After doing some interweb research last night, I'm rethinking my weight-lifting strategy. Or re-committing to a slower, safer approach to that aspect of my exercising, anyway, because it's not like I've never thought about this before. I got into a bad habit of straining to do 6-12 reps at the highest movable weight level. And that's fine within a certain phase of training. However, for my age and level of fitness enthusiasm, it's unproductive and even dangerous to do that session after session.

I should be shooting for sets of 20 reps before I "level up". For example, I can arm-curl 12x 30#, and on a good day starting fresh I can even curl 12x 50#, but until I can curl 20x 30# I shouldn't really be pushing to do 50#. The goal is lean, toned muscle, not ripped-up mass. Likewise, with all my shoulder/elbow/wrist popping and soreness, it's madness to run around overworking those joints.

Breakfast: PowerBar and some smilk.

3 sets on the Cybex equipment, shooting for 12-20 reps on lower weight settings, taking about an hour:
arm curls: 12x 30#
overhead press: 12x 50#
ab crunch: 16-20x 90#
arm extension: 12x 50#
chest press: 12x 90#
rows: 16x 70# / rear delt: 12x 30#
leg curl: 16x 90#
squat press: 16-20x 230#

Lunch: 2x Dunkins egg+cheese on multigrain bagels. Each provides 550 kcal, at least 23% and probably more like 30% DV sodium, 32% DV fiber and 23g protein. You might think most of that protein came from the egg and cheese. You'd be wrong; figuring in reverse from the nutrition info for a plain bagel vs (plain bagel + egg+cheese), the egg+cheese is only 9g protein, and the multigrain bagel alone is 14g protein.

What is an appropriate protein DV? According to WebMD, adult males need about 56g per day. Women, being short, need about 10g less. (take-away: 2 Dunkins egg+cheese on multigrain bagels provide the minimum protein DV for an average sedentary adult female.) Athletes (and I'm talking competition-class professionals, marathon winners, Olympian wannabes, not garden-variety fitness enthusiasts such as myself) need as much as double that. At my level of fitness enthusiasm, 75g should be plenty.

CotS chunk white tuna in water: 2 nominal servings per 5oz can, 11g protein per serving (i.e. 22g / can). Conchita chickpeas, ~3.5 servings per can, yielding 24.5g protein and 450 kcal.

Tuna bears a calculated risk of heavy metal contamination. Canned pretty-much-everything is subject to BPA contamination; even companies that have pledged to eliminate BPA in their canned goods are sketchy about timeframes and/or specific products that are BPA-free.