Follow Ryan

I’ve been told by many recent parents that having a child of my own will teach me patience.  Little did I realise that this process would start months before my baby is even born.  My life for many years had meaning.  It could mostly be summarised by experiencing new things and sharing them with the ones I love.  Now with a new one on the way I’m dying to have the new experiences and share them with everyone + 1!!

Yu Kyoung and I are officially married now. At the resort everyone refers to her as Mrs. Fife and it still makes me giggle just a bit because Mrs. Fife, in the rare times it was used, always referred to my mother! We are enjoying the beautiful desert resort of Al Maha. Unfortunately, we cannot share any photos with you because we’ve accidentally posted the data cable back to London with some other items. We did record this special thank you for our wedding guests, however.

Since everyone seems to use their own little codec for video you can’t always view them on your macintosh straight away.  I had this problem with my father’s Casio digital camera movie files.  It appears that others have complained and Casio has listened. The download and installation instructions can be found here:

 Casio AVI Codec for Macintosh
If you have QuickTime PRO it is easy to export the video into a more widely supported format before posting it.

A friend of mine, James Marzano, directed me to a Tutorial on Fake Model Photography. The idea is to take photos of real life and manipulate them in PhotoShop so that your mind thinks it is a picture of a miniature model. I haven’t tried it yet but James did and his first photo is shown below. It’s of his kitchen and is really convincing, don’t you agree?

I haven’t kept up my food journal.  It’s a lot of work although I think it would probably be beneficial to meeting my workout targets.  I couldn’t find anything that helped me quickly calculate nutrition information for the meals I eat.  I tend to make all my own food for supper and I’m a non-measuring type cook so it’s very difficult to track what I’ve done!

The good news is the workouts are continuing and I’m already seeing improvements.  It feels good to sit at your desk and actually feel the muscles on your body instead of just feeling like a gelatinous blob. I’m absolutely appalled at the low weights that I’m doing but that will improve with time.  I didn’t realise that I had let my strength slip so much!  The last time I really did weight training with free weights was in Dallas around 1998 so it’s been a while.

Today is break day and I need it!  I cannot walk normally because my leg muscles are so tired.  This would be great news if I hadn’t taken it so easy last night.  Nevertheless what’s done is done and I’ll do it again tomorrow.  Today’s food is quite said.

• 2 Cups Coffee (0 *)
• Boston Chicken Sandwich, unbreaded (581 cal, 79g pro, 24g carb, 13g fat)
• 2 Cups Jasmine Tea (0 *)
• Chicken Fillets w/mushroom, tomato (343 cal, 66g pro, 9.5g carb, 5.5g fat)
• 1 White Pitta (150 cal, 6.25g pro, 59g carb, 0.75g fat)
• 1/2 tub hummus (316 cal, 11g pro, 13.5g carb, 41.5g fat)
• 1 cup whole milk (146 cal, 8g pro, 11g carb, 8g fat)
• 3 cloves raw garlic (just for fun)

Total for the day:

• 1,536 calories
• 170.25g protein (48% – 681cals?)
• 117g carbohydrates (33% – 468cals?)
• 68.75g fat (19% – 618cals?)

Strangely I get 1,767 calories when I use 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrates, 9 calories per gram for fat.  I’m not sure what’s happening here but I’ll use my original numbers until I figure it out.  I’ll have to increase protein and fat from what I took in today I guess.  Suggestions?

I’ve never really done strength training. My swimming provided fitness training and, of course it made me stronger but it wasn’t actually strength training. I tried with Erik when I lived in Dallas but our enthusiasm ran out after just a couple of months. The strange thing is that I’m faced with an odd situation of actually needing to eat more. I just added up my food for today.

• 2 Cups of Coffee (0 *)
• 1 Large Bowl Chicken Laksa Soup (630 cal, 43g P, 49g CH, 31g Fat)
• 4 Pieces of Bacon (300 cal, 32g P, 0 CH, 19g Fat)
• 1 Yellow Pepper (50 cal, 2g P, 12g CH, 1g Fat)
• 2 Medium Tomatos (22 cal, 1g P, 5g CH, 0.2g Fat)
• 1 Large Hummus Tub (632 cal, 22g P, 27g CH, 83g Fat)
• 2 White Pitta (300 cal, 12.5g P, 59g CH, 1.5g Fat)
• 3 Cups of Milk (438 cal, 24g P, 33g CH, 24g Fat)

This makes my total for the day:

• 2,372 Calories
• 136.5 grams Protein (28%)
• 185 grams Carbohydrates (38%)
• 160 grams Fat (34%)

The dietary guide that I’ve been reading suggests about 3,000 calories, 180g Protein, 180g Carbohydrates and 120g Fat. It looks like I need to try to get my protein and carbohydrates up and my fat intake down a bit. Unfortunately, it appears that hummus might have to be reconsidered as a major part of my diet and I might have to start drinking semi-skim milk again.

Tonight was the first night of my circuit. I’m absolutely stunned at how little strength I have in my upper legs. Everything else made about the showing I expected but I could barely manage fifteen pound weights in each hand while doing static lunges and even then I barely made my 15 reps per set. I’m looking forward to seeing how long I can keep this up though!
Weigh in: 78 Kg