February 2017 Progress Pictures

As I promised in an earlier post, I am going to again post my monthly pictures to show my progress from my workout routine. Although it is not always so obvious to see changes from one month to the next, I will be also posting my pictures again from November 2016. Hopefully there will be a little more visible change.

Progress can sometimes not move at the speed you want it to, but I am finally realizing that I know its a slow journey My gut may not look the way I want it to now but there are other changes I am seeing. Changes like my strength. I can clearly see my strength is improving dramatically from let's say 1 year ago when I could not even do a single pushup.

 November 2016

                                                                                                      February 2017

Halfway through the 30 day pushup challenge.

I just want to post an update on how I am progressing with doing 100 push-ups a day for 30 days. So far it is going really great. I have done at least 100 each day. The most I did one day was 250. When I first started I was doing them off of my knees. But as I am progressing I am able to add more and more standard push-ups into the mix. 

This has been a great learning experience for myself and it is actually pretty fun. I started this challenge in the middle of January and it has been just a bit over 2 weeks. I plan on continuing this all the way through February also. As of today, I have done around 2200 pushups so far. I would love to hit 4000 by the end of 30 days. So I guess we will see how that goes. 

I will keep this updated with my progress at the end of 30 days. I will also be posting progress pictures sometime next week. It will actually be 6 weeks since I last took pictures. I wanted to start taking them at the beginning of the month again because it's easier for me to remember to do them. 

My workouts for the week.

I feel that I am already getting sidetracked at posting my workout updates on my blog. But I am back at it again. I have been doing a 4-week program that focuses on strengthening my abs. I am currently on week 3. Typically a week will contain a couple days that are ab focused and the other days will be either HIIT or some sort of strength training. My abs have always been a weak point for me but I feel they are getting stronger. 

I would also like to give an update on my 100 pushups a day challenge that I am doing. I have been doing for 9 days and I have done 1350 pushups. There were a few days in there where I was able to get in 200 pushups each day. I have mostly been doing pushups from my knees but lately, I have been adding in some standard pushups. I would say maybe 10% have been standard pushups. They seem to be getting easier for me which is awesome. 

I will typically do them in increments of 25 and then sprinkle pushups throughout the day. I am hoping by the end of the 30 days that I will be able to do 25 standard pushups in a row without stopping. And if I am not able to then I will just keep on trying. 

I will be posting new pictures of my overall progress at the beginning of February. I am hoping to see some more changes from the last month. 

100 Pushups a day challenge

I decided that I wanted to add a little something to my regular workouts. So I started doing 100 pushups a day. I have never been very good at pushups so I started by doing them off my knees. I am going to do this for 30 days and just see what happens. Hopefully towards the end I will have gained more strength and I can start doing regular pushups.

I started 3 days ago and on my 2nd day I actually did 200 pushups. My minimum will be 100 but there will be some days where I have a little more energy and I will push myself a bit harder. As I am writing this I have already done my 100 for today but I think I can squeeze a few more pushups out of my day.

I invite anyone to reads this to join along and give it a try. What do you have to lose?

Is it ok to have an off day?

Today was just one of those days where nothing seemed quite right. I got up like I normally do to do my exercising but I was just not committed to it 100%. I did my full 40 minutes of working out but I feel like I gave it maybe 50% effort.

When I went to take my normal morning walk, I only stayed out walking for about 10 minutes. The whole rest of my day seemed to go the same way. I had no energy and just kind of sat around the whole day.

Is it ok that I had an off day like this? I think so and it happens to everyone. I know nothing really changed during the day. It's not like I gained 50 lbs while I sat around. The main thing to focus on is not staying stuck in this type of rut day in and day out.

Tomorrow is another day to start fresh and get back on the horse.

How I feel after I stopped drinking carbonated drinks.

I have tried a few times before to stop drinking pop (or soda if you pronounce it wrong 😃) It would last a month or so and sometimes maybe just a few days before I would give in and drink a can of coke. But this time around I finally put my foot down and said NO MORE. 

As of today I went 114 days without drinking any pop. And to be honest, I do not miss it one bit. I am sure my body is thanking me for it. For a while I would get headaches because my body was craving the sugar, but that did not take long for those to go away. I can imagine that if I was still drinking pop I would weigh quite a bit more than I do now. It takes a fair amount of exercise to burn off the calories consumed from one pop and I would have 4 or 5 a day. 

I am also trying to cut out added sugars that are in other food items also. That seems to be a bit more of a challenge because sugar is hidden in just about everything nowadays. But I am always looking at nutrition labels. 

It's a work in progress but all of this is getting easier each day. 

My workout and meals for 1/9/17

My routine is pretty strict during the weekdays. I get up right before 4am and I get in a 30-40 minute workout. Today I did a combination of High intensity Interval Training or HIIT which was about 15 minutes. Then I did 10 minutes focusing on my abs. With a warm up and cool down in coming in at just about 35 minutes.

After I have worked out I usually have a protein shake and a piece of fruit.

After I take my son to school, I will typically go for a walk. Today I walked 7 miles.

A little over 4 years ago I bought a Fitbit pedometer to keep track of all my walking. As of writing this I have walked over 15,000,000 steps or around 7500 miles. I love having a Fitbit because I am a numbers person and I love to know how far I have gone.

After I have walked I will typically eat something. Lately I have been eating a lot of eggs. So I will have maybe 3 eggs and an apple or some other type of fruit. By lunchtime I am not usually that hungry, so I will just have a small snack.  Tonight for supper I had some chicken with brown rice and also some brown rice noodles.

I am trying really hard to keep myself focused and on track with my eating. So far it seems to be working great.