Prologue (8-7-2002)
Getting ready to go back to school has been an exciting time for me. However, it has also been a time of reflection. One of the things that I have known about myself for quite some time is that I need to be in better physical shape.
In the past fourteen months, I have lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle for the most part. I haven't done anything athletic apart from the occasional outdoor activity in the past two years. And I am living with the effects of it.
According to the scales today, I weigh 174 pounds. My body-fat content is roughly 18%. That doesn't sound bad, but it really is when you look in the mirror.
I've done something similar to this once before, called Body-for-LIFE, from June-September 2000. The results were very good. I ended up around 160 pounds from a high of 180. The program worked well for me; I can plan meals reasonably well, I didn't spend the entire day in the gym, and one day a week I ate whatever I felt like! The problem was that school started up again, and I didn't prioritize well. I went off of the program, and now I'm back at the beginning.
This time, I won't be following Body-for-LIFE completely, for a couple of reasons. First, the program has you eat six small meals a day. While this was feasible for me during the summer I used the program, it won't really be as a college student. I would end up eating most of my "meals" on campus, with no really good place to store food. Also, a lot of my "meals" were the special bars and shakes, and while they were good, they are also somewhat expensive, and that is a cost that I cannot justify. I will simply eat better food and limit my bad eating habits to the one day per week specified in the program.
Also, I won't be doing the lower body and aerobic parts of the program, because I intend to get most of that exercise by walking and biking around town and the campus. It should not be difficult to get my legs into shape by biking; I know that from my years as an undergraduate at Alabama. My upper body wasn't in shape from going up the hill from Rose Towers, but my lower body was!
That being said, I'm looking at the following 12-week goals for myself. On day 84 of the program (which I count as October 27, 2002), I hope to attain the following goals:
Goals
Weight, body-fat percentage, etc.
- Weight target: 160 pounds.
- a loss of 14 pounds.
- Chosen because it was my weight entering college.
- Body-fat % target: 8%.
- Equates to 12.8 lbs. of fat overall
- A loss of 18.52 pounds of fat
- Correspondingly, a gain of 4.52 pounds of muscle.
- Fit into size 32 jeans comfortably
- A loss of at least 2 inches off of the waist
Strength
All weights are for a set of 12 repetitions.
- Chest:
- Dumbbell bench press: 40 lbs./arm
- Dumbbell flyes: 30 lbs./arm
- Shoulders:
- Seated dumbbell press: 15 lbs./arm
- Side dumbbell raises: 10 lbs./arm
- Back:
- Dumbbell rows: 45 lbs./arm
- Dumbbell pullovers: 45 lbs.
- Triceps:
- Dumbbell extensions: 25 lbs.
- Lying tricep extensions: 15 lbs./arm
- Biceps:
- Seated dumbbell curls: 30 lbs./arm
- Hammer curls: 20 lbs./arm
Intangibles
- Bike to/from and around campus effortlessly
- Increased energy throughout the day
Positive steps
- Stick to my regimens of weights and good eating.
- Have a strong spiritual life (they feed off of each other).
- Make sure that I get plenty of sleep, but not too much, so that my energy level is good.
Things to avoid
- Eating low-nutrient, high-calorie foods.
- Eating too many foods with simple carbohydrates
- they're too easy to digest
- so they turn too quickly to fat
- Skipping workouts.
- Drinking soft drinks of any kind
- Includes diet and caffeine free.
- Caffeine is a stimulant, and you're better off without it
- Carbonation in the drinks results in sluggishness