Three Quarters Done
Wow! I’m now three quarters of the way to my target, 45 pounds lost to get to 170 down from 215 just 20 weeks ago. This feels great! I’m now slimmer than I’ve been since my late 20’s (I’m 39) – a decade’s worth of weight gain gone!
Since my last post at the start of September I’ve dropped from a 34” to a 30” waist. I bought one pair of 32” jeans along the way and just bought a pair of 30”. It was funny actually; I was in the jeans section of Old Navy and I couldn’t find the 30” sizes, only larger. The 30’s were hidden away on the very top shelf and they were the SMALLEST size they had! I’m going hold off an buying any more because I’ve still got 15 pounds of belly fat to lose and I figure I might get down to a 29” or even a 28” waist when I’m finally done. Looks like I might have to buy jeans in the kids section. My belt is now down to its last notch and it is getting loose – time for a new one.
I’ve gone through my wardrobe – all the XL sizes, 36” & 34”pants are gone. I’ve kept the L size stuff for the time being but that is starting to look a bit large. I think it will be M perhaps even S size when I’m done. What I am wearing looks great – its amazing how much better cloths fit when they aren’t being stretched over a big belly.
I’ve also started working out – I joined a gym two months ago. The objective is not so much to lose weight through exercise, but to minimize muscle loss during the diet and as a general additional step to get healthy. My body fat% when I started was 23% (which was actually surprisingly low). One month in, it was down to 21% and I’ll probably get another measurement next week. If I can believe these figures and I can avoid losing too much muscle then I can reasonable expect to be close to 10% body fat @ 155 pounds. That would be outstanding – well within athletic range. My routine has settled on 3 days a week; 40minutes of cardio on a treadmill followed by basic weight training. I split my 3 days up as chest/biceps, back/shoulders/triceps & legs. One session per week is with a trainer – the idea here is to first stay motivated to work out and second to have an expert show me good technique as I gradually get stronger. At this point I can run non-stop for 30 minutes at 6mph – 20 weeks ago I broke into a sweat walking upstairs!
The diet continues and now that the end is in sight it is really not a big bother. My only concern is that it looks like I’ll be trying to transition to maintenance mode right over Christmas when I be home with my family in Ireland. This will be hard – there are always mountains of food over the holidays lying around. I won’t have a gym to workout and the weather usually sucks so walking/running outside is problematic. I think the key will simply be damage limitation, don’t eat too crazy and try to get some exercise in. Mainly I’m not going to obsess about it and of course I get to show off my great new look to my family and friends.
