Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Time to get back on track

In response to Kevin's call for former FATties to get back to business, I'm back. It's been six weeks since my last post, and I've been doing alright. I haven't weighed myself in the past few days but I think I'm somewhere between 211 and 213. I went to Chicago a couple weeks ago and ate out every day, so I did gain a pound or two there. However I am still very active with my Crossfit workouts, and I'm setting new personal records almost every time I do a workout. For me, focusing on performance goals has allowed me to increase my strength and endurance while allowing me to eat a bit more and still maintain my weight. But that's the problem. I don't want to maintain my weight. I want to continue to lean out, but my head has not been in it from a diet perspective.

I've started using Sparkpeople again to track my daily intake. Yesterday I had 2600 calories, which is just a few hundred too high to lose weight at a steady pace. I can maintain weight on around 3000 calories without much trouble, so I want to be around 2400 per day to maintain a nice 1 lb./week loss. Just cutting out one serving of almonds or a glass of wine should get me there pretty easily, I've just gotta watch out for temptations at work, where there is a constant influx of crap food available for free. I'm pretty good at resisting those temptations, simply from doing it so much the past few years, so I definitely think it's doable.

I've been a little lax on the Paleo front recently, but I've begun tightening that up as well. I've found that some things, like rice, don't seem to bother me or affect my performance, but any sugar or refined grains send me into a gnarly sugar-craving cycle. That means that if I cheat with those things I'm much more likely to continue cheating, rather than just having one serving and being done. So my cheats need to be smart, and infrequent.

So what are my goals? Lose 4 pounds by July 1st, for starters. Simple, concise, doable. I'm going to take this in small steps. My ultimate goal is to weigh 190, but if I focus on "lose 2 pounds here, 3 pounds there" I think I'll get there a lot faster than thinking over a longer term. Looking back on my older posts it seems that's what has worked for me in the past. Other goals include entering everything I eat into Sparkpeople, even if it's bad. As far as my fitness goals, right now my main goal is to finally get a muscle-up on the gymnastics rings. It's the only basic Crossfit skill that I still cannot do (not counting one-legged squats, which don't come up too often). I'm currently in training to become a part-time trainer at my Crossfit gym, and one of the requirements is to be able to demonstrate the basic movements, so that's the one I'm gonna focus on.

I'll post a weigh-in tomorrow, and shoot for at least 3 new posts a week. Anyone else out there who wants to join in on the summer fun please feel free.

2 comments:

Ripx180 said...

Geoff, glad to see you are still maintaining and laying out some new goals. I still read and am trying to reorganize myself and get back on track both on and off the blog.

Kevin A. said...

Glad to see you blogging. Let's kick booty.