Tim's Body-for-Life Quick Jumps

Journal Week 3

This was a much better week. The two highlights were:

Monday evening upper-body workout: A friend, Dr Mark Butler, is an experienced body-builder. He came with me to guide me through a session. This was a much more postivie and useful session than the one I had last week with a trainer from the gym. Mark let me know that in most cases, my form was quite good. He gave me some good tips on chest exercises, and we went through the entire workout, although slowly.

On Thursday, I was able to wear some trousers that I hadn't worn for two years. Visually, there is not much noticeable change, but I can feel it around the belt line.

Also on Thursday, the Body Caliper arrived (four working days by air mail from the US: hats off to the US and Singapore postal services). Now I have a tool to measure my body fat progress conveniently, when I want. I doubt our measurements are terribly accurate, but I expect that we can make them quite consistent. I have some convenient freckles that make sure that we will be measuring in the same locations.

My Wednesday and Friday gym sessions I did before work. This is a real winner. The gym is much less crowded, and I feel incredibly refreshed going to work. Getting up hasn't been much of a problem, although I am getting tired at night because I haven't yet adjusted to sleeping earlier.

I cut down my portions this week, trying to make sure that my protein serves are palm-sized, not hand-sized. My weight is fluctuating more than usual during the day: this is probably due to hydration levels. I have been down to 72kg in the morning first thing, and up to 74kg at the heaviest. My body fat measurements are too crude to be of any use so far; I hope this changes over the coming weeks.

My endeavours for the week ahead are to make each gym sessions at 6.00am, to move through the workouts in a reasonable time, and to make sure I'm pushing myself. Next week is week four, and at the end of it I'll be taking my four week progress photos. I'm excited by the progress in fat loss so far. I'm still not happy at the progress with the weights, particularly the shoulder and chest exercises. Next week I am going to concentrate on doing weights that let me push through the sets fast enough.