Day 201: Weekend Looming

Christmas Challenge Day 5

A great day training and nutrition again, boy I feel strong both mentally and physically this week. I sat through yesterday evening with my wife and brother both drinking beer and wine and was absolutely fine. My mind is focused and in the right place so it was easy.

Until tomorrow...

Day 200: The BIG 200 Days of Blogging

Christmas Challenge Day 4

Wow this time round I have made it to 200 days straight of blogging (well I have missed one day!) and now I have re-motivated myself also with this new personal challenge so things are getting much better.

Today was another great day both for training and nutrition. I did have quite a large tea tonight but it was all healthy, packed with lean meat and I had it quite early too so I will have plenty of time to digest before going to bed. I also don't to limit my calorie intake everyday as I think this is where I have gone wrong in the past, creating too large of a calorie deficit.

No rubbish has been consumed so far which is great, but the weekend is looming and my brother is here so can I stay true to myself and off the booze at the weekend. Stay tuned to find out!

As I said a great training session today although I just could not push the final minute today in my HIIT session. It was the same as the last session except for that final minute. I guess it's the lack of exercise from last week. I didn't stop there today though, next was 10 minutes on the bike at an effort lvl of 6 for 5 mins and then 10 for 5 mins, then the hand bike for 10 minutes at effort 6 and final the elliptical for 5 minutes at about 140 rpm at level 12.

My gym clothes were absolutely dripping by the end of it but I felt great. I am feeling really good about this challenge 4 days in. Only another 51 days or so to go!!

Until tomorrow...

Day 199: Great Weights

Christmas Challenge Day 3

A great heavy weights session today, abs are feeling it a bit from last night which is great. After posting my stats today I looked back at some older ones from July which was interesting.

Even though I have put on 4kg since then almost 2kg of that would seem to be muscle which is great. So all I have to do is try to keep all that and drop the fat!!

Until tomorrow...

Day 198: Whoaaa there Billy

Christmas Challenge Day 2

Well I was going for basic boot camp tonight but decided against it due to doing weights tomorrow in the gym and only having my tea 90 minutes before my workout.

I did however tackle Ab Bootcamp instead. For those of you not familiar these are 1 of series of DVDs by Billy Blanks, his bootcamp series. He has many out and apparently they are very popular in North America. They are combination of body weight exercises and also using the "Billy Bands". You may laugh as I first did when I bought the series over a year ago. I thought hey I am pretty fit now, I do a fair amount of weights this is gonna be a bit easy!!

Trust me it's far from easy. The snag behind all these workouts is almost no rest for the entire workout. I will explain the others as i do them but basically the Ab Bootcamp as a simply exercise that you always return to in between each one that you do, so your rests are always doing what they call slimming.

So it's a 30 minute ab workout and also a cardio workout, believe I was sweating big time when I finished a few minutes ago and I know my abs are going to be sore tomorrow. Again if you don't believe me go out and buy it and vie it a try you can get them on Amazon pretty cheap now and they are great if you can't get to the gym or out of the house one day.

Nutrition was good today especially as I was in the office, Banana and apple for breakfast when I got to the office as I leave at 5.30am then another banana mid morning, a chicken salad baguette for lunch on granary and another apple and then 2 chicken burgers, 2 tomatoes, cucumber and about 250g of mixed rice (cooked weight). I know I have not had enough fluids today but they always suffer when I go to the office as I am constantly in and out of meetings, still the nutrition was great today.

Until tomorrow...

Day 197: Christmas Challenge Day 1

Well today marks the first day of my new challenge. I have eaten and drunk way too much over the past couple of months, especially over the past week so it's time to get back into it big time.

By my calculations there are just under 8 weeks (my god only 8 weeks to Christmas, yippee!!!) to Christmas so lets call it a round 8 weeks.

I am 6ft 1in and today weigh in at 86kgs (I have put 3 of those on in the past week!!), my BF % clocked in at 21.5%. My goal in the next 8 weeks is to lose 4kg (1/2 kg per week) and to reduce my BF% to 17.5%. Based on my past training this will still be tough, admittedly you could do this much faster if you went to extremes but I don't plan on that.

With that said I am also implementing a stretch goal of 80kgs and 16%BF by Christmas. I will eat healthy every day until Christmas except for one cheat meal per week and I will avoid alcohol except for maybe my Christmas party in a month or so. I plan on getting back to training 6 days per week to achieve this. I also vow to try not to repeat a workout within a 2 week period so as to keep things fresh.

I had a great start today with a sort of steady state / HIIT cardio session. 40 minutes on the treadmill, first 5 minutes at 10kph, 2nd at 11 kph, 3rd at 12kph and the 4th at 13 kph, I then reset back down to 10 kph and repeated all over again. Although that averages out at around 11.5 kph for each minute which is not that fast that 5 minute run at 13 kph for minutes 35 - 40 is a tough one especially off the back of a week off.

Still it was a great workout. Tomorrow, it is an early start as I have to travel to the office but I plan on getting the DVDs out when the kids are in bed and a return to Boot Camp so that I get a workout in tomorrow.

Until tomorrow...

Day 196: Back in Action

After a mammoth pile of ironing created by 2 kids on half term I managed to sneak out for a 5k run and start my training a day early which is great. I am going to take some stats tomorrow when I go to the gym as my starting point, and then it will be hard training through till Christmas.

It was a good run today despite not having done much for a week. Weather was surprisingly compared to the very cold weather of the past few days.

Had an energetic time in the pool in the afternoon with the kids, almost empty today so perfect for throwing and chasing the 2 of them without worrying about annoying anyone.

Until tomorrow...

Day 195: Almost There

Vacation is almost over, it has been great but cannot wait to get back to some hard training...

Until tomorrow...