a different kind of cruising

[alfresco]

I was just going though some photos I took for work
and I ran across a image that reminded me of something
my wife said earlier that same evening and how it relates
to muscular growth and diet.

But first, as is my nature, the back-story . . .

In August of this year, my wife and I went on a big family
vacation; a cruise up the inland passage of Alaska. A week
on one of those huge cruise ships, all you can eat 24 / 7,
in the intimate company of about 2,500 strangers.

I was planning to give blood before I left (I usually do that
before my layoffs), and take a week off from training; just
spend a week playing tourist, hitting the various ports, take
a ton of photos, read a bunch of books and get caught up on
my bodcasts.

Well, I did everything but give blood and take a week off from
training. No sooner did we get on board that my wife drags
me take a look at the onboard gym. She was planning on
working out and rather than suffer through a week of hearing
about how I was not working out and she was, I decided to
join her every other day.

The gym was small as one would expect, but they had a few
decent upper and lower body machines, and hard to believe,
some heavy dumbbells (no barbells) and a couple of adjustable
benches. Okay I said to myself, I can make this work, just focus
on a the basics, make it brief and work really hard, then you
can go eat, play, lay down and read, take a nap, and take some
photos when you get inspired.

Long story short, the workouts turned out better than I expected.
Very hard, very brief, very basic exercises for the upper and
lower body. Nothing fancy. And not a huge variety of exercise
options to distract me. I worked out every other day for a week,
a total of three workouts, each lasting about 30 minutes.

That routine, in conjunction with the increased calories (higher in
protein, and immediately after working out for a change) and
being lazier then usual, resulted in surge of size and strength.

I had not taken notice of the changes that had occurred so
quickly until the last evening when we were Vancouver, BC, visiting
some gardens outside of town. It was extremely warm and I was
down to my last clean shirt, which so happened to be a white,
short sleeved polo shirt (short sleeved shirts I rarely, if ever, wear).
As we were wandering around, my wife turned to me as says . . .
"You are really looking muscular. You are the only person I know that
can go on a cruise, eat everything and anything they want, be a slug,
and end up looking better than they did before they left. It's just not fair."

I credit that to very hard, brief, basic exercises performed every other
day followed by complete and total rest in conjunction with a diet rich i
n clean calories and higher in protein.

So in closing, when it comes to working out, quality trumps quantity
and diet makes all the difference.

Attached is the photo I just ran across. I was trying to demonstrate
to my wife what digital noise looks like on high ISO setting, so I took
a night photo of the reflection in a window. Not the best photo (it's a
very small part of a much larger photo), but it reminded me that I could
barely get my arms in the sleeves of the shirt I was wearing that night.

Oh well.