January — 31 Days Of Snap Its Cold

As of this morning:

• Weight: 234 lbs
• Neck: 16"
• Navel: 43"
• Waist: 42"
• Hips: 45"
• Body Fat: 33.23%

That’s a loss of 5 lbs and a net gain of 2” resulting in a +1.25% in estimated body fat. I’ll take the weight loss and accept the change in geometry — it’s a delta within the 1-3% error range.

I’m actually quite pleased with the results of January’s commitments after gaining 2 pounds during the candy season of Halloween through New Years.

I didn’t focus on progress so much as daily compliance with my eating strategy. That worked well. Especially during the last two weeks — I stayed within my caloric and macro-nutrient tolerances.

I struggled with establishing a consistent routine for the circuit training this month. It’s a work in progress. I did indeed tweak it:

• 10 burpees
• 10 lunges per side
• 15 second horizontal plank
• 15 dumbell rows per side

I can get 2 or 3 sets in while making breakfast. I need to be doing 3 or 4. I also need to add more weight to the DB rows as soon as I can squeeze out a few bucks. The 4L water jug works great, but 10 lbs is clearly not enough. Body-weight rows / inverted push-ups are not even on the table yet let alone an actual pull-up. I did pick up a pull-up bar — I can hang from it quite nicely. Quite humbling. Oh well. We all need dreams fantasies goals. I will continue my hero-training. I will channel Jerry Seinfeld to enhance the habit.

Now, walking was a kick-ass win this month. I crossed that miserable bridge nearly every workday — about 5 km. I logged a whopping 131 km in January. Booyah!

I’m on track in training for the Bluenose Run on Victoria Day weekend. I have until the end of February to register. I feel quite confident about the 10k. Perhaps I’ll commit to the 21k jaunt instead. See how the month goes as I add walk/run intervals to my regime.

The real surprise of the month has been in writing. The original plan was to come up with a weekly blogging habit. I broke it out by topic category and such. The goal was to exercise my writing muscle in preparation for NaNoWriMo in November.

Then I stumbled upon Writers Digest’s creative prompts. It’s more deliberate practice and quite fun. “Stormy Night” is taking a bit of a life of its own.

I still have a stack of other blog ideas that are percolating.

To sum up, this month’s commitments are to:

• maintain strong Primal Blueprint eating compliance,
• add walk/run interval training to the regimen,
• do 3-4 circuits every frickin' frackin' day, and
• continue with weekly installents of Stormy Night

By next month’s update, I’ll have registered for the Bluenose.