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Week 6 of the 35 42Day Fall Fitness Challenge (The last week…YAH!)

I should have stopped after Week 5 because I was a little bored with the program this week.  I still met my target, but I had to load up the last day with weight training circuits, interval training and a session of intermittent fasting to do it.  I didn’t get a long walk or hike in because my cranky knee decided to act up again.  It didn’t bother me during weight training circuits (except for the constant and off-putting grinding sound), but it almost made me cut short my interval training yesterday.  Looks like a return trip to the doc is in order.

Week 6 looked like this:

Overall, I’m pleased that I stuck to the program and far exceeded my goals on most weeks.  My average weekly point total was 25.8 or 86%.  My target was 80%.  The purpose of The 35 42 Day Fall Fitness Challenge was to provide motivation during the late fall months when I have a tendency to start feeling very unmotivated to work out.  I really only had one bad week so I’d say it fulfilled its purpose.

An added benefit was that I kicked the Diet Coke habit.  I’ll have one or two per week now, but I’m not drinking them daily.  Prior to the 35 42 Day Fall Fitness Challenge I’d have at least one every day.

I’m disappointed that I only lost a couple of pounds, but that’s offset by the fact that I’m stronger and the interval training has really increased my aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels.  Of course, the main point was just to work out consistently and I’ll give myself an A on that account.

This week will be a mixed bag of weights and interval training.  I’m just going to make it up as a go along.  Next week is a recovery week, but I need to come up with some plan for the weeks after that so I can keep this going and not fall into bad habits again.

This week I put Week 4 behind me and moved on to Week 5.  I also decided to extend the challenge for another week mainly because I haven’t figured out what to replace it with.

To get right to the results:

I made a couple of changes for the sake of variety, such as dropping one of my intermittent fasts this week.  I had enough points to reach my target goal without doing a second fast and I think it’s a good idea to mix them up by varying their duration and frequency.  I also did a hike that included enough hills that I felt justified including it as an additional interval training session.

It was actually an easy week.  My energy levels and mood were good and, although I had to talk myself into starting a couple of sessions, once I got going I was fine.  I increased the weight on some of my lifts and could tell the difference.  I repeated Tabata dumbbell thrusters as one of my interval training sessions.

I’ll be visiting family for nine days starting November 24^th and intend to use that time as a break from weight training although I plan on walking or doing a couple of interval training sessions.  So I may very well extend the 35 42 Day Fall Fitness Challenge to a total of 49 days.

I’m not sure what I’ll do when I return from vacation.  Maybe I’ll get some kettlebells or maybe I’ll do all bodyweight training.  There are a lot of options and I don’t have a clue at this point.

I mentioned in my last post that I had received the results of my latest blood test.  If you’ve read Time to Get Serious, Part 1, you’ll know that back in the summer a routine blood test revealed that my triglycerides, cholesterol and blood glucose were extremely out of whack.  That’s indicative of metabolic syndrome and not a good thing.

My doctor decided to raise my Lipitor from 10mg/day to 20mg and added another medication for my high triglycerides.  My fasting blood sugar was in the low 150’s and, since my blood glucose results had been in the pre-diabetic or impaired range for a couple of years, this was a concern to her.

These results forced me to re-evaluate my diet and exercise and I’ve adhered really well to the revisions I made to both.  I’ve had a couple of slip ups.  Halloween candy for one.  One week where I didn’t meet my exercise goals for another.  Overall, however, I’m pleased with my progress and my ability to stick with the program.

Those efforts have paid off as the results of my October blood test demonstrate.  There was a wholesale improvement across the board.  My cholesterol and triglycerides are now within the normal range even though I never took that additional medication for the triglycerides that the doctor prescribed.  My blood glucose is much better although it’s still registering slightly into the impaired range.

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Week 4 officially sucked.  There’s no other way to put it.  I was grumpy, depressed and cranky most of the week and I still don’t know why.  Work was stressful.  I’m sure that had something to do with it.  I worked very late Friday and missed my interval training because of it.

In addition to the Friday interval training session, I skipped a weight training session on Saturday.  I had the time to do it, I just didn’t have the inclination.

I drank a Diet Coke on four straight days.  I felt hungrier than normal on my intermittent fasting days.  With the mood I was in, I didn’t have much mental reserve to deal with the hunger.  I managed a 21 and an 18 hour fast, but was very tempted to throw in the towel on both of them.

After doing really well with my eating choices for weeks, I fell prey to the temptation of Halloween candy.  Of course, to make matters worse, I beat myself up over it.

Here are the results for the week.  I didn’t meet my goal of 24 points and by the end of the week I didn’t really care if I did.

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Friday:  I knocked out a hike which also counted as my interval training.  I hadn’t gone on a strenuous hike in a few weeks and thought I was up to tackling a local peak, Mission Peak in Fremont, CA.

Mission Peak rises steeply for 2200 feet and there is no easy way to the top.  The official park brochure recommends a five hour round trip for the 5.6 mile hike.  I made it up in two hours.  Once I reached the summit, I spent a little time resting, having a snack and swatting gnats before I started back down.  If it weren’t for the gnats, I probably would have stayed longer.

