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Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 15

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So it has been 15 days since I started my “Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan” and I just wanted to do a very quick update post on how things are going.

My Personal Training Plan

Firstly, this past week on Wednesday I had my first full length personal training session with Sam from Ivanco Fitness.

I really liked my session with Sam, and found him to be the perfect balance between pushing me to go further than I would ever go working out on my own, but also knowing when to ease off during my workout.

This was my first real workout (strength or cardio) in a really long time so my body definitely wasn’t used to the workout.

We did a full body circuit routine using a combination of my new gym, my barbells and just body weight exercises like squats, push-ups, etc.

The strength training wasn’t easy, since it was my first workout, but the hardest part was getting past my lack of cardio conditioning.

The workout really kicked my butt, and definitely challenged me, but when it was done and over with I was glad I had done it.

Sam is going to be designing two more different work out routines for me to follow for the first phase of my program, and I’ll be rotating between the three to start with.

So that’s going to be my strength training and cardio portion of my plan as a starting point and then I’ll measure results and adjust as time goes on.

My Weight Loss Tracking Sheet

Another thing I’ve been working on is putting together a tracking sheet that is going to give me a more accurate picture of my progress over time.

Why do I need a tracking sheet like this?

Well, I have always found there to be one “flaw” with setting weight loss goals in the past…

…and that “flaw” is that it’s not easy to set an accurate weight loss target goal when doing a weight loss and strength training program if all you take into account is your weight.

Meaning, if you’re just going on a program where you’re trying to lose 10 lbs of or 20 lbs or something, and all you’re going to be doing is focusing on weight loss, then that is easy to track…

… simply step on a scale, take your present weight, and subtract 10 or 20 lbs and there is your target weight.

However, if you’re doing a total re-shaping of your body program like I am doing, then just tracking body weight is not enough.

The reason for this is because a straight weight loss goal doesn’t take into account lead body mass gains – meaning it doesn’t take into account a person putting on muscle.

So what I had to do is design a tracking spreadsheet which calculates a target weight for me based on what I want to accomplish, and then based on that initial target it automatically adjusts itself whenever my body composition adjusts itself as well.

Let me give you a quick example as to what I mean by this.

Let’s say that my starting weight was 200 lbs and 150 lbs of that was lean muscle body weight, and 50 lbs of that was fat.

Now, let’s say that I my goal was to lose 20 lbs of fat.

That would mean that my goal weight would be 180 lbs.

However, let’s say that one month later I lost 10 lbs of fat AND at the same time put on 5 lbs of muscle…

… well if that happened, then my target goal would no longer be 180 lbs, but rather 185 lbs, because now I had put on that extra 5 lbs of muscle.

By creating a spreadsheet which tracks not only my body weight, but also my lean body mass and fat mass and automatically calculates my target weight based on these stats I can more accurately target a specific body weight and not have to worry about any muscle gains actually working against me and my goals.

Now, I am using a Fitbit Aria scale to measure my lean body mass, which means that the measurements aren’t exactly 100% accurate BUT it’s still better than nothing and as my weight keeps dropping the stats will get more and more accurate.

For now though, here are the latest stats that my sheet shows me.

So basically my sheet has calculated out for me that based on my current lean body mass, current fat mass and current weight, my target weight I’m trying to hit is 176.5 lbs…

And since my current weight as of this morning was 241.4 lbs, that means I’ve got exactly 64.9 lbs of fat to lose…

And so far I have lost a grand total of 3.7 lbs since starting this program.

Now, like I said, the lean body mass measurement from this body scale is not 100% accurate so that 176.5 lbs will fluctuate each day depending on what the scale thinks my lean body mass is on that day… however, this at least gives me some indication of how I’m doing with my plan.

My tracking sheet also spits out tracking charts so that I can track the TREND of my weight loss over time.

Here’s my weight loss chart so far:

It’s early yet to try to plot a trend line, but within the next week or two I should be able to plot a trend to see if I’m losing weight or not.

Right now it looks like I am slowly starting to move towards a weight-loss trend, so I’m happy with that.

That’s pretty much it for today’s update.  I should have another one for you guys soon.

 

How to Condition Your Mind for Success

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In Episode #07 of “Driving With Paul” I share a strategy I learned for conditioning your mind for success.

Once you’ve watched the video, if you’d like to use the 21 Day Blogging Challenge as your mind training task, you can learn more about it by clicking