Pushing to the max and progress blog

Thursday, April 21, 2011

The advice that I am going to give in this blog is not necessarily for someone who is new to sparkpeople or is new this weight loss journey. I believe the start of a weight loss journey is all about getting some momentum and following the two steps forward, one step back philosophy.

However, I am not starting out, and have more than enough momentum...some would argue too much...so here it goes. In my mind, losing weight is not the challenge. For me it was simple, portion control, cut down on bad food, cut out booze for a long time and moderate exercise. To some it may not be this simple but for me it was.

The real challenge in my mind is maintenance. It is how you motivate yourself when you no longer have a scale goal. How you focus on keeping the momentum you built on your weight loss journey. How you set goals for yourself to stay motivated.

For those of you that read my blogs often, I think you can assume where I am going with this. How I focus, how I keep my momentum and avoid slip-ups is by pushing myself to the max every time I work out. Working out to the point of complete exhaustion creates some type of competition (whether or not it is healthy competition or not remains to be seem, however I digress) with yourself every single time. Every time I increase the distance I run, I try to maintain the same pace for the whole time regardless of the distance. Every time I bike, I try to better my pace and keep my heart rate up for as long as possible. Every time I swim, I try to be as perfect as possible. Every time I strength train, I make sure that I am pushing myself to failure on every exercise, every time, no matter what.

Pushing myself in my workouts really translates to the nutrition side of things too. It really has become a game with me...I know that the more clean my diet is, the harder I will be able to push myself and the more successful I will be at achieving the goals mentioned above.

These are the challenges that I have created for myself, to stay focused, to stay motivated and to make sure that this lifestyle change is permanent.

For the maintainers, how do you stay focused and for the newbies, I hope you can use some of what I have written here.

p.s. 97 min workout today...5.25km run, Back and Biceps from P90X and Ab Ripper X for a total of 1400 calories burned.

p.p.s. BRING IT!!

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Today's workout stats.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Today was probably my best workout in the 8 months that I have been doing P90X.

I went for a short, pretty fast paced 3.8k run that I did in about 18:15, a 30 second improvement from my sunday workout that I felt was at a slower, recovery pace.

Immediately after my run, and 3 minute walk to cool down, I changed out of my winter running clothes and pressed play on the Chest, Shoulders and Triceps video from P90X. Great video, I pushed myself pretty hard but I was not done yet. At the end of C S and T, I did Ab Ripper X.

Total workout length 95 minutes.
Total calories burned 1280.

After my recovery week, I needed a day like this where throughout my workout I honestly felt like the hulk and I really just did not want to stop...if I didn't start to get some cramps in my glutes, I probably could have done ab ripper x another time through.

BRING IT!!!

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Good recovery week...now back to the real stuff.

Monday, April 18, 2011

This past week was recovery week. What that means for a triathlete is basically I just reduce the amount of time I swim, bike and run each session and I swapped strength training for some yoga. I still did my 3 runs, 3 swims and 3 bikes but they were very short and for the most part, were performed at a very slow pace.

The first time I did yoga this week, I was so relaxed that I almost immediately got into bed and passed out for the night. I honestly felt like I was on an opiate I was in such a lethargic state.

I can't wait to get back into strength training. For the next three weeks, Tuesdays will be Chest, Shoulders and Triceps with Ab Ripper X and Thursdays will be Back and Biceps with Ab Ripper X. My shoulder is really bugging me today so hopefully I wake up tomorrow and everything is back to normal otherwise a shoulder workout may not be the best idea.

In past blogs I have talked about completing a half-ironman triathlon in Thailand in December and I am thinking of starting a fundraiser to raise money for some kind of charity if they will pay for my flight over there. Hopefully I will find a charity that will be able to do that for me.

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I earned this recovery week.

Monday, April 11, 2011

One thing that I have really come to enjoy doing P90X/insanity is the recovery week. Even though I am not following a p90x/insanity schedule per se, triathlon training still has those recovery weeks mixed in and this week I definitely earned mine.

On thursday, I ran 5k in 23:30, just under a 5min/km pace and then followed that immediately with shoulders and arms from p90X. Yesterday, I ran 6.25k in 31:45, just over a 5 min/km pace. My run yesterday was very bizarre...I left and it was around 7 degrees and was slightly windy so I wore my running pants, a long-sleeve shirt and gloves. By the end of the run it was 18 degrees, my shirt sleeves were rolled up and the gloves came off...I could not believe the temperature could change that much in just over half an hour.

Include my longest swim ever in this past week and I definitely earned the recover week. I most likely will not be able to swim today because I am going to be busy during lunch but I will have a few recovery swims, bikes and runs this week and most likely will do 2 yoga sessions.

Still contemplating doing the ironman 70.3 race in thailand...don't know if I can justify spending 3500 in 10 days.

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