The Word with Rev. C. Bennett hoffman

Becoming Leonidas – Day 21

Success and Failure

I've been sick for the last few days, which traditionally puts a fatal damper on any workout routine I'm involved with. Happily that's not the case here, as I worked through mild discomfort on my most recent Friday workout and have every intention of working out again on Tuesday.  While lying in bed on Sunday, I grew restless and wanted to do something physical, even just a set of pushups.

In terms of having developed a habit of working out, I'd say that I'm hooked at this point.  Unfortunately, the diet plan has shown its weakness in the face of my minor cold and I fell back into eating whatever sounded tasty at the time. I even failed to procure provisions for the week, so it looks like a careful day of eating out on Monday, followed by cooking Monday night. I've had trouble with the diet plan throughout the trial, which means I didn't plan ahead enough and have had to rely too much on willpower.

Often lauded as the cure to all personal ills, willpower can actually only accomplish so much. For those with extraordinary reserves of the stuff, it may be enough to create a new habit or stop a bad one on its own. However for most people, willpower will last only a week or so at best. Being endowed with an extraordinarily small portion of willpower and the tendency to become frustrated easily, I need to rely on other mechanisms to induce change.

To be effective, I need to use my allocation of willpower to change my environment all at once. As a programmer, I've developed a love for being lazy. It's seriously one of my greatest assets. So, if I can make it easier for me to eat a healty homemade lunch than for me to go out and buy something, I'll end up eating well. That's the key, and that's what I didn't quite acheive with this plan.

As I have 2+ months before Halloween, I'm certainly not just going to stop after the 30 days of this trial are up. In a future article, I'll detail what I did with my diet, why it failed, and what I plan to do to make it work next time around. To the extent that my willpower can help me stick to it for the last week of the trial, I will .

It's been a while since my last update, so I've got two new workouts to post. Nothing tricky about 'em.

Workout #5

I weighed in after the workout at 184.4 lbs. for a total gain of 4.6 lbs. over the course of the trial. The leg press is marked as 'split' because I neglected to link the plates on the machine, so they moved independently. This actually showed me that my legs were not as balanced in strength as I thought, as my left leg suffered less fatigue. Additionally, the sit-ups are marked with an asterisk because I did them with a faster cadence.

Workout #6

I weighed in after the workout at 183.0 lbs, for a gain of  3.2 lbs. over the course of the trial. I didn't feel well and spent most of the day asleep, so I performed this workout later in the day without having eaten a proper meal.