cheezepie

James McQuarrie

A collection of random links and thoughts curated by James McQuarrie

2013 Fitness plan: Day 1 Week 3

And so the third week of my six week plan has begun.

This morning I awoke feeling really well rested which was nice (didn’t have a particularly early night last night, but reading a little on my kindle before sleeping I think really helps me wind down and get a good night’s sleep). It was also handy as this morning’s run was always going to be challenging in snow covered London.

After last Friday’s problem with snow getting stuck in the grooves of my Nike running shoes, I dug out an old pair of regular trainers for today with no deep grooves in the soles. They worked a treat and stayed fairly snow free despite the significantly deeper snow they had to contend with.

The run itself wasn’t too fast, but felt pretty good and wasn’t as slippy or icy as I feared it could have been. Here’s a photo I took after finishing http://instagram.com/p/UvemHOH9WP/.

Through the day I’ve been good food-wise having:

  • 3 eggs, spinach, salsa and a green tea for breakfast
  • 1 protein shake post run
  • 1 bowl of turkey and veg curry for lunch
  • 3 cups of coffee through the afternoon
  • 2.5 pints of water through the day
  • 1 portion of wasabi nuts in the afternoon
  • 1 protein shake post workout
  • 1 portion of quorn and veg stir fry for dinner.

Tonight’s workout was a beast:

  • 10 sets of 100 (instead of the 50 I was doing the previous two weeks) crunches
  • 10 sets of 20 kettle-bell swings with the 28kg bell
  • 10 sets of press ups doing 15 reps for the first 5 sets and 10 reps per set for the remaining 5.

All, as before, done with a 2 minute rest between circuits. The last three circuits were really tough and took all my will power to complete. I was almost sick by the end of the last set of press ups. Sounds nasty, but it felt good to have pushed so hard – once I’d recovered!

As it’s day 1 of week 3 here are this morning’s measurements with progress marked against last Monday’s:

Morning Measurements

Weight: 100kg down 1.9kg since last Monday
Body Fat percentage: 18.6% down 0.5% since a week ago
BMI: 25.5 down 0.5 since a week ago

That’s a slightly smaller weight drop over week 2 than over week 1, but still good and still in the right direction. The body fat percentage change is just under half of the drop from the first week, but again still going in the right direction. The BMI change is about the same.

All in all, I’m still happy with my progress, and was expecting the changes to slow as I moved into the six week cycle; week 1’s changes would have big because of the shock to the system, I imagine (I may be wrong) that over the next few weeks the changes will be less and less overall. But as long as they are heading in the downward direction, I’m happy.

Let’s see what happens at the end of this week.