8 Week Challenge - Day 4 & 5

Yesterday I had a day off. I was still a bit sore from my work outs and thought it was a good day to catch up on some much needed sleep. I spend a lot of my time laying in bed sleeping. I didn’t do too well with sticking to the meal plan. I felt rebellious and that is never a good thing. I messed up, but I am not going to worry about it. Today is a brand new day!

Today I had an assessment at the gym with Matt. He took my measurements and my weight. He came up with a nice resistance/weight program. It’s less than I used to do, but it’s a good one. It’s more focused on my hip and back problems. I started off with doing walking lunges, which was pretty hard for me to do. Than I did the chest press, seated row, leg press with feet/knees together and to finish it off the hip abduction.

Cardio

• 20 min. Cross trainer - level 2/3 - 12/13 km/h
• 40 min. Bike riding - level 7 - Hill program - 85/90 rpm

Resistance

• 2 laps of walking lunges
• 2x 15 reps Chest press 15 kg
• 3x 10 reps Leg press feet/knees together 50 kg
• 2x 15 reps Seated row 25 kg
• 2x 15 reps Hip Abduction 25 kg

8 Week Challenge - Day 3

Oh my goodness! I am so sore from the PT session and boxing class I did yesterday. Just about every muscle in my body is aching. I have trouble getting up from a chair and walking just hurts real bad.

Despite my aching muscles I did go to the gym, because usually when my muscles warm up I don’t feel the pain anyway.  I started with a 10 minute warm up on the cross trainer and asked myself why on earth I had gone to the gym.  But when the body combat class started the pain slowly faded away and I was kicking and punching like a maniac again.

After the body combat class I started to feel my muscles again and decided to sit in the sauna for a while. My muscles still ache pretty bad, but I guess I am just gonna have to suck it up for now.

Cardio

• 10 min. Cross trainer - level 2 - 13 km/h
• 60 min. body combat

Dietitian Consult

Yesterday I had my first consultation with a dietitian. He gave me the nutritional manual that comes with the 8 week challenge. We went through it and he explained a little bit about the type of meal plan I’m supposed to eat. After that we talked about what I was eating on a daily basis.

He didn’t have much to say or any pointers about what I was eating. He made a meal plan for me that isn’t really a big change. The only thing that is different is that I need to add a salad for lunch. For the rest I felt he just re-arranged some of the things I was eating to different times and dinner even stayed the same.

He told me that I have a slow metabolism and hopefully his meal plan will speed it up a bit. I am getting pretty frustrated with working hard in the gym and not shifting my weight. This morning I even weighed in at 83 kg. Instead of losing weight I am gaining again. Hopefully the new meal plan and even more/harder training in the gym will do the trick.

8 Week Challenge - Day 2

Today was my first PT session. I was a little bit surprised when the PT asked me what I wanted to do. My reaction was “Uh? … I want you to work my butt off!” He said that during PT sessions I had to decide what I wanted to work on. So I told him that I liked to have a good weight training program. To which he replied that that was not the purpose of the PT session and he booked me in on Friday with some other PT to set up a program. Confusing stuff…

So I said I wanted to do weight training, since I had calculated that I would do that today. I did the leg press, seated row and bench press with much higher weights than I thought I could do. I kind of surprised myself. I think next time I’m gonna ask him to do a boxing session with me.

After the session I jumped on the bike because I had some time left before the boxing class would start. I had never done boxing before and I really, really wanted to do the class. The class was awesome but very tiring. Of course I started out pretty fanatic, but it was a case of crash and burn. I learned pretty quickly that I could not keep up the pace I was going at. I think the next time I’ll concentrate more on my technique instead of going fast and hard like an idiot. I was glad when the boxing class was finished. Afterwards I jumped on the treadmill for 10 minutes for a bit of a cool down.

Cardio

• 5 min. Cross trainer - level 5 - 12/13 km/h
• 15 min. Bike riding - level 8 - Hill program - 85/90 rpm
• 60 min. Boxing class
• 10 min. Treadmill - 5.0 km/h

Weight training

• 3x 12 reps Leg press - 2 legs 50 kg
• 1x 8 reps Leg press - 1 leg 25 kg
• 3x 12 reps Seated row - 30 kg
• 2x 12 reps Bench press - 20 kg
• 1x 8 reps Staggered Bench press - 30 kg

Start of the 8 Week Challenge

Today I started with the 8 week challenge. The goal of this challenge (for me) is to lose as much weight as possible. I’d like to lose a kilo a week, but I’m not sure how realistic it is. Tomorrow morning I have my first personal training session with James and in the afternoon I have an appointment with a dietitian. During my session with the dietitian I will get my training and nutrition manual.

For today I just did cardio because I am not sure what we’re going to do during the PT session tomorrow. My food today will just consist out of 5 or 6 small meals.

Cardio

• 25 min. Cross trainer - level 2 - 12/13 km/h
• 35 min. Bike riding - level 7 - 85/95 rpm
• 10. min. Treadmill - 5.6 km/h