Exercise

One Month Down

After a month of exercising and eating less junk, I’ve lost 6.2 pounds and 2.3 percentage points of body fat.

Month1weight
Weight (in kg) on the left, calories leftover on the right

It’s hard to quantify strength, but I am definitely getting stronger. I can now do a few trapeze tricks I had trouble with (in particular, pulling back up to sitting after a crucifix) and I’m slowly inching up in weight used for my various strength training exercise. I still have a long way to go, in particular with core strength, but I can feel improvement. I’m running considerably faster than I used to, and managed to go 2.4 miles in 30 minutes without feeling too terrible. My best ever 5k time was 35:58 and I felt like I was going to die afterwards.

I look pretty much the same. I took some photos and compared them to the ones I took at the beginning of the month, and there’s really no discernible difference. I guess I’ll have to work a little harder for the six pack abs of my dreams.

It’s interesting because I felt like I made no progress the first two weeks, and that it all happened the last two. But looking at the chart there’s a fairly steady downward progression with a few bumps. I do think that logging what I eat has made a huge difference in my snacking. Planning my dinners ahead of time makes it much easier for me to eat the foods I like without totally blowing my calories or sugar for the day.

With all the snow (and more on the way) it’s been tough to hit my goal of 6 workouts per week but I usually get in 4 or 5. Over the next month I want to focus on both core strength and longer runs. I’ll keep working on lowering my body fat % (now at 31.7) but now that the worst of the emotional eating weight is gone I’m not worrying about the scale so much.