All posts by Mark

Day 77

There are two weeks left to go, and as of today, my weight loss stands at 29 pounds. I’m going to try to really push it and see if I can’t get that number up by doing an extra workout in the morning, probably just some light cardio (like bike riding) or something.

It’s hard to believe that the end of this program is so close. On Day 1, Day 90 seemed so very far away, almost like forever, but now that we’re down to it, it’s easy to see that 90 days really isn’t that much time. It doesn’t seem quick when you’re first starting out, but by the end you wonder where the time went, especially if you stick with it every day.

And that’s the key. Don’t slack off. Just do your workout every day, eat as clean as you can, and in no time, you’ll see results. But you have to work at it every day if you want to be fit and healthy. You can’t just lose a bunch of weight and then go back to your old habits or you will become the old you. It has to be a total lifestyle change.

After Day 90, we’re going to take a “break” from the heavy workouts for a week or so before getting into the Power 90 Masters series, which is on it’s way. I’m sooo looking forward to some new workouts. If there’s one unfortunate thing about power 90, it’s that there’s not enough variation in the routines to last 90 days without some amount of boredom toward the end. In fact, this last week, we substituted some other cardio workouts for the Sweat 3-4. For the last couple weeks, I think we’re going to rotate the three cardio workouts (Sweat 3-4, Power 90 Fat Burning Express, and Jillian Michaels Banish Fat Boost Metabolism). JM’s workout really kicked our butts because it was so different from what we’d been doing. Sweat poured off us in buckets.

Day 71

So I missed out on telling you about Day 60, at which point, the weight loss total was 23 pounds. But today was something much more momentous to me. I blew past the 200 pound barrier reaching 198.4. Probably the first time in 10 years that I’ve been under two hundred pounds. Total weight loss is now 27 pounds.

It’s tough going, really, trying to lose a lot of weight, but it’s totally worth the effort. I remember, back when I started, how few pushups I could do, and how few crunches, and the lack of weight on the weights. I’ve mentioned my starting pushup counts and ab rep counts, but I started out using five pound weights for all the sculpt exercises (presses, curls, etc…). Now I’m using 15 pound weights for almost everything (I still go down to 10 pound weights for two exercises), and I’m thinking I’m in need of some 20 pound weights. Last week, I regularly did 115 or more pushups in each sculpt workout (129 once).

If you’re sitting in front of your computer reading this, and you’re not spending 30 minutes a day exercising, and a typical meal is half a large pizza or a pound of chicken wings or large amounts of some other food, all it takes to lose weight and get your body back is 30 minutes of exercise and trimming the number of calories your eating. Just cut your portions in half and make sure you eat five times a day. Three meals and a couple of snacks. Your body was not designed to handle sloth and gluttony. It was designed for movement and scarcity. We live in a culture and a time that encourages the former – fight it and be what you are supposed to be. A lean, living machine.

Day 57

It’s been a rough couple of weeks as far as the scale goes. Until yesterday, I’d only lost two more pounds over those two weeks, which was really starting to frustrate me. Certainly, a pound a week isn’t anything to be upset about in the grand scheme of things. That’s fifty two pounds a year. But, seeing as how there’s not a year between now and this summer, I was beginning to get a little annoyed.

However, between yesterday and today, another pound and a half has disappeared, which hopefully means I am back on track. Three days from Day 60, and while I had hoped to be able to put a 24 in the loss column for 60 days, 22 or 23 will be just fine, too.

Ignoring the weight part of it, my body fat percent is now consistently under 30 (today it said 29.2%), and I’ve been able to almost daily exceed my previous rep numbers on pushups. During the last sculpt workout, I managed 99 total pushups, 20 of which were declines. That’s not 99 in a row, but 99 spread out over the course of the 38 minute workout in sets of 20 or more (the last set, I did 30 before I collapsed). I’m hoping today that I can hit 100. 57 days ago, I could barely do 15 of them over a shorter workout.

I tried on a shirt that I wore to my 20 year high school reunion last summer. It was a tent. Can’t wear it. Right now, I’m wearing a shirt that I bought several years ago when I weighed (I think) about my same weight as I weigh now. I could fit my three year old daughter in it with me, I think. It’s sad, in a way, as it’s one of my favorite shirts. The days of XL shirts are over, it seems.

Day 43

Woke up this morning, weighed in, and found I now weighed 18 pounds less than when I started. That’s the first time my weight loss has seemed like “quite a bit”. Three pounds a week so far which is really awesome. My overall goal is to get down to about 165, which is a sixty pound loss. I’m almost 1/3 of the way there.

Finally, A Real Workbench

One of the benefits of getting physically active through Power 90 is that I seem to have more energy for everything, more stamina, more desire to do something other than sit at my desk.

A couple weeks ago or so, I finally got back into my shop and started finishing my current project which had mostly sat around as pieces of wood waiting for me to make something out of them. I attacked them with vigor (something I couldn’t have said before), and the result is the workbench you can see at the bottom of this post. It cost me less than $100 in materials and is pretty dang heavy. Now, it’s time to clean up the mess you see behind it.

What really excites me about it is that I can spend hours out there shifting wood around now, and I don’t feel tired or worn out or sore at the end of the day.