Week 12 Update

It has been week 12 of my IF experiment; boy, the time has flown by. During the last three months a few momentous things have occurred:

1. My 9 month-old baby boy has gone from wearing 12 months clothing to 18 months.
2. Kate’s weight has dropped down to 111lbs from chasing Mr. Man (Christopher) around the house.
3. Baltimore got famous for going schizophrenic.
4. I was able to go from this to that.

Although I’ve made good progress toward my ultimate goal of 8%, having only 6 weeks left, I feel like I am down to crunch time. And Ginger Boy keeps telling me that I am fat and will lose the bet. I need to batten down the hatches and focus for the remaining six weeks. Thus, I’ve decided to make few tweaks to my fitness and eating routine.

Workout adjustments

Six weeks ago, I noticed that I was doing way too many exercises. For instance, in one of my workouts, I was doing Handstand Holds, Archer Chin-ups, Front Lever, Headstand Straddle Press, Headbangers, Hanging Leg Lifts, Deadlifts, Single Leg Romanian, Victorian Holds, Crow, Dragon Flag, Candlestick, and stretches. The volume was killing my wrist and elbow, so to give my joints a break and get back to basics, I cut my exercises down to a warm up of Wrist Push-ups, DB Wrist Curls, Palms Turned Out Support Holds, Xiaopeng, Table Top Holds, German Hang, and Band Shoulder Dislocators, and three primary exercises. For example on Mondays, I plan to work on Tuck Planche, Palms Turned-out Ring Push-ups, and Leaning Planche Push-ups. Thus, my upcoming goal is to build on what I have done for the past six weeks and really focus on quality not quantity. Also, I will continue to work my legs on Wednesday (squat day) and Saturday (deadlift day)—Kate had told me I am not allowed to have chicken legs—and commit to mobility everyday.

The other adjustment I needed to make is to add more abs, oblique, and lower back oriented movements. So for the next six weeks, I plan to include the Ab Wheel, Reverse Hypers, Back Extension, and various Hanging Leg Raises at the end of my workouts.

“Another meal bites the dust”
After thinking things through, initially I was going to eat just one large cheat meal at the end of the day. My thought was the single meal would decrease my caloric intake and supercharge my dinner carb-up. However, after I realized that my hunger pangs were worse than labor pains—I really don’t know what that feels like but I couldn’t imagine pushing something like that out of my body. What was God thinking?—I decided to resort to two meals.

The first meal at noon would typically compose of three eggs cooked in coconut oil, veggie like a small cucumber, and a quarter cup of kefir; and second meal would be carb heavy meal like this and 30 grams of whey protein:

Like I have said, it is coming down to crunch time. The good news is that I have already dropped few millimeters on my skinfold measurements on my abs and obliques from last week to this week. If all goes as planned, I look forward to taking Kate out to sushi on Will’s dime.