fatguywithablog

I have had a pretty good week.  A couple slip ups, but for the most part I have worked hard and that is what I want.

I had an interesting run last night.  I really, really did not want to do it.  But I forced myself out the door and hit the payment.  Right away I could tell that it was not going to last, so I switched it up.  I knew about how far a mile was from my house, so I decided to run as fast as I could for one mile.  I kow that it would take me 8-9 minutes and really 8-9 minutes of excercise on a day when you don’t want to work out does not seem that hard.  So I got it done and ran the mile in a little under 9 minutes.  At this point, huffing and puffing I forced myself to walk in the wrong direction of my house down a huge hill.  So at the end of the day I only ran for about 12 minutes (I tried and failed to get it going again), but I was out excerising, walking (up some big hills) for 35 minutes.  Not the workout I planned, but no means a wasted day.

This morning, I forced my body out of bed and hit the gym.
Results:

Inclined dumb bell press:  55 lbs x 11 x1
9 x 1
10 x 1
60 lbs x 6 x 1

Bicep curl: 70 lbs x 12 x 2
80 lbs x 8 x 1
7 x 1

Military press (dumb bell):  45 lbs x 7 x 2 (just flat out missed on this lift, got to reevaluate)

Crunches: 20 x 3

The weekend is tough for me.  Mon - Fri is easy, I am at my desk, I am on a schedule.  Saturday and Sunday come and all hell breaks loose.  But I did pretty well this weekend and kept my eating under control, for the most part.  Pretty good.

I kicked the week off yesterday after work with a great session in the gym.
(Note, I realize this site is largely women and that weight lifting is not the emphasis here, but it is something I enjoy doing and I see it as an important part of my fitness plan.  I am not posting about my gym performance to be a meat head or to show off or anything like that.  I just think it is going to help me, to get these numbers down and see them regularly to track my improvement)

So anyway, I have started a new lifting program.  It is more a of a full-body, core strength routine.  It looks challenging and judging from how my body feels the day after the first run through, it is going to hurt.  My results.

Deadlifts: 135 lbs x 8 reps x 4 sets
Yes, the deadlift is back!  I have not done these since training for the old glory days of high school football.  I know these are a dangerous lift and you can really hurt yourself, so I started with a low weight and less reps.  I need to not get ahead of myself and really concentrate on form and execution for a couple weeks before i start adding weight.

Lat pulldown:  120 x 12 x 2 / 125 x 8  / 130 x 8

Dumb bell shrugs: 50 x 12 x 2 / 55 x 10 x 2 (these were hard, but I should increase the weight)

Skull crushers: 160 x 12 x 2 / 170 x 10 x 2 (right reps, but really hard.  Not ready for more weight yet)

It was a good start and I hurt like hell today, which can only mean one thing.  Its working.

I don’t believe in frequently weighing myself.  I have no idea what I weigh right now.   I do not care because it doesn’t do me any good to know.  I have a general idea and that is good enough.

I have found what worked for me in the past (and I admittedly did not stick it to) is to stay off the scale and instead measure my body to track my progress.  Now I have longer, macro goals that include weight, so I can envision getting on the scale for bi-monthly check ins, but that is it.

The facts are simple.  Healthy weight loss is about 2 pounds per week.  But at any hour of the day your body weight can fluctuate up to + or - 5 pounds, from a varitey of factors (what you ate, liquid intake, temperature, stress, etc…).  So you can have a great week of working out and loss your 2 pounds, but get on the scale at the wrong time and actually see a 3 pound gain instead of a loss!  Now that is an extreme case, but it within the realm of possibility.

Frequently weighing yourself creates a need to see instant success and instant success is not going to happen.  Simple as that.  Weighing yourself daily, weekly, etc… is going to lead to disappointment, which leads to resentment, which steamrolls into questioning what you are doing and finally in quitting your routine/diet.

I am not going to do it.

Instead I am going to track my success in the mirror.  I know what I look like and i know what I want to look like.  I am going to reinforce this with a monthly measurement.  Losing 5 pounds might get you excited, but losing 1.5 inches off your belly, now that is an accomplishment!  So here we go:

All in inches:

Neck: 17

Chest: 49.5

Stomach: 52

Waist: 45

Hips: 47

Bicep: L 14.5  R 15  (these are the only two I want to go up!)

Thigh: L 26.5  R 26.5

so there you have it.  That is me.  Obviously there is room for improvement.  Particularly in the belly and love handles.  I will remeasure in a month and we will see where I have changed.

I went for my run after work last night and it turned out to be a good one.  I ran 2.3 miles in 25 minutes.  I aim for a 10 minute mile so I was not too far off the pace.  I am pleased with it.  Than a little BBQ chicken and brown rice (threw some really hot, hot sauce on the rice to kick it up) for dinner, made it a great night all around.

I got up early this morning and hit the gym.  There is a more formal weight training program I plan to start on Monday, so this week was really about just “waking” up my muscles to the idea of working again.  Some light lifting for my legs and than 40 minutes on the eliptical, a protein shake and some proper breakfast and now I am at work and ready to start my day.  Its going to be a good one.

Today is a cardio day and I want to go for a run after work.  However, there is nothing but rain in the forecast, so I might be regulated to the gym.

Running is interesting to me.  I started running last fall and did well.  At the time I was a graduate student in Boston and I got to work out a fancy new fitness center with an indoor track.  I did very well running there building up to a 40 minute, 4 mile run.

I than graduated, took a job in Rhode Island and moved to Providence.  I know live in a beautiful neighborhood with lots of sidewalks and lots of hills.  My running has suffered.

