D.Alan’s BodyBlog

Random Musings.  It’s been a few weeks since I last blogged mostly due to things being very busy around here.  I have been managing to keep up with the workout and diet routine, but there hasn’t been a lot of time for much else.  I am finally getting caught up on a few things, like the bb.com blogging.

My IT job is in a school so we were in the middle of the chaos and bedlam that is close-out of the school year throughout the month of June, with it all coming to a head the last week of that month.  Then it was time to immediately shift gears into summer break mode and getting things ready to pack up and head out and open up the cottage for the summer.  I was looking forward all school year, as I always do, to heading up to the cottage and getting some sun and swimming and generally relaxing, only to be faced with the reality of the weather so far this year in the Northeast… the very UNsummer-like weather, that is!  Lake water was barely warm enough to swim in at first and by the end of the week it was too cold to go in at all, it rained a lot, the wind blew like crazy … sigh.  We’re headed back there tomorrow for another week so hopefully things will have improved a bit in the weather department.  The weather at home this week, of course, has been great.

On the way home from the cabin we were at our usual superhighway junk food emporium for a potty break and supper stop.  It’s an interesting place to people watch, and I sure saw my sig line in full force that evening.  I saw one guy who was a weightlifter — man, did he have some massive guns and pecs – but even he was carrying a fair bit of body fat around the middle, though maybe he was bulking.  I saw more pot bellies and just generally fat people than you could shake a stick at… as I was eating my Wendy’s burger (shhh).  As iKoniConSciencE once said in a comment to me, "If you ever want an ego boost, go to the mall" and people watch.  You can do it at road stops, too!

With the cottage trips the workout routine gets a bit out of sorts since I have no lifting gear there.  That’s why I was so miffed that the swimming wasn’t great, that’s about my only physical outlet there, other than the loading and unloading of the luggage & etc. on the way up and on the way home.  I have been trying to hit it hard in this week that I have been home and have been largely successful.  I even got out on the bike yesterday for a quick errand run as well as a short walk.  I lost a workout time yesterday evening because I had a mild vertigo attack that started during supper and kicked into high gear if I laid flat on my back… and I was planning to do chest and tris.  I think I am working up to Meniere’s Disease, as I have had these mild vertigo attacks from time to time and it is prevalent on my mom’s side of the family, with two of her siblings having it, along with an aunt or two, and I am the prime age for its onset… sigh.  I was able to sleep on my side without the world spinning last night and it passed off through the night and I have been OK today.  But, it threw a small spanner into the workout schedule.  No biggie, and I am not going to stress over it.

I did retain a ton of water earlier in the week and am wondering if that didn’t help with the vertigo.  I don’t know what set off the water retention.  Usually it is when I have something with a lot of salt in it like processed food, I seem to be quite sensitive to that, but I can’t pinpoint anything this time.  It appears to be slowly getting back to normal.  Sometimes it all lets go at one time and I pee like crazy for a morning, which is usually when it happens, after I have had my morning coffee!

Well, I better get back to packing for the cottage run.  I just posted a pic I snapped after the chest workout.  I thought I looked better than it came out, as usual the pic has me looking fatter than I think I look in the mirror.  Oh well, it’s a progress pic.

Keep liftin’. 

Don’t know what I did, but something has my right shoulder hurting with flat or decline flyes and bench presses, so much that I can’t lift much weight,   It started last week, but was just sore for a day or two afterward and seemed to be better, but this week when I tried the flat bench and flyes it really started hurting.  I am not too happy, of course.  I can do incline flyes and presses OK, so it must be just one specific muscle or something.

Things seem to be OK in the BF% area.  Pinch measurement over the weekend was down from the week before, and I have been noticing some "veinage" lately here & there which would indicate the BF is down some more.  My forearms are showing some more veins than usual, and I noticed the other night that I had just a little showing in my calves.  That really psyched me.  Of course I still have the rubber around the middle so there is still a ways to go yet, but every little step over time means a big step closer to the goal.  Though, I got looking at my records and see that my BF% pinch total is down only 5 mm from last year at this time.  I thought I had made better progress than that.

Summer seems to have finally found my part of the world and it’s good to get outside in the sleeveless shirts and get some sun on the arms.  Cottage season is coming very quickly so I am very much looking forward to more sun and some swimming.

But until then I need to keep liftin’.

Wow, been a  few weeks since I posted an entry in the blog.  Just been busy with work and liftin’, I guess, and throw in a three-day weekend trip last weekend and there isn’t much extra time to go bloggin’.

The efforts of my year-and-a-holf of lifting were worth it this week.  I was at a retirement gathering for a colleague and there were a number of now retired colleagues at the party that I hadn’t seen in some time, for some of whom it’s been several years.  Boy, did I get a lot of compliments on my appearance.  One asked me if I was "bringing sexy back" which was about the best comment I received the entire time.  I guess this lifting stuff is working!

