I weighed in today at 181 lbs, not much of a difference from two weeks ago.  So what does that mean?  I feel stronger and already feel that I have more energy but I weigh the same.  Maybe I am gaining muscle mass and losing some fat at the same time.  I guess I wouldn’t know unless if I measured my body composition.
3/7/06 - 181 lbs
2/27/06 - 179 lbs
2/13/06 - 183 lbs

I’ll take some more progress pictures next week, I know you’re all just dying to see my beer belly.

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I weighed myself on Monday and the scale read 179 lbs.  Could it be possible that I lost 4 pounds since I’ve started working out 2 weeks ago (Feb 13 @ 183)?  Maybe 4 pounds isn’t enough difference to be sure, but I’ll check again in another two weeks.

I don’t really notice my beer belly fading away yet, but I do notice that my upper body muscles are beginning to harden.  I’ve also gone past that stage of tremdous soreness when you first start lifting.  I’m now in the stage of unstability, where you are shaking real bad whenever you start getting tired during the lifting.  I hate it when you’re doing your dips and your whole body is shaking like you have a seizure, that’s when I hope no one is watching.  Usually it takes me about 3 to 4 weeks of consistent workouts before my muscles become stable.

I can’t wait for my muscles to be more stable because that’s when I can really start to make gains on my lifting, or at least that’s how I feel.  I’m no expert when it comes to body building and losing the beer belly but I know from past experience that I start making incremental gains on the amount of weight I can lift after I’ve gone though the phase where my muscles are shaky.  That really makes me feel good, but never really seems to help much in getting a six pack.

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I’ve been working out everyday for a week now, doing my cardio and a little lifting.  I spend about 15 to 20 minutes running everyday on the treadmill at a pace of 5.0 mph, which is quite a bit slower compared to the 6.5 I used to run.  This is all because I need to stay under my VO2 Max zone to make sure that I’m burning the fat and not the fat & sugar.  But then again, I don’t know my true limit because it is just out of my budget to go through that $175 test. From what I understand, when you’re over your limit or when you’re working “inefficiently” as the Lifetime Fitness coaches likes to call it, your body can’t take in enough oxygen to feed your muscles and therefore you are doing anaerobic exercise.  I have this theory that when you’re in this anaerobic zone, you have trouble talking to someone if they were to interrupt you.  Based on the indication of difficult breathing I tried to determine my own heart rate to see when I am approaching my VO2 Max.  I’ve done this a couple of times and I notice that I start having to breath hard when my heart rate is reaching 175.  So now whenever I’m getting to 175, I just slow down, don’t want to work inefficiently ya know… Funny thing is I’ve noticed that I am able to handle a faster pace now and still keep my heart rate under 175.  I think I’m improving, I’ll have to test my limits again in a couple more days.

Last Friday morning I got up early to hit the gym before work because I had some drinking, I mean partying to do that night.  And I loved it, well not the getting up part, but I loved the feeling of working out in the morning.  The feeling of coming into work full of energy and feeling like you’re a step ahead of others who are still in bed is quite amazing.  I did it again this morning and hope to keep it up.  I used to be baffled by those who can get up before the sun rises to exercise but I have a few tricks myself.  Being in Minnesota and during the middle of the winter, there are many factors working against you when you’re trying to get out of bed.  First of all, it’s early as hell and you’re likely to be tired, it’s also cold and dark outside.  Needless to say, you just want to stay in your warm comfy bed.  One of the tricks I use to get myself to get up is to have a set routine I must do every morning, this does not include hitting snooze.  I usually get up and turn on my bed lamp, turn on my computer and start picking out what I want to wear.  Then I make sure to read my email and some online news sites, this usually gets me engaged and helps me to wake up.  Or you can try setting up 4 alarm clocks to go off in 15 minute intervals, like I used to do. :p

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