The descent is almost as bad as the ascent because of the steepness.  It’s really a killer on the legs and I felt some hot spots developing on my feet.  After about another 1.5 hours, I was back at my car in the parking lot, but my legs were toast and I knew they’d be sore later.

When I got home, I iced my feet and didn’t see any blisters.  Yeah!  But my legs were already starting to tell me they were not happy about all the activity.  Boooooo!  I sat in the tub for a while before bed hoping the Epsom salts and baking soda would act as a magic potion.

Saturday:  OMG!!!  My calves were killing me.  They didn’t bother me at ALL on the hike yesterday so this was a total surprise.  Instead I expected my quads and hamstrings to be hurting.  My quads were a little sore and stiff, but manageable and the hammies felt fine. Continue Reading »

Week Two was another great week!  It’s difficult to believe it’s only week two.  I feel like I’ve been doing this for a month already.  I hope that’s not a bad sign that I’m doing too much and am about to flame out.

Tonight I almost skipped my weight training circuits because I felt worn down.  Not really tired, just out of energy.  I had a cup of coffee, but I don’t think it made much difference.  I made it through the workout ok and felt that it was intense.  I increased the amount of weight I used.  I did bench pushups instead of kneeling pushups.  I just felt that I wasn’t in the game mentally and that all the exercises were harder than they should have been.

I had four really intense workouts the previous four days so I think I’ll take tomorrow off.  Maybe I’ll do some stretching or light yoga, but I’m going to reschedule my intervals for the day after tomorrow.

Now on to my results from last week, Week 2.  Here they are.

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I think I have my table problems resolved for the time being.  Here are the results by day and category for Week 1.  Can I get another big Woo-Hoo?

Week One of my 35 Day Fall Fitness Challenge is over and how did I do?  I did GREAT!!  See for yourself.

Well, you really can’t see because I’m having problems importing my table, but I scored 27 out of 30 points for 90%.  Trust me.  As soon as I can get the table thing figured out I will show you the results.

I don’t know if I’ll continue to score 90%.  The first week of any new endeavor is full of anticipation and commitment.  I was determined to do well last week and I knew I had to at least meet my target score of 80%.  Otherwise, I would have felt pretty stupid about my last post where I laid all this out and whined about possibly falling back into my annual fall/winter workout lethargy.

My 35 Day Challenge definitely motivated me.  I used heavier weights in my weight training circuits.  I did full ‘manly’ pushups for half my reps instead of doing a full set of kneeling pushups.  Ok my range of motion wasn’t great, but I accomplished what I wanted by increasing the intensity and my strength along with it.

I usually have no trouble pushing myself during my interval cardio sessions, but I pushed even harder last week.  I did one sprinting session and two interval workouts on the stationary bike including one killer workout that incorporated the Tabata protocol. Continue Reading »

I’m back after a two week layoff.  The first week was a planned “off”  week.  The second week was unplanned, but the result of a commitment to a side job and a couple of days of feeling a little under the weather.  At least I did manage to get in a weight training session and some hill intervals followed up with a long walk in that time period.  Now I’m back in the routine.

Since fall has arrived with the days getting shorter and the weather getting worse (well, I really don’t have THAT excuse in California….it’s not like I live in the Snowbelt), I decided I needed to embark on a fitness challenge of some type.  That two week layoff had me worried that I could easily slip into my fall/winter workout doldrums.

There are about 80 days until January 1^st and that seemed like a long time frame for a challenge so I decided to do a 35 day challenge.  That works out to be a nice, even five weeks. Continue Reading »

Exercise to build muscle, lose fat and improve glucose and lipid levels.

The final piece of the puzzle is exercise.  My previous exercise regimen consisted of running 2-3 miles several days a week and lifting weights 2-3 times a week.  Unfortunately, it was predictable and boring and, when winter rolled around and it was rainy or cold or damp, it didn’t take much for my motivation to wane.  As with any habit, repetition reinforces the action.  So, the longer I “took a break” the longer the “break” continued.

It’s not as if that exercise program was without benefit.  Lifting weights helped me maintain and increase strength and I noticed a definite deterioration in strength when I took my extended “break”.  Running (which I enjoyed for the most part) provided a certain level of cardiovascular fitness.  Both weight lifting and running are weight bearing exercises which are helpful in preventing osteoporosis as we age.  I was fitter than most people my age, but I didn’t look it.

The drawbacks to this routine were that my body fat percentage didn’t budge and I was burned out and bored.  There was also the pesky problem with my blood sugar and lipids.  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, I needed to make some changes.  Enter circuit and interval training.

For the foreseeable future, I’m using Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training.  I was trying to decide which circuit training program to buy when I sort of “accidentally” bought TT.  Accident or not, Turbulence Training is well known and highly recommended and I’ve been using the program for a few weeks.  I’m working out more intensely than in the past and find that the supersets and variety make the workouts fly by. Continue Reading »