A Weighty Matter

Time for a monthly prog pic check-in

I realized it’s been about a month since my last prog pic.

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Yea Ive have the same issue. I am current decreasing my long distance runs to once or twice a week and increasing my sprints and leg workouts.

Yup! I should have done this like a month ago I think. My body is just too acclimated to my normal steady-state training runs (5-6 miles a day during the week) so rather than increase that mileage (which would be insane) I really need to incorporate speed work. This is the kick in the pants I needed!!

1.5 lbs is SO not a big deal AT ALL. 1 week and that shit is off. seriously, don’t trip. you’re doing awesomely. but i feel you on the whole metabolism issue. if i look at peanut butter too long my pants get tighter.

I’m not *that* upset about the actual weight, I’m more mad at myself for kind of staying in la-la land and not catching it before… Oh well. But yeah, I look at anything not 100% clean and, poof. I yo-yo dieted and eating disorder-ed my way here so… that’s life! I’ll keep on trucking. ;)

Weigh-In Not So Good

Actually, pretty shitty. In the spirit of total honesty on this blog, I am apparently up 1.5 lbs since my last weigh-in a month ago… WTF… Guess I gained a lot more than I thought when I got sloppy about tracking around Thanksgiving.

Lesson learned: I need to weigh in more often to keep track of things, perhaps daily.

I can’t possibly work out more than I already do, so I need to possibly:

1) Work in some sprint drills instead of steady-state runs

2) Lower carbs more (sad face)

3) Stick closer to 1200 calories

I honestly wish I had never crash-dieted through that weight loss clinic… Keeping that weight off has been fine but my metabolism is kind of fucked now and it’s been almost impossible to get off any more additional pounds.

To weigh in or not to weigh in?

I haven’t weighed in “officially” in about three weeks, it appears. It’s most because I forgot. I weighed myself once after that week of traveling (went up a pound), then a few days after (just to check if I got rid of it, which I did).

I haven’t weighed since then, and am just taking progress photos and measurements, and I’m pretty happy with what I’m seeing.

How often do you all weigh in? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Less frequently? Never? Whatever the answer, what’s your reasoning?

I’m thinking I might go for monthly because I’m less stressed out that way. I figure I’m tracking my calories/daily deficit pretty accurately and I’m not going to exercise more than I already am.

But maybe not seeing an actual number is foolish/dangerous over the caloric minefield that is December? What do you think?

Abs Progress Pics….

OK, I’m gonna post these now for my own personal record, though I might change my mind and delete later, haha.

This is abs — or rather total lack thereof (yay, regime of pretty much only cardio) — from around late October…

Then this is last week….

Then this is yesterday. I don’t understand the changes (well, I can see them) in just the last week, but whatever. (TBH I think last week I was still bloated from the week of traveling and retaining water from flying, drinking a little too much, and probably eating way too much salt.)

Still a while to go to get to my goal but taking progress photos has been much more enlightening and encouraging than checking the scale. I think the only difference in scale weight from the first picture to the last one is about 4 pounds.

Arm Progress Pic….

Feeling okay today so I’ll post this… My goal for November was to focus more on strength work, specifically upper body, since I was using all my running as an excuse not to. Here’s my arm from a little less than a month ago, and then my arm from yesterday… I think this is actually the same arm in both pictures because I took the top one myself with my cell phone and the bottom with Photo Booth, which reverses everything, right?

Anyways, making progress… Still need to work on the triceps etc. obviously but that’s usually the last fat to go for me.

Then yesterday:

*May* post ab/leg progress pics later if I am feeling confident.

Trying to make a before/during…

…But I was so afraid of having my picture taken at my highest weight that I can’t really find a before. Blegh! Maybe that’s motivation enough in itself!

One Reason I Love Exercise…

As I mentioned before on this blog a couple of times, I lost a decent amount of weight (about 30ish pounds) earlier this year through a weight-loss clinic. In retrospect there was some good and a lot of bad about the experience. I don’t want to go into it too much because I don’t want to seem like I’m judging people who go the same route.  I will just say that for me, it was probably not the best option, in hindsight.

Among the bad was the fact that I was too depleted all the time to exercise. I also gained back about 10 pounds almost instantly because that’s what happens when you restrict calories drastically and then try to eat normally after screwing up your metabolism. Those are the 10 lbs I have been trying to get off since about March which has been tough because, yeah, I screwed up my metabolism for sure. I’ve gotten off about 5 in the last few weeks.

Anyways, I just took a “during” picture and compared it to my previous LW at the end of the round at the clinic. I’m about five pounds heavier now…. But I look at least 5-10 pounds lighter. Exercise rules and I would rather lose weight the “hard” way if these are the results :)