This week I had a few things I thought worthy of sharing in my weekly reflections.

• You have to pay attention to your body and other people’s concerns.  The older you get the more you need to watch what your body is telling you or you are going to get hurt!  Don’t ignore it.  If it hurts, rest it.  If you pull it, stop doing it. if you don’t know how to do it, look it up or for the love of God ASK someone.  Plenty of people will help you.

• Switching it up can also mean having a light week.  I believe in keeping your body confused.  Meaning not doing the exact same body part on the same day every week and not sticking to the same exercises for those body parts. I was doing that and It not only got boring and mundane but sometimes the equipment I wanted was taken.  Now that could happen anyway, however, I feel like switching it up with what your doing also lowers your chances of having to wait for a machine.  Space is always limited in my gym so that’s always an issue and a reason I workout at home but at home, I don’t have all the great equipment that I want.  This weeks switch up came in the form of a light week.  Less hard exercising and more laid back routines like running, short workouts with higher weights and working out at home with less temptation to work quite as hard.

• Finally, the try try again lesson.  I have spent three months working on my eating habits.  I’ve changed my macro count plan I think 5 times now.  I tried it the first time for a month.  when my weight didn’t go anywhere south, I switched it up to high carbs on workout days.  No change so I changed it so I had high carbs the day before a workout.  Nothing.  Now I know muscle – fat trading doesn’t always equal less weight and in fact, it probably means more weight but I’m not lifting enough or long enough at a time to bulk up.  I just want to dump 10 pounds.  Next, I did a “ramp up” on carbs to then dump them the day of harder workouts and yet no change.  This time I’m going to focus on calories, not carbs (I will count carbs but it won’t be my focus) and my plan is to see if more food works.  There are many writings that insinuate that if your body isn’t getting enough food, then it goes into “starvation mode” keeping what it needs to survive.  If you feed it more it works better for you so this time that is what I’m doing.  I’ve hovered between 1300 – 1900 calories during any day in the weeks.  According to several websites and experts, my ‘maintenance’ calories are between 1865 (what!) and a holy shit 2650 for my current weight!  What the hell!  That seems like a LOT of calories to consume to lose BUT, I’m going to try this and work very hard to stick to a high fitness plan Sun – Fri and taking Sat as rest days as always for the next two weeks.  If in two weeks my clothes are tight then I’ll know to rework what I’m doing.  If they aren’t and I’m seeing any changes or the scale (which I don’t allow to rule my choices) follows suit in its reflections then I’ll stay the course.  stay tuned