In September I tried expanding my diet to include additional food like cheeseburgers and brats (eating chicken/turkey/fish/chile every meal of every day was getting extremely monotonous). After a couple of weeks, I reluctantly accepted that I no can haz cheeseburger.
In October, I had a shoulder and a knee start acting tweaky, and for a couple of weeks that limited how much exercise I could do before having to stop. I was lucky to get 10-15 minutes a day in before one or the other started hurting too much (divebomber push-ups and jump-knee tucks, I’m looking right at you).
And throughout the entire last 90 days, I’ve missed a lot more days that I did the first time. A seemingly endless torrent of early morning/late evening meetings and general exhaustion working up to our big conference of the year managed to disrupt my exercise routine every time I managed to get back in the groove.
And the worst part is football season is bringing out the chef in *everybody*. I don’t have any problems turning down food I can’t see. Put a plate of mac ‘n cheese in my face, and suddenly that devil on my shoulder gets a lot harder to ignore.
So here’s day 180. I went from 168 lbs to… 168 lbs. Given all the above, I guess that’s not too bad. My pants are a little looser, I can’t “pinch an inch” as much as last time, I don’t have to use quite so much imagination to see two abs lurking about, so I’m sure I traded a pound or two of fat for muscle. But it wasn’t nearly the improvement I saw last round.
On the plus side, I did see good improvements on the cardio side of things. There are two popular measures of heart fitness: maximum heart rate, and heart recovery rate (how quickly your heart slows down after exercise). My heart hit 189 bpm (up from 175 bpm in round 1) after 30 seconds of double-time jump-knee tucks, and dropped 66 bpm within two minutes, both of which suggest I have the heart health of a man 10+ years younger.
So here’s hoping the next 90 days go a lot smoother. I think they will. Fall is always the hardest season at work. My aspirations for the end of round 3:
Hey, delusions are free so you may as well have big ones. 🙂 He’s 5 years older than me, so I think I can catch him. Do your best and forget the rest. And keep pressing play.
Oh, and read this. There’s some really provocative stuff there.