Results: Week Three

All right, this is more like it... This week more than made up for last week's numbers.

Before I get to the results, here is something to keep in mind: If you are starting from a point where you're not working out at all to working out consistently and cutting calories, initially (in the first few weeks) your body may react in such a way that the numbers might not make sense. That may have been what happened last week when I seemed to gain back much of the fat that I lost the first week. During the first week my body probably thought "Hey, great, he's working out... we can stand to lose a couple of pounds." But in the second week the reaction could have been "Wait a minute, this is going to keep happening? I'd better hold on tight to that fat!" Plus the fact that I'm drinking a lot more water also affects the caliper measurement.

In short, the first few weeks can vary quite a bit while your body tries to figure out just what's going on, so don't get discouraged early on.

Here is a running summary of the nutritional data over the last three weeks. As you can see I dropped the calories by close to 300 per day this past week, but the ratio of carbs to protein to fat has been very consistent.

On to the progress report...

You can see that this week there was a significant change (in the right direction!):

Week	Weight	Fat %	Fat loss/gain (lbs)	Waist
Day 1	158.0	13.2%		34.25
Week 1	157.5	12.1%	-1.8	34
Week 2	159.0	13.0%	1.5	34
Week 3	157.0	11.7%	-2.3	33

Although I didn't quite stick to my "no alcohol" rule from last week (I had one beer two days this past week), I did not have any fruit juice (as I recommend in my book), I dropped the calories per day and increased the intensity and duration of my workouts.

I have to say I'm not surprised to see the numbers where they are since I can really see the difference in the mirror as far as an increase muscle size in the shoulder and upper arm area and the fact that I'm starting to see my abs come through.

Onward to next week where I going to keep at the higher intensity/duration level with exercise, and I'm going to increase the protein intake a bit since right now I'm only taking in about .43 grams per pound of bodyweight and I think that's a bit low. I'm going to try to increase that up to between .6 and .7 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight.

To learn how you can use these techniques for fat loss, read "The Last 10 Pounds" eBook.