Walking the Tightrope I Think…But Still Holding at 198lb

So, as previously mentioned, I have achieved my goal weight and have shifted my focus to becoming more toned and muscular. So far, that’s been a fail. I’ve been very busy with work and after-work family activities and just haven’t gotten to the gym this week. That said, I’ve been really active in a typical ‘primal’ way – lots of moving slowly, and I’ve done some sprinting here and there when playing soccer with my kids. But I haven’t done my weightlifting routine this week so I am going to do it tomorrow (I had planned on doing Mondays and Thursdays). I’m doing a full-body routine consisting of low reps and heavy weight. I find I enjoy it more and I definitely ‘feel it’ more in my muscles both right after lifting and the next day. I strive for 4 to 6 reps, 3 sets each of:

Leg Press (I’ll eventually get back to doing real squats though, as I know those are better)
Dumbbell Chest Press
Cable Row machine (the one that targets the back)
Pulldown bar machine (can you tell I don’t know these machines by name? It’s another one that targets the back)
Dumbbell bicep curls
Tricep pressdowns using the rope attachment to the cable/pulley machine

I need to incorporate crunches and shoulder presses, I know. I *hate* shoulder presses and have mostly avoided them. Amazingly my shoulders are the one part of my body that are pretty damn toned, with great definition. How that happened I don’t know, but I’ll take it.

I may try attending my gym’s squash “club night”. My gym is primarily a squash club, and one night a week the squash pros go around and pair up amateur players for friendly matches. I’m sure I’ll be the worst player there, which I don’t care about in terms of pride/ego but it is awkward because the decent/good players don’t want to waste their time playing someone like me. They’d like to break a sweat! Hopefully there will be another bad player there.

On the eating front…as I said – I’m not actively trying to lose more weight. That said, I could definitely stand to lose another 10 pounds. I carry the 198lb pretty well (I have big thighs/calves) and people are surprised when I tell them I still weigh that much. But aside from some softness in my middle I’m pretty much where I want to be in terms of body fat. But the last few days I’ve been on a slippery slope – eating more junk than usual. Today was a doozy – I ate, for the first time in probably almost a year, white rice. Some friends offered to buy me lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant. I had the Coconut Milk Chicken soup (it was awesome), a salad with peanut butter dressing (it was awesome), and my usual Green Curry with Chicken and white rice (yes, it was awesome). I could feel my blood sugar pumping after that meal!

And on Monday night, in anticipation of the Eagles game and after a long day of getting my ass kicked at work for things out of my control, I decided to wash away my sorrows that evening with a few glasses of Coconut Rum mixed with fruit juice. (Yeah, I’m a real man.)

Amazingly, so far, I’ve not gained any weight back. Holding steady at 198 all week. But I can feel like I’m on that ‘slippery slope’ where I’d better reign things back in. Especially since I am going to a happy hour on Friday after work : )

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