W405

In between writing I have other crap I need to do. I’ve been negligent on tracking workouts and workout progress. I’ll be posting more of these with some videos.

This year, I have challenges. The first one is to be less 40 pounds (18 kilo, 2.86 st) by February 15th. I’m already down 6 pounds. However, I’ll know I’ve hit the right range when I’m in the low 250s to 240s. I think it’s doable. I’m giving myself leeway I’m just not telling myself there’s leeway. My highest weight the last month was 305 right after the holidays (so dec 26th). To make this reasonable in timeframe and effort I’m going to start with my weight on 1Jan20 which was 294.8. That makes my goal 254.8 – I’m not satisfied with that. I want to hit 249. That may be more than my goal weight, however, I want under 250. The last time I weighed anywhere close (according to my logs) was 11Aug07 when I weighed in at 255. This morning I weighed 285.2 or so. That’s only 30+ pounds to hit my weight loss goal and 36 pounds to hit the goal I want. I can do this. It’s lofty, it can be done. The last time I had a huge weight loss like this was 2018 when I went from 331 down to 280. I hit about 30 pounds loss in one month. I’ve got a total of 45 days to hit 40 pounds.

The last time I did this there were a lot of people telling me what I was doing was unhealthy. It probably is. You know what else is unhealthy, 285 pounds. Fortunately, all of my labs are normal. My echo cardiogram is awesome. So, the only thing left is to do this. My body fat is estimated, via calipers, at 34%. What’s my plan?

I’m doing something a bit different than the last time. The last time my plan was just to drop weight and I was very successful at it eventually dropping from 331 to 269 – 62 pounds. I didn’t yo-you back up after that, it crept back on because I didn’t realize how much I used food as a comfort – nor how I’d been doing that my entire life. So 3 months of work was gone in a month of eating like crap and I went from 269 back up to 280-285 or so and then hitting 305 again. We’ll not discuss the psychological conditions related to this. That’s for another time. I did a lot of meditation, self-hypnosis, and counseling to forgive myself and accept myself. I’m not chasing food like a drug. I also used to go through phases where I’d spend erratically. I don’t do that either. I’ve addressed concerns with myself and I’m ready to proceed.

The actual plan. Intermittent fasting, potatoes for 2 weeks with some salads, intense workouts daily, after 2 weeks rice/beans/tomatoes and salads. That’s the gist. I’ll cover that more below. I was going to just not eat for 16-18 days. I can do that. That’s not the most difficult thing I’ve done when it comes to restrictive dieting. I’d probably drop about 40 pounds in that time. That’s not really my goal. I mean 40 pounds is the goal. I’m saying my goal isn’t just 40 pounds it’s also not to be so weak that I can’t move. That 40 will pop back so fast if I did that. I do really well with intermittent fasting. I won’t eat after 8pm no matter what. From the time I eat something I have 4-6 hours to eat but not after 8pm. so if I start eating at 6pm then I have 2 hours to eat whatever I’m eating for the day. I can eat only potatoes for 2 weeks. I’ve done it a few times before with great results. Now, I’m going to counter something at this point. You’re not supposed to workout while only eating potatoes. I am going to. I want to increase some muscle and burn a bit more fat. I have a lot of fat to burn.

I start my day with 30 minutes or more of meditation. I wrote some confidence scripts and then recorded them. I listen to them and I use Centr for some guided meditation. I then spend 15-30 minutes or so stretching for flexibility. It’s not yoga it’s yoga-esque. My workouts include 60minutes riding a stationary bike with mag trainer and the hardest gears and I wearing a 50# weight vest almost all day every day. I do 20s planks, 20s side planks each side, 8 rows TRX, 8 bicep curls TRX, 8 tricep curls TRX, 10 pushups, 8 hanging leg raises, 1 assisted pull-up. The hanging leg raise and assisted pull-up are without a weight vest. Every hour I get up and drink 16 ounces of water. I usually have to urinate from the 16 ounces the hour before. I then do these exercises and maybe stretch something that feels tight. I do this from 8am until 4pm – except at 3pm I quit drinking 16 ounces of water and just drink a little – maybe 4 ounces at a time. That’s because I have kids to pick up and errands to run from 4-5:15. Then at 6, if I’m eating I’ll have another 16 ounces of water and then cut back to 4 ounces at a time until about 8 when i stop drinking. If I don’t stop then my body will continue to urinate until after 10pm when I really need to be sleeping. By the end of the day I’ve had about 112-150 ounces of water through the day which is about a gallon. When I eat, I don’t eat before noon. I really try not to eat before 2pm since 3 is when my body begins to get tired. I try to get in some food if I’m feeling tired. For the first 2 weeks this is going to be potatoes and leafy greens only – primarily potatoes. The next 2 weeks will be potatoes, rice, black beans, avocado, and tomatoes with chilis. I’ll usually make that and eat once a day and I will really not eat a lot. Remember, this program is temporary – less than 6 weeks. The goal is to get some muscle, not a lot, just some so I’m not weak and lose fat. I can already hear the same comments I always hear – don’t worry about it. This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. After the first 2 weeks I have a scheduled eating that is whatever I want. This is ok because I won’t eat whatever I want. I can eat whatever I want, trust me, I won’t.

Once Feb 15th hits and I’ve reached my goal (unless I reach my goal sooner) then I’ll adjust my diet. After this point, I’ll be ramping up my workouts. I should be used to working with the weight vest on and dropped weight. I’ll increase my food intake sticking with primarily plant-based eating rice/beans/tomatoes/potatoes/leafy greens/carrots and adding in some fish, shrimp, and maybe turkey as I want. This point it’s a matter of building muscle and losing more weight which will come from the workouts. I’ll be focused on functional training so the same as I’ve been doing, however, I will add more TRX workouts that increase in intensity. Such as inclined pushups, increasing my work on parallettes, working on more core work including getting to the point I can attempt a planche, hanging lever, etc. I love the TRX – I’ve had it nearly 6 years and it’s my favorite workout equipment. I go to the gym three days a week. I split those workouts up into upper, lower, and core. I walk about 15 minutes before I do my workouts. I use machines for a lot of the work. It’s easier to leg press 300+ pounds on a leg press and not worry about squats. It may not be what you agree with, it’s just what I do. In the gym, I do exercises that I wouldn’t normally do at home and they’re more to gauge how well I’m progressing with the TRX. Remember the TRX I’m using my body weight and I work on the most difficult level so if I do squats with 285 and 50 pound weight vest I see how my leg press stacks up. Or abductors or adductors. And I do lat pulldowns on a machine. However, I’ll also do dumbell shoulder exercises there. I’m more motivated at a gym not to look stupid so I push just a little harder. No one cares, it just gives me an extra push. I don’t push 100%. I push 75% so I’m not completely sore the next day and I don’t injure myself. I can still get in all of my workouts and recover. Every third day I do a workout without the weight vest.

Now, after 15Feb I don’t have my next goal set. My total goal is to get between 180 and 200 pounds by 1Oct. I can do that. My fitness goal is to be able to do at least 1 pull up – so I work on those assisted and negative pull-ups daily. I’m not sure what to do after this point, actually, I’ve not thought about it. Since this first 6 weeks or so is losing weight and gaining some muscle and fitness capacity after that is muscle, fitness, and then losing weight I don’t know what to do. I’ve had trainers have me eat like 3k calories a day and that didn’t work out well for me. So, before I get to that point I’ll have to plan out my foods and what I’m going to do. Any suggestions are welcome. I don’t want to spend all of my free time figuring out what to eat. I like to eat the same things daily because it’s easier for me to go “oh it’s 2pm I’m going to eat steak” or what have you.

How will I measure progress? I have a measuring tape for size. I have calipers for body fat. I have a scale for weight. These are simply tools for measuring and I’m not using them to say “oh I need x more pounds this week so I won’t eat.” I also said I’m measuring my progress by using weights and the gym to test my strength. I’m taking video of my workouts through the day – not all of them – just some of them. This will help me track how I look and feel. I’ll vlog this part. I track in myfitnesspal my workouts, food, and water. I also track this in my journal so I can write how I feel before and after a workout. I’m pretty good about tracking a ton of variables. At some point, I’ll be at a point where I notice the clothes more loose. My pants already fall off me and shirts that I’ve not worn in a year are fitting much better.

My reward. When I reach my goal between 200 and 215 I’ll buy new clothes. I already have a lot of smaller tshirts I bought that I can’t wear because they’re much smaller than I am now. I wear a 2x and these are all L or XL. So I have some shirts to shrink into. When I’ve hit my goal I’ll buy all new clothes that compliment my size. I’ve also planned a disney trip for november. This trip starts by hitting my goal on the 15 February. there are bonuses that will be added as I go for the trip. This year has already shaped up to be a great year – now it’s my turn to shape up.

I need to really plan out what I’m going to do after the 15th of February. I have the Derek Weida 2020 plan which I was going to start. I might do that in addition to my hourly workouts. I don’t want to stress my body too much before the 15th of February. This first six weeks is building the base and losing some base. I really need to think about nutrition after that date though. I’ll probably talk to someone who is much better at the nutrition aspects than I am about what I should eat and what workouts I should do to increase the muscle mass the way I want it. I mentioned the Centr app. I really like it and maybe I go with that. I don’t know.

I think that’s it for now. I’ll be posting weekly updates here. I am also going to mention that 405 weeks ago was march 2012 when I started this journey. There have been a lot of ups and downs. I’m finally on a mental track to push this year to be the best fitness year.

Until next time, dodadagohvi.