Second Week Roundup

On Saturday we finished up the second week of Phase I of the Maximum Strength Program. And to commemorate the end of a successful week, I decided to bring on the carbs.

Carb Loading

On the last day of the training week, Upper Body day, we ended the week with a killer workout and felt that we needed to give ourselves a reward: it was time for a cheat. Dinner and dessert for Kate, carb loading day for me. Oh yeah, and a little dessert for me too.

If you do a search on your favorite search engine for Carb Loading, you'll get about 942,000 results. One of the biggest reasons for carb loading is to replenish your energy stores. So having had an extremely taxing week, my body just felt like it needed a pick-me-up. And it worked nicely. 

Kate doing eccentric chin-ups (chin-downs?) until she can 

do free-hanging chin-ups

Later, after the workout, I made myself a heaping plate of protein and carbs:

• Quinoa salad (black beans, corn, red onion, lime juice)
• Wheat berry salad 
• Lean turkey bacon
• Lean turkey sausage
• Half of a grapefruit (not pictured)
• Green tea

Awesome post-workout meal,

but two hours later, I was eating again

The rest of the day I just kept eating, eating and eating. Then ate some more. This is by no means something I do often or even plan to do on a regular basis, but this was just the thing to recuperate the body from some heavy-duty work.

Sunday Preppin'

Speaking of eating, one of our favorite things to do is take a couple of hours on Sunday, cook some delicious food and pack them up for the week. Here's a small highlight:

Egg Muffins from Chris Shugart's article on T-Nation

Triple-Threat Mexican Chili again from T-Nation

And one more from Chris Shugart's article

Not only did we pillage the above-mentioned T-Nation article for recipes, but we made a couple more from a different source. We hapenned to stop by a local thrift store and picked up a recipe book called America's Best Recipes. The darn thing barely cost us .75 cents and has some great recipes that are compatible with the suggested eating habits from Maximum Strength. My phone camera just doesn't do these meals any justice, but here they are anyway:

Honey-Garlic Grilled Pork Chops

Lime and Ginger-Grilled Salmon

Maybe I'll post some of these for you later this week. Trust me, you'll want to try these killer recipes. Now, off to mentally prep for the third week of Maximum Strength, Heavy Lower body. I may need some crutches to get around, we'll see.

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