The Word with Rev. C. Bennett hoffman

Becoming Leonidas – Day 30

My 30 day high intensity training trial has officially ended. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’m through with exercise or watching my diet. I really should have called the trial as a whole “Becoming Leonidas, Part 1″ because I still have two months until Halloween and lots left to do. Although it got difficult at times and I could have performed better, I feel very satisfied with the results I’ve achieved. I’ll go over what I did well and what I need to improve upon before posting my last two workouts.

The Good

First of all, I’m stronger. I feel much stronger and I look like I’ve gotten bigger. I think The workout numbers back this up pretty well. Using a one rep max calculator as a crude metric, my leg press improved ~20% (309 lbs. to 372 lbs.), my pullover improved ~45% (64 lbs. to 93 lbs.), my pec-dec improved ~22% (147 lbs. to 180 lbs.), and most of my other results were similar.

I experience a compulsion to workout. I’ve heard it said often that exercise is addictive and there’s probably a grain of truth there. However the word “addictive” seems out of place, in the way that it wouldn’t sit right to say that sleep is addictive. I now have a better appreciation of how much physical activity adds to my health, energy, and sense of well being. Most importantly, the habit has integrated itself into my life and sustaining it should prove straightforward.

Despite a number of shortcomings with my diet plan (discussed below), I had a good deal of success. Most notably, I’ve ceased any habitual consumption of soft drinks and have studiously avoided most things that one would consider junk food (chips, cookies, etc.). Except on Saturdays of course, that’s my day off .

The Bad

Even though my diet improved markedly, I didn’t stick to the course I set out at the beginning. I kept it up at first because I took the time to make a bunch of food beforehand and that made it easy to take lunch (and sometimes dinner) to work. When my initial supply ran out though, I just didn’t buy and cook more food. This particular diet wasn’t the problem: I failed because I eat out for the vast majority of my meals. In order to succeed with dietary change, I need to first begin preparing my own food.

To that end I’ve started ordering food from Amazon Fresh, a grocery delivery service. While eating a healthy diet remains critical, I need to focus first on streamlining the process and making food preparation a sustainable part of my life. By using Amazon Fresh, I can save a lot of time that I would normally spend shopping and traveling to/from the store.

If I automate getting food to my house, then that just leaves cooking it. My next 30 day trial should help out with that part… more to come soon.

The… Ugly?

I haven’t yet gone and had my vitals remeasured. I bought a scale that supposedly measures my body-fat % today and expected some variance from the reading taken by a personal trainer at the beginning of the trial. He measured 16% body-fat. I’ve gotten noticeably slimmer, but the scale insists that I’m at 24.5% body-fat. That would mean ~137 lbs. of lean mass and ~45 lbs. of fat which is just plain wrong.

So it looks like I’ll need to setup a meeting with a personal trainer and re-run the tests after all. Even though the primary objectives of the trial were to setup a sustainable exercise and diet routine; even though I didn’t stick to the plan perfectly, I’d like to see how I stacked up to Mr. Ferriss in the end.

The last two workouts follow. As of this writing, I weigh 183.2 lbs. for a gain of 3.4 lbs. in 4 weeks.

Workout #7

I weighed in after the workout at 181.0 lbs. for a total gain of 1.2 lbs. over the course of the trial. This was my first workout after being sick for a few days. I hoped that most of my weight loss was due to dehydration, however it looks like that’s not the case as I only gained back another 1.4 lbs. by the last workout.

Workout #8

I weighed in after the workout at 182.4 lbs, for a gain of 2.6 lbs. over the course of the trial.