Weight: 221.0 (-10.2)
Fat: 32.3% (-7.0%)
Meals: Big Lunch, Fast 1 start 7pm
Exercise: Strength training, Cardio (Treadmill 25:00 WL5 - 316 calories, 1.78 miles)
Pictures: Front/Side/Back/Flex
Today is yet another late post and so I think it's time to discuss priorities. But first, some comments on today's progress.
Eating and working out
For last two days I've written about portion sizes and about how my food capacity has decreased. Today I completely ignored those two consecutive days worth of realization and ate too big again. Frankly, I woke up very late and I knew my fast tonight would begin at 7pm. Rather than fix myself some lunch, I got on the computer to respond to email and do my preliminary assessment of the day's workload. I got caught up in it and before I realized how much time had passed it was 4pm.
With only 3 hours left to eat I panicked. I hadn't prepared any food, I only had time for a single meal, and I hadn't even gotten dressed to go out and get food. So I made a trip to KFC and loaded up. Three strips, 2 orders of potato wedges and a biscuit. The last time I ordered this meal, I was still eating bigger portion sizes and I still left 2 of the 3 strips for later. Because I wanted to "fuel up" I forced myself to eat the entire thing. Feeling full and bloated afterwards, I didn't workout right away. Four hours later, I still felt uncomfortably full but I'd already put off my workout for longer than I could.
The strength training actually went very well. I increased my weights again over last workout and I think I still hit 12 reps on most exercises. That means the next workout I continue to increase the weight until I can't do 12 full reps. My muscles worked harder than they did previously, and afterwards I felt like I was spreading the load around my body instead of working one set of muscles harder than the others. I went from having a difficult time doing 30 crunches the other day, to doing almost 40 with few problems and no real strain. I have to find a way to increase that intensity without doing three thousand crunches every workout.
It was great right up to getting on the treadmill. Even though my belly has visibly shrunk, it felt like I was carrying twice my weight in the gut. I've been enjoying my work on the treadmill up until today and it was a real struggle to get through this workout. Okay, maybe I'm overstating that, but it was the first time I didn't feel good after the run. It was significantly worse than any other workout, even though it was only a minute more than the last one that felt pretty good.
Having overeaten and just completed my toughest weight lifting session yet, I'm not going to panic. But the cardio is definitely getting harder on me and I think it may be time to start reining it in a bit. I'm not going to stop or slow down. Nor am I giving up on continuing to add intensity. Maybe it's time to slow down the intensity increase though. I'm running a lot harder and faster than when I started and I promised myself I wouldn't run myself into the ground. It's more important to keep doing something than to push hard and quit.
Starting tomorrow, I'm only going to increase my workouts by a minute every other day. As the workouts get more difficult I'll switch to every third day, then every week. If I go a full week without an increase it's time to switch to the elliptical or head to the community clubhouse where I should be able to find a stationary bike or a stair stepper. Doing the same workout every day will result in a stabilization and I still want to push my body.
Priorities
As I mentioned this is yet another late post in a week of late posts. Are my priorities slipping? Is this a sign that I'm not commited to success in my weight loss? Am I headed down a slippery slope to giving up yet again?
The short answer is: No.
My priorities haven't changed at all. My first and most important commitment is to my relationships. It is and always will be. I promised my love that we would watch a movie together last night and since she had expressed her concerns that we had been a little distant the last few days I thought it important enough to skip posting. Well, not skip, but delay posting. I hadn't written the post yet or even put up a placeholder. I felt bad about this but having my priorities set in my head made it easy to decide the right thing to do.
Work and career are also very important to me. Although my business partner might not always believe it, I take great pride in the work I do and I really do enjoy hard labor, physical or mental. I wouldn't be a happy person if I didn't have some form of productivity in my life. Yes, kicking back on a beach is extremely appealing, but I have to earn that.
But as important as my loved ones and my business is to me, my health is among my top concerns as well. It may not be my top concern, but I need to put an effort into eating right and working out if I want to achieve the level of fitness that I want. If a loved one is in the hospital or some family emergency comes up, I may end up skipping workouts or letting my diet slack. If there's a work crisis and our business is offline, I may not have the opportunity to get to the treadmill. I accept that.
Just as it's important to realize that though, there has to be a balance. If I unconditionally and consistently put other people ahead of myself, my health and well-being is going to suffer as a result. I'm not saying I have to be selfish, or that I always come first, but if I don't make an effort to make time for myself and my fitness, I will never achieve my goals.
So part of finding that balance for me has meant a few late posts. The first week of posts were all late, the website wasn't built yet and when I finally did get it live I had to play catch up. I'm still committed to posting every day, but these posts do take some time to write and if they fall behind or I'm forced to post much smaller updates I'm comfortable with that.
On the other hand, there is absolutely 100% no excuse to ruin my diet plan. Fasting actually requires less work than even my regular eating, and much, much less time and effort than the six meals a day of only high protein, low carb foods. Since most of my weight loss will be from this super simple form of calorie reduction, this should continue unabated.
Working out daily is also very important to me, as my goal is not just to be skinnier and have a lower number when I stand on the scale, but I do want to build muscles and endurance. I'll never be a super active person, but being able to participate in highly physical activities on occassion is very important to me. But just as I would like to run between 23 and 33 minutes a day, and lift weights three times a week, I'm prepared to miss an exercise for my other priorities. Feeling lazy isn't a priority, nor will it cause me to miss a workout. And if I can't do a full workout that day, I've promised myself to "do something", even if it's just a few pushups and some situps.
Recording my weight and taking pictures daily is pretty simple and quick to do, and having gaps in my measurements reduces their benefits. So I'm making an effort to record those daily. Even on days when my blog post is a day late, I'm still weighing myself every morning and taking pictures after every workout.
As far as my fitness goes, blogging is the least important of the things I do, and the first casualty when things are too busy. I'm still commited to blogging every single day, and there might come a day when I fail to update at all. But in fitness priority terms, that's okay because the other stuff is higher in my list of things that need to be done. Unfortunately it's also the most visible sign that I'm doing my job. On the bright side though, every day I post means that I accomplished my other diet, exercise and measurement goals. And if I'm too busy for those, there's something serious enough going on in my life that I'm okay with that too. But as soon as that dies down, I'm back to pursuing my fitness goals.
