Evil Stick Blog

After two months of silence, I have progress to report - I’ve lost about 8 pounds! From 228 at the start to right around 220 now (217 on a good day). However I’m not certain this is something to be proud of - I haven’t done a pushup in over two months. The loss of my job back in January hit me pretty hard, and when I wasn’t applying to jobs or studying for interviews I just didn’t have the motivation to keep myself in shape. I think the 8 pounds above is some combination of eating less and digesting more due to stress, but I obviously can’t say anything for certain. I was also borderline ill for most of the period, and full-on ill for the last week, so that probably contributed to my lack of motivation.

On the plus side I walked 3.5 miles today. One of the benefits of losing my job is that my new position will require much more walking, which will mean much more exercise for a certain lazy ass I know. I’m not going to name names, but his initials are MYSELF. So hopefully what has resulted over the past two months continues into the future as I get more active. The 3.5 miles was round trip to and from the train station, which will be my primary means of commute going forward. I figure that at least during the warmer months I can walk it, then when it starts to get cold I can switch to a bike with cold weather gear. From tragedy arises opportunity.

Prolly not though. It tends to vacillate wildly for no readily apparent reason. Either I’m losing fat one week then gaining muscle mass the next, or I’m going on some sort of secret binge that I’m not really aware of, then purging for another week. I know I’m not supposed to really focus on that particular number, but what can I say - I liked the days when I was 185 MUCH more than I like these days where I’m 226. It’s been nearly a month with all this stuff and I’ve barely seen any improvement in that particular number.

Finished week two of running, and started week 3 yesterday. I’m wondering when I’ll have the epiphany that so many running websites talk about that essentially means I’ll start to enjoy running. As it stands now running makes me ridiculously exhausted, and doesn’t really seem to be something enjoyable yet. On the plus side, though, there has been some progress. When I started this running deal I was having trouble managing several sets of 60-seconds-at-a-time running. Now I’m able to manage multiple 3-minute sessions of running (interspersed with shorter 90-second sessions). This is definitely something I wasn’t able to do consistently before, I think - not without getting so worn out that I couldn’t do it again. Of course this could all be in my mind - I’m pretty sure sections of the Kilties show were more strenuous than the running I’m currently doing. That’s really my only complaint with the couch-to-5k program so far: once you finally get a handle on the requirements for a week, it’s time to move on to the next one. I feel like I’m never really reaching a level where I can say that I feel good about my progress because I always feel like my ass has been kicked when I step off the treadmill.

I’m also on week 4 of the pushup program, and this has also grown more challenging. I’m doing many more pushups per day than I was before (up to 110 last week, and I’m still working on today’s total as I write this post), and my consecutive number has definitely increased (from 23 to 40), but it’s getting harder and harder to complete the required number of pushups each day. I’ve either hit a wall where my body really needs to work to improve, or I haven’t been working as hard at the prior weeks as I thought I was. I’m going to assume it’s the former and push on, and if I don’t do so well on my next exhaustion test (coming up on Sunday) then lesson learned - I’ll just have to repeat prior weeks until I’m happy with the result.