Thursday, 31st January

31 January 2008

Physical Measurements

Size Measurements

Weight:		81.5 kg
BMI:		24.9 (A little bit high)

Down from 84.5, a drop of 3kg—which is really a bit too fast to lose weight on a long term basis.

Body Fat

Body Fat:		19.8% (average 19.5%): Bad
Lean Body Mass:		65.4 kg

Down from 21.2%. This means my body fat has dropped from 17.9 to 16.1 kg (a drop of 1.8 kg), which is good, but also mass my lean body mass has dropped from 66.6 to 65.4 kg (a drop of 1.2 kg), which is bad. I know that body fat measurements are notoriously inaccurate, but I feel there has been some loss of LBM.

Right Thigh Straight

60 cm [+11/2 cm]

Down from 62 cm. There isn’t any significant fat store on my legs, so this is consistent with a loss of LBM.

Buttocks

99 cm [-2 cm]

Down from 100 cm, but not a significant change. There isn’t much fat stored here, so I doubt there could be any significant change without losing LBM.

Waist Deflated

92 cm

Down from 93 cm. Although I look a little slimmer, my waist measurement hasn’t changed significantly, which is disappointing—this is where I store my body fat.

Chest Deflated

92 cm

No change.

Hip/Waist Ratio:

97%

Particularly disappointing is that my hip waist ratio has not improved, but is nominally worse (up from 96% (but given the half cm precision of the measurements, the change is within the margin of error and so is immaterial).

All of this may seem like a very negative report, and if you just look at the numbers, it is—I certainly didn’t lose a jeans size. Four things must be remembered.

• I got a head cold, and so lost an entire week of exercise, and had some restrictions on what I could do for some time after that.
• I had the worst bout of depression I’ve had since 1998. A week of depression is usually good for a weight gain of a kilo or three.
• Tim picked a few exercises which aggravated an old injury. For the workouts, I managed to come up with a set of exercises that worked as a substitute, but it’s meant coddling my shoulder for the whole month, so not everything was done.
• My weight training is far in advance what Tim allowed for (I’m currently squatting 75 kg x 20 reps). It took three to four repetitions of each workout just to find a point where I was getting a workout (e.g., working up from bodyweight squats—0 x 15 x 3—to Zercher squats—40 x 15 x 3).

Given all of the above, particularly the first two points, I’m very pleased with the results.

Okay, Tim has some questions about the process.

Q. What have you sacrificed in order to achieve these results?

• Home-made rye bread. We make out own bread, and the stuff I eat is always either 100%wholemeal, or wholemeal rye. That said, I do eat too much of it.
• Rice, especially basmati (still trying to locate a supply of brown basmati—yum).
• Rooibos. I can live without the other herbal teas, but not drinking Rooibos was hard to take.

Q. What have you got out of the program?

• My diet (what I eat) is/was pretty clean, but portion control is a big problem.
• I eat too many nuts, seeds and dried fruits, all of which are very calorie dense.
• I like the structure of Tim’s workouts, not for the heavy weights days, but as an in-between “light” day. The choice of exercises needs a little work—maybe replacing the reverse flys with inverted rows for example.
• I like the slowed down Olympic lift, particularly the one handed version of the snatch. I think the push-press could eventually become a one handed clean and jerk.
• The warmup, once I added in the cat pose, is brilliant. It takes a minute or two longer than jumping on a piece of cardio gear (or walking round the block), but is a far more effective joint mobiliser.

Q. What would you differently next time?

• Anything that I felt would annoy my shoulder would not be attempted—I’m still paying for trying the energizer back in the first week.
• Ignore the “drink only water”, and continue to drink rooibos and herbal teas. They are zero calorie, and I feel cutting them out was counter productive (i.e. less water was consumed).

Q. Would you do this all again, or recommend to your closest friend that they do this program? If not why not?

A. Yes, with the caveat that they have a either qualified personal trainer or someone experienced in weight training guide them through the first few workouts.

Anyone can climb into a leg press machine and the machine will guide them through the exercise. Squats, lunges, and the like are technical lifts, and very few people can master them without instruction (the things that make them harder to do correctly are the very things that make them better exercises). Most people’s proprioception is quite poor—they really don’t have the foggiest what their bodies are doing. Unless someone is watching them, they don’t realize just how badly (unsafely) they are performing an exercise.

Spiritual Practices

Chant Discipline

Ganesh Mantra

Day 31 (of 40)

Lakshmi Mantra

Day 6 (of 40)

Gratitude

• The music of Deva Premal.
• Sleep.
• Lost some weight this month. More importantly, I look a bit slimmer.
• Reached my goals in five of the big six lifts (squat, deadlift, 5 rep dips, press, row, and 5 rep chin), missing out on only the 15 rep dips and chins.
• Sue lost a chunk of weight, and looks a lot healthier for it.