tenner22’s BodyBlog

After 8 weeks, I am down 19.5 lbs!  As week 9 gets underway, things are pretty much habit by now.  I know the things I have to do to reach my goal.  All I have to do is make sure there are minimal slip ups along the way.  The pitfalls I face?  I am still not too tempted by bad food, but I am tempted to let portion control get out of whack.

Things could have gotten out of hand last week when I was in a training seminar downtown all week.  They served us lunch each day.  Here are some menu examples from various days:

• Fried chicken strips over fried rice with sweet and sour sauce, fried spring rolls, and fried wontons
• Baked potato bar with melted cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits
• Lasagna

I would like to personally thank my company for looking out for my physical well being.  I know, it is not their responsibility to make sure I get balanced meals.  I ditched the company sponsored fried starch buffet for a local deli each day.  I was able to get a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with mustard each day.  I figured that was my best bet.

I am a little concerned… it seems that around 3.5 lbs of my weight loss is lean mass.  Obviously I want to hold on to as much of this as possible.  Maybe I should just be happy with the overall loss, and accept the fact that even professionals lose some muscle when they are cutting.

The measurements are in for week 6, and I have lost 16.5 pounds.  My bodyfat percentage went from 36.1% to 33.9%.  I have a LONG way to go, but I feel good about the progress.  It’s kinda funny… I looked at my pics from 6 weeks ago and compared them to today, and I can’t tell a lot of difference.  It’s not getting me down though.  When you have over 100 pounds to lose, 16.5 doesn’t look that noticeable.  I’ll compare after another 6 weeks, and I hope I can tell more of a difference.

Train hard, and have a good week.

After 5 weeks of not missing a workout, I have lost 13 lbs.  I am kinda riding a workout high right now!  While I am slightly behind schedule for where I wanted to be after 6 weeks, I am moving in the right direction.  Who can really complain about losing an average of over 2 lbs a week?  The bodyfat percentage shows I am holding on to my muscle too.  101 more pounds to go!

OK, so enough reading about this HIIT stuff… I had to give it a try last night.  Rocked my world.  This is now my preferred method of cardio (if I have to have one).  I was soaked by the end of that 20 minute session… much more so than after my usual 30-45 minutes on the bike.  i am going to work on getting 4 sessions in a week.  Hopefully that will kick this fat loss thing up another notch.

Three rum and diet cokes last night.  It is a good thing I did the cardio.  I decided to leave the yolks in with my egg whites this morning, so I will need to make adjustments to my eating for the rest of the day.  I am really craving Buffalo Wild Wings grilled chicken skewers, though.  They aren’t bad for you, but the beer that typically goes with them is.  I know, how can you complain about the fat not coming off fast enough if you are drinking on a Thursday, and eating contemplating it on a Friday too?  I’ll be nice.  I can do the DD thing tonight and have my chicken too.

Leg night tonight… I don’t think I will be able to do HIIT after hanging out at the squat rack.  Saturday morning you can count on it though!

Have a wonderfull weekend, and for those of you from Alabama, GO VOLS!

Four weeks are now done, and I have not had any major slip ups.  I feel good, my strength has skyrocketed, and I am able to push my cardio workouts much harder than when I started.  I am a little bummed about my weight and bodyfat percentage not moving as I would like though.  I know weight is not everything, but come on.

I am further refining my diet.  Lunch today is going to be brown rice and chicken.  No more turkey sandwiches for a while.  No more low fat granola bars with my mid morning cottage cheese.  My dinner protein servings are being cut by about 25% (still getting over 300 grams a day) and I will make better carb choices at dinner.  My calories are being cut from 3600 to around 3100.  Hopefully this will do the trick.  Just to make sure, I went out and bought a tape measure so that I can take weekly measurements.

Tonight is my weekly weigh in, but I am not going to be surprised by what I find one way or the other.  Moving forward my cleaned up diet should help make a difference.

Upon weigh in last night, I discovered that I was a whole 4 lbs heavier than on Monday night.  I am 1.5 lbs off from where I started 3 1/2 weeks ago!  The good news is my bodyfat percentage is down almost 2%.  All is not lost.  In fact, I may have gained around 5 lbs of lean mass.  I am hesitant to make this claim, because it could just be natural fluxuation.  Yesterday was another perfect diet day, so I will just keep on working out hard.

