Thanksgiving is just around the corner and for most of people that means a huge meal with lots of calories and a full belly at the end of the day, perhaps even some pie. It was decided by me that this year I am not going to keep myself from enjoying Thanksgiving dinner but that does not mean that I need to eat a 4000 calorie meal either, with some simple substitutions an awesome meal can be had by anyone. This year Wify and I decided that we would stay home and cook for just us and the kids on Thursday and Friday would be when we saw family and because of that I am planning on making a low calorie dinner, low calorie? Thanksgiving dinner? can that really be said in the same sentence? indeed it can.
My menu for Thursday will include Turkey obviously, and a 26 pound turkey at that! in place of mashed potatoes I will be making Parmesan mashed Cauliflower which is substantially lower in calories than traditional mashed potatoes and honestly in my opinion tastes just as good. I will also make mashed turnips which is mostly for my father when he comes by on Friday, along with some sweet potatoes grilled outside, I will also be making corn which will be from a can this year since its just the 4 of us cranberry sauce, dinner rolls and stuffing will be at the party as well. The only thing that I am not making low calorie is the stuffing and that's because my recipe calls for sausage and boiled eggs to be added and other than using turkey sausage I can't really figure out a way to make that taste awesome and drop the calories significantly enough to make the effort worth it. Dessert will be provided by the children, Wify decided that since its just us that we will let them choose something to make sort of like an after dinner activity for them and when we asked them what they wanted to make "ice cream" came up so we are thinking sundaes or something though I really do think that I will be picking up a pumpkin pie as well just for good measure and because Thanksgiving just isn't Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie. Normally I do not include the Holidaze as days to count my calories but I don't want it to be a free for all either so if most of what I make is healthy and made as low calorie as possible I can do some damage control preemptively.This week I have gotten off to a good start and seem to be in the right state of mind, I am watching what I eat, I am at the gym "doing my thang" and in spite of Thanksgiving being this week I am planning to see a loss on the scale come Friday. Still above my all time low which I reached just before my surgery I have to admit that I am slightly frustrated but it is on the way down and I have started lifting weights more seriously so a bit of retention is to be expected and I am not going to bother myself too much worrying about it.
I am off of my game a bit this week because my daughter has half days at school so I have to go to the gym earlier than usual and I did not expect it to be any different but the couple hours difference really is making me feel taxed when I am finished working out not to mention that I cannot stay as long. I received an email last week from someone saying that they enjoyed when I post exactly what I did for my work out so I am going to try and include that more often. Yesterday I started out with 20 minutes on a stationary bike and then I did 12 minutes on an arc-trainer, I wanted to get weight lifting in so the arc had to be shorter than normal because of my daughters short day. My bicep was feeling up to par so off I went and did a work out for my shoulders, biceps and back, all with lighter than normal weight consisting of a row machine for 2 sets of 12 at 130 pounds as a warm up and then 3 sets of 10 at 200 pounds, I followed that with some over the head shoulder presses 2 sets of 12 at 100 pounds as a warm up and then 3 sets of 10 at 130 pounds. Upright rows followed that and though it was the same 2 sets of 12 followed by 3 sets of 10 I do not recall the weight that I used, I do know that it was very light as I really just wanted to get the motion in, I finished up with preacher curls but what I did differently this time is that I used a very light weight and did more reps, I warmed up with 30 pounds for 2 sets of 18 and then 4 sets of 12 at 50 pounds, the last set did fall short because I started feeling it in my left bicep a little more than I wanted to so I did 10 for the last set and finished the day up with a 10 minute walk in the treadmill to cool down.This morning I can feel that I lifted but I am not what I would call sore so that's a good thing, a little later this morning when I head out to the gym I will do the same cardio work out but I will do a leg work out on the weights this time around. My legs are...well..HUGE and no wonder after carrying all of that around for as long as I did, not to mention the fact that even before I blew up to over 500 pounds I was always a big guy doing mostly manual type jobs but I don't want that to be a reason to neglect them. The plan is to work on the leg press machine, the calf raise machine and maybe some lunges holding free weights, I prefer to do squats but with my back injury from 2000 I am still weary of getting hurt and side lining myself because I prefer one movement over another so the leg press machine it is until I feel like I am getting strong enough to do squats safely, an injury would not be good right now as I can feel myself getting into a stride, not that an injury is good at any point but surely you know what I mean.
Now that You have endured my lengthy Tuesday morning post You owe yourself a big ol glass of H2O so go grab that and I will get myself ready for the gym and my daughter for school. Thanks for following along and for more you will have to tune in tomorrow to see what Fatman and Blobin get themselves into, until then my friends..
As Ever
Me
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