Day 90 Approaches

Brit and I started Body By Vi May 1st, 2012. Best day of my physical life. We have been having a blast blending shakes for two meals and watching the lbs fall off.

End of challenge photos and details to come next Wednesday! Watch out.

GQ June

The Goal: 10% body fat
To Do: Vi Shake for breakfast / dinner, protein shake + creatine immediately post workout, grilled chicken / salmon salad for lunch, all the fruit / veggies I want for snacks. No sweets, treats, eating out, or soda. Water is what I drink. Vitamins morning and night. Walk 18 Monday - Friday at first light.

Goal: big arms, big chest.
To Do: Max OT workouts, chest, arms, back, rest day, repeat. Start with chest Saturday June 2nd, arms Monday, back Tuesday, rest Wednesday, chest Thursday, etc.

Goal: Own June. Be elite. Win my challenge.
To Do: Track progress, measure waist, flexed arms, and chest June 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th. Challenge friends on FB to join me.

Notes: for 1 month of my life I can be perfectly disciplined, motivated, resolved, and successful at this physical fitness endeavor. No excuse is good enough, no day is too busy, no chance to fail, because I choose to win.

Garth

Body By Vi

I started a 90 challenge yesterday that I am ecstatic about. It's providing form and ease to my process of changing. Starting a shake meal replacement regimen. The results have been amazing for some of my friends. Check out my website http://gqandyou.myvi.net/.

Max-OT!

Loving my new lifting regime. It's all about maximizing time in lifts to build muscle fast through proven science. Low reps, high weight, after a precision calculated warm up. Goal is to overload not exhaust muscle. I can't tell you how good I feel. Loving it.

Perspective

I'm officially down 6% body fat from my start point with another 12% to go. There's a lot that could be said about the past, but my focus is squarely on the present. People are starting to notice I've lost some weight, and it's not even remotely satisfying to hear. This morning my wife wrapped her arms around me and declared I'm a shadow of my former self, and I didn't see it. The process, slow, steady, calculated, and disciplined, has brought clarity to what I am, still 12% away from my goal. I've never looked more hideous in the mirror, never been more aware of my body fat, and never more motivated to keep this going.

Steady

I'm done with my 5th week of solid workouts. I started with 3 / week but the last two weeks have been every single day. Resulting 5% reduction in body fat is nice to see. I'm feeling a lot of momentum, looking forward to being back to 18%, where I was when I graduated college. I'm determined to get closer to 10, but never above 20 again the rest of my life.

energy

the surprising thing about not drinking caffeine every single day, at every single meal, and in between for me was how tired i was.  sure i figured short-term i would suffer from sleepiness and rebound, but because i replaced every beverage with water i was ultra hydrated and didn't have the headaches i expected.  sleep, on the other hand, overwhelmed me early and often.  i seriously fell dead asleep at or before 9 pm every night the first week i quit.  i expected that to change.  it hasn't.

6 weeks later i find myself powering through low sleepy spots in my day from 10 am.  it's kind of lame.  i'll be honest when i say the idealist part of me expects ultimately that i'll have more energy and to spare because i'm drinking pure, clean, unadulterated water.  only so far that's not remotely close to my experience.

so take a tired man and mix in a daily, vigorous workout, and what do you get?  your best friend stopping by and asking what's wrong with you, you seem exhausted.  well, i am.  i'm 4 days working out in a row, and i promise, all i want to do is sleep.

nevertheless, the hope remains.  i'm not blogging about my imminent return to caffeine or the lounge chair, i will persist, but a little spike in my natural energy to go along with my health commitment would be nice!  :)

musings

I can't believe it's been years since I started my project Vin blog. There's little to be excited about knowing my physical make up is nearly the same as then, but there's no benefit in wasting time with regret. I began again 6 weeks ago.

The obvious attribute I need to help me move forward is discipline. I decided I would drink water only instead the steady stream of caffeinated beverages that had become habit. For going on a month and a half, I've had less than 44 ounces of soda per week. I drink water. My purpose in making this drastic and difficult change was to get more discipline. It's working.

