perfidy

Yesterday was a happy day, for I am finally south of 230 pounds for the first time in well over a decade.  That 230 had seemed for some little while now to be like the speed of light - something that can be approached but not exceeded.  I've been as close as 230.5 a few times in the last couple months, but just couldn't get any further.

I have blamed the stagnation on my wife, circumstances, children, cosmic rays, the Jews and always the never to be sufficiently damned herring eating Norwegians.  But the was just one simple cause, really - lack of focus and consistency.  So it was my fault, I guess.  The last couple weeks I have been much more strict in my paleo diet, and I've started lifting again.

I have to say that even just a little into the new exercise regime, I am very pleased with it and the the results.  I've combined the super-slow methodology that I was introduced to by Aretae with a collection of body-weight exercises, and it pretty much kicks my ass.  Which is what you want in an exercise program.

The first day's program was arms and shoulders.  I was surprised at how much more difficult push-ups are done super-slow style can be.  My arms are strongish, thanks to the six months of weight-lifting on machines I did last fall and winter.  The push-ups gave me a nice burn there, but the next day I could feel everything around the big muscles hurting, and even more, I could feel the pain in my abs.  I think this new program will be a lot more effective.  The best thing about the You Are Your Own Gym book is that he gives you lots of ways to adjust the difficulty of the exercises, which makes it easy to adjust each exercise to hit the 90-second-to-exhaustion target for super slow.

For the next few months, I'm going to be doing about seven minutes of lifting a day, four times a week.  I think this, along with a strict paleo diet, will get me down to an optimal body weight sometime in the Fall.  I'm not sure exactly what that will be, exactly, because I'm not sure how much more muscle I'll get; but I definitely want my body fat percentage down to at least 10.