Where To Begin…….

So, the life stuff…….let’s catch up, probably over the next several posts……where to begin….

I got up here Memorial Weekend in late May and that Monday joined 24 Hour Fitness. I can use all but one of the clubs up here, and I’ve taken full advantage of the club, it’s amazing equipment, the staff, and more. I haven’t used the wet areas yet because I don’t have trunks that fit (the ones I had in Michigan are hideously large and long gone), but it’s nice having all of the different weight-lifting options available. I TRULY appreciated the months at Top Dog, as they brought about significant change while I lived at home, but this new place has really helped me break through some plateaus and start a new set of goals.

I’m still going five times a week, but I’ve also added a personal trainer to two of those sessions. We started this almost immediately after I joined, and we totally revamped my nutrition and shook up my weight routine as well. Regarding nutrition, my trainer was pleased with the weight lifting routine I was following, but he immediately outlined why I wasn’t seeing the muscle growth/development that I should have been getting. Plain a-nd simple, I wasn’t eating enough protein to build lean muscle mass, so I started using nutritional supplements (protein drinks) a couple times a day and closely counting every gram of protein I was ingesting. To support muscle growth, he recommended eating 200g of protein on days I work out, and 150g on non-training days–both of which are not easy to do with regular diet. And the shakes, they’re not that bad.

Based on Dhruv’s advice (that’s my trainer’s name), I’ve gone from doing a three-day rotation on body parts to five days, each with a different body part, but more intense training on each part. And, as mentioned above, he cut me back on the amount of cardio I’m doing (from 80-90 minutes of it down to about an hour…10 minutes to warm up and another 45 minutes to finish up). I like the switch, and it feels great to get in there and use more dumbells and free weights and similar machines (not just the typical machines, but specialty ones that use free weight plates).

And in terms of results, yes…….I can already see some serious changes in my arms, and my “bitch tits” are all but gone and are being replaced with pecs. Real, live pecs. My legs, due to my life-long weight struggles, are plenty big and just needed some toning, so my big goal was to change my torso and arms, and that plan is working. And it’s not just my own perspective…I’ve had several comments on the changes from a variety of people. And that makes me happy!!! And while the scale isn’t dropping that quickly any longer (the muscle is offsetting fat loss on the scale, for the most part), I know that I’m thinner because I’ve gone down yet another jean size (about three weeks after getting here) and I feel that those jeans are getting a little looser now as well. And best of all, those jeans…….are eleven sizes smaller than I was at the onset of this journey (September 2009). And they are now 38 waist–I’ve not been under a 40 in over 20 years, maybe longer. I had a goal, initially, of hitting a 40……and now I’ve surpassed that! And I feel like I still have another 30ish pounds to lose (or rearrange, it appears), so I should continue to slim down….possibly into 36 or 34 waist, which is territory I’ve not seen since the mid/late 1980s. Holy crap!

OK–it is getting late….and I’m almost NEVER up this late any longer. I’ll explain why in the next post, which will cover some of the fun and interesting developments on a more personal/social level. And then I see another post about work and business ideas and the like. So there’s at least two more posts germinating here………..