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Well, I’m back in the saddle today after a 4 day weekend of gorging, not because I was hungry so much as I was in social “party” situations over the 4th of July weekend and was just eating with family and friends.

I was a whopping 7 pounds higher than I should have been (147 lbs vs 140 lbs) and closing in on the deadline for this diet to hit 135 pounds by Day 42 of this diet.

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It’s the 4th of July today!  In the spirit of freedom I won’t be dieting and will continue my weekend downward slide.  But, hey, I’ll catch up if I get back on to my 800 calorie diet.

Here are my metrics for today:

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My need to finish.  Probably somewhat of an Asperger’s trait.  Nearly uncontrollable.

Especially when it comes to leftovers.

Not good when you’re on a diet.  Doubly not good when your kids habitually don’t finish their dinners – and then you’re forced to finish them since one of your roles as Dad is to play “trashcan.”

Yet another hurdle I need to account for as I learn more about my response to the HCG Diet.  *Sigh*

I still believe I’ll make my goals.  But, I’m slowly eating up my buffer and it’s probably going to go down to the wire with less than 2 weeks left to go.

Sure makes life exciting, though!

Here are my metrics for today:

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Well, I think I’ve done gone and proved it.

Once a cheater…always a cheater.

Yup.  I couldn’t resist.  It is 4th of July weekend and, sure enough, with everyone coming over for lots of fanfare and feasting, I could not control myself and only eat the 800 calories I’m supposed to eat per day while on this HCG Diet.

I pride myself on having fairly good self-control.  Still, I must, with equal force, also admit my limitations.

I suck in a social situation when it comes to dieting.

Lesson learned in order for me to succeed – don’t be in an environment where I’m subject to lots of eating celebrations with others.

In other words, I need to be on a diet that allows me some flexibility for “cheat days” (or even “cheat weekends”).

Still, I’m not overly concerned.  I have 2 weeks left and am still confident that I can come close to hitting my goal of 135 pounds and 5% – 7% body fat range (I give a range because of the variation I have from measuring on my Garmin Connect Scale (which I can use every day) vs on the “gold standard” GE Lunar iDXA scanner for body composition wh/ I’ll use at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee after I’m done with this diet)).

Can’t believe it’s the first day of July already!  Man, where does the time go?  The HCG Diet is chugging along for me.  Today I broke into the 140’s at 140.9 and hit 10.0% body fat!  Wow, not bad coming down from 158-ish and 18% body fat in just 4 weeks.

The question is, “will I cheat today?”  It’s Saturday and the start of a holiday weekend.  The kiddos’ cousins are all over and I’m about to cook them up some goodies outside on our huge Blackstone griddle for breakfast.  Every sense of mine is screaming to join with them in the tasty feasting!

I guess you’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s post to find out the answer!

 

 

Here are my metrics for today:

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Back to breaking new performance barriers!

Today marked my lowest weight yet and lowest body fat since going on the HCG Diet.  I felt pretty good about that especially given the slight shock (and guilt) I faced over the weekend when I pigged out during a party.

 

Also, I went in for my weekly checkup and am on track to hit my goal of 135 lbs and hitting 5-7% body fat.  Yes!!!

Here are my metrics for today:

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Slow and steady wins the race.

Even though so many people like HIIT (which I talked about in my previous post) there is, contrary to popular belief, still lots of benefit to long, steady distance (LSD).  It’s great for lowering your resting heart rate!

So, mine has dropped from about 70 to 55 since I started about a year ago.  Even so, I believe I can get even lower (but that will be a another personal biometric experiment which I might blog about!)

Anyways, more to come there in the future.

Here are my metrics for today:

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OK, maybe things weren’t quite as bad as I thought from my binge weekend.

I was down 3 pounds today and weighed in at 144.  This is in stark contrast to being up 3.6 pounds over the weekend.  Very puzzling as I didn’t do anything differently.

Today was sprint day.  I try to sprint 2-3 times per week.  Any more than that and my body can’t take it.  I find that sprints help my metabolism stay “super-charged” throughout the rest of the day and are a very efficient form of exercise.

My sprints are anywhere from 40 meters to 100 meters (in all honesty more close to the 50 meter mark than to the 100 meter mark!)  I typically will sprint the distance (right outside my house on the asphalt) and then walk back to the starting line and then immediately go again.  I’ll get in about 8-12 sprints during sprint day (and cover roughly a mile or so with the combined sprinting and walking)

While I’m nowhere near as fast as I used to be it is still important for me to push myself as our speed and reflexes age over time.  Sprinting regularly will help slow down my loss of speed as I grow older.

It does wonder for fat loss, too!  (Just Google “High Intensity Interval Training” and you’ll get a ton of info!

Here are my metrics for today:

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You’ve heard the saying, “Pigs get slopped but hogs get slaughtered,” right?

Man, was I slaughtered and served up as the main course this weekend.

The consequences of me “cheating” this weekend at my son’s party really smacked me upside the head this Monday morning.  Guess how much my weight was up from my binge-eating, carnal pigfest?

3.6 lbs –> up to 147.8 and up 2.2 points of body fat percentage to 14.4%

Ouch.  Getting to 140 by the end of this week is going to be damn near impossible.  I need a caloric deficit of 4000 calories per day to hit that.  I would need to not eat for the entire week PLUS do 2000 calories of exercise a day.  Not gonna happen.  Still, I did knuckle down today and only ate a little over 700 calories.  I’m going to have to really be disciplined to even come close to 140 by Saturday.

On a positive note I did knuckle down today and only ate a little over 700 calories.  I’m going to have to really be disciplined to even have a chance of just losing those 3.6 lbs and breaking even for the week.

Still, it was SOOOO good (as I mentioned in yesterday’s post =)

All guilt aside here are my metrics for today:

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Man, I suck.  Threw a family party this week for my son who was back from college for only 3 days.  We had everyone over and it was a great time.  However, I decided to chuck the HCG Diet for the weekend and ate like a pig.

I am such a loser.

It’s not like I was super hungry.  However, I was doing a lot of the cooking (Manning the griddle station was my main job.  Plus, I had to get the place ready so I burned a lot of energy trimming bushes, vacuuming the garage, cleaning it up, getting the griddle ready for the season, setting up the griddle station, rearranging furniture in the garage, helping set up the guest rooms so the cousins could all sleep over.

Still, I shouldn’t have eaten so much if my goal is to get to 135 lbs.

Maybe it’s because I had hit 144-ish and felt like I was making good progress that I could take a bit of a break since I’m a little ahead of plan.

Dangerous thinking.  I better sharpen my mind.

Today is Sunday.  Let’s see if I can maintain laser focus for the rest of the week and fall below 140 lbs before Saturday.

Nothing like a challenge!

Here are my metrics for today:

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