this past year i was traveling to hong kong for my first real vacation outside
of the usa. as i was walking around all day i suddenly realized that all that
sitting down on the job for 4 years with little exercise didn't do me any good;
i was out of shape. i told myself that when i would come home i would start to
exercise and lose some weight and get into better shape.
this was january of 2001. in june of 2001 i forked over $1099 for the bowflex.
i wanted a machine that could allow me to do many different exercises to work
the entire body.
got the machine in the mail and put everything together. the first thing i decided
to do was go through all my cupboards and throw out all the junk food i had. i
didn't have much to be honest. i wasn't really a junk food junky if you could
believe this!
went to the grocery store and bought all the healthy food that the guide in the
bowflex manual suggested. they suggest 1500 calories a day, so i decided to go
for it. 1500 calories a day seems low but i was never hungry that much at all.
The key to my weight loss is a few small things that helped very much
i stopped eating fast food
i stopped drinking all sugary pop
very low sugar, if any
no more fried foods
stopped eating beef for no particular reason
i first started the bowflex better body routine. i found out that after 45 minutes
my arms would start shaking. that's a good sign i was out of shape. after doing
this routine i switched over to the next level and then finally at 6 weeks the
'body building' routine. talk about tough. i got through it the first time and
couldn't believe how much more 'difficult' it was. it made my muscles kill the
next day. the first time it took me nearly an hour and a half to finish it.
I said to myself 'there is no way i'm going to be able to do this every day'. it's not
good to sound negative but it was true. i decided to instead go for it every
other day for 4 days a week.
to be totally honest i did absolutely NO aerobic/cardiovascular activity during
75% of my weight loss process. towards the end i invested in a stationary bike
and eventually did a lot of walking and eventually running. i guess during the
last 12 weeks i did do a few days of this routine that requires your heart rate
to be constantly up.
During the first week i lost 8lbs. That's excessive i think, but i worked really
hard at it.the first week i ate 1500 calories a day and had no junk food but
one single pop tart. i frequently would eat out at subway, that helped a lot.
you also will need to drink lots of water. try going for a gallon a day.
during my first 12 weeks i also did not consume protein powder, meal replacements
or energy bars. i did not do that until week 16 when i tried to go for the
body-for-life thing.
Facing problems along the way
when i got on the scale after the first few weeks the results just kept me going.
i wanted to try as hard as i could and keep at it. some weeks you get on the
scale and nothing has changed. your still the same weight. instead you measure
your body parts with a tape measure and you find out that you in fact did lose
a few inches of body fat. no matter how bad i did one week i had to keep telling
myself i'm doing well and to keep at it no matter what. often at times i would
come home late and be tired. try to avoid working out to late at night if you
get sleepy or have to work early in the morning. sometimes at 2am i would force
myself to get my lazy butt to work and do some exercise instead of giving myself
an excuse. sometimes when you are so tired it's hard to put in all your effort
you possibly can and 'go to ten' on the workouts.
to be totally honest i really had very little problems in resisting the temptations
of food. i just was sick of feeding myself junk and never wanted to go back to that
sort of life. why ruin all the hard work i put into losing weight?
Pay no attention to the links below. They were automatically added by Tripod.