my 8 week challenge

It’s hard to believe that it’s already Day 21 — in other words three weeks. It seems like only yesterday that I really started my journey and I’d like to share a few things with you.

Now I’m not really big on my weight, just more so where it’s distributed. Weight is a number, but it’s a number a lot of people pay attention to. Depending on the scale I step on I’ve got a wide range of numbers. I’ve been benchmarking with my scale at home that tells me weight and body fat percentage. For the record, I know it’s not correct; but it serves as a starting point. In the last three weeks, I’ve shed roughly 13 pounds based around exercise. My diet hasn’t been so great, but my physical activity has.

Over the last twenty-one days, all but two of them I’ve been active. If you read my post yesterday about making lemonade, you’d realize that day 19 I wasn’t getting sweaty. The other day was today.

Don’t be worried about a pattern starting to develop. I’m working with my personal trainer and starting to work with a dietitian to help accelerate the transformation.

I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing some video blogging to make this even faster. I recently got an email from a guy I met once who goes by the name DK and was watching some of his videos. It got me thinking that it would be easy to do. In fact I went to his blog and read the most recent article about converting to Mac .MOV files. His opening sentence sums it up:

In case you haven’t noticed, all of the big internet marketers have made the switch to using video. In fact, I can barely type anymore!

And so with that I’ve got my Apple iSight hooked up to my Mac Pro with the expectation that I’ll start video blogging soon. Of course, only if you’re interested?

Today is Day 20 and if you read along at all, you’ll notice that there haven’t been any posts for the last few days. That’s not to say I haven’t been busy. Saturday my daughter and I went for a nice 9.75 mile bike ride; just before the nasty weather and rain came to Calgary.

Yesterday is a different story. Yesterday was Day 19 and ultimately the first day since I started my 8 week challenge that I did nothing physical. Rather than sit and look at what I could or couldn’t physically do yesterday, I’m moving forward today.

The alarm went off early today…5:30 to be exact. I hit the snooze once, but only really to make it stop buzzing. Slowly rolled out from under the covers, got changed and bike the 3+ miles to work. Then it was work out time. I did the workout from the other day that Terri Champagne had setup for me and it went well I think. I’m busy shaking as I write this so my arms definitely got their workout.

All that’s left is a full day of work, then a 3+ mile bike ride home and I’ll have easily made up for my lack of sweat yesterday. Looking at tomorrows schedule, it looks like it might also be a challenge. Out of curiosity, what do you consider worthy of a “sweaty post” here?

Perfect Lemonade Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 cup water (for the simple syrup)
• 1 cup lemon juice
• 3 to 4 cups cold water (to dilute)

Method

1. Make simple syrup by heating the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved completely.
2. While the sugar is dissolving, use a juicer to extract the juice from 4 to 6 lemons, enough for one cup of juice.
3. Add the juice and the sugar water to a pitcher. Add 3 to 4 cups of cold water, more or less to the desired strength. Refrigerate 30 to 40 minutes. If the lemonade is a little sweet for your taste, add a little more straight lemon juice to it.

Serve with ice, sliced lemons.

Serves 6.

Yes it’s Day 17 and I know I haven’t posted since day 13 — I’ve noticed and apologize. I really have no true excuse.

I can tell you though that I have still been active each day, for at least a few minutes and have definitely been sweating. Everything from biking to work, running and even using the rowing machine as a unique way to get some physical activity.

Yesterday was a fun one though. It was my first real time with my mobile personal trainer Terri. She developed a great program for me that we managed to work through. Now it’s up to me to continue the work program until next week. My week didn’t turn out physically as it was planned. Tuesday was supposed to be street hockey day but an inadvertent mix up in the scheduling meant it was actually happening on Thursday. Not only was yesterday an hour of sweating in the gym, it was also followed up by an hour of street hockey.

To say the least, I was concerned about what today was going to look like. This morning I woke early to hit the gym for a quick run and a good sweat. It was hard to get moving, yet I still managed to knock out a few miles and I’m happy I did. Today there are only two parts of my body that hurt; my gluts and my right wrist. Overall I’d say yesterday was a great success and I’m looking forward to more.

I need to apologize again to my readers that I haven’t been writing as much as I had intended. I’ll be rectifying that shortly. Please don’t forget to be honest with me for a bit, it will really help everyone.

I’ll be interested to see how I feel tomorrow, since everyone has told me it will be even worse. How do you feel the day (or two) after a good sweaty work out?