Then yesterday I get a phone call from a friend who’s passing through the area, can we grab a bit to eat together?  Sure.  I hadn’t seen this friend in a number of years also and he was quite complimentary about the way I now look, and was asking detailed questions on what I am doing for a routine.  He’s been trying to eat right and work out but has a very erratic work schedule so the gains he makes when he sticks to the routine are lost when he has to hit the road or things get too busy.  He at least has a guy advising him in a personal trainer sort of role.

Anyway, all these enounters this week sure energized me.  With the trip last weekend with no lifting for about five days and not eating exactly right, I was down a bit when I got home to find the scale being up a bit and the BF% pinch total the week before was up a little and so on.  I was feeling like I was sliding back, so I was very glad to get the face-to-face compliments.

The BF% pinches this week were down little so I am back to where I was about two weeks ago, so the progress continues, albeit slowly.  Three steps forward, two back.  Summer is here and I still can’t see my abs, which was originally a goal of mine, but I will keep at it.  The only problem is during the summer the lifting schedule gets crazy because I start alternating back and forth bewteen the house and the cottage, and the weeks I am at the cottage there’s no lifting, though there is swimming.  So, the summer lifting schedule is essentially a week on and a week off.  It works, I just don’t make a lot of progress.

I have a couple of weeks yet before the cottage trips start. so for now I’ll keep liftin’.

Monthly measurements are up a bit for the first time in quite a while!  Not a lot, mind you, it was a quarter inch here, and an eighth inch there, but it’s enough to kick the motivation up a notch.  It might be because I started taking Omega 3 fish oil a few weeks ago.  They say you need that to build muscle and I start taking it and a couple of weeks later the measurements are up, could be a connection.  Whatever, I am very pleased to finally have a little progress.

I was glad to see the growth because I was beginning to get concerned about my weight, which has been up a bit for the last week or so and I was originally attributing it to some water bloat but it wasn’t going back down like it normally would with water retention.  So, perhaps it is up because I actually have added a little muscle.  Time will tell, of course, but I am telling myself at the moment that that is what it is.

I want to keep this growth going so I will keep liftin’.

BF% pinch total is down about a half mm this week.  The slow-but-sure progress continues.  The BF pinch total is down between 4-5 mm since the beginning of the year, and down 50 mm — yes, that’s correct, 50 big ones — since I started lifting seriously in October ‘07.  Couldn’t believe that number just now when I looked it up!  Talk about small bits of progress adding up to a big change.  There’s weeks when there is very little change in the pinch total, or worse yet it goes up a bit from the previous week and it can be discouraging.  Gotta keep the big picture in sight.

And here I was mad that I have been somewhat bloated the last few days.  The weight got down to 166.5 on Thursday and we went out to eat Thursday evening and I admit to having french fries and other stuff not good for you and Friday morning the weight was 170!!  Had to have been mostly retained water because of the salt in the stuff I ate.  Arrgh.  Oh, well, in the next day or so I’ll suddenly be peeing like crazy and all that water will leave and I’ll be back to the current normal.

However, I want to keep at that lowering BF pinch total, so I’ll keep liftin’.

OK, so what happened to bb.com yesterday?  I couldn’t get onto the site all day, and even "ping" attempts came back with nothing.  Checked the "news" page today and of course nothing is mentioned… just like the picture counters that apparently are broken for any newly posted pix.

Had a wild week at work which previous to my lifting and diet minding would have meant a lot of extra eating, but I managed to avoid that.  The lifting also helps to keep the frustration in check, too.  I did have a "screaming hissy fit" one morning about yet another snafu that developed, but that’s the only one I have had in a year or more.  Without the lifting it might be a daily occurrence.

There was a big event at work Friday night and I saw some folks that I hadn’t seen in a while and there were a lot of compliments in my direction about my appearance.  "You’ve lost weight!"  "Wow, you look great!" "What’s your secret?"  When I replied that my "secret" is to eat right and exercise, I got a groan in return, "Oh, I don’t know about the exercise part, that’s what I have trouble with."  Everyone seems to want a quick fix to weight loss and fitness, no one wants to put out the effort to actually do what you have to do.  It was an ego booster anyway to get the compliments.

BF pinches this week were undetermined, I guess you could say.  The cheap plastic calipers have me down a bit from last week, the digital one has me up a bit.  I guess we split the difference and say there was "no change.  The tape measure didn’t say it a couple of weeks ago, but I think the shape of my arms is improving… at least that is what I think I am seeing in the mirror!  The pecs seem to be doing well with the routine I am doing, I am trying to hit the bis and delts a little differently, so we’ll see how that goes in the next few weeks.

Work is still screwed up and I have to keep an even head with the stuff that comes up, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Continuing with the routine here.  BF pinch total is up a mm from last week, but that is possibly because I hit the chocolate a little too hard this week,   Work has been crazy the last two weeks and while I have been very good in not attacking the chocolate like I used to in similar circumstances, I did hit it some.

Took my monthly progress pix tonight, a week late since I should have done it last week, and did some comparing with some of my earliest pix.  I made up a comparison shot between 2006 and tonight and it is quite striking, I think.  I was a little down the last day or so as I was "feeling fat" and then the BF pinch was up a bit sort of confirming the "feeling fat" and then I looked at these pix!  Not feeling fat any more!  Keep taking those pix for checking your progress, they’re the biggest ego booster out there!

