Well, looking back at January it sure has been quite a month for me. I think I’ve had enough excitement to last a full year. Hopefully this isn’t a harbinger of things to come for the rest of 2012. January started off with about 2 weeks of healthy eating and regular exercise. YAY! Now I will follow that with all of my excuses:
- Spent a long weekend in New Orleans. Basically ate and drank my way all over town. I’ve been good, don’t I deserve a cheat weekend (um… how did that turn into 5 days of gluttony, I even ate bread and a biscuit!)? Came home at 137lbs – that sucked.
- Promptly got sick for a week and a half once I got home. Bad diet? Too many cocktails? Air travel? Lots of strangers? Check, Check, Check and Check. Couch, chair, bed… repeat. Ate lots of homemade vegetable soups that I froze earlier in the winter.
- Two day whirlwind trip to Atlanta to help out my dad with some paperwork. Car wreck on the way home – while still 7 hours from home.
- Three days of going to the doctor and sitting around at home recovering from muscle soreness from said wreck. Nothing serious, just some muscular issues inflaming my sciatic nerve.
- Ate half of a large cheese and pepperoni pizza with red wine. I can’t even begin to justify this extravaganza except to say that I survived a scary accident. Yes, I paid for the wheat and cheese and processed meat in triplicate over the next few days.
Now, saying all of that… how did I fare? I’d say not bad, but not what I wanted to see.
Recall from the beginning of the month – 135lbs / 20.9% fat
Now at the end of the month – 130.5lbs / 21.2% fat
Between my waist, hips, and thighs I lost about 4″.
This is a great example of why diet alone won’t work, you need some weight training to maintain muscle mass. I lost more muscle/lean mass than fat over the month. In fact, I lost nearly FIVE times more muscle than fat. 0.758lbs fat vs 3.732lbs muscle. My diet also wasn’t quite as clean as it could have been. I ate out a lot more than usual, my alcohol consumption was up, and I wasn’t eating my vegetables. I did a reasonable job of staying away from processed foods.
I’ve always heard that a good diet is 80% of getting lean, and I agree. Even with my transgressions I managed to lose 4.5lbs. I would say that I ate “clean” about 75% of the time. I need to do a little better; and get some exercise to get the results I want.
