FAT-OFF, DAY 11

Here I am at Day 11, and I'm writing this late, so I have no cute or informative notes to add. Is this photo showing my progress to date? NO!!!! This is a reminder of how much blubber I was packing on Day 0. I'll try to get new photos the night before I begin week 3. Am I brave putting these fat shots up? I guess so, but what good is this blog and how honest am I if I don't have any of those nasty "before" photos?

Whoa! Wait a minute: I keep meaning to tell you that getting LOTS of sleep is imperative to your success, so don't scrimp. If you can find them, 8 to 10 hours is optimal. Some people sleep less, but I think you are compromising your success if you do. I often take a good power nap or 2 during the day as well as my night sleep, but honestly I don't think I ever get more than 6 hours a night. However, I say that with full knowledge that my success would be better if I were to follow my own advice.

As I predicted, today's weight went back up, and quite considerably. I assume part of that was something to do with the scale, but I also retained a lot of water, I think, to help "salve" the muscles that got swollen up from yesterday's rough workout. I guess tomorrow's weigh-in will show the truth. Don't get too excited about the day to day drops and gains. It's the end of the week compared to the beginning that will really reveal the true trend, and hopefully that will show a minimum of 2 pounds a week for the first two weeks. Generally it should be much more.

Today I drank several protein shakes and had a huge vegetable shake in the evening made of a processed vegetable juice augmented with carrots and frozen broccoli. I added 2 cloves of garlic and a cup of cottage cheese and blended it until smooth. I am a garlic fan, especially raw garlic, and if you really desire to have long and healthy life you'd better become one too.

I splurged and also had a small piece of blueberry pie one of the other firefighters left in the fridge. When you see my workout today you'll see why I was able to justify that.

Today was chest and triceps day again, and we finished off with abdominals.
For chest it was flat flyes, incline flyes, and cable crossovers, and you need to concentrate on a SERIOUS stretch at the bottom of all these and a very hard squeeze throughout the movement but especially at your peak contraction.

Close grip bench, pushdowns, and kickbacks served to put my triceps into overdrive, and due to a lack of time we supersetted each triceps exercise with the corresponding chest exercise. We were able to do this only because these particular chest exercises concentrate on the chest and don't involve any triceps work.

For abs we did old-fashioned situps, the best way to gain strength in the upper abdominals. I did one set with no weight, then the next two with first a 5 and then a 10 lb plate behind my head. We finished off the routine with crossover crunches, both left and right, and center crunches. 15 reps of each of these will suffice.

Later, at the fire station, I did ten or twelve sets of cable crossovers and 50 very slow pushups.

In the evening, I ran one hour on the treadmill and weighed in at 203.75. Yes, I sweat a lot! Most of that weight I have probably gained back in water by now. But the 961 calories the treadmill computer said I burned in that workout allowed me to feel okay about the piece of blueberry pie. It was good to get some glycogen stores back in my muscle tissue.