I am recomposing by body to be in the best shape of my life by the time we leave for Portugal in 13 weeks.
First, a little bit about my goals.
- Weight – I know I should not watch my weight as closely and focus on other non-scale victories (or NSVs) like clothes fitting differently, improvement in posture, things like that. Well, as much as I hate to say it, my primary goal is to get below 300 lbs by the time we leave for Portugal. I started the journey at 333.3 lbs at 15 weeks pre-departure, so the goal was to lose 33 pounds in 15 weeks.
- Shoulders – I know my wife is VERY into shoulders, and I have weak shoulders (and a weak upper body in general) so my second goal is to improve my shoulder musculature, with no defined measurable goal set- just to see improvement of some sort. I don’t expect these massively capped shoulders but even an increase in size would be helpful.
- Biceps/Triceps – yep, the showcase muscles, the muscles everyone looks at to define a muscular man. I’d like to get the biceps bigger and rounder and the triceps larger and firmer to fill out short sleeve shirts a little better (I’ve heard that increasing the size of your triceps actually makes your arms look bigger than increasing the size of your biceps, so… there ya go.)
- Pecs – Being fat for as long as I have means I have saggy, flabby man-boobs. Even if I can just tighten them up a little, that’d be great.
- Back – I would like to have a nice, muscular back… like this.
Here are the items I am tracking on a daily basis to help me achieve those goals:
- Sleep – I am doing all I can to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night, including intentional wind-down, minimizing blue-light exposure an hour prior to bed, things like that.
- Lifting – I am working a simple PPL (Push/Pull/Legs) routine the mornings of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week. I plan on adding a fourth day of just purely shoulder work to help with that particular aspect of my physique.
- Breathing – I use the Breathe app on my phone and aim to use it at least twice a day. It helps as part of my wind-down routine for getting ready to go to bed.
- Nutrition – I am on a GLP-1 so hitting my calorie goal is difficult, especially early in the week when the medicine is at its most effective. Barriers aside, my absolute floor for caloric intake is 1,900, but aim for 2,100-2,400. For protein, my floor is 180 g, but aim for 200+ g daily.
- Movement – primarily in the form of steps. I would like to aim to meet my goal of 7,000 steps per day, mainly from walking Ash. With DST having just started this morning, and with warmer weather on the way, regular walks with him will be much easier.
Accountability comes in the form of a story that ChatGPT is telling me and using my progress as guideposts for the character in the story. The story is a slasher story where my character is being stalked in the woods by a masked marauder. Each of the five goals above equates to a trait my character can “level up” in, for instance, if I meet my calorie and protein goal, my character has the energy to fight the stalker. If I meet my breathing goals for the day, it improves my character’s clarity and he becomes more situationally aware. Things like that. (as an aside, this is exactly how I envisioned my app to operate…)
So, with that said, let’s start discussing the week past.
Sunday, March 8 marked the end of week 2 of my Body Recomposition journey. It was a rough week to say the least.
Tuesday, March 3, I started my call shift at work, which just so happened to coincide with my wife being out of town for an entire week. Being on call for a company based in the Pacific time zone while living in the Central time zone means I have to be online and available from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm, PST, which means I have to be on until 7:00 pm each night. When I’m normally starting to wind down from the day by that time every night, things got out of hand pretty fast. I didn’t sleep very well at all, I didn’t track my food, I have NO idea if I met my caloric or protein goals, I didn’t do a single breathing exercise, and while I did my Push and Pull lift routines, by the time Friday rolled around and it was time to do my legs, I was too gassed to even consider doing it.
After consuming entirely too much THC, CBD and CBG Friday night, I finally got a decent night’s sleep and woke up raring to go Saturday. I got a walk in with the pooch before 8:00 (just a mile, down to the end of our street and back (from our front door to the end of the street, across, back down then across again to the front door is precisely one mile.))
I ran some errands then got to work on some work in the yard, bagging 9 bags with yard waste that are currently on the curb waiting for pick up tomorrow. By the time I got those nine bags full, my legs and my back were cooked, so my skipped leg day Friday, I made up for on Saturday, AND I wound up with over 10,000 steps that day, so that was good.
Today was official weigh-in and I was down to 329.1, so just over 4 lbs from 2 weeks prior (on track for that 33 lb loss before June.) It’s a flex day otherwise, so I didn’t lift, won’t track food (though will still be aware of what I’m eating) and will aim to get some good sleep again, ready to reset for week 3.
In measurements, I lost 3″ off my hips and an inch from my neck. I gained half an inch on my shoulders, so a teeny-tiny bit of progress on that front, but otherwise, still saggy. 😟
I know, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Perhaps by the time our September trip to Cabo rolls around, I’ll be in even better shape.
But, week 2, officially in the books, not my best week by a longshot, but I’m still ready to show up tomorrow morning.
Let’s GOOOOOOOO!