100 Pounds in 6 Months

I checked the scale moments ago, my weight was 345, which is slightly heavier then the last time I weighed myself a few weeks ago.

My workouts have changed at the gym since I started working seriously in January.

Originally I would do 15- 20 minutes of elliptical on level 4 or 5 and then do an upper-body workout Mondays and Thursdays and a leg workout Tuesdays and Fridays. Wednesdays I would usually take off. I dropped below 350 after a few weeks of doing this, and then plateaued. About this time, the city announced they would be hiring firefighters (applicants had to past a written and then a physical test), so i began training for that.

In the middle of February, one of the trainers at the gym suggested that I do 15 minutes of cardio (either elliptical or treadmill) and then my weight routine briskly, and follow that with 20 more minutes of cardio work. I did this on basically the same Mon-Tue- Thu-Fri schedule and although my weight remained pretty constant (within 3 pounds of 340) I had to buy new pants because they were becoming too large. I did increase my elliptical intensity to 7 or 8 at this point after discovering your blog.

I passed the written and physical portions of the fireman test (the harder parts of the physical test involve wearing a 40 pound weight vest and carrying ladders and 150 pound test dummies around, as well as running up to the 7th floor of the training building)

After passing the physical portion I fell victim to a pretty serious infection and was unable to move around comfortably or work out for about 3 weeks. The physical test was in the middle of March, so I didn’t really get back in the gym until early April.

in April I decided it would be most helpful to focus on losing weight, so I cut back on the weight training and focused on doing elliptical or treadmill work 40-50 minutes a day every day. I had to start at 5 on the elliptical , but at this point I am up to 9. depending in my mood, I may do 40-50 on the elliptical or split the time with the treadmill. I do an upper body work out about once a week.

I also started biking to work in the middle of May- I live close to the 2 places i work, so its a quick 7 minute ride to one job or a 15 minute ride to the other. I tend to do 40 minutes of cardio the days I bike to work, otherwise the small hills in between are painful.

I have lost 4 inches from my waist size, and dropped from a 4x or 5x shirt to a 2 or 3x, but I haven’t lost any significant amount of weight since the middle of March.

As an aside, when I started it took 6.5-7 minutes on the elliptical to burn 100 calories, now I burn that many in just under 6 minutes and heart rate spikes up about a little less (145-150) when I work that hard.

JC

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