The Real Life Fitness Journal

I’ve noticed remarkable improvements on many fronts, but mostly my stomach area. I never had any intention of losing weight, so I ate quite a bit more than the recommended meal sizes and even the number of meals. I have my shake in the morning, 2 decently sized meals with many snacks in the middle, and then a shake at night. Yet, I am starting to see my abs again … gives me great excitement.

My energy levels remain high (but I’ve always been high energy, so I’m still not convinced off this affect) … replacing the two meals does reduce the amount of processed, preserved, etc food that goes into the body, so that alone could be a factor in the energy levels.

Something that has also been noticeable, but not sure how it fits in, is my leg pain. A number of years ago I did severe damage to my knee and literally ripped my PCL in my right knee apart … no surgery to fix it, so it causes me frequent pain, especially during sports. Lately, though, I barely notice it and that’s not to say that I haven’t had lots of reasons for it to hurt. I am quite active and do a lot of running in Ultimate Frisbee twice / week, plus baseball 2-3 / week and I’ve had this same schedule over the last few years. Usually by day 2 or 3, I’m wearing my knee brace for the rest of the week because it is so fatigued and sore that I sometimes have trouble just walking. Now, I wear it only during warm up to give my muscles a chance to take over the stability and then it’s gone for the rest of the game without even a thought of throwing it back on.

My “30-day cleanse” package of products arrived within 4 days. I’ve never done a cleanse before as it’s always brought up nasty thoughts about sitting in the bathroom 80% of my day … this isn’t one of those. Instead, it’s quite simple. Most days I just replace my morning and evening meals with a meal-replacement shake that, to my surprise, tastes pretty good. Then, on the actual cleanse day, I’m taking this liquid 4 times / day … it tastes a bit funny, but isn’t something that would make you gag.

I did make a few trips to the washroom, but most of them were for #1, as part of the cleanse day is to drink a ton of water (which I drank about 16). I went pretty hungry, but not starving, so it was manageable. However, a couple days later, I discussed this with my roommate (who has done the program for a couple months already) and he said that you are allowed to eat, just not any big meals … good thing to note for next weeks cleanse day.

I feel a bit more energy, but it’s hard to really know if that’s just psychological or not. Some people claim headaches and the such, but I’ve had no side affects that i’m aware of.

My local gym started selling Isagenix products some time ago and have been pushing it pretty hard on some of it’s members. I’ve always considered these products to be a waste of money and any bulking / toning / whatever could be done solely with your own ambition.

Well, the owners of the gym are good friends and they have allowed me to shameless advertise my website, so I gave in to one of their speeches and will be starting the program as soon as my shipment arrives.

[current measurements]
Upper Arm: 13′
Chest: 41′
Waist: 37′
Butt: 41′
Thigh: 23 1/2′
Weight: 185 lbs

Well its been more than 3 weeks since my last workout, with a combination of Christmas holidays and starting a new full time job I fell off the wagon…hard. I accept that failure but need to get back on track and do it fast.

I worked out again today for the first time with a colleague from work, and hopefully he will push me to keep up the habit. I am also training a split program (4 days a week with Wednesdays off and the weekends off) the whole body is worked on over a three day period. I will go into more detail of the program in tomorrow’s entry.

I had a quick weigh-in today as well and tripped the the 220 mark, so I am up a couple pounds of holiday excess, but I feel  confident that will come off pretty quick.

I was able to go into the gym today with a far better attitude, and it showed in the energy I had. Even though my bench press still remains weak at a mere 135lbs (I am used to being able to handle 225lbs for 8-10) the rest of the workout was solid.

Do numbers mean much?
Personally  I believe when it comes to weight training so long as the weight you are using (whether that be relatively light to what others are doing or what you might be used to doing) is a challenge for the reps you have to do, you will make progress. Your muscles can’t tell the difference between barely pressing 135lbs for 10 reps or 225lbs for 10 reps, all they know is that they can only press whatever weight it is for 10 reps, and then that is it. Does that make any sense?

Training calves
I miss training my calves, something I used to do just about every workout, as they are always a hard muscle group for me to develop, I think I may start adding calf raises at the end of my workout before cardio.