Last night’s chest and shoulder workout was great.  Tonight is back and arms, which I never seem to attack with the same vigor as chest and shoulders.  I am going to have to psych myself up for this one.  I often find my grip giving out on the pulling movements before my back is ready to give out.  This is not the case with chest, so I have always trained my chest harder.  Back is a weak point for me.

I walked this morning and it was 40 degrees outside.  Didn’t care for that much.

Update on last night’s workout… I got 30 minutes of cardio in, but missed the ab workout.  I love my home exercise bike.  I know I get some cardio workouts in I wouldn’t get otherwise.  We walked 30 minutes this morning, and things are starting to get a little cool in the mornings.  We were in the low 40’s at 5:30 this morning.  I think it forced us to pick the tempo up just to keep warm.  I don’t know that I will keep the morning walks up once the thermostat drops below freezing.  I guess that is what the bike is for, but I love the variety… I don’t want ALL of my cardio workouts to be on the bike.  Plus, with full work, exercise, and social calendars, it is a time my wife and I know we can reconnect.

Tonight I hit chest and shoulders… there is no way you can keep me out of the gym tonight.  I spent probably an hour last night on You Tube checking out videos of some of the big boys’ posing and training routines.  Very inspirational.  Just the midweek kick in the pants I needed.

Diet has been firing at 100% since my weekend slip up.  As I was looking over my food journal, not only did Friday and Saturday’s diets get blown, Thursday’s did too last week.  No wonder I gained.  I’ve been good since Sunday though.  It is funny how your shift in thinking works.  I am in week 4 now, and I no longer look forward to "cheat" days.  In fact, I hate the thought of slipping so much that I look forward to the days when I can just stick right with the plan.

I am feeling last night’s leg workout this morning.  This was one of those workouts where your leg is still involuntarily twitching hours later.  Kinda freaked my wife out as we were watching TV!  When the alarm went off at 5:00 AM this morning sounding the wake up call for 30 mins on the bike, I vetoed.  The legs need a little more rest.  This evening for sure I will get in 30-45 minutes of cardio followed by some ab work.
 

I am still pretty bummed from last night’s weigh in.  I know I shouldn’t put too much stock into the scale, but when your goal is to lose a certain amount of weight, you like to see the scale go down.  The bummer is my bodyfat percentage jumped too.  Can this all be as a result of one weekend gone bad?  I guess it can.  Let that be a lesson to me.

I’m moving in the wrong damned direction.  The weekend of fun takes it’s toll!  Back to fish and rice.  Good leg workout tonight though… I was doing the jiggle dance as I walked to my car.

It is the start of week 4 and I am nervous about tonight’s weigh in.  A friend was in town over the weekend, and while the food portion of the diet plan was close to what it should be, we went way over on calories in liquid form 12 ounces at a time.  Then tequila showed up.  Sunday was back on track though, and I managed to get 30 min of cardio in on my off day.  We even went to the gym together on Saturday and got a great back and arm workout in followed by 30 cardio.  I was supposed to get up this morning and walk for 30 minutes, but mother nature had something else to say about that.  I should have gotten up and done something though.  Oh well.
 

Today is the halfway point to my 6 week goal of 18-19 lbs lost.  I know what you’re thinking… why not just make it an even 20?  In order to reach my 1 year goal, that is just the amount I need to lose the first 6 weeks.  Each 6 weeks requires a little bit less.  I don’t think I can maintain 3 lbs a week over time.  At the end of my 52 weeks I should be sitting at an even 250.  I know that still sounds like a lot, but it is over 100 lbs lost.  I’ll reevaluate at that time and see what tweaking needs to be done.
 

My focus remains strong.  It is starting to become habit now.  I find comfort in knowing I stuck to the diet for a day rather than finding comfort in cheat foods.  I have a freezer full of 1 week’s chicken breasts already cooked, a fridge full of eggs, and a pantry full of tuna and oatmeal.  That is a good feeling.
 

I’ll update later tonight post weigh in and workout.  Wish me luck!