Good morning!
The excess weight is slowly coming off. I'm down a full kilo (or should I say liter?!?) today. With that, the fat percentage is up, and fluid/muscle is down, just as expected. It's all water. :)
This is obviously a good thing, getting rid of it. It would have been nice if it was a fat loss, but that just doesn't go all that fast.
I'm more than happy with this morning's result.
...
I did reasonably good yesterday. I ate my meals, and stayed away from processed sugars, as promised. Wife and I DID indulge in sugar free ice cream - I had about 200 calories worth, which is a pretty damn big portion - and I have no regrets. It doesn't damage anything. If anything, it'll just weigh me down because I ate it.
This is generally something from yesterday. I could probably have had a much larger drop in weight this morning, had I chosen different meals yesterday.
My lunch was very reasonable. Lefovers from the day before, about 400g of it.
The kicker was dinner. Wife made her chicken soup, and it was super delish. I had to have seconds. It was all accounted for - I had about 800g of actual chicken and veggies, and then the clear soup on top. It totaled at 400 calories, give or take. Nothing bad whatwhoever.
It does, however, weigh me down today, I'm sure.
That's okay, though. It's the fat loss I gotta focus on first. My water and food intake excess weight will fluctuate from day to day no matter what I do, and I am still too far from goal day to even want to begin to worry about this too much.
I do have a plan set up to get on the right page when it comes to this.
For now, and the rest of the way to surgery, the aim is to simply stay within RDI daily, and if I need a few extra calories it will be from the ones I didn't use to reach my RDI the week before. There will be no dedicated Indulgence Days, though, but there will be days that are a little more relaxed. One gotta live, too. Right? :)
There will be no sugar, no candy, no ice cream, no soda, no cake. Sugar free items not included. I can enjoy those. The point to skip these is to avoid the processed sugar.
Then, when we get to the week before surgery, I will go much more strict. I will look at smaller meals, and be more focused on avoiding things that will make me retain water. The last week is all I need to get the water weight down, and obviously I can't eat 5 lbs of food the night before my final weigh-in. :)
...
Now, the REAL challenge comes AFTER surgery. There will be a while where I can not work out. There will be a while where I can not even move much. This will KILL my calorie burn, my step count, everything.
I will have to lower my RDI significantly to compensate. This is hard, because this is also a time where I can easily get bored, and tempted to much on bad things. Hopefully, a lower RDI will help me stay focused.
...
I think that I will stop obsessing over my weight after the surgery. I will try to make my new goal to NOT obsess over weight. At this point I am DONE losing weight, and it will have to be another focus.
My new focus, to avoid gaining the wrong kind of weight, will be my bodyfat percentage.
I think this is a much better goal.
When I work out the way I do I need to accept that I will gain weight - from fluid and from muscle. I'm okay with that. I have to be okay with that if I want to be stronger and leaner.
What I have to watch out for is body fat.
So, post-surgery, my measure-tape for weight loss is my bodyfat percentage. My first goal - which SHOULD be reached before surgery - is to get back under 10% at all times. This is very accomplishable.
I dip down to 10 every now and then, but mostly because of my water fluctuations.
Not too many moons ago, I would be at 5% all the time, sometimes for weeks in a row. That's what I want again, ultimately, but I also know how hard work it is to remain at that level. It's most likely a much more comfortable goal to stay at 10%.
I will simply have to see.
I want to be healthy, lean, strong and fit, but I don't want to feel that I am on a weight loss diet for the rest of my lift.
I don't mind the focus, and I don't mind the work, but I do mind a life long unneccessary restriction, if the real difference is between 5 and 10 percent.
It's not like I can really SEE or feel a significant difference between these anyways. I love - LOVE - the thought of a percentage of 5, but it's not like it can be seen on me.
Google suggests that body fat percentages look something like this:
I tend to agree.
The thing is, though, that I will NEVER get to look like that.
I have excess and loose skin on my entire body. This will never, ever go away - and there is nothing I can do about it. I have had one surgery to remove the ridiculous amount I had around my waist, and as you know my 2nd adjustment is in a month, but my chest, arms, legs, back, etc., will never be tight as in the photos.
I will never, ever, be able to have a sixpack. I guess the point is that it's still okay - as long as I don't have a keg. ;)
Looking at the pictures above, I think I pretty much look like the 14% picture. There isn't any real fat under my skin, it's just loose and looks like I am a little "fatter" than I really am. It's just something I have to live with, and I'm cool with that. I have no intentions of going to the beach in speedos to impress the ladies.
I just want to feel thin, feel strong and feel great. Is that too much to ask?
Actually, I am already there. In my mind I have reached goal and accomplished it all ages ago. It's just this little last step that I need done.
The surgery is really the only reason that I am so eager to get back down around 80 kilos.
After that, no more chasing weight numbers. I shall be looking forward to this.
...
Today is gonna be a good day. It's gonna be a busy one, but I think it's gonna fly by SUPER fast.
First of all, I have - of course - done my gym work this morning. I also did my walk, and my daily 10,000 step goal was reached before I went to work. Very very nice. I love when I pull this off.
Work will have enough interesting tasks that it's gonna fly by - and I'm leaving 45 minutes early too, to go work at the gym.
The gym is gonna be pretty much nothing but introductions to the cirle training workout system that we do. We have so many new clients from last week's convention, and they are all starting up now.
The only break from this is when a couple of young guys are gonna show up simply to try it out. We were talking at the convention, and they were basically laughing at the way we work out. They go so a "real" gym, and build muscle the "real way". Yeah, whatever. They were very surprised when we did a test - held out a 5lb dumbell in one arm, lifted above horisontal. We did this on time, and I won by several minutes. I did three minutes, the best of the others did 55 seconds. That got their attention. :)
Anyways, I'll be looking forward to showing them what we can do - and I'll be looking forward to making them eat their words - and eat my dust. LOL.
...
Today, I'm thankful for:
- A pretty good night's sleep.
- Wife!
- Coffee!
- A fun day at work tonight!
Life is good!