Had what I thought was my best arm pump ever tonight.  After I was done I was thinking that the guns were the biggest/best looking they had ever been, so I tried to get a pic right away.  And, as always, it doesn’t lookanything in the photo like I think it does… I hate when that happens.

I want to look good all the time, not just with a good pump, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Continuing with the routine here.  BF pinch total is up a mm from last week, but that is possibly because I hit the chocolate a little too hard this week,   Work has been crazy the last two weeks and while I have been very good in not attacking the chocolate like I used to in similar circumstances, I did hit it some.

Took my monthly progress pix tonight, a week late since I should have done it last week, and did some comparing with some of my earliest pix.  I made up a comparison shot between 2006 and tonight and it is quite striking, I think.  I was a little down the last day or so as I was "feeling fat" and then the BF pinch was up a bit sort of confirming the "feeling fat" and then I looked at these pix!  Not feeling fat any more!  Keep taking those pix for checking your progress, they’re the biggest ego booster out there!

Had what I thought was my best arm pump ever tonight.  After I was done I was thinking that the guns were the biggest/best looking they had ever been, so I tried to get a pic right away.  And, as always, it doesn’t lookanything in the photo like I think it does… I hate when that happens.

I want to look good all the time, not just with a good pump, so I’ll keep liftin’.

Last night was my monthly measurement night and for about the third or fourth straight month in a row, there are no significant changes.  My chest is down a quarter inch this time, but everything else is the same as last month.  I am not surprised at the chest measurement as there is still fat there and on my midsection to lose, and the BF% pinches keep coming down, albeit very slowly.  The BF pinch total is down another mm or so over last week.  Again, slowly but surely.  My pinch total for some time now has been less than my stomach pinch alone was the first time I did a BF pinch.

So, I guess I am officially on a plateau.  I have made steady progress for most of the time I have been at this, starting in late October 2007, until the last few months.  Time to change things up, I suppose, but it’s tough to come up with other things to do when one has only a set of dumbbells.  I can’t do anything involving cables or barbells since I don’t have any of that stuff.  I have slowly upped the weight on some of things that I do, but I try to do it when I can handle the weight w/o sacrificing form, so weight-upping has come very slowly.  Any of you CPTs out there looking for a challenge, PM me and I’ll let you know what I have been doing and maybe you can come up with a new routine that’ll get me making some progress again.

It’s not to say that I haven’t improved in the time I have been at this.  One of the things I have upped the reps on is close-hand pushups for hitting the tris.  When I first started into this seriously it was all I could do to get three sets of 10 reps in, and I even found I note in my exercise log from those early days that "close hand pushups are HARD!"  I can now do three sets of 20 of those, and can probably bump those up a couple more reps each again.  At first it was all I could do to lift 20 lb DBs for alternating bicep curls, now on a good night I can do 10 reps of 25 lbs on the last set!  I’ve previously mentioned being now able to do a sitting leg lift thing where when sitting on the floor you put your hands on either side of you and lift your butt and legs off the floor in a pike or "L" position… I never could have even thought of doing that before I started lifting seriously.  It’s not like all my hard work hasn’t resulted in any improvements.

We’ve been having some summer-like weather here the last few days and I have been outside in the sleeveless shirts… not quite ready to shed the shirt entirely yet!  Still not ripped enough, and probably won’t be this summer as I had hoped all through the winter.  Also my arms don’t look all that great out in the bright sun, despite all my work.  That was a little depressing.  But it’s great to have the good weather around and get outside and do some yard work or whatever.  It also means it’s bicycle season again so I can get some add’l exercise riding the bike on errands and such.

However, I still need to drop some BF and build some muscle so I need to keep liftin’.

I started out the week feeling a little sorry for myself, having been away for a few days and not being about to lift and eating badly, though on my return home my weight wasn’t too far out of whack.  Spent the rest of the week getting back into the routines and eating better and felt a little better, but was still feeling like I am still too chubby, not buff enough, etc.

I took a couple of pix Wednesday evening and a day or two later got comparing them with my earlier photos.  Wow, have I come a long way.  I made up a year’s comparison between April of last year and April of this year which shows the progress I have made.  I posted that and have gotten some nice comments on it.  What really boosted the ego, though, was looking at my earliest photos.  I started doing some basic, I guess you’d call it, lifting back in 2005.  It was nothing serious, though at the time I thought it was.  What I ended up doing was toning up a bit, but the diet was still terrible and I didn’t weigh myself at any point (didn’t have a scale) and I never lost any fat.  I did take monthly photos of my non-progress.  Looking at them now is almost painful to see how big I had gotten and how I was making no gains in the lifting, or what alleged to be lifting, that I was doing.  What’s even sadder is that at the time I thought I was doing well!!  At least I finally found out the right way to go about it.

Anyway, looking at those photos of me then compared to me today really helped to pick me up and give me the oomph to keep at this.  I have made a lot of progress, and it is still continuing.  So, I’ll keep liftin’.