HALFWAY IN THE EXERCISING AND DIETING MARATHON

The goal is to kick off bigger challenge in my body with a guided nutrition and training guide for a month. Let’s start by me assuming that you’re most interested to know what are the changes.

NUMBERS

So starting with some data. This is how I changed in the exact 15 days from 27.11 since the start of the marathon.

weight    72.6  > 71.2 kg
chest         92 =  92   cm
waist          77 > 73    cm
hips          112 > 109  cm
leg             65 > 63    cm
fat           33.7 > 30.6 %

If I take waistline, hips and two legs together, i lost 11cm off of my body. Isn’t this just a weird-ass math?

NUTRITION

For the 1st week my plan was to eat over 50g of protein.
I’ve already done a protein challenge of trying to eat 100g of protein a day which ended up being around 80g as average in a month. So it wasn’t too weird to start eating so much of it again, but now the limit was the calories restriction.

From the week 2 the game has a step up.
I had to start mixing high-carb, high-protein and mixed days. Actually the rest of the group this was from the start, I had it later because I’m a vegetarian and we as a group tend to under-eat protein a lot.

When i check the average values for how I’ve been eating in the last 14 days.

 Calories      1350
 Protein          81g
 Fat                 61g
 Carbs          127g

What I take from here that I basically eat how I was eating in august on the protein challenge just with way less carbs, hence less calories. When I track how I eat ‘naturally’ I consume about 180g of carbs even on reduced intake.

TRAINING

For this marathon I chose the hardcore option of gym 3 times a week. Of course for some people it’s the life, but for a huge group of beginners this is the advanced option.

– strength training

However the training is something I’m more or less used to, the program is slightly different from what I normally do.
As I started to read on the training I was using the guidance for already fit people who want to build on a muscle mass doing 3 sets of 7-10 reps of the maximum weight you can manage. Since my original fat % is actually in start of obesity spectrum it’s not a good starting point for improving my body.

Since this new program is focused on just toning with higher reps 12-15 per set, I notice that I’m not so broken after the strength training days, which leaves me space to do the following.

– cardio

Hey, i hate cardio. most of us do. problems with pressure and asthma doesn’t make me love it any more. but this program was like “put as much cardio as possibbruuu!!!” and though i don’t like it i tried to try to incorporate it in the days that were either before or after training.

Since I can’t do running now, I chose to do fast walking on incline with a pulse 120-160 per minute.
First week I was doing it only on a separate day for about 30 minutes.
By the end of the week two I was able to do 40 minutes on a separate day and 10-20 minutes after strength training.

DATA SUMMARY

I’m a bit of a dork so for the weekly reports one of the things i sent is this table with summary of nutrition, training and measurements. So this is how it looks like:

PEOPLE

Each person in the marathon has 2 chats – one directly with the coach to send your personal stuff and one for the whole group. I have very mixed feelings about the later. As well as it’s quite adorable that so many people share support and advice, as well it’s horrendous about sending a LOT of picture of food from supermarket with the same question “can I eat it?” It becomes old really fast.

MENTAL STATE

In the 1st week I was feeling pretty down because the initial results of other people were so prominent. I’m all happy for them and believe we should be improving ourselves at own speed and all that, but it’s still a quite a mi-mi-mi time when for the first results sending i gained 1 kilo, though I was back to initial weight just 3 days later, and after that started to loose more.

Another aspect I didn’t quite like is the tiredness that comes with less-than-normal calories and sudden increase in training.

Otherwise it’s pretty manageable though it’s not easy. Starting to see more result however small it is seems very reassuring and promising. I can’t seem to fully embrace that i’m able to feel my legs so good first time probably ever since i gave up dancing.