D.Alan’s BodyBlog

These stupid micrometers I have.  The cheap plastic one says I am down a half mm from last week in the BF% pinch total, the digital one says I am up 0.4 mm!!  Whatever, I am inclined to believe the digital one, and am taking measurements with both for now to get an average of the difference between them so I can go back to my earlier measurements and correct them.

I bought myself some medium T-shirts this week for something different.  I was wearing XL Ts when I was, uh, large and they were loose then, let alone now.  When you’re fat you don’t want your clothes hugging you too tightly to show off all your, um, protrusions…  Anyway, thought I’d try the mediums for fun, and it was.  They fit very snugly and look esp. good through the arms and shoulders.  I took a few pix tonight and posted one.  It was a bit of an ego booster.

My arms look really good in the T-shirt, even though the tape measure says there’s been no change for a while.  The bis are looking a lot more defined, I think, if nothing else. 

A little more size would be nice, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Monthly measurement night and am not overly thrilled with the results, I think.  Some things are down, and it’s probably due to fat loss, which is a good thing, but it’s not where I want to be losing size!  Around the middle is what I want to lose more from, and that remains unchanged from last month!

The measurement that has me really mad is my arms.  No change despite adding an extra bicep routine to the week for the last month.  But, since there was a loss on my calves and chest, maybe the fat loss and muscle gain on my arms negated each other.  Whatever, it’s a long road and not every month is going to be a winner with the tape measure.

I did BF% pinches with both measuring tools again and there was a 5-6mm difference between them again.  Looks like I have to go back to all my BF% pinches and add 6mm to the totals and recalculate the BF% numbers.  But, there was good news with the BF% pinch, I am down a mm on the new micrometer from last week, so the battle of millimeters continues its downward trend, and that’s a good thing.

I want to keep the BF% trending down and the muscle size trending up, so I’ll keep liftin’.

I bought a digital micrometer this week and used it tonight to check my BF%… I think now I know why my BF% readings seem to be low… they were!  The cheap plastic micrometer I was using until now was reading less than accurately, shall we say.

I measured with both tools tonight and there was a 6 mm difference in the total between them!!!  According to the pinch total from the digital one I am around 12%, which is probably closer to accurate than the 9.8% that the total from the other one is telling me.  Sheesh.  I am going to use both over the next couple of weeks to see what the difference is between them and then I will have to go back and look at all my BF% pinches and adjust them accordingly.  Disappointing in a way since the BF% is higher than what I was measuring, but somehow I knew it wasn’t right, and even commented on it often in the blog posts.

Had a number of positive comments from coworkers at work on Friday about my appearance.  Don’t know what inspired them to suddenly notice, but it was an ego booster, esp. since my weight has been creeping up since the holidays.  I want to say it’s muscle gain, but with the BF% pinch measurements all out of whack I can’t say it with any certainty.  The BF% pinches have been relatively steady with an ever-so-slow downward trend, so I am hoping the weight gain is muscle gain.  I haven’t been doing anything different with the diet than I have been doing all along.

I have added a second day of bicep work to the routine.  My arms just haven’t done much of anything except look a little more defined.  The size hasn’t really changed at all.  They initially went down from the fat loss and came back up to about where they were with the fat and haven’t changed much since.  There was a recent article on bb.com about adding another workout day for a particular body part if you aren’t getting the gains you want.  The multiple days seem to be working for my pecs.  I have been doing two days for them for quite a while and have added 1.5 inches to my chest since I started all this.  The first day I do flat bench presses and flyes, the next day I do incline and decline flyes and presses.  I figure since the dual day thing seems to be working for the chest, why not try the arms.

On Saturdays I do biceps and back and I have now added to the incline/decline chest day (usually Tuesday) a dumbbell curl "rack run," where you curl with the heaviest weight you can handle and work your way down to the lightest you have.  A profile commenter suggested that routine to me in the summer and I tried it a few times but didn’t add it to the routine until now.  I am anxious to see what the monthly measurements look like in a week since it will be about a month that I have been doing it.  I think my bis are looking better in the mirror, but as always, it could be wishful thinking.

