Many of you will recall my previous fitness post where I talked about making a commitment to fitness, joining the gym, and getting a personal trainer.

It’s been about a month, and I wanted to share what I have accomplished and help inspire you to do the same. I also want you guys to hold me accountable and give me a hard time if I start sliding on my commitment.

My fitness and health circa February 27th, 2008
I felt bloated and slow most of the time. I was in decent shape, but I didn’t feel like it at all. I hadn’t done much real exercise since the past summer. I had an exercise bike that I would ride off and on, but that didn’t seem like it was really doing anything for me. I was dehydrated and not drinking enough water, but I didn’t really realize it at the time. My diet wasn’t bad, but not that good either. I went out to lunch almost every day and my idea of cooking dinner was heating up a frozen pizza. Disgusting. This is why I decided to make such a radical change in my life. I knew I was sliding and I didn’t want it to get any worse. It was time to turn over a new leaf in my life — or maybe just cut the whole tree down and plant a new one.

I joined a local Gym, Answer is Fitness, in North Attleboro, MA.

They did a body composition test using the Biodynamics BIA 310 bioimpedance analyzer. Check out the results to the right of this text.

My fitness and health circa April 3, 2008
Physically, I feel better than I can ever remember feeling. It is such a dramatic change. I have much more energy. I get up at 7-8 am (it was more like 9-10 before). I get up and go to the gym first thing in the morning every day. I lift weights on Mondays and Thursdays and do cardio the rest of the days, taking Sunday as a rest day. I am using this strategy because I am training myself for strength and endurance for bicycling.

I have been eating healthy, and eating smaller meals, more often. (find a link about this on bodybuilding.com) I am actually learning how to cook, and I am learning just by trying to make things and seeing how they come out. I have not used any recipes yet.

After a month, my body fat percentage went from 12.6% to 10.2%, I lost 4 lbs of fat and I gained 3.39 lbs of muscle. I also had 1.7 more liters of water in my body and I stay much more hydrated now.

I feel great and I even started to get rid of my mini-gut. Now I am at a crossroads though. I can either continue as I have been going, or I can go the path of putting on some serious muscle. I would like to gain more muscle mass, but I wonder if the extra weight will hinder my mountain biking agility and performance. One of the reasons I am so good at mountain biking is because I am so light, it is easy for me to maneuver and go really fast. What do you think about this dilemma?

I read this on Tim Ferriss’s blog and was very intrigued.

“From geek to freak - How I gained 34 lbs of muscle in 4 weeks” by Tim Ferriss

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Tags: Fitness, personal update, tim ferriss

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.