Lose That Sixth Grader

I did Turbulence Training Beginner Bodyweight and Interval Workout B today. The challenging exercises remain to be split squats with my front foot elevated. My right quad is still weaker than my left. The other challenge is bicycle crunches, but my form is getting better and I did 3×20,20,16 more reps than ever before. The most exciting thing was that my 15 year old daughter did the bodyweight exercises with me. However, since she’s training for lacrosse she went on a distance run rather than doing intervals with me.

A set back is a set up for a comeback — Les Brown, Author and Speaker

Now for the regression part. As I’ve written about before you CANNOT out train a bad diet. This week I went way overboard. Most nutrition experts whose material I’ve read lately stress that you don’t have to eat correctly 100% of the time. If you’re serious about weight reduction you should eat correctly at least 90% of the time. You can even lose weight eating correctly 80% of the time.

Let’s break that down a little based on three meals and maybe two snacks a day, call it five meals. In a week that’s 35 meals. Ninety percent of thirty-five is 31.5 call it 32. Theoretically that means you could eat less than optimally for three meals a week. That’s less than one day. Many nutritionists and trainers recommend giving yourself one treat meal a week.

That’s all good and I understand it, but I ate far more than three treat type meals this week. Monday I did the McDonald’s thing. Tuesday I slipped up again. What I didn’t write about on Tuesday was that I got home to pizza and promptly ate at least 4 slices. Wednesday I ate out all day including dinner with my wife at a seafood place seafood can be healthy but not if you over eat and drink along with it, which I did.

Thursday was decent I ate healthily all day. Friday I had a good breakfast. I ate out for lunch and had a homemade style hamburger, potato salad, pickle and 1 oatmeal cookie. I intended to start a 24 hour fast Friday night, but after I got off work at 2330 that night I went to Krystal and had four krystal burgers w/ cheese, fries, a rootbeer and a fried apple turnover.

So, that’s at least eight meals which were way past being sub-optimal. That’s almost three times a pretty lenient estimate of three treat meals a week and obviously eight times the recommended one treat meal a week. This is not the way to reduce my weight by twenty-five pounds in time to win the 4th TT Transformation Contest. This is not the way to be healthy.

Let’s see how far this week of bad eating set me back. I now weigh 252 pounds. That’s not too bad! I thought I would have gained weight. It’s not as good as the five pound weight reduction I recorded last week, but not nearly as bad as the expected gain. I am near the end of a 24 hr. Eat Stop Eat fast which is scheduled to end at 1800 hours today.

But just imagine what my weight reduction could have been if I had done the two fasts I had planned for the week and eaten clean 90% of the time. That three pound reduction could easily have been anywhere from six to ten pounds. But I won’t cry over spilt milk as the saying goes. Nor will I spend any more time in the land of woulda’ coulda’ shoulda’.

I will just do better this week. I’ll plan to have 1 day at most of treat meals. And before the end of the contest, I’ll whittle that down to 1 treat meal per week. So enough analysis. Now for the measurements and pictures.

Age: 42
Height: 5′9″
Weight: 252
Neck: 16.5″
Fore arms: 13″
Upper arms: 15.5″ straight 16.5″ flexed
Chest: 50″ – must have been incorrect before, no way I gained 2 inches on my chest.
Waist: 48.5″
Hips: 47.5″
Thighs: 27.25″
Calves: 16.25″

I put a quarter inch to a half inch on my lower body measurements. I wonder if that’s water? I have been having some problems retaining water in my lower body. At any rate I feel better both physically and mentally since beginning to workout some six weeks ago.