I want it to be the real thing and not wishful thinking, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Back into the regular workout and eating routine now that the holidays and vacation and all that are behind me.  BF% pinch for the week was the same as last week, and the weight has been up a pound or two.  With the BF% pinch lower overall and weight up a bit I translate that as a little muscle gain, but I am not getting too excited … yet.

Noticed something last week that has been bugging me this week… my traps seem to be unequal.  When I try to flex them, the right one pops right up and looks awesome, the left side just lays there.  No matter what contortions I go through, I can’t get it to pop up like the right side.  I can’t figure out how I might have trained them unequally since I do everything in a balanced fashion whether it’s working the actual traps or doing lateral shoulder raises or whatever.  I can’t seem to move the left shoulder like my right one.  The right shoulder I partially dislocated/popped 20 years ago when I was playing hockey, I ended up down on the ice heading into the corner chasing after the puck and went shoulder first into the boards.  It was a minor dislocation as it popped right back in, though it hurt like hell, and I continued playing not only that game but the rest of the season.  As a result that shoulder has a bit more range of motion than the left, so I don’t know if this is affecting the traps thing.  Since noticing this I have tried to work the left trap a bit more, throwing in an extra set or so on a day that I wouldn’t normally work shoulders and traps.  Weird, and maddening, esp. if it is because I have been doing something wrong to cause this.  I’d appreciate any ideas someone may have about this.  It could be I just need to practice flexing it more, which I have been doing.

Another kind of awesome thing that I have recently been able to do that I could never even think about doing before is this leg lift.  I don’t know the correct name for it, but you sit on the floor with your legs straight out, put your hands on the floor on either side of you and lift your legs and butt off the floor in an "L" or pike position and only your hands are touching the floor.  There’s no way I could do this before lifting and working out.  I have been able to do this for a month or two now and try to do it for a few moments most evenings… trying to increase the time off the floor, but I am not sure I am improving on that yet.  On the good nights I can open and close my legs a few times with my butt off the floor.  When I was in middle school I had the ill-conceived notion that I wanted to be in gymnastics.  The PE teacher at the school had a gymnastics club of sorts and I participated as best a clumsy, tubby kid could.  This was the era of Nadia Komaneche and the ‘76 Olympics so the girls in particular were really interested in gymnastics.  There were even a number of boys in our group that took part, though except for myself they were all rather athletic; my one friend was really good.  My major accomplishment back then was that I could turn a decent cart wheel.  Big deal.  I watched with envy my friends getting better and better and some even doing back flips.  As it turns out, a gymnastics career would have been short-lived with me… you don’t see too many 6-ft tall gymnasts!  Anyway, I found it rather awesome that I could finally do this leg lift thing… if only 30-some years late!  Oh, and my friend from middle school who was a great gymnast at the time?  I saw him a year or two ago when his mom passed away and he now looks like a beach ball!  Somehow I don’t think he’s doing too many back flips these days.

Maybe there’s some other moves/positions I can work toward, and I don’t want to look like a beach ball, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Well, the holidays are about over and I have managed to not add a bunch of weight! In fact, it is looking like I am coming out of this a mere pound heavier and up a half millimeter in the body fat pinches for Christmas/New Year’s and down two pounds for the entire Thanksgiving-New Year’s month.  Major success, I’d say.  At the beginning of Thanksgiving week I was 170 pounds, tonight I am at 168.  The beginning of Christmas week I was at 167.  The body fat pinch total is down two mm from Thanksgiving to tonight.

I will admit to skipping a couple of workouts.  I kinda blew it on the scheduling of the workouts this year around all of the events of the last two weeks.  Last year I never missed one.  What I ended up skipping were the leg workouts a couple of times and there was an abs night I skipped.  But the abs skip was because my back was very sore from snow shoveling and I would have really done a number on my back with all those crunches and flutters and so on.

It will be back to the regular work grind come Monday morning so things will get back to normal with eating and to keep liftin’.