Apparently I've been really lucky with the training I'm getting. I started light with a and then moved on to a more .
I more or less maintained my weight during the personal training, but in the first three weeks of what the gym calls the Weight Loss Challenge, I've dumped 15 pounds (I don't know what the body fat percentage loss is like – we'll check that after six weeks of the program), and, at 8.8% of my starting weight (170.4 pounds), that's good enough for second in the program.
That video up top? I never want to slice my trainer open. He lost 30 pounds in 12 weeks on his own, trains a few times a week with his adult son, and is a genuinely nice guy. I came into the program with a goal to lose exactly that number (30 pounds over the 12-week program), and I'm on track to beat that. I'm probably a couple of weeks away from my lowest weight since the late 1990s, and a couple of months away from my best shape (not lowest weight; I was a skinny tennis player) since high school.
For perspective, I graduated high school in 1994 at 115 pounds. By the turn of the century, I had hit 160. When I moved to Syracuse in 2003, I had hit 215. I did the first 45 pounds on my own (and in only a couple of years), but I'd stabilized in the 160s (my initial weigh-in for the program might have been slightly inflated by a breakfast of 4 chocolate chip pancakes with butter and maple syrup, a ham steak and a protein bar in the hour before I climbed on the scale).
By the end of next week, I'll have rendered useless my second belt of the Challenge.
Here is a – it's roughly one we do Thursdays (we also do team workouts on Tuesday and Saturday, I play racquetball three times a week, tennis at least once a week, and get short – 30-45 minutes – workouts in once or twice in addition to all that). And food's a big part of the program. I decided to not count calories in favor of eating good foods, and .
A note about food: I can't say enough about . They're not the cheapest meat out there, but they portion their meats in the right sizes, the food is really tasty, and I'm expecting my second shipment. If you do one of the value packs, you can get 25 pounds of meat for about $6 a pound, and you can avoid the fatty stuff (like potatoes au gratin) in favor of lean burgers.