Monday, 9 February

Day 131 - 234 Days Remaining - 149 Days to First Goal Weight (220 pounds)

It's been a long while since I updated this blog about my training progress. Things over the past month have been going along so-so. I haven't worked out as often as I should and my diet hasn't been bad, but it hasn't been good either. For running in maintenance mode, I've been doing just that, maintaining. I'll weigh in tomorrow morning with where I'm at and try to remember to take a waist measurement to get something to work from. I received a brand new digital scale for my birthday. When I got it I weighed myself on my old scale and then on my new one. The new scale says I'm three pounds lighter than my old scale. Going forward I'll be using my new scale so my goal weight changes from 225 to 220 pounds (rounding to nearest 5 pounds).

So, my initial goal using the new scale, is to weigh 220 pounds by day 280. That gives me 21 weeks and 2 days to lose around 30 pounds (more accuracy to come tomorrow). In short, rest time is over, back to cracking the whip!

My diet today wasn't bad.

Breakfast
2 egg whites and 1 whole egg [2P]
1 ounce ham [1P]
1/2 cup 1% milk [0.5P/0.5C/0.5F]
1 banana [3C]
9 whole almonds [3F]

Lunch
3.5 ounces ham [3.5P]
1 cup green beans [1C]
3/4 cup mixed vegatables [1.5C]
1/2 apple [1C]
14 whole almonds [3.5F]

Afternoon Snack
1 stick string cheese [1P]
1/2 apple [1C]
3 whole almonds [1F]
One of the guys at work brought in a big bag of peanuts and I snacked on about 20 of those this afternoon. So, way too much fat this afternoon.

Dinner
1 green pepper stuffed with 1/5 cup rice and ground beef with tomato sauce.
3 ounces ham.
9 whole almonds
This was way too much protein tonight and probably not enough carb. This has been the gist of how things have gone over the last month. Breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack have been fine, but dinner and evening snack have generally been poor and/or not measured.

Evening Snack
Skipped.

I did my cirtuit training workout tonight. To refresh that's:
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
20 crunches
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
12 curls each arm
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
10 lunges each leg
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
12 overhead presses
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
20 squats
40 step ups on an eight inch stool
(repeat from curls to squats)
20 crunches
light stretching

I think the weight I'm using is about 30 pounds. I haven't measured it exactly. One of my Christmas gifts was a 20 kilo (44 pound) kettlebell. I'm using it for front squats instead of the dumbbells to relieve the stress on my shoulders from holding the dumbells away from my body. To compensate for the lighter weight I don't allow any break on my squats (though it is simply hard to get a break holding the weight right in front of my chest) so I do 20 straight reps with no break in between.

The weather is still icy so running outside is a tricky proposition. I haven't been getting over to the YMCA, so my running has suffered immensely during the winter. That's one goal I won't be able to check off (wimping out on running when the weather got cold). I'll have to see what I can do to get my aerobic level back up, not running simply isn't going to cut it.