Progress Pics

I took the above pics on October 17th. I can't remember exactly how much I weighed, but I'm guessing it was about 229 lbs. I re-entered my journey to weight loss after getting to my highest weight of 232 lbs this Summer, and I consistently stayed near that weight until I joined a gym and started lifting weights and doing cardio five days a week.

The next collage are pics taken this morning before I went to the gym. This morning's weigh in is 219.6. I lost a little over 12 lbs. Let me tell you, I feel fantastic. I'm very happy to see these results. They're subtle, but with all the hard work at strength training and eating, I'm glad to "see" in my mind's eye the results. And I feel good.

My routine is doing five days of cardio. I do 45 min on the treadmill by walking on a random incline. I strength train 4 days a week. Mon and Thursday is Upper Body weight training. And when I say weight training, I am bench pressing, I am using free weights to do bent over rows for my back, and I'm using weight machines. On Tuesday and Friday, I do lower body. That means using barbells to do squats , deadlifts, calf raises, and box step ups. I switch routines up a bit to not get bored. I keep track of my strength training in a notebook so I can go back and see the type of exercise and weight that I did previous sessions. It helps with planning the next time.

I'm feeling a lot more confident and physically strong. I still have a twinge of pain on the hip, but doing a month of Hot Yoga at a local studio helped relieve the pain. I am taking a month off from Yoga to work on strength training. I will do Yoga at home from videos, I just don't have the time to spend at another facility when cardio and lifting takes up most of my available time.