Week 4 – a.k.a. Reflecting on the First Month
So I got really lazy about blogging last week, so instead of talking about the week’s workouts, today will be a review of the first month. First, some stats:
Weight: -6 lbs
Body fat %: -1% (a highly suspect number given how I’m measuring…I think it’s probably more like 3 or 4 %)
Resting heart rate: -16 bpm
Waistline: -3 in.
I’m particularly surprised by the resting heart rate number. It wavered in the +/-2 bpm for the first 10 days but has been going down pretty steadily since. I think this is a huge win…my heart’s getting stronger and cardio is getting easier.
Reading through the last month’s bloggings, I realized a few things:
1) I’ve learned as much about living a lifestyle that promotes activity as much as I’ve done the workouts themselves. The amount I can do the workout is highly dependent on how the rest of my life is going. This includes getting enough sleep (8-9 hours really), eating right and enough to have enough energy to do the workouts, and creating a schedule so I can do the workouts every day. I didn’t set out to do this to begin with, but it sort of worked itself out that way.
2) Do as much as you can with no apologies. I know a few people who have started things like this and decided to stop at the first bad meal or the first day missed. I’ve tried to have the attitude of keeping up with the program as best as I can, but not feeling bad about it when I don’t. I’m sure if I was more exacting with how I kept up with it, I’d have lost more weight and could do more of the exercises, but if I tried to be more exacting, I just wouldn’t do any of it.
At some point, I stop caring a little bit more means doing it not at all
In rertrospect, the first month was really about trying to learn to work out again. Pushing myself didn’t really mean feeling a lot of burn in my muscles, but more about pushing until I didn’t have any energy left in my body. I’m excited for month 2 to instead make max reps about pushing my body to do harder workouts.
