Ow.

Just finished my workout. Today, I went back to weight training after months of being out of it. Like... lots of months.

I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then headed to the upper body circuit. After doing 2 of my intended three trips around the circuit, my arms were dead. Like... started at 10 reps of 130 on the bench and ended not being able to push half that. Dead.

Since I still had 10 minutes left on the full hour workout I'd intended, I hopped on the stairmaster for 10 minutes, which I've never done before and found to also be quite challenging.

Eesh. After I got home, I found it difficult to even shampoo my hair. I just couldn't lift my arms up that high for more than a few seconds.

Seriously, ow.

That said, I still feel absolutely fantastic about being back at this thing full force. I'm confident that another week or two of this and I'll be seriously rockin the workouts.

True to form

As I promised you, myself and the rest of the world yesterday, I am striving to make this a solid month of weight loss. To me, that means staying on top of my nutrition, working it in the gym to get back to the proper level of training and updating this blog much more regularly than I have these past few months.

I just finished my workout and had my afternoon snack. I feel fantastic. Since I got back on the wagon, I think my workouts have been pretty poor. Not working out for so long seems to have knocked me back a few pegs. Today, I was determined to show myself what I can do on the elliptical. I feel very good about the hour I did today. I never felt like I was overexerting myself, but I pushed myself and am very satisfied with the 175bpm average and 1200 calories burned I got out of it.

My post-workout snack consisted of a small banana, 3½ oz of strawberries, some yogurt and a banana nut fiberone muffin. Absolutely delicious and very refreshing. I really love how good I'm feeling on my nutrition and I feel like my fitness will be on the same level very soon.

Tomorrow, I get back into weights training.

A year ago...

Last year, I fell off the wagon in October. I spent a majority of the month not working out, not tracking, and gaining unknown amounts of weight before I got my butt back in gear. I pushed myself for the final week of the month before going back to weigh in on November 1st. I had gained a pound. It wasn't devastating, but I was disappointed to have lost a month of weightloss.

That month-long slip motivated me to get back in the gym (I even worked out on Thanksgiving morning) and track my food so militantly that I managed to pull losses over both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays despite visiting both my and my fiancee's family on both occasions. That streak of motivation wound up carried me through 30 pounds of loss over the course of 2 ½ months, an average of more than 2.5 pounds per week. During that time, I had not a single gaining week. I saw myself through some very significant milestones, particularly my final goodbye to the 300s and entry into the 200s.

Having another month like last October would have been a bad enough setback, but the one I had this summer, culminating in a ridiculous 42-pound gain was just crazy. I'm still fighting to get back to where I was in the middle of July at 241.8 pounds. Similar to last time, I let the gain motivate me to get back in the game. While my workouts are still not where I'd like them to be, I have been very good about my tracking. These past two weeks (apologies for not updating sooner), I've lost another 1.8 and 2.0 pounds respectively.

I'm now down 27.4 pounds since I ended the binging 6 weeks ago -- an average of 4/week that seems to be settling out to a more reasonable 2/week. In less than 13 pounds, I'll be back where I was. I intend to reach that 241.8 and let my momentum carry me on through the holidays, perhaps even reaching that original 225 goal before year.

Right now, I'm feeling very empowered and enthusiastic about my weight loss journey. I could sit here and lament over the fact that I'm still re-losing weight I had already once lost or that I should already be below 225 if not for that gain, but instead, I choose to hold my head high and recognize that I'm human and these things will happen. I'm just glad I caught myself before I'd done more damage.

So here's to a new October, one that'll be much better than last October. Here's to getting back to where I think I should be with my workouts. Here's to life.