June 15
Just another day, I suppose, although I am trying to settle into a more regular exercise programme.
I also looked at myself in the mirror as I was working out in the gym tonight, and could swear that I could see some real changes in my body. That was cool.
I have also bought some new shirts, one size smaller than I was previously wearing. I was wearing 3XL, but my wife always said that they looked too big and baggy on me, but the 2XL felt tight. Well, now the 2XL fit nicely. That's gotta be some kind of progress, right?
Almost forgot - My khaki shorts are starting to slip down off my butt. Going to have to start wearing a belt - or buy new shorts. Also, the chinos I stopped wearing a couple of years ago because they were too tight now fit tolerably well. Bye-bye track pants!
I had my wife take some photos of me back in early April when I just started all this. I will get her to take some more at the end of the month and I might even post them for you all to see - if I am brave enough.
Okay, on to the day's story.
breakfast - steelcut oats with agave nectar, 2oz roast beef
snacks - 1 banana, 22 cherries
lunch - 1 cup mashed potatoes with margarine, 4oz buffalo sausage
snack - 1oz cashews
supper - 2 slices whole wheat bread with butter, bowl of salad with light caesar dressing and feta
dessert - 2"x3" Nanaimo bar, 1/2 cup milk
Exercise:
I'm trying to get myself worked into some kind of regular exercise programme, as opposed to previously when I just did whatever I felt like whenever. So my plan is to alternate swimming days with resistance training days. So, this evening I hit the gym.
I did what I'm going to describe as circuit training:
stretching
5 min warm-up on treadmill
bodyweight squats x12 (for now I think my bodyweight is plenty)
pushups x20
lat pulldown 60lbs x12
DB lunges 20lbs x12 (each leg, alternating)
DB stepups 20lbs x12 (each leg)
DB shoulder presses 20lbs x12
DB woodchoppers 20lbs x12
pec-dec 40lbs x12
reverse fly (blue exercise band) x12
DB curls 20lbs x12
tricep pressdowns 50lbs x12
cardio intervals - 6 min on rowing machine doing 30/60 second intervals
Then repeated the whole thing, except:
raised lat pulldowns to 70lbs
raised tricep pressdowns to 60lbs
failed on cardio intervals after 2 min, so finished up with 5 min cooldown on the treadmill.
I was pretty tired after that.
I'm sure the programme I scribbled down could use some streamlining for efficiency - I'm sure I'll get there.
I also want to develop two different resistance programmes, one for the gym and one for home. For the one above I could do everything at home except for the 3 machine exercises (lat pulldown, tricep pressdown, pec-dec). I could substitute flat flys for the pec-dec, I imagine - not sure about the other two but I will do a little research.
For the gym version I am going to focus more on the cable work, and maybe even barbells when I progress that far. I prefer using dumbbells as much as possible, and the gym will still be useful once I exhaust the potential of my home set which only go up to 25lbs.
For the gym sessions I want to primarily do stuff that I can't do (or can't do as easily) at home.
Off to bed now - 'night all.