Two weeks ago I cleaned out the workout space in my garage, unburied the smith machine, set up the speakers, and eliminated all excuses. Two days ago I actually lifted and I'm perfect since. It's a start.

It's always startling how much better I feel after a workout. In an attempt to build up positive energy around my workouts I hung photos from muscle and fitness magazine near my weights plus downloaded the blogger app on my iPhone so I can journal about my progress.

Here I go.

uh, here I go again?

There isn't really anything to say except, it's time to start again.  Discipline in eating is not something that I ever even though about growing up.  It's only been the last 10 years that I wasn't in perfectly good form eating whatever, whenever I wanted.  Anyway, I've at least identified what is required.

To start again I'm in the middle of a full 24 hour water-only fast.  Over the past two weeks I've tracked my caloric intake at roughly 4,000 per day (no wonder I've been holding this steady state weight nearly 90 pounds over my marraige number).  The fast today is to designate the start to my new daily number of 2,000.

I've been using the calorie counter app on my Droid Incredible to keep track of what I eat.  It's very easy.  I am going to continue to eat whatever I want, but stop eating every day when I hit 2,000.  This should allow me to trend down towards my target body fat percentage.  As I log days of eating the right number of calories, I'll start worrying about what I eat, but for now, my only focus is going to be quantity.

Peace!

week 5

Pretty slim on the reports this week.  If you miss a couple of weeks, don't sweat it.  Just jump back in whenever you get back on track or need some support. 

I worked out 4 days and saw another one percent percentage weight loss. 

Randy worked out six days.  And, Morgan mixed in four workouts. 

Tell your wives, significant others, friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers to email me at pedroscousin@gmail.com.  I'll send them an invite to the blog.  Let's get it going!

strength

You know, the body is amazing.  I love that with a few workouts strung together I start feeling so differently so suddenly.  It was the out of shape, tired all the time, persistently lame feeling that really got me fired up for project Vin, but this week, just a few in, that feeling seems so far away.  The human body is amazing.

There is one significant difference for me though now verses earlier times of dedicated working out.  It's simply strength.  I feel so much stronger than at any other time in my life.  In terms of weight I can lift or speed, I haven't measured against what I was, but there is a distinct feeling of being stronger than ever before.

I've heard that for men the thirties into your forties is when you have the ability to be the strongest you will ever be.  I'm not sure that's what's going on here, or if the contrast from how low I was, with the hope of where I'm heading, has created a new exaggerated feeling, or if the the strength is reality, but I don't care.  It feels great!

week 4

What is up party people?  The week 4 report is this:

I worked out four days and saw a minimal change in my body weight percentage. 

Kristi ran three days for a total of more than seventeen miles.  Rhett worked out four days.  Greg worked out four days.  Randy worked it six days and saw a one percent decrease in body weight.  Bethany worked out three days and is down nearly a percentage in body weight.

As a reminder, I'm only tracking percentage weight loss on a weekly basis so we can see progress, not get all caught up in how much.  The weekly numbers may be small, but it shows work.  Great job!

My crazy busy time leading up to graduations is now officially over and I'm very happy to report a significant increase in my attention is going to be on project Vin and helping us all get to where it is we want to be.

Thanks to Bethany, Kristi, and Britani for their renewed resolve as well. Let's do this!

weekly reports?

So I am waiting to see what the weekly total is here... I know you are getting the results each week so you can see what progress is being tracked by everyone and using their motivation, but I need some extra motivation too. :)

week 3

I worked out three times this week and had .7 percent body weight loss.

Karen mixed in seven days working out and saw 1.6 percent weight loss.  Randy five days and 1.6 percent weight loss.  Morgan had three workouts.  Greg worked out five days and had an amazing 5.6 percent body weight loss! 

