May 30, 2005
Results: Week Four
As I look back at the numbers, this was an interesting week... For some reason the first and last days were way off in terms of calorie intake, but inbetween I did just fine.
My daily target was 1,800 calories but on the first day I ended at over 2,400 and the last (documented) day I hit 2,900! To me, this shows the necessity of cutting yourself some slack on a regular basis. I think that if you tell yourself you're never going to treat yourself and most people will be doomed to failure over the long run.
Here are my ongoing results in regards to weight, fat percentage, fat loss and waist size:
Notice that although according to the scale my weight has actually increased by 1 lb, my bodyfat percentage has decreased by over 16%.
This is why I emphasize that you cannot measure your progress just by the numbers on the scale (women especially, please take note!).
You can see that my progress is slow and steady, as I recommend. Overall I've lost about one pound of fat per week (one can reasonably lose up to about two pounds per week). My progress isn't faster for two reasons:
1. It's harder to lose fat when you don't have much to lose. The lower you go, the more your body wants to hang on to it.
2. I'm not spending a whole lot of time working out, although my sessions are intense. If I add up the total amount of time spent working out during this past week it only comes to about 45 minutes. That's for the whole week folks, not per day. (I really need to bump that up to at least 60 minutes per week.)
Here is a summary of nutritional info:
I did manage to hit the goal I had set for myself as far as increasing my protein intake from 70 to 100 grams per day, and I believe it was very helpful in helping me to increase muscle mass. Also, if I had not had that monster helping of pizza on Saturday my daily caloric average would have been right on target at 1,800 per day.
Here is my progress in graphical format:
