day 3 on body for life went great. i got up this morning and did my lower body workout. i am going to adjust the weight some as i wasn’t quite reaching a level 10 let alone a 9 in my workouts. i also need to find some other abdominal workouts because crunches and oblique crunches are just not doing it for me. all in all it was a good workout though. my meals went good today as well:

  1. cottage cheese and yogurt
  2. coffee and oatmeal muffin (not perfect i know)
  3. 1/2 turkey sandwich with veggies on wheat bread with a cup of chicken noodle soup
  4. 1/2 turkey sandwich with veggies on wheat bread and a coffee
  5. turkey sandwich on sour dough with sprouts, lettuce, and mustard
  6. myoplex hp bar

i am making every attempt to get six healthy meals in and most of the time i am. i know coffee isn’t exactly on the program, and i am quite aware of that. but setting myself up for failure by trying to kick all my vices at once would be plain stupid. once i am steadily and consistently following the program, and i am past this huge release at work, i am going to attempt to ween myself off coffee. no it’s not making excuses, it’s being realistic.


i almost didn’t make it up this morning. one thing i am definitely going to try and do is get at least 8 hours of sleep at night. last night i only slept for about 6.5 hours and i had a trouble getting up this morning. since i am going to be doing morning workouts, and i have to make a 7:43 am train, that means i need to be up by 5:00 am to get a good workout in with time to shower. in order for me to get 8 hours of sleep i would have to be in bed by 9 pm. impossible on tuesdays due to class but entirely attainable the rest of the week. so starting tomorrow i am going to attempt to be in bed by 9 pm, that’s my major goal for tomorrow. my other major goal is to increase the quality of my second meal.


for you fitness enthusiasts out there i recommend you subscribe to the email list over at hussman.org. there is also an archive available. he sends out a weekly mailing that is a great read. it has fitness advice, ideas, thought provoking articles, and tons of great information. he is really good at motivating and presenting information in thought provoking ways that make you really dig down and answer serious question about you health and fitness. did i mention that he is a proponent of body for life? here’s a great quote from one of his more recent posts:


“It is a major mistake to let the scale, the mirror, or the calipers tell you whether you have had a good day. As soon as you do that, you surrender control to things outside of yourself.”


after reading that quote i thought back to what made me stop my program. after much thought i realized that i had artificially let the numbers dictate my success. in my mind i knew what my goals were for my body yet i let the readings from a scale tell me that i was succeeding. i took success to far and starting thinking things like - “hey i lost 100 pounds and it wasn’t that hard so lets just relax a bit, i don’t have to kill myself being so rigorous ” … well i was wrong. it’s about consistency and dedication. your body needs to consistently be in caloric deficit to lose weight. what is a caloric deficit? it’s the difference between the amount of energy you consume and the amount of energy you burn. the human body is incapable of a sudden bursts of fat loss, it will adapt and respond by conserving energy and storing that energy as fat. if you don’t believe me, ask the expert.


so what can you do? consistency consistency consistency … it’s simple and it’s proven. you can also educate yourself by reading books and articles to keep abreast of health issues and advancements. finally you can experiment with your exercise program to find what really works and what doesn’t work for your body.


that’s about it for today … stay strong everyone. see you tomorrow …