Week 8–The Second Half and Pics

Starting weight:  206.  Down 26 pounds from the start. 

I am so slow in getting these weekly posts out there.  As I am writing this entry I realized I am nearing the end of Week 7.  Time flies and with my sudden lack of energy the thought of coming home and typing my entries makes me want to crawl in to bed.  I keep telling myself to conserve energy and use it in the gym.  So far that has worked.  But it is night and day between my energy level in the gym and what I can exert when I am not in the gym.

Needless to say…Week 8 I felt like I was hit by a truck.  Three weeks and not one carb.  Still eating the same food for the past three weeks.  Nothing has been changed and now food is fuel.  The trainer threw in a tease with our new workout…’let’s see where you are at the end of the week and perhaps we can throw in a cheat meal.’  He didn’t say a re-feed meal.  Re-feeds are oatmeal, brown rice, potatoes.  Cheat meals are the stuff dreams are made of…pasta, burritos, pizza, chicken wings.  I wasn’t worried about my assessment at the end of the week….I was focused for an entire day on where I would go for a cheat meal…inhale!  And then it dawned on me…it was a trick.  For the 8-10 hours I was thinking about my cheat meal I was relaxed, my mind was off of the pain and anguish of the process, my energy was at an all time high, I suddenly felt more focused on where I was in my training.  I went to the gym and had one of my best workouts in a long time.  Just the thought of eating normal food was enough to change my whole outlook.  Be that as it may…my assessment came and sure enough…no cheat meal!  But just the thoughts and ideas and smells that came to mind were enough to get me motivated this week.

My assessment is always visual.  There is a girl at work that came to us one day determined to lose weight.  WC and I were happy for her and supportive.  We asked her what her goal was and she replied that she wanted to lose 9 pounds…9 pounds?  Gosh, that seems rather specific.  To her it’s a number in her head she sees on the scale.  Once she sees the number….then she met the goal.  WC and her even have a bet going just for a little extra motivation (whatever works).  She is willing to work her tail off with eating right, getting in cardio, and three sessions of weight training a week…just to see a number.     

My assessment is always visual.  I can tell you what I weighed when I turned 16 because my driver’s license still has the same weight…155 pounds.  Imagine the police officer’s look when a 232 pound guy hands him that driver’s license?  Whoops!  Since around the time I was 16 I always strived for a certain look…never caring about what the scale said.  It’s all relative is what I have learned and mostly centers around the amount of muscle I can add to my frame.  Sure there are always numbers in my head of what I want to see, but whether you want to lose 9 pounds or 90 pounds its really more about how you feel when you look in the mirror. 

My assessment is always visual…this is the Week 8 assessment (and the reason why no cheat meal was allowed):
 
These next two pics turned out better than I thought.  This was our first full session of posing so many of these we had never tried before.  The hardest part of the process is to get into position and flex all of the right muscles at the same time….oh and hold it until the picture is taken….not an easy task by any means.  If any of the pics appear blurry, it’s not from the trainer taking the pics…more likely it’s from me shaking violently trying to hold the pose.  I was winded!
    You can’t see my face, but I am cracking up laughing trying to hold this pose.  We took these in an open area in the gym….which also happens to be in the basement of where WC and I work.  A couple people walked by with puzzled looks on their faces.  They wouldn’t last 5 minutes in this crazy process!

That’s it for now.  Off to eat my 5 cage-free eggs for an evening snack….trust the process!