Its Summer, I’m Cutting

Well I’m two months and 22 days into this cut, and things are still going pretty well.  I would have liked to see a bit more progress by now, but I’m down 18 pounds (As of August 13, I haven’t weighed in a while…) with no significant change in muscle size or strength.  I still don’t have my calipers in, I think they have become lost somewhere in Southwest Asia, but I would guess myself at around 14% BF right now.

 I have begun to do morning cardio at 0430 before work, and let me tell you, it sucks!  Today was my second day of doing a mile and a half run upon waking, and it has been pure suffering the entire run!  But the sense of accomplishment later on makes up for it.  My goal is to do 1.5 miles every other day, and eventually work up to 3 miles every other day.  It’s funny how much harder the morning run feels than it does in the evening.  I can run 1.5 miles NO problem in the evening, but when I do it in the morning it adds a couple of minutes onto the run time - it surprised me how much harder it felt.  I think it must be a combination of being tired, dehydrated, and not having my usual preworkout arsenal fueling my system that I do in the evenings.  This new addition is bound to jump start my fat loss again, and hopefully by the end of september I’ll be down another 8 or 10 pounds, and a few more BF% points.  Slowly but surely!

"You aren’t going to ‘find’ yourself, you are here to MAKE yourself"

I’ve been bringing the HEAT in the gym the last couple days, I’m expecting my transformation to be really nice once Im finished.  I’ve really been pouring myself into my training and diet.  I was pulling a shirt on today and I noticed some new ripples and hardness that I’ve never seen on myself before, I had to stop and do some flexing, haha!  Yeah shutup you do it too. 

On my supplements - I haven’t been using fat burners heavily yet..Im holding out for another month or two and then I’ll start hitting the fat burners hard to keep the ‘ripped-ness’ coming on strong.  So far I’ve been depending mainly on cardio, diet, sesamin, cla, and napalm for the cut.  Once I’m around a solid 4 months in, I’ll add in some stims and fat burners.  I’m gonna be RIPPED!  Say good bye to the puffy ‘ITS-GO-TIME’ (Yes, I know it’s a grammatically incorrect name) and say hello to the shredded ITS-GO-TIME…

Train HARD!

Alright, I’m a couple months and some change in to my first serious cut.  I’ve lost around 16 pounds, and quite a bit of fat.  My mid section is looking better and better, but I have come to the conclusion that I haven’t been working the abs either, A.) With enough frequency or B.) Enough intensity.  Something is missing somewhere and I’m determined to find it!  I’ve been working them like any other muscle, about twice a week, but I have generally saved them for either after a long bout of cardio, or after a weight session.  I think I’m going to change up and devote a whole workout session to abs, that way I’ll be mentally fresh to punish them.  It’s just hard for me to not pour all my energy into my big muscle groups, the same way I’ve done for years….it is hard to break old habits!  I’m going to throw this change in and ride it for a while and see if it doesn’t improve my mid section. 

"If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always received"

I’m still hangin’ in there!  I’m down to 194 on the scale, and the body fat continues to creep lower.  I’m not quite sure where I’m at, but I should have access to a caliper in a week or so, I’ll update that when I get the numbers.  My strength and muscle mass seems to still be all there, and I’m down a total of around 16 pounds since I started this in June.  I’ve upped my cardio slowly, and I’m doing a half hour after every strength training session, and on my off days (2 days a week) I hit the eliptical for an hour and do abdominal training.  I have to say that although I wasn’t very lean to begin with, trying to bring out my abs has been a much longer process than I had anticipated.  They are looking better every day, and my stomach is getting very flat, but it still seems that to actually have ‘abs’, I could be as far as two or three months away at this rate!  I have tinkered with my diet,training and supplement program, and I seem to have everything finally optimized, so maybe I’m wrong, and I’m only looking at another 6 weeks or so?  I guess time will tell.  Time isn’t really an object, I’m in the sand until Christmas anyhow, with really nothing to do other than workout…so if it takes longer than planned it isn’t a big issue to me - the biggest thing is that I continue to see improvement, and I have been.  I took a few photos a few days ago, will take some more in September so I can better gauge the changes.

Until next time - train hard!