D.Alan’s BodyBlog

Measurement night for the month… more good news!  Chest is up a bit, waist is down a bit more, arms continue to remain the same.  BF% pinch total is down another mm.  In all, I can’t complain too much.

My weight hit a new low this week, 173, and has held for a few days.  Cutting back on the protein shakes seemed to do the trick.  Obviously the higher amount that I was taking of them for most of the month since my last measurements didn’t do a lot for me: arms are unchanged, my thighs are down a bit… nothing to get excited about, and no significant gains.  So, I will stay on the old schedule of two shakes on a day I lift and one or none the days I don’t.

Had a couple of nice encounters regarding my new look and abilities this week.  A colleague is retiring in a few weeks so a party was thrown and a number of retired folks I once worked with came back for the festivities with those of us still working.  One of the retired folks, whom I have not seen in a couple of years, just raved about my appearance.  A couple of others also commented about how good I look.  It was a good ego booster and reinforcement for busting my butt with the iron all winter, and I think also points out that I was a bit too fat before I started seriously working out.

The other encounter was today.  I was in a store and was buying a 50-lb sack of material.  I carried it by the corner of the bag with one hand to the checkout counter, as I was carrying something else in the other hand.  I set the 50-lb sack on the floor by the counter and the woman is saying, "Oh, you have the 25-lb sack" and is about to ring it up as that, and I told her no, I have the 50-lb.  "Oh," she says, "you were handling it like a 25-lb."  I thought that was a pretty cool comment.

Just more proof that all this really does work and it is showing in all sorts of ways.  I took some progress pix tonight and will have to go through them and see what, if anything, is worthy of sharing.  I think my lats are beginning to look good with my pullups, but that may just be me.  Have to maybe put together another back progress side-by-side pic… and keep liftin’.

Body fat pinch totals continue to creep downward ever so slowly.  Last week I was up a mm from the week before, this week I am down two from last week, for another new low in the pinch totals.  Pinch total is now 36 mm — my first BF% pinch total was 73 mm back in October, so the progress so far is pretty good, I’d say.  I do five pinches: tricep, chest, abdominal, oblique and thigh and consult a chart from betterbodz.com.  Supposedly I am at 12.6% BF.

I also think I have found one of the reasons that my weight plateaued… I had increased the number of times I had a protein shake during the day to three, where previously I would have one or two: usually two on the days I lift and one on the days I don’t.  I was having three nearly every day starting about the time my weight stopped going down and I can’t say that I noticed any more muscle gains with the 3-a-day protein than I did previously.  Hmmm, you do the math.  So this week I went back to my previous schedule, twice on lifting days (one mid-afternoon, and one right after working out in the evening) and once on the off days and suddenly I was nudging on 174 again.  It is a delicate balance trying to build muscle and cut fat at the same time, and I suppose some would say it can’t be done.  After being chubby for most of my 40+ years I just want the fat off!

I continue to be pleased with my progress.  I like what I am seeing in the mirror.  Depending on the lighting my delts and pecs are looking pretty good and lately after the arm workout my arms seem huge… probably just me, but it’s definitely a big improvement from where I started.  I just need to further reduce the flab around my middle… ugh, maybe I’ll actually have to do some cardio… 

Keep liftin’.

Continuing in the holding pattern on everything.  Weight is unchanged as is BF% this week.  I think I can definitely classify my state as in a plateau!

Discovered a really bad newbie goof this evening… the workout plan that I have been following all this time has specified one arm DB rows, and for some reason I got the idea they were one arm UPRIGHT DB rows… hardly the same exercise.  Geez.  I know I looked it up when I started all this — got the workout plan from bb.com — and for some reason got the Upright One Arm DB Row as the explanation for that exercise.  Oh well.  So I started the true one arm DB rows a little later in the program.  We’re supposed to mix up the exercises anyway, right?  With finding that out, it’s surprising how good my back looks when it turns out I have been hardly working it!

I guess it’s a continuous learning process, and meanwhile I’ll keep liftin’.

Another week of plugging along.  My weight stayed at 174 for a few days for the first time ever, which was encouraging.  I got looking through the pix that I took last weekend and this evening I put up a couple of progress shots comparing when I started in October to last weekend.  The front double bi and relaxed back shots were impressive, IMHO, the back especially.  Nothing like some visual encouragement!  I really need it about now since I seem to have plateaued a bit and it seems like I am not making any progress.

BF% measurement tonight was down two more mm in the total.  According to the chart I am now at 12.6% BF.  Great, if it is really true.  It seems like I still have too much flab jiggling around on my pecs and abs to be halfway between 10% and 15%, but that’s what the chart says.  I got it from http://www.betterbodz.com/library/bodyfat.html and is what I have been using all along.  I found another site with a bunch of online calculators that you punch in your pinches and age, but it was telling me a few weeks ago that I was at 9.8% or something ridiculous like that.  Whatever, the pinch totals are coming down.  When I did my first BF% pinches back in October, my abdominal pinch alone was 31 mm, tonight it was 12 mm… that’s quite a change for the better, since my pinch total is now only 37 mm. 

It’s progress so I keep liftin’.