Beginning of week 9. Weight this morning was 15st 8, and that’s been the case for the last three days, so I think I can say I’m back on target. All good in that respect.

I completed all three cardio sessions last week, but not to full intensity – I was resting that hamstring. Fortunately it seems better now – still not quite 100%, but getting there. I intend to re-introduce the trampoline this week, but only in very short bursts (30 secs) to start with.

Strength on the bench press seems to be getting back to where it was. I introduced a little extra work last week which I think may have helped a little – a set of ‘strength’ press-ups (5 reps with feet elevated) and a set of ‘endurance’ press-ups (30 reps from the knees) – performed Mon and Fri after three sets of bench press and two sets of dumbbell overhead press. Deadlift strength seems unchanged.

So, a reasonable week overall, but I need to get back on track with the fitness – last week I coasted at best. That was due to the injury and wasn’t a serious setback, but I’m keen to start making progress again on the fitness front.  

Well, weight has bounced around a little this last week. On Tuesday I was back up to 15st 11, by Friday I was down to 15st 8, by Sunday I was back up to 15st 9 and this morning I was 15st 10. I know these fluctuations do happen, and it’s got nothing to do with fat gain or loss. I certainly didn’t lose three pounds of fat between Monday and Friday, then gain two back by the following Monday. So I’ll see how things go over the next week before I start to make any assessment of whether I’m making progress. I have to admit though, it is a bit frustrating to see the scale weight in the same place it was a fortnight ago. Last week my calorie average was a touch over 2500. If I haven’t lost any scale weight by this time next week, it’s really going to be time to rethink the diet.     

Other than this, it’s all pretty much proceeded according to plan, except that the trampoline seems to be straining my right hamstring. I think I might have to lay off it for this week and then reintroduce it slowly.

So, overall, not the best week. I’ll see how the next one goes. 

Beginning of week seven, and the start of the next six-week phase. The aims for this next phase are a) to keep on losing weight, and b) to further increase fitness.

In terms of the first aim, the target is to drop below fifteen and a half stone by the end of the six weeks. I only need to lose another four pounds to reach that goal – and maybe my goal should be more ambitious – on the other hand, this one gives me a margin for error. If I go a week without dropping any weight, it doesn’t knock me off track – so long as it doesn’t happen more than twice (assuming I lose one pound per week on the other four weeks). If I lose any more than four pounds, I’ll consider that a bonus.

I plan to achieve the second aim mainly by increasing the intensity of the 20-minute cardio phase. I’ll do that mainly by introducing short bursts of high-intensity exercise, following the HIIT principle. For the ‘intense’ exercise, the choices are hitting the heavy bag at an all-out pace, or simply jumping / flat out running on the spot.

How much intense exercise? Again, I’m going to introduce this very slowly. By the end of the six weeks, I intend three minutes of the twenty to be flat-out intense exercise. That may not sound a lot, but I’ll increase it further in the third six-week phase.  The 3 mins is in total – I won’t be doing 3 mins in one burst (not really possible – the point of ‘flat out’ is to be going so hard as to only be able to keep it up for a short time, 30 secs or so). So 3 mins equals six flat-out bursts or ‘sprints’ over the course of the 20 mins.

So:

Week 7	Week 8	Week 9	Week 10	Week 11	Week 12
.5 mins	1 min	1.5 mins	2 mins	2.5 mins	3 mins
1 burst	2 bursts	3 bursts	4 bursts	5 bursts	6 bursts

The rest of the session will be a mixture of light and moderate cardio. For the light cardio, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing so far, such as the light aerobics. For the moderate cardio, I bought a small trampoline last week. I’ve tested it out and it is indeed pretty moderate exercise – harder work than the light aerobics, not so hard as the flat-out stuff. So a typical session will be a sort of circuit – switching between light cardio, moderate cardio, and a few intense bursts of flat-out cardio.   

I’m also toying with the idea of increasing the overall length of the cardio session – maybe to 25 minutes – but I’ll see how I go with the increased intensity first.  

With regard to the weights, I aim to keep doing what I’ve been doing. Current workouts are as follows:

Workout A

Bench press – 3 sets, 6-8 reps

Heavy dumbbell overhead press – 2 sets, 8 reps

Squats – 2 sets, 20 reps

Light dumbbell workout (lateral raises, rows, overhead press, curls, French press) – 1 40-50 rep set of each

Workout B

Deadlift – 2 sets of 5 reps

Dips – 2 sets of 8-10 reps (these are light / cheat dips – still too heavy yet for proper ones)

Heavy dumbbell rows – 2 sets  of 8-10 reps (intend to replace these with pull / chin-ups when I can, i.e. when I’m light enough to do them again )

Squats – 2 sets of 20 reps

Light dumbbell workout (lateral raises, rows, overhead press, curls, French press) – 1 40-50 rep set of each

