My personal, monthly, progress report on my fatloss....

Today's Post: Monday, 9-20-2010

Last month, I was surprised to lose a bit on the scale that I hadn’t expected.

This month, despite being unable to do the Kettlebell exercises I’d like with my left hand or doing full weight on the dumbbell exercises AND making no new cutbacks on my food or drink intake, I lost another one & a half pounds.

So despite eating and drinking at a level I expected to put me at my goal weight for the year, I’m now two & a half pounds under that weight.

I also lost a quarter inch off my waist.

That means that the small bit of added exercise during my workdays, the kettlebell workouts I have been able to do mostly right handed, and the extra leg exercise on just one day a week have burned that many extra calories. I just added the two new things besides the kettlebell last month; and have kept doing all the other exercises I was doing. I’ve also been continuing the eating style that lost the initial 15 pounds.

Much to my great surprise, these quite small additions to my exercise efforts have cut two and half pounds off my fat in two months.

The bad news is that I very much wanted to lose all this fat off my waist and keep the size of my chest measurement the same by adding muscle. And, despite doing enough exercise that I DO think I added muscle on my chest, I’ve lost about 2 each inches off my chest, waist, and hips since January. So, despite the rest of me besides my too fat tummy looking leaner, my basic shape is almost the same. (My hope was to lose all 6 inches off my waist only.)

I still hope that when I can build up my Kettlebell routine as I’d like to do, I’ll begin to lose more off my waist and keep my chest measurement the same or increase it.

Something else I have been able to do which may gradually help is my new double push up program that I started this past month.

Since my bicep and inside of my elbow and the connected part of my left arm are where my still healing injury is, I can still do push ups since they work the triceps on the still healthy side of my left arm. I can do as many as I would have done had my left arm still been OK on its other side.

What I was doing on my 3 quick upper body workouts at home was to do fast pushups where I don’t quite touch at the bottom until my last 7 or so when my arms begin to tire. Then I do the last 7 all the way up and down & have been doing as many as I can until I just barely can do the last one.

That kind of working until your muscles can’t do one more repetition is said to cause muscles to grow and get stronger.

But, since I haven’t been able to gradually do more push ups and my chest hasn’t grown as much as I’d like, I decided to try doing a second effort while my muscles were still that tired. So, after a few seconds, maybe 3 to 5, I now do a second set of pushups; but from the knee instead of full pushups. This morning, for example, I did 54 of the full pushups and 10 of the from the knee push ups.

That way, I only burn a tiny bit more calories but I get double the effects on growing my muscles since I push them to the failure point twice each time now instead of just once.

My goal is to be able to do 75 of the fast pushups and 10 more from the knee pushups. And, my hope is that over a few months, this will add at least a half inch to my chest and take away at least three fourths of an inch from my waist from lost fat. The idea is that the new muscle will use the calories that now feed part of my excess waist fat.

I also have added a third thing. Now, of the two weekdays I do upper body exercises, I do the fast push ups plus the extra from the knee push ups still. But on Saturday morning when I do my weekend single upper body session and am less pressed for time, instead of doing the fast partial pushups at first, I do very strict complete, push ups for every one from the start and somewhat more slowly to ensure that each one goes through 100 % of the range of motion. That’s a much more conservative style and may work the “fast twitch” muscle fibers a bit less than the fast ones. Right now, I can only do 35 of those and last Saturday, I also did 9 of the from the knee push ups right after that.

My initial goal on those is to do at least 42 by later this year and 50 by the end of next year plus 10 more each time of the from the knee style right after that.

When I can resume doing the kettlebells and making progress on those for my left hand, in about two more months I hope, because I could feel that those exercises were giving my triceps a solid workout before I injured my arm, I think that will help me reach my push up goals.

The kettlebells also burn calories as every move uses multiple muscles. So when my injured arm stops preventing me from doing so, I’ll gradually be able to do more repetitions and burn even more calories besides.

THAT, I’m looking forward to for both reasons.

(The reason that hurting my left bicep prevents me doing the kettlebell move that exercises my left triceps and shoulder is that before you push the kettlebell up from your shoulder you curl it into position mostly with your biceps. So, once I can again do that move safely without pain or re-injuring my arm, I can go back to making progress on my kettlebell work.)

Then as soon as I’ve been able to resume progress on my kettlebell exercises, I plan to test out the two supplements that have been tested in other people as increasing fat loss from the waist to see if they work for me.

Whether not those 3steps work, I’ve decided to work then on cutting a bit more calories from my food intake and boosting my leg exercise to see if that will take a bit more off my waist.

Every muscle building exercise I can add without overdoing how much time I use and every calorie I can stop ingesting that does not remove nutrition or make me hungrier will get me closer to my goal of losing all the excess fat off my waist.

No one of the now 14 small things I’m doing is that hard to do or keep doing. So, If I can add about 7 more small things that also are doable and sustainable and remove fat, I will reach my goals.

Note that by simply continuing the things that worked and adding just a bit more in the last two months, instead of gaining back fat as too many people do, I’ve lost a bit more instead.

And, those two months saw a lot of things happen, such as my left arm injury, that could easily have derailed me instead. Doing multiple small things I could continue to do and finding new things I still could add, did the job.