I expected some change moving from an indoor track to the outside but not as bad as I am experiencing.  Running outside in the heat, with the wind and up and down hills is hard!  I am lucky if I can last a 20 minute run.  I don’t even bother thinking about distance anymore, I just hope I can last long enough to keep my heart rate elevated for a decent amount of time.

I am curious how much of this is a physical harder run vs how much is mental.

I am in need of new running shoes and I will get them shortly.  Maybe those will be the mental trick I need to get over what is blocking me from having great runs.  I find that sometimes something silly like new shoes will make you think you can run better, faster, longer, when really it is just a mind game.  But if it works, than go with it.

There is also a big football stadium near me.  I have done some stair work there.  Talk about a good walk out!  75 stairs to the top of the stadium.  The first day I worked out there, I ran up the stairs twice.  After my second time to the top I have to sit for about 5 minutes.  My legs were shaking so bad that I did not feel safe walking back down!

I have been back since, but have decided to build up some endurance using the other side of the stadium (about 30 steps).  Some day I will get back to racing up the long haul.

What I did this morning.

Time to track some progress, I got up at 5am this morning and hit the gym before work.  It was chest and tricpes day.

It should be noted that I acutally started lifting on Monday and arms and back.  I definantly over-lifted and i still cannot completely straighten out my arms.  So my workout today was definantly impacted.  But I tried to force my way through 4 lifts:

Dumb bell press:  45 lbs * 10 reps
65 lbs * 10 reps
65 lbs * 8 reps
70 lbs * 5 reps

Inclined dumb bell press:  35 lbs * 10 reps
55 lbs * 8 reps
55 lbs * 5 reps
(definantly did too much weight here, got to scale back)

Dip press (on machine):   135 lbs * 8 reps
150 lbs * 5 reps
(I think the weight was right, but my arms really hurt me here)

Skull crushers:    160 lbs * 8 reps
160 lbs * 5 reps
(again right weight, but the arms couldnt do it, too sore)

Tricpes pull downs:      140 lbs * 10 reps
140 lbs * 10 reps
150 lbs * 10 reps
(need to start with more weight)

Not a bad day, missed on a couple of lifts some due to mental mistakes some due to physical limitations.

My schedule by the way is going to be lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Cardio: tuesday, thrusday, one weekend day and one other day

So far for food I have put down:
Myloplex protein shake (20g protein!)
two banannas
Slim fast optimal shake
2 yogurts
coffee
water

A pretty good start today.  Salad for lunch and BBQ chicken for dinner.  Don’t want to throw a good workout away!

So I have been doing quite a bit of reading to try to understand how the body works and how you can shape/refine yours.  Here are some things I have learnt along the way that I am going to try to keep in mind.

1.  Over-training.  I have definantly been guilty of this is in the past.  supposedly less is more when it comes to the weight room.  If you do not give your muscles days to rest than they get over-worked and can shrink instead of grow.  I am going to try to limit my lifting to 3x per week to give my muscles time to rest.  We are going to test this.

2.  Gaining mass/losing weight.  You cannot do both at the same time.  To gain muscle mass, you have to eat more calories (mostly lean protein) but to lose weight you have to eat fewer calories.  These directly contradict each other.  However, you can still grow your muscles while losing weight, but you cannot expect to get huge bulging biceps right away.  Adding muscle helps to burn more calories while at rest.  So I plan on lifting to raise my heart rate and add some muscle to my body.  That and I generally enjoy lifting weights.

3.  Heart zone training.  Not all carido is the same.  Going all out for 45 minutes on the eliptical will improve your heart and lungs but you are not necessarily burning fat.  Balancing your cardio to include periods of 60-70% of your max heart rate and 80-90% of your max heart rate will help you not only improve your respiratory system but also allow you to burn more fat cells away.

4.  Dieting.  This is where I fail.  I plan to ease into this again, so in the near future I will be counting calories.  I have made some strides here in the past few years now.  I realize now that dinner is not an event.  It is a chance to resupply the body with fuel.  We eat for fuel, we don’t eat because it is a luxury.  That is an important distinction, since it helps remove tempation to just eat anything you want.  I have to get better here.

5.  Keep track of your progress.  That is why i started a blog!

6.  Weight does not matter.  I do not plan to weight myself frequently.  It does not matter.  Healthy weight loss is about 2 lbs per week.  At any given hour of the day your body can fluctuate +-5 pounds from your liquid intake alone!  So you can have a great week, lose your two pounds and still look as though you gained 3!  Weighing youself every week does nothing but disappoint you.   I will be weighing in by monthly to track progress on my macro goals.
But the better indicator is to simply measure your body.  How big is your stomach?  How wide is your chest, thighs, arms, etc…  I will be posting my starting measurements soon.

This is a lot to keep track of and requires some shift in thought that is not easy.  But it seems to me that these six things are going to help me get on the right track.

Hello,

I have decided to start this blog because I am fat and I want to lose weight.  I am a 26 year old male living in Providence, RI and I have struggled with weight my whole life.  I think charting my progress on a blog may help.

I am not sure what I currently weigh, I don’t really want to know.  I know that at one point I weighed 288 lbs.  Than I started working out.  I have been working out for about 4 years but my weight now just fluctuates between 240 lbs and 265 lbs.  I cannot seem to get past that mark or maintian any gains I make.

I stopped working out for the past 4 months and spent a lot of time reading about fitness and trying to learn what will work best for me.

On this blog I hope to chart out my successes, my failures, my goals.  I am hopeful that people will help me learn more along the way or that someone wants to join in with me to work on this together.

Stay tuned, this will hopefully be fun (hard work, but fun)