It’s only been several days since my last podcast, so I don’t have any weight loss to go over. (My weigh-in day is Thursday.)  I am a bit apprehensive about this week, though.  I’m sure things will be fine, but I have to admit that I’ve been a bit burned out on the whole weight loss regimen lately.  I’m not sure if it’s due to the 6-day a week workout routine, the constant thinking about weight loss and training, or what; but I’ve been feeling pretty burned out.  I haven’t been trying to slack on my food or wanting to stop working out; I’ve just been feeling a bit burned out.  Of course it might be partly because it’s been so cold and gray lately as well.  Not being able to walk outside is a bit of a bummer.  Plus being sick this past week didn’t help either.

At the beginning of my weight loss journey my losses came fairly quickly.  Now they are slower in coming and that is something that I’m trying to adjust to.  I will say that on the upside when I see changes in my body, because they are slower in coming they are a bit “sweeter”.  For example, when I started losing weight I had a waist size of about 60-64 inches.  This week I was able to put on a size 40 belt.  It’s on the very last hole available, but I was still able to get it on and that feels pretty good.  This morning I feel like I’m back on track and getting things back together.  I also know I’m not the only one feeling this way because I’ve started to notice people dropping off at the gym, calling in sick at work, or just a general feeling of gloom going around the office.  I think we in Michigan (as well as the other parts of the world stuck in icy conditions) are pretty much sick of Winter and ready for Spring.  It’s going to be a couple of months until that happens, but gosh darn-it we’re ready!

I think another thing is that I’m pretty sick of my workout routine.  Although the consistency of the program has been nice I’m about done with it.  This is the first routine I’ve tried going for 3 months instead of 2 and some things have become pretty apparent to me.

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2. I have too many exercises in my routines.  Each routine I personally put together has about 13 different exercises.  This is just way too many.  The routine I got from the Primal Primitive has about 5 each day.
   
3. The exercises are unbalanced.  By that I mean that they don’t have a balance of push and pull exercises.  To give an example, a bench press is a push exercise where you get the most resistance when you push the bar away from you.  A pull exercise is an exercise where you pull something towards you such as a Bent-over Row.  It’s important to have a good mix of both in your routines to make sure you work your muscles equally.
   
4. I don’t have any way to gage my progression.  I never set in any milestones with my routine and therefore never set any way to gage whether or not I have gained any strength.  One of the things I’d like to focus on in the future is setting milestones and seeing how I can progress in my strength.
   

A lot of this will be resolved when I switch over to the routine I mentioned in last week’s episode.  I am a bit nervous about dropping from 6 days down to 3 because frankly there’s a part of me that worries that I won’t be exercising enough.  I know that’s silly and a pretty common myth, but it’s still there.  I just need to realize that nothing is etched in stone and if I find that I’m not having the results that I want that I can always change things up again.  However, I will still need to give the routine a chance to actually work.  Who knows, it might actually be pretty exciting to see the progress that I make!

This week I talk about encouraging people to keep on with their planned exercising and lifestyle changes and offer some tips found on CNN (via Health.com) that give 7 easy ways to kickstart your metabolism.

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