Velocity Diet 3.0 by T-Nation.com
Annnnnd there’s the wall. Insert your favorite comical effect of a cartoon character running into an immovable object at high speed [here].
They say anything you can do for twenty-one days can become a habit, either direction. I came up a few days short. However, all is not woe, though the last seven days haven’t exactly earned themselves a smiley face sticker or little gold star.
Sticking to It
Not perfect. Understatement. The body, without doing anything more outré than subjecting me to a couple lousy nights’ sleep, was still unambiguous about its desire to get something other than a chocolate protein shake. I wasn’t able to stave off that particular Zerg rush (my RTS playstyle tends towards, “Turtle until you can strike with gratuitous levels of overkill, if at all possible,” Demigod may finally break me of this habit).
At the gym, all is well. Well, almost. The workouts continue apace, and the weights I’m able to use are going up. The weekly challenge/self-assessment workout on Tuesday slapped me with a healthy dose of “You think you’re kicking butt? Oh no you don’t” (See “Progress” item). To mitigate the bad news somewhat, putting the “real weights” to use is pretty cool, and there’s a lot less uncertainty and ambiguity about how much work is getting done with the lifts that had previously required various forms of equipment hacking. Unfortunately, it also means that I have to do it in my garage, for which “climate control” amounts to “you won’t get rained on.”
Progress
Last Monday I wrote, “In any case, that’s [21:00] the time to beat going forward.” Tuesday? 21:25.
*facepalm*
Well, at least my antics amused Mike. “It’s funny to watch how you start out by really getting some good height on those squat jumps, but by the last set, not so much.” At least he waited until Wednesday to say that, so I had the energy to give him a dirty look (and the virtual finger; the joys of talking smack via IM).
So, yeah. Despite feeling stronger and being able to do more weight in the other sessions (even if it was only five pounds), the stopwatch doesn’t lie. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.
Gravity’s embrace and my overall body composition remain relatively unchanged; in light of everything else, I can’t complain overmuch, and just need to buckle down and get/stick with it. However, there is one other bit of good news in the form of what the Weight Watchers folks call a “non-scale victory” (NSV): I’ve comfortably moved to the next hole on my belt. That’s honestly pretty cool to see.
Apparently, this particular form of insanity is more contagious than I thought. Another one of you is going to be giving it a try. Rock on! For my part, at least I’m 3/4 of the way through the hardest portion of the program.
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Keeping up can get hard on programs like this. I am getting into week 12 od P90X and the last 3 weeks have not been nice. Missed workouts, lazy on the diet. It’s tough. I am working toward a happy medium. Intense workouts, and a diet I can live with. Hell I a off sodas, thats a victory in itself.
Well, got another 100 pushups to do, laters. /sigh
I understand exactly where you’re coming from. The three biggest holes in my regular diet of two years ago are soft drinks (one a month, maybe), beer (one or two a month), and pizza (once a month or less). Those were pretty much daily things for a really long time.
It’s not without its rewards. I reached two big personal milestones today (which I’ll natter about over at my place, since it’s not as germane here beyond “Hey, I accomplished this, so can you!”)
[...] would be accurate to say “better than Week 3, but not perfect.” When the “worst” thing you can say you ate was chips and salsa [...]