Nice freaking work Karen and Randy with the consistency over the last two weeks.  You are our superstars right now, way to work your project!

no pain no gain is a bunch of crap

I have been able to balloon up to my current size with no pain. That is why I say that it is crap that there is pain to gain. What I want is pain to loose fat. I thought I’d share something that I have been using for the past month. I have always heard that counting calories is a huge part of weight loss. According to Garth’s post, it is 80% of weight loss. The secret is finding out what your recommended daily intake or RDI of calories is and then creating a deficit beyond that with exercise. I have found a really great app for android phones called “Calorie Counter by Fat Secret”. What is really nice about this little tool is that I can scan barcodes which will input all the info you need. You can then add everything you eat, and all the exercise that you have done. It syncs with fatsecret.com. Long story short, this app is amazing for anyone that has an android type phone. There is so much more, definitely worth checking out if you want some additional help. Since accountability is huge, it is hard to cheat with this thing. I don’t know if there is a version for the iPhone but there is for you iPad people: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/calorie-counter-by-fatsecret/id364140848?mt=8

week 2

Accountabilty is just owning it, no excuses. Support comes from working together over time, not just when it's easy.

This week I worked out once and lost once percent of my body weight.

Mignon worked out five times. Karen worked out seven days and lost over three percent body weight! Randy had five workouts. Gwen worked out twice and lost over two percent body weight. Greg gave me a baseline weight.  Rhett worked out three days.  Bethany worked out four days saw a one and a half percent reduction in body weight.

There are others that intend to report tomorrow. Text or email me results anytime and I'll update this post. Week three here we go!

food eighty workouts twenty

You'll hear in business that eighty percent of your earnings comes from twenty percent of your clients. This applies in my business to a large degree so the idea was in my mind on Monday when I ran into a strength and conditioning coach and asked about lifting, "which shoulder, arm, and chest lifts do I need to focus on to get chiseled up?" The answer was not was I was looking for.

I figured there had to be an ideal numbert of sets or pattern of lifts to maximize results. She said lifting and excercise is at best only twenty percent of what's important for me to look the way I want and it really doesn't matter what I do, just that I do something. Food is eighty percent of the challenge. Finding and then eating the right number of calories to lose fat an retain muscle. She de-emphasized what you eat and says it's more important to cut yourself off at your total calories for the day no matter what you eat or what time you reach your total.

It went against everything I was moving towards, but she's muscled up and, well I'm not.

new source of inspiration

I have a friend who recently lost approxiamtley 30 pounds. She has discovered new things that her body can do including run a 5K in 37 minutes. She continually asks me if I would like to run a 5K with her, and I just proceed to laugh. I have decided that I want to try. I want to try and run a 5K. So I guess that is my new commitment. I want to be able to run at least a 5K by the time I leave for Mexico. That gives me 3 months to be able to do that. Wish me luck, and thanks for the inspiration.

week 1

I worked out 4 days this week and saw 1.01% reduction in weight. I took a baseline body fat percentage measurement.

Britani worked out 4 days and saw a 1.01% weight loss. Rhett had 5 workout days and gave a baseline body fat percentage number. Randy worked out 3 days and gave me a baseline weight. Jana worked out 4 days. Morgan worked out 2 days and gave me a starting weight. Bethany worked out 3 days, gave me initial body fat percentage, bmi measurement, and weight. Karen gave me baseline weight.

Week 1 is just that. It's the start. If you missed reporting no worries, shoot me a text or email when it's convenient and I'll update this post.

Good luck, let's hammer it out people!

the beginning

On the eve of the first week of project Vin I can honestly say I'm as excited an optomistic as I've been regarding the direction I'm headed physically. For the last ten years I've focused on work and little else. I've ignored my health, taken it for granted, but not any more. There have been other half-hearted attempts leading up to a trip where I'd be lounging in a swimsuit, but I want so much more than to be tolerable at the beach. This is the beginning of my healthy and fit lifestyle.

There is power in a group of people headed towards a similar end. I hope tomorrow many of you start with me, so this will actually become a forum for change instead of my online journal. Either way, I'm committed and ready.