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

Today's Post: Monday, 1-17-2011

1. The past month I gained one pound of weight and a quarter inch on my waist. So, I’m now one pound over my goal weight; &, at 38 & a quarter inches, I’m still 4 to 6 inches over what I’d like to see on my waist measurement.

2. I did mostly a better job over the last month of keeping my alcohol intake down for the first 3 weeks. The weekend just ended though, I had a family reunion and a play off game I watched for a short time where I drank a bit extra. So when the week ended I was about 32 % over the weekly total I aim for.

3. The main culprit though was that a bad cold or light medium case of the flu, the kind I rarely get, caused me to miss about a quarter of the exercise I normally get over the month. Without that setback, I might have lost a pound and a quarter inch instead. The only good news is that compared to what many people experienced with this bad cold, I got off relatively lightly. I never had to take time off work or had my work slowed like a worse case would have done.

I’m recovered and have almost got back to the level of exercise I was doing before. This past week was MUCH better.

4. My left arm injury that has prevented my progress in increasing my calories burned each week and pounds of muscle added remained about the same or it might be a bit better last month. I’ve not pushed it more which might be helping. (It still feels like something is loose now that wasn’t before, so this may be more than a simple case of bad muscle or tendon strain that will heal eventually. But it seems to call a bit less attention to itself, so it might be getting better.)

I’ve kept using the inexpensive way that may speed its healing. (There are 3 other ways to speed such healing; but taking anabolic steroids is NOT a good method to use generally & I can’t yet afford either of the other two.)

I want to be sure I’ve not injured my left arm in a way that needs surgical correction before I assume that it will just get better if I wait long enough. And, I want to check with someone knowledgeable before I push more to get back to the weight I was using before, let alone adding more, as I was about to do.

My plan to see one of the sports medicine doctors in our local area to check this is not doable still.

But, the good news is that I have an appointment with a physical therapist for two weeks from today which may do the job. If she says that I won’t injure my arm worse if I carefully resume building back or add more, I’ll try it very carefully. And, if that works, it will really help.

The kettlebell exercises I’ve had to partly discontinue and not been able to progress in WERE working. I was getting vigorous exercise that was burning more calories than just the rest of my exercises without it. And, had I not injured my arm, I’d be likely doing three or four times that much by now. Plus, when you exercise a muscle in a way that will build it up, you can feel it in the muscle; and I was getting that feeling before I injured my left arm.

If I can resume those and build up to that level, it WILL remove inches from my waist!

6. I’ve been a bit off and on with the possible new strategy to add that is said to help lose belly fat at least some. So, I’ll make a more consistent effort on that until next month in part because I want to lose the quarter inch I gained last month AND another quarter inch if I can.

7. Lastly, I found something just a few days ago that might really help. I’ve known I could go to an even stricter pattern of calorie and sugar cut back than I have been using. Bodybuilders do this before contests to have their muscles easier to see by having them be covered by less fat. But, what I didn’t know was that when they went from a very high effort to remove fat to a more moderate level after their contests, they were able to lift more weight and add muscle instead of fat when they began to eat relatively more.

So, if I lost 2 or 3 pounds for each of two months for a total of 5 pounds of by becoming even stricter than I have been for two months and then went back to closer to what I have been plus eating more protein both before and after, I might be able to add 5 pounds of muscle the following month.

That would wind up with me weighing about the same but with 5 pounds more muscle and 5 pounds less fat. Just like being able to get back to the kettlebell exercises, if I can do that, I’ll lose inches off my waist.

Ideally, by this time next year, I’ll have managed to do both -- get back to the kettlebell exercises AND add more weight in the other strength training exercises I already do. If I can burn more calories a week directly from using the kettle bell and burn even more by adding up to 20 pounds more muscle, my waist is likely to lose a few of inches I need to take off of it!