So I've been meaning to start this for awhile. I've been keeping a detailed excel spreadsheet tracking everything, but the few times I've tried to copy/paste parts of it the format gets all screwed up. I figured I should just get it up here already, and maybe someone will have a better suggestion on making the format easier (but as long as it's legible, whatever right?).
Not-so short background:I decided to get back into shape again in May 2010. I'm 26, 5'6'' and 150lbs +/- 5lbs. Doesn't sound like much, but I was 125lbs and much stronger in high school without any real training (just gym class). The number of my weight never mattered much to me, but strength and body fat percentage does.
We have an elliptical machine that had been gathering dust, so I started using it again for cardio. I was convinced I could gain at least some muscle at the same time. So I started looking into stuff I could do at home. I started doing some yoga for upper body strength (can get you really sore with just yourself and the floor
) because I never wanted to be big and inflexible (ever see a guy who can bench 350bs but can't take off his t-shirt?). I started responding well (struggling at 10 dolphin pushups at a time to having no trouble doing 25), got encouraged and started looking for more things. I found something about a "3min pushup challenge" to asses your overall strength.
http://www.menshealth.com/men/fitness/fitness-tips/physical-fitness-test-pushups/article/32879597c4737210vgnvcm10000030281eacBasically do as many pushups as you can in 3 minutes, as many sets as you like. "Average" was 55-74 and I thought "no problem"... well, on June 23rd 2010 I could only do 42 and was exhausted (and angry).
That's when I decided I needed to stop overestimating my gains and get serious. I had an old dumbbell set inherited from an old roommate (free = better than garage sale, he was happy to leave them with me instead of packing another ~100lbs of iron into his car). I came very close to buying P90X after seeing the infomercial for the 100th time, but figured I should try and look up the exercises myself first (I didn't need a guy yelling at me, I just needed to know what to do and how often). That's when I discovered Scooby on youtube. After watching most of his videos I came here, read lots of stuff then decided I should join.
Ok now to the actual progress diary. Other than writing down my shameful number of pushups on June 23rd, I hadn't really kept track of anything till July 12 when I watched Evil's video on getting and keeping motivation. I started my spreadsheet then, and the next day added a food diary to it to track my protein and calories. It'll probably take a couple posts to get this thread up to date and I'll try to preserve as much of my formatting as possible (so it's semi-legible at least) in case anyone is curious/bored enough to read it
Since lots of my fancy spread sheet formatting will be lost, I note everything as
Exercise Sets Reps Weight. I also keep track of volume, but that seems to really kill the formatting here. I'll add it if anyone is curious, and doesn't want to do out all the math themselves (most of the reason I use excel
)
For the nutrition part, it's
Food Protein Grams Calories with a total for the day at the bottom.
I lift in the morning before going to work (just works best for me) except sometimes I get the cardio in after work. A note on cardio, I use an elliptical that has a few different 20 or 30min programs (Aerobic or Weight loss 1, 2 and 3) that I use to keep it interesting. It also has a calorie counter (who knows how accurate) that I note. So you might see things like "WL3 / A2 till 600 Cal" hope it's fairly self explanitory.
My
current split is:
Monday chest/tricep
Tuesday abs, cardio and/or rest (early meetings)
Wednesday back/bicep
Thursday shoulder and/or abs
Friday legs
Sat/Sun rest or cardio
All questions, comments and advice is welcome, either as a reply here or a PM.
Here we go:
23-Jun 3min challenges Pushups 42
Body weight Squats 68
Burpies 33
12-Jul chest flys 4 10 2x26 2x20
press 3 10 26
pushups 3 10
incline pushups 3 10
triceps kickbacks 3 10 to 15 1x3 2x5
dips (from bed) 3 12
french press 3 10 20
overheads 2 10 10
13-Jul cardio weight loss 1 ~400cal
oatmeal and powder 29 420
tea with honey 0 60
powder in water 23 120
grapes 0.3 30
coffee 2 sugars w/apple 60
2 meatballs 7.5 85
ziti 21 630
fruit salad 0.9 68
nature valley 8 380
apple sauce 110
chili's burger 57 1300
lemonade 150
146.7 3413
