I'm on a mission again! I'm reasonably happy with how I look and how I feel but my weight is starting to go in the wrong direction again and I need to reign it back in. I need to lose between two and two and a half stone to get back to ideal weight. I also want to be stronger so I can smash up next years Nuclear Rush (mud obstacle race).
In terms of my diet, it's really about going for the less healthy options less frequently and cutting out the bad snacks. I eat healthy most of the time but tend to favour cheese on toast for lunch when I'm at home so I'll be swapping that for an omelette with salad. I favour pasta (wholemeal) in the evenings because its quick and easy and I've usually already pre-prepared mince (often turkey mince) to go with it. I'll be trying to eat more lean meat and fish with vegetables when I am home in time to cook. Lastly we have got back into a bad habit of having snack nights with crisps and chocolate which needs to stop.
When it comes to exercise its difficult for me to commit to a three times (or more) a week kind of plan as my work hours vary. Some weeks I may only do two or three workouts but another I may do five. So with this in mind I develop my plans over a monthly basis. I have designed 3 weights based workouts which I plan to do 3/4 of each per month. I also plan to do various running programs including hill sessions, short speed intervals, longer (6-10k) runs as well as some outdoor plyometric training (preferably without tearing muscles this time). I hope to do one of each type of run over the month.
I am contemplating visiting a gym as well, maybe once a week or fortnight. Although I am happy working out at home and can get good results, there are a couple of things I would benefit from in the gym. I don't have a proper squat rack at home which means whatever weight I squat, I have to pick up and lift over my head first. As the weight is getting pretty heavy now , this is getting difficult to do safely. I am struggling (like many people) to do pull ups and although I can find ways to compensate, for example doing incline pull ups at home, if I went to the gym, I could use an assisted pull up machine. They also have a good climbing simulator machine which looks interesting. There is a good gym quite local which offers a PAYG membership of £5 per session.
I started the first workout this week and somewhat overdone it. My legs were quite achy but not too bad but my arms were really bad. Three days on, I still cant straighten my arms properly! I think the incline pull ups were the biggest culprit. I may need to knock a couple of reps off next time. Even with achy legs, I still did the hill session which went really well. I was surprised by how comfortable I found it considering even a year ago I would have run out of steam half way up even the shortest hill and would have walked. Now I barely even flinch at a short hill. Lots of hill running on holiday probably helped too.
Today I should really be doing a weights workout but as I said I still have quite bad DOMS in my arms, therefore I will be going for a run instead and perhaps some core exercises too.
The goal for now is to get back into my skinniest of jeans by Christmas.
