Week 23/24
Into Week 24. Couldn’t post my Saturday update for Week 23 because I was away visiting with friends for the Easter weekend. Not that I didn’t have Internet access, I was able to keep up somewhat with BodySpace a bit, but I didn’t have a lot of spare time. It was my first away-from-home trip since I started seriously into the BBing… could I manage to stick to the diet and maybe squeak in a workout? Seemed like fat chance.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends dearly, they’re a couple I met in college and we have stayed in close touch ever since. They, however, are both endomorphs and pay lip service to wanting to reduce and get in shape, but go about it all wrong, especially for their body types. The wife of the pair is extremely opinionated and jumps on every diet fad that comes along. She told me ahead of my arrival that they are "now eating healthy" primarily because their one daughter has a yet-unidentified food allergy, despite a lot of testing. So "eating healthy" really meant that they are eating a lot of organic and no added preservative stuff, which of course isn’t a bad thing, but good grief, how they eat! Meal times are completely erratic… I tried to eat every three hours but eventually gave up. The meals include a lot of cheese, one breakfast had copious amounts of bacon… meanwhile the Mrs. is being pious about how we can’t have a particular vegetable with dinner because we are already having enough starch… hello! I don’t think the starch is your problem! She thinks she’s micromanaging the meals for the better, but I don’t think she’s succeeding.
There wasn’t a bathroom scale to be seen… so I was fretting about how much weight I may be putting on since now my eating schedule was out of whack and with what we were eating. The Mrs. claims she is into cardio, saying she walks a lot several times a week and I spotted a "Curves" tag on her car key ring, and she was bragging about how she has dropped 27 lbs. Good for her if she has, but I sure can’t confirm it… and I haven’t seen her in a year and can’t honestly say I see a difference from last year. She’s about 5-5 and maybe about 240 lbs. As I said she’s an endomorph so I know she has a rough road for weight loss. But she just isn’t doing it right! The concept of adapting diet and workout for her body type never crossed her lips.
I didn’t say a thing about any of the weight loss stuff. For one thing, there was never a comment in my direction about the 15 noticeable pounds I have dropped. In fact the one day as she was going on about cooking "so healthy" she made a comment about "Oh, you’ll go home nice and lean" because of spending four days with her cooking. And I am not now? Also I didn’t say anything because when she has her mind set on something, you can’t tell her anything, so I didn’t even try. She later made a comment about my new appearance — sort of — at one of the meals. I politely declined sour cream on the taco salads we were having and she said "Oh, that’s why DA looks like he does: no sour cream and no butter" as I had declined butter on my waffles that we had earlier in the day for breakfast. Um, it’s more than just cutting back on the fats, dear. And thanks (I think) for the off-hand comment, but I kept my mouth shut.
Hubby is also an endomorph. He’s about 5-8 or 5-9, probably about 250 or 260, and has been rather overweight most of his life. They have this nice home gym machine that they bought more than a year ago and he claims to use it at times. I was looking forward to getting in a couple of workouts on it during my visit only to find it has been dismantled for the moment because they are in the middle of redecorating the family rumpus room where the weight machine and other recreational stuff is. Great. They also have a NordiTrack and hubby has spent a lot of time on it over the years to no avail to his weight. Hubby and I are very close and I have talked with him on email what I have been doing since October and giving him hints on what he could maybe try differently but the committment for both of them just isn’t there. So I don’t push it.
Got back home late last night and jumped on my scale and was surprised to find that I hadn’t gained or lost; I was right where I was when I left four days before. Woo hoo. I guess I have successfully cranked up my metabolism to deal with burning off nearly all what I eat … even on an erratic schedule and no workouts. I was relieved.
Now I am a bit out of sync with my workouts, but I will get things going. I did do an abs routine at my friend’s as I don’t need any equipment for that other than a DB for the side bends, so I just didnt do those. Just now at home I did my biceps and back and did my monthly measurements… more good news. Yeah, I know you shouldn’t measure right after a workout, but that’s what I have been doing so let’s keep it consistent.
BF% is down another 3mm from last week and has dropped me down into the 14% range… cool! Biceps are up another quarter inch. Chest dropped some, but I knew that would happen because there is still the jiggly stuff on my pecs to melt off. I need to take some monthly progress pix.
Overall I am really pleased. I "survived" a trip/break away from the eating and workout routine and didn’t screw up my progress, and my monthly progress is still cranking along. Oh, and before I left for the trip I used it as an excuse to do some clothes shopping and it was GREAT to buy some pants that were down a size from what I have been wearing, as well as buying some new smaller belts… proof positive that I am getting somewhere.
Psyched? You bet!
