Progress Report: Getting Fitter

So it has been about one month since my previous blog. I am on a goal to reach a target weight of 70kg by this year end. I started at a mammoth 85 on January 1st, was at 84 on February 1st.

I was following a mixed version of Tabata and GVT to reach my goals. I'll give an account of the journey as it has been this past one month.

So I began February with the insane workout routine as I listed in my previous blog. I followed it to a scratch, and have to admit that it felt good. I started off with 3 days a week, The first few days, as expected, were terribly sore. Putting on a shirt or even lifting a cup of tea, at times posed a challenge. With time (read as the next one week) I became stronger, and my cardiovascular system improved. I could pull of 100 pushups quite easily and yes, the weighing scale did dip, by exactly 0.2 kg.. I know. It felt like a joke. I was going no where. Even though I had put in 2 weeks of dedicated routine, I was basically still the same. 

So I decided to take it up a notch. Instead of limiting myself to the number of repetitions, I brought in timed intervals. 30s On 30s off. Go all out for 30s and recover in the next 30s. And that's how the circuit went. This continued for another week, but this time, instead of just working out 3 days, I added 3 days of long slow cardio as well. And boy, I did lose another 0.3kg! So by the end of 3 weeks in February, I was down half a kg since 1st Feb. Things were definitely not moving as expected. The goal was to touch or atleast scratch the 81- 82kg range, but nah ah, I wasn't. Far from it, I wasn't feeling strong, and was losing out on the motivation to continue.

All this while, my attempts at controlling diet went down the drain. I simply couldn't pull myself together to eat the right stuff. Basically, after spending an hour and a half doing lung bursting workouts in the gym made me feel entitled to a nice dish, and bam, all my efforts went down the drain.

It was 20th February now, my weight had inched up to 83.8 again. I has lost my gains of the previous week. And I hadn't been going to the gym that week. My partners had given up, and I found myself on the slippery slope of losing motivation and binging on whatever I could lay my hands. on. Potato chips, ice-cream, cheese sandwiches, cheese-burst pizzas and the list goes on.

I don't remember from where, but this book caught my attention. 

I managed to get a peek into the contents from the site. It seemed pretty interesting. The guy speaks about wholesome body development, not just brawl, but brains as well. He talks about identifying your source of motivation, preparing yourself for the load ahead, and meditation, and most of all, DIET. 

Yes, he speaks about the single most important factor that was absent from my workouts. The part that swept me off my feet was that his specified diet is based purely on the Indian ingredients. Ever since I had given up non-veg, I was basically feeling lost on what to eat. But this fellow, gives pretty interesting recipes even for the vegan folk!

Now I am not much of a body builder. Big muscles and bulk repel me. I am more the kind of guy, who wants to be lean and have functional strength, basically to help me run faster, bike faster, and whenever I do, swim faster. So pumping heavy iron was definitely not my cup of tea, or so I felt. 
But then, my targets were not being met on my own, and I was drifting away from my goals anyway, so what the heck, I decided to give it  a shot. I bought the book on the spot.

The next 10 days, I tell you, have been nothing short of a joy ride.  After the first 2 days, I got on the scale again, and I was shocked. Before being shocked I thought the machine had gone awry. So asked few of my friends to check it out, and turns out, the machine was okay. I had dropped a kg! My motivation was at an all time high now, I followed this guy's schedule in and out, straight for the next week, and let me tell you, the stuff this fellow talks about works.

So it's First of March, and now I weigh just below 81 kg. That's right, in the last 8 days of Feb, I dropped about 3 kg. And I am just getting started. This fellow breaks down the entire schedule in to 3 phases, which can roughly be described as Preparation, Conditioning and The Final Push. I haven't even gone halfway past the preparatory phase, and the results are already astounding. Let's see how far the entire routine takes me.

Meanwhile, what are you up to? How much have you covered on the way to your goals?