After being on the program for about a week, today is weigh in day. Last Monday, 8/11/2008, my stats were as follows:

Weight: 185 lbs.
Body Fat: 17.4%

Today, 8/18/2008, my stats are:

Weight: 183 lbs.
Body Fat: 16.7%

That means I lost 2 lbs. and 0.7% body fat. Breaking it down even further, I lost 1.6 lbs. of fat and 0.4 lbs. of lean body mass. My goal is to lose 1% body fat each week, so I fell a little short. The first place I’ll look is my diet.

For the most part my diet is fairly clean. I eat 6 meals a day, and make sure I get the right amounts of protein, carbs, and fat. I even taper my calories and carbs. There is, however, still room for improvement.

I do eat one of the foods on the D list, cereal, but the cereal I eat is not loaded with sugar, so I’ll leave that in for now, but I’ll mark it as something to revisit if needed.

I eat two things on the C list - alcohol and butter. The butter can stay for now, but I’m going to give up the alcohol. I’m not a big drinker, but I do enjoy a glass of wine with dinner almost every night.

I’ll remove the wine and see what that does for me.

I was really busy and didn’t get to post anything yesterday. Besides, there wasn’t anything too important to say. I did 2 sets of cardio workout #1, which lasted 20 minutes. Then I did 3 sets of ab circuit #2. I finished with 20 minutes on the stationary bike at an intensity level of 10, plus 3 one minute bursts at level 13.

Today I did the 3 Day Metabolic Boost Day 2 workout. I also learned something new. For a while now, I’ve been doing a lot of unilateral movements to fix some strength imbalances I have. The problem is that my balance on things like 1 Leg Deadlifts, Lunges, and 1 Leg Squats is really bad, especially on my left sides. I’ve tried holding the dumbbells in both hands, on just the right side, and on just the left side, and my balance has not gotten any better. On the day 2 workout video, Vince said something I never thought of. He said don’t use weights until you can do the exercise with just your body weight, and it worked great. I was able to do 1 Leg Romanian Deadlifts with hardly any balance problems.

Today I did the 3 Day Metabolic Boost Day 1 workout. The workout took me about 45 minutes, and let me tell you, it was a tough 45 minutes. I watched the video of Vince doing the workout, but I didn’t appreciate how taxing it was until I actually did it. By the time I got to the planks at the end of the workout, I had nothing left. They look pretty easy in the video, but holding each for 30 seconds with an empty tank felt like an eternity.

Today I did 2 sets of cardio workout #1, which lasted 20 minutes. Then I did 2 sets of ab circuit #1. I finished with 1 set cardio #1, which lasted 10 minutes, and finished with 10 minutes of brisk walking at 3.7 mph.

The cardio sessions were on a treadmill at 3.0 incline, with the hard intervals at 6 mph, and the easy intervals at 3.5 mph. I felt good and was really huffing and puffing most of the way through. I left a nice puddle of sweat everywhere I went. :)

I’ve been doing a lot of reading related to fitness lately, and I’ve purchased quite a few e-books (my favorite medium). One of the best I’ve come across is Vince DelMonte’s No Nonsense Muscle Building. It looks like a great program for adding quality muscle mass in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, I need to lose weight at this time, so this is not what I need right now.

Just a few days ago, Vince released his No Nonsense 6 Pack, which is exactly what I’m looking for. I read through the book and I like his approach to losing body fat, so I’ve decide to dedicate myself to following the program. The thing that I like the best is that it is not a one size fits all approach. He lays out the pieces, but it is up to you to move, add, or increase the pieces to find what works best for you.

I’m going to start using the program this Sunday. Between now and Sunday I’ll post my thoughts and plans to really get the most out of it.

When I first started working out 10 months ago, I weighted 205 and had 26% body fat. I did hire a personal trainer, but didn’t make many other changes. I did start to drink more water, but my diet stayed exactly the same as it was before. I did weight training 3 times a week, and 30-40 minutes of cardio on the other 4 days. Since I was a beginner, I made decent progress. In 6 months I was down to 200 and 23% body fat.

Then in April 2008 I decided to do a little research to find a better way to get the results I wanted. One of the first books I ran across was Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. This book really opened my eyes. I realized that I had been doing everything wrong, and hampering my results by ignoring the diet part of the equation.

So with my new knowledge, I cleaned up my diet, payed close attention to number of calories I consumed and the ratio of macronutrients I was taking in, and set out some clear goals for myself. In the last 4 months I have lost another 5% of body fat and went from 200 to 186. Finally, I was starting to see the results that I wanted.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the steps I’m going to be taking to see if I can improve on the results I’ve gotten so far.

For those of you looking at the title of this post and thinking you would be reading about some juicy sexual story, I’m sorry to disappoint you. This is a different kind of coming out party.

I’ve been trying to get my body fat down to a respectable level for the past 10 months or so. I’ve had some success, but I think it’s about time to get serious and take it to the next level. So with that in mind, I decided to document my quest on this blog so that the whole world can see. This not meant to be some ego trip to make me fill important, but rather a way to add some accountability to the process.

So here is how I currently look:

And here are my current stats:

Age: 42
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 186 lbs.
Body Fat: 18%

In future posts I’ll lay out where I’ve been, where I’m going, and how I plan to get there.

2006 Carlisle Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley

I let this wine breath for 6 hours.

The nose had lots of bramble and earth, with some blackberry and mocha, and nice hint of blueberry and oak at the end. The palate was sweet and rich, with blackberry liqueur, dirt, blueberry, and a finish of vanilla and spice.