Week 99 — End of Summer
Some more random musings, but then I guess that’s what a blog is for!
Summer vacation is over and it is back-to-work time. In some ways that’s good, because it means I will be back to a stricter eating plan and regular workout routine. When I am off in the summer I am away a lot and the eating and workout schedules got out the window. I seem to have really "suffered" this year, too. My weight is up a fair bit from the beginning of the summer, and my waistline hasn’t escaped some expansion as well. Though, the last BF pinch measurement I did, I wasn’t up all that much, maybe a mm or two, so that hardly seems the entire cause. Perhaps I actually have some muscle weight gain? Seems unlikely with the erratic workout schedule, but who knows. This bodybuilding stuff affects everyone differently.
I think I am going to have to revise my "how I started" bio on my profile page a bit. In it I state that I had slimmed down some in college. I thought I had, I really did. This past week I was looking through my college yearbooks trying to answer some questions that a friend and I had come up with, and I came across some pix of myself. Ugh. Was I a chunker in college. I was going to scan an example for this post but there weren’t any shots that would crop well enough to get the point across.
On the college subject though, the alumni news from my alma mater arrived recently and in it was a photo of a group of guys from my era, and in fact I knew most of them in college, with their families at a little mini reunion they had recently. Was that an eye-opener! Guys that were skinny computer geeks in college are now these very fat code writers. I’m not talking a few pounds overweight, I am talking into serious obesity. Wow. I was kind of glad after finding my pic in the yearbook that I have gone the opposite way: fat computer geek to fit IT Guy.
Been looking at the workout routine and trying to put in a few changes here and there. Kind of hard to mix it up a lot with only dumbbells, but I have discovered incline bicep curls… what a pump they give you! Also added in the body weight dips for some extra tricep work. My delts I feel are lagging and I want to concentrate on them this winter, but with the shoulder problems I’ve had I need to tread carefully there… any suggestions out for hitting delts good with dumbbells? The other day in the leg routine I finally tried doing calve raises holding a pair of DBs… I’ve been doing them with body weight only all this time… and what a burn that created that I am still feeling two days later! Walking stairs is very interesting at the moment, and if I sit for too long my calves get stiff. Have to think carefully about doing that routine again! Probably used too much weight for a first go at weighting the exercise.
Well, autumn is approaching and it is back to the better eating and lifting routine. Hopefully as I approach the two-year mark of the concerted fitness effort I can continue to make some gains.
So, I’ll keep liftin’.
