10 weeks down, 2 more left
I’m entering the 11th week of Body for Life, and I’ve dropped a respectable-ish 23lbs. The rate of change has certainly decreased in the last couple of weeks, though I imagine that’s probably a direct result of my body getting closer to some level of homeostasis. I fully expected the things to slow down as more weight dropped off, I was just hoping I’d be able to keep up the barn burner pace for the full 12 weeks. I don’t think I’m going to make 185lbs in the next two weeks. I doubt at this stage of the game it would be beneficial for me to drop 7lbs in two weeks, so I’ll just have to be satisfied with making it below 190.
Quick update
Going into my 9th week of Body For Life and so far I haven’t missed a workout and have done a pretty good job of staying true to the eating principles he outlines in his book. I haven’t had a french fry in over two months, which is quite an accomplishment for me. Even back in the marathon days I was a french fry feign. The past couple of weeks I’ve added two more days of HITT, following the Guerrilla Cardio methodology because I was starting to see my progress slow down a little, which I didn’t like.
To date, after 8 weeks of working out, I’ve dropped 20lbs while increasing my bench press and squat by a fair amount. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a max in anything before I started, but I’m working out with 10-15lbs more than I was when I started (and I’d been lifting semi-regularly before I started this).
So, as far as weight loss goes, I’ve eclipsed my initial conservative goals, and would like to take off another 8-10lbs over the last 4 weeks of the program, after which I’ll begin training for a 15K and a half marathon. It’ll be sort of sweet to run the Atlanta Half Marathon on 10 years after having run it the first time, though I’m sure I won’t do it an an hour and a half this time around.
Anyway, there’s your update. It’s not all good news, I still drink too many diet sodas, but that gives me something to work on.
It’s a trend, I can’t update this thing on time
I missed the Monday morning update again, however, I have not missed a workout, nor touched a french fry (since I started this) or had any beer since my last update.
I’ve been ramping up the intensity on the HITT, which now has me running 2.2 miles, it was below 2.1 when I started, but it’s really not about that. As far as the weight training, I’ve been slowly building up the resistance and added a few new lifts to the regimen. My weight was 205lbs yesterday morning, so that’s still going in the right direction. That’s a total of 10lbs so far. Jeez, I have a long way to go. I know, slow and steady is the key. I didn’t get fat overnight and I won’t be able to undo it that quickly either.
Keep on keeping on
Well, as you can see I failed to get around to updating on Monday, however, I am happy to report that I am 2/3 of the way through my third week and I have yet to miss a workout. Actually, I worked one extra cardio session in this week because I broke down and had a couple of beers that needed to be worked off.
If you’ll recall…
Keys to accomplishing those goals:
- No french fries
- No beer
- More water
- Commitment to not miss workouts
So far I’ve stayed true to 3 out of the 4 keys and I’m pretty sure I did a good job of working off the one indiscretion as far as the beer went. What do you want from me, I was on vacation!
As of this morning I weighed in at 207.5, which is down 7.5lbs since I started this almost three weeks ago. That’s actually a little faster than I’d planned to pull weight off, but I imagine it’ll probably slow down once I hit my stride.
So far, the worst part of my workouts are squats. I haven’t done them since high school, and in all honesty I can’t remember what it was I liked about them back then. The 20 minutes of HITT, while challenging, is actually pretty invigorating. I look forward to having enough time on my legs and having dropped enough weight that I can start incorporating a couple of days of “distance” running. I’m thinking I may shoot for that in week 8, but we’ll see. So far, the extra HITT session hasn’t really hurt me, though the third day in a row was a bit of a struggle.
Tabula rasa
I started Body for Life last week and I’m happy to report that I hit all of my workouts and did a pretty good job of eating well, which is a good first step. I’ve done a lot of reading, and I know that the Body for Life workouts, especially the strength training portions of the workout, aren’t really held in that high of regard by much of the fitness community, but I figure at this point it’s better that I get out there and do something than sit here and talk about what I’m planning on doing without ever executing on it. I see it as a well packaged, easy to follow jump start. Ultimately, my goal is to become a runner again, but I need some level of fitness under my belt before I can begin to run again with any hopes of enjoying it. I’d love to go back to being the guy that shrugs and says running a half-marathon in 1:20 is no big deal.
That’s a pretty vague goal, so here are some more measurable goals:
- Be back below the deuce (200lbs) by August 15
- Complete a 5K by the end of October (I won’t be doing any running other than 20 minutes of HITT until the end of August)
- Consume, on average, fewer than 2 diet soda’s per day by August 15
Keys to accomplishing those goals:
- No french fries
- No beer
- More water
- Commitment to not miss workouts
I weighed in at a whopping 215lbs on the Monday morning before I started, so I’m going to use that as my baseline, though I do tend to fluctuate quite a bit throughout the week, depending on when I weigh myself. I guess for purposes of tracking progress, I’ll be weighing in on Monday mornings before work and will endeavor to update here at least once a week, mostly just so I have something to look back on if when this all works out. I don’t forsee myself delving too deeply into the boring details of my workouts, though I may track the mileage, average/high HR for the running portions of the workout, since ultimately this is to be a blog about running. In all honesty though, given the nature of HITT and the fixed duration of the workout, I don’t see there being too much fluctuation in vitals, though I suppose I could surprise myself.