back to NY.  I worked for Dave and Busters (what a mess that was,) and have since landed myself a nice IT job, where I have normal hours, enough time for the gym and everything else I need to do, and the ability to see my kids grow.

I've decided to rekindle this to talk about some of the things that matter most to me- again, in hopes that the words I have will motivate or inspire someone out there to be better.








Let's quickly mention where I'm at right now:

Age: 29
Weight: 210
BF: <19.9%
Goals: Cut to 10%
Diet: <2000kcal (changing now.)
Max Lifts: B/S/D: 205/275/365
Routine: Modified PPL



Today's meals:
Breakfast: 2 whole eggs w 2 whites, feta cheese, coffee with 1tbsp of Natural Bliss creamer
Lunch: 100g Barilla PLUS, 1oz fresh mozz, red peppers, 1Tbps EVOO, chopped artichoke hearts



Stay tuned!

I Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone!!

So after almost an entire year of not writing, I've decided to start back up again. I need to start finishing things I start, and this is a good place to begin.

I'm in New York for another few days, and training starts back on Monday. I started teaching, and teaching boot camp classes twice a week, so things get a little hairy.

First thing I need to change is my diet. I've heard restaurant depot does 40# bags of chicken for cheap - something I have to get into.

I'll start posting workouts, recipes, boot camp stuff, and other thoughts... I don't think anyone really reads this, but if one person comes across it and it helps, then it's totally worth it.

Take care!!

Food poisoning. ugh.

Food poisoning last night.  I knew that sausage tasted like plastic.

Worked out lightly today, 5x overhead press, some clean snatch, and 4x planks.


My diet was even worse, considering I could barely keep food down.

Venison steak, vegetarian baked beans
everything bagel with some veggie cream cheese
50g protein shake.

then my stomach hated me.
Early to bed, hopefully early to rise to start 6am workouts.

Still a little off

Today is still an off day, but I did get a chance to work out.  6 Sets of back squats, and 3 sets of lunges.  Don't want to push too hard if I'm not nearly 100%.

Because of not feeling well, my appetite is off too, so here's the diet.

Breakfast: 3 cups of cereal (finished my box!) with 2 cups of milk
Lunch: 20oz of Jambalaya (homemade)
Dinner: Grilled cheese

I also have drank some orange juice, and a boatload of water.  This sickness needs to pass! :)

Stay motivated, recipes this weekend!!

A little off

Hey friends-

No long post today, I feel like the gum on the underside of a shoe.  Taking a night to actually rest, and come back stronger tomorrow.

Breakfast: 50g of protein shake
Breakfast 2: Large bowl of cereal, 1 homemade banana muffin (thanks mom!)
Lunch: Large chicken caesar salad.  Ive decided that I need more green and fruits in my life.  That and it's the only thing I could get and keep down.
Dinner: Copious quantities of pasta, and homemade Bison meat sauce.

I've decided that weekends are going to be new recipes and culinary adventures.

Talk to you all tomorrow!

Supplements and the such

Good evening folks!

I'll start off by saying that today is my off day for working out, and a great one at that.

Here's the diet for today:

Breakfast 1: 50g of protein through shakes, which we'll talk about today
Breakfast 2: A large bowl of Trix (we'll chat about this too.)
Lunch 1: Homemade venison stew
Lunch 2: Coffee. Ha.
Dinner: More pizza.  I know, I'm ashamed.

I told you yesterday we were going to talk about supplements.  Reading through Muscle and Body from GNC, you pick up a little bit.  I haven't tried them all, and I haven't done "independent studies."  But from what I've gathered, if I exercise and have a great diet, by using these supplements, I can be cock diesel in 90 days!  Cough.  Right.

Here are the supplements I use, and why I use them.  I also must say this, SUPPLEMENTS ARE NEVER BETTER THAN ACTUAL FOOD!  This is important.  Having 50g of protein shake is not better than say, 50g of protein from fresh salmon.  Real food > Nutrition Supplements.

2 gummy multivitamins in the morning.  That's right, I take gummy vitamins.  Want to know why?  Because they taste good and they're easy to take.  One-a-day vitamins have between 80-133% of my daily recommended vitamin intake.  That's just to supplement anything else I don't get during the day.  And cmon, gummys are awesome.

When I get to work, I take 2 green tea/caffeine pills.  Now, you'll probably look at me and wonder why I take these things.  The main reason?  160mg of caffeine, and 40,000 thermal units of capsaicin.  Add in some EGCG for good measure (not sure what it does besides an antioxidant, but whatever) and you have a pretty decent supplement.  Caffeine is a known mood booster, wakes you up in the morning, and also apparently aids in thermogenics! (Burning of fat.)  Capsaicin also aids as an appetite suppressant.  My buddies and I when cooking used to put habanero peppers in our foods to help keep us full.  Surprisingly it worked.  Does it work in pill form?  I don't know, but it hasn't hurt me yet.

You can also just drink coffee if you want to attempt the same effects.  I take the pills because it's similar to chugging 2 cups of coffee.

I also take 2 more either after lunch on break days, or 30 minutes before I work out in the afternoon.  The caffeine aids in my lift.  Helps me push out that extra rep.  Simply because my heart feels like it's about to explode.

Let's talk about some protein.  I don't know the difference between whey, casein, etc. proteins.  I do know whey protein has a higher BV (biological value) than any other food.  From what I've gathered, the BV of a food is basically how well that type of protein absorbs into the body.  Dave told me once that it doesn't really matter what the BV is unless you have to watch your protein intake very carefully- I believe him.  But for a fun fact, whey protein has the highest absorption rate.

I've used about 7 different protein powders throughout my days.  I've settled on 2 that I think taste the best, are light on the stomach, and just make me feel decent overall.  Optimum Nutrition's Rich Milk Chocolate and GNC's Amplified Wheybolic 60 are the two.  There are some that are lighter, and easier on the stomach (there are some that pride themselves on being light enough for cancer patients (isopure)) but I chose these two.  They both pack a wallop in a serving, (30 and 20 grams per scoop, respectively,) and taste fantastic.

They're also relatively inexpensive.  You can usually get a gold card BOGO of the GNC, and vitacost.com has some great deals on the ON protein.  When you see me taking a protein shake, its either one or both of these products.

I also take some yohimbe at night.  I don't really know if it helps, but studies show it helps with male sexual health, and aids in some fat burning.  I take it just because it's cool looking.  Dave, you think you could comment on this?

That's it for now.  As I said earlier, some people pride themselves on key ingredients in XYZ supplements.  I'm broke. I can't afford super expensive things.  Everything I've said here, minus the vitamins, you can get in Costco sized containers that would feed a small army!  Nothing super special, just some simple things to aid in your nutrition.

Dave always told me that "you can't look for motivation or results in a bar, or a shake, you have to look for them within."  This really stuck with me.  These things won't give you results if used simply by themselves.  In fact, too much protein gives you the worst smelling bowel movements ever.  (I've lived with body builders in two different states and times in my life,) and won't really do well.  They're there to simply AID you in the process.  1/10th of the equation.  I try and eat my 180g of protein a day, but I find it difficult to do so.  I can only eat so much!

Also, if you're looking for a bar, try the 2:1 bars that you can find in GNC or random spots on the internet.  The caramel almond ones are my favorite.

Tomorrow we're doing lower body.  Just a heads up, we'll be doing squats (front or back, I haven't decided yet,) as well as some reverse lunges.  I'll be doing sitting and standing calf raises, and probably working abs again.

Keep motivated, and talk to you later!

-Justin