I alternate the two workouts, so on one week I do Workout A 2x and Workout B 1x, the following week I do Workout A 1x and Workout B 2x. It’s a pretty minimalist programme, I know, and I’m aware it wouldn’t be much use for bodybuilding or strength gain – but that isn’t the aim. The aim of the heavy stuff is simply to preserve existing strength. When the weight and fitness are sorted, I’ll worry about stepping up the weights and gaining more strength then. The one exception is the bench press – the lift where I think I’ve lost a little strength – I’m compensating for that by gradually increasing the weight and number of reps again on a week by week basis, but I’m still not doing more than three sets. The other heavy lifts I’m not trying to progress on, just maintain the status quo. The aim of the light dumbbell routine is to increase upper-body muscular endurance, and so that routine is progressive. I’m currently doing one 40-rep set for each of the five exercises. When I hit fifty reps, I’ll add more weight and drop back down to 20 reps – then build it back up to 50. After that, I’ll probably go to two sets of 30, and build that up to two sets of 50…that will be over a period of several months, though.     

Well, there’s the goals and the plan. Let Phase 2 commence.  

OK, it’s the end of the initial six weeks, so let’s recap on progress so far.

Saturday's weigh-in showed me at 15st 10, so weight loss has been 5 pounds. That’s only a small fraction of what I need to lose of course, but it’s a start – and better than I actually expected, given that I didn’t actually expect to start losing weight until around week 4. My gut girth has decreased too – from 48” / 121cm at the start, to 46.5” / 118cm now.  

Fitness is harder to measure, but I’m certain it has improved a bit. Cardio sessions have gone from ten minutes – which was plenty in the beginning – to twenty. Still only light cardio, of course, but that was always the plan in this first phase. My walk in to work (about a mile, mostly uphill) feels significantly easier.  I’m still highly unfit and there’s a lot more work to be done – but I’m no longer at rock bottom.

Strength appears largely unchanged so far – which was another important aim. So far it’s mostly being met. The one exception, as I mentioned the other week, may be the bench press – I think I’ve lost a little ground there – but I’m trying to compensate by going back to a progressive programme on that lift. Hopefully I can gain back what I’ve lost over the next few weeks – or at least avoid losing any more.  

The biggest achievement though has simply been to put the routine in place – to start controlling my diet and consistently doing cardio.  I know some people will say I could have pushed myself a lot harder during these six weeks, but that was never my plan. I’d never stick to anything too intense, especially at this early stage….I’d end up saying ‘bugger it’ and falling off the wagon. This routine may only be modest, but at least it’s something I have a better chance of sticking to, and working towards my long-term goals at a slow but consistent pace. The best routine is the one you’ll stick to doing, right? And I have stuck to it. I think I can give myself a small pat on the back for that.

So, in summary…only a beginning, but it’s been a fairly good beginning. 

Into week 6, last week of the initial phase. The latest weigh-in shows me at 15st 11, so another pound dropped. On the other hand, for the second week in a row, I didn’t meet my calorie target…I averaged 2450, which is a tad less than last week but still 200 above target.  Well, that’s the same pattern for two weeks on the run now, so what do I take from it?

It’s clear that it’s going to take a bigger effort than I’ve made so far if I’m going to drop calories any lower…and it’s going to involve being hungry some of the time. To keep intake at around 2500 involves a moderate amount of self-discipline but nothing really hard. To drop lower is going to require significantly more self-discipline.

Question is, do I actually need to? At least at this moment in time? I seem to be losing weight steadily even at 2400-2500. Not only that, I actually don’t want to lose weight too fast – a pound per week is great. So….I think I might just keep things as they are for now, aim for an average of 2500 and see how it goes. Realistically, I know that, at some point, the weight loss is going to stall, and at that point I’m going to have to cut calories to significantly below 2500 to get it going again. I have to be ready for that and, when that time comes, I ‘m going to need to find the willpower to do it. But I’ll face that when I need to.

Another concern is that strength seems to have dropped a little. Last week I struggled to get 8-9 reps on the bench press with a weight I used to be able to lift for 10. I don’t want to lose strength, as I said, but I think it could be because I’ve cut training back too much. So  this week I’m back to three sets, plus a programme of progressive overload – I’ve cut the reps back to 6, added weight, then I’ll build back up to 8 reps before adding more weight, etc. That’s the system I used before to gain strength. I don’t know if it will work so well while I’m in calorie deficit, but I’m only in modest calorie deficit so hopefully it will.

On the plus side, apart from the weight loss, I think fitness is still increasing. The walk in to work is definitely getting easier. I may do a test this week – see how many flights of steps I can climb before I get out of breath. It won’t be many! It will give me a baseline though which I can aim to improve on over the next six week cycle. Fitness is hard to measure with any precision, but this will be a rough yardstick.

Cardio sessions are now up to 20 minutes and so far I haven’t missed one. Seven more days and Phase 1 is complete.