First, the obvious. I started this as a way to lose weight and, by extension, improve my health. I have lost weight. I'll wait until the official 30-day mark to tell you how much, but I've dropped what I considered a good amount, certainly near the upper end of what I thought might be realistic within a month.
I've experienced an accompanying drop in girth and inches. Remember my posts about finally fitting back into my belt, and then moving down to the second hole? Well, it's not just my waistline that's shrinking. My legs are a little smaller, my chest, hips, even my neck and face aren't quite as flabby. Don't get the wrong idea, I'm still really fat, but there's a difference I can see, feel, and even measure.
I am sleeping considerably better. Before I started this, it wasn't unusual to eat really, really bad food late at night. I'm talking a big plate of nachos, or a Big Mac and fries, around 11, 11:30 at night, maybe even midnight. If that's not bad enough, that was usually on top of already having eaten badly all day long. When you go to bed that full, sleeping is uncomfortable. In my case, I'd constantly be waking up, never getting into a deep sleep, particularly those first few hours of the night. I'd sometimes find myself not breathing as easy as I'd like, waking up just to shift position so I could breath clearer, or be a little more comfortable. My wife would sometimes poke me to get me to wake enough to stop snoring, because I was so loud I'd wake her up.
All of that seems to have gone away. I still eat a little if I get hungry late at night (and yes, I include those in my daily calorie counts on my blog posts), but it's a small amount, and it's something healthy. I'm never feeling overfull after eating. I don't wake up multiple times during the night, I'm not waking my wife with the snoring, and while one of the things I still do a really bad job on is getting enough sleep, that's not because I'm waking up constantly during the night.
Other differences? It's hard to explain other than to simply say I feel better. Before, I often felt tired, listless, doing easy little tasks became chores that I'd avoid. Most of that's gone away now, too.
I don't mean to suggest I'm ready to hop into a powerlifting competition or run a marathon, but simple, everyday tasks have become so much easier.
I've seen a difference in my workouts as well. My first day was a chest, shoulder and triceps day. Generally I do barbell bench presses as my main chest exercise, but twice since I started the bench at the gym has been busy, so I moved to dumbbells. Once was on my first day, and the other was four days ago, on day 22. Those are the only two days I've done dumbbells as my main chest work, yet here's the difference:
March 9
Dumbbell bench press,
50 pound dumbbells, 1 set x 10 reps
70 pounds, 3 sets x 10 reps each
70 pounds, 1 set x 8 reps
Include barbell press
115 pounds, 2 set x 10 reps
That was it, my full chest workout, and while only the last dumbbell and last incline set was actually done to failure, I can honestly say that was about all I had in me.
Now, here's last week's chest workout:
Dumbbell bench press
55-pound dumbbells, 1 set, 10 reps
85-pound dumbbells, 3 sets, 8 reps each
85-pound dumbbells, 1 sex 6 reps
Incline Barbell Press
115 pounds, 2 sets, 8 reps each
Flat-bench Dumbbell Flyes
40-pounds, 2 sets, 8 reps each
As you can see I've increased weight, increased sets, or simply added more overall sets to the mix. Remember, I'm waiting only about 30 seconds to a minute between each set -- I don't do that think where you do a set, then sit around and rest for 5 minutes before doing the next set.
Most of my other workouts have seen similar results, more weight and more sets,
Same with cardio. My first night I did 30 minutes on the stationary bike, all at level 4, and recorded 9.75 miles. That really was about all I had in me.
So, with cardio I'm going longer, harder, and covering more "distance" on a per minute or per-five-minute or whatever-per-whatever measurement you want to take.
I'll be finishing up the first 30 days later this week, and along the way I may be looking at ways I can change things up, push a little harder (either in my workouts or my eating), see how much more I can improve in the second month.
But for now, finishing the last few days of month #1 strong, and enjoying the results, is pretty gratifying.
For the day:
Well, I took the day off, both from exercise and from eating entirely healthy. The exercise decision I made yesterday while I was on the bike. My knee started bothering me around the 30 minute mark, and given that I have a little mileage on the knees, and had worked pretty hard last week, I thought maybe a rest day might be in order.
As for the food? Well, I ate almost nothing today. By the point when dinner time rolled around, I'd have a grand total of around 540 calories on the day. My oldest daughter and son-in-law were down visiting, so we made that trip to Applebee's I was thinking about on Friday night. Still, I ate a much, much smaller meal than I would have a month ago (half-rack ribs, small amount of fries, and water rather than a diet soda).
So, tomorrow I'm back on it!
Thanks for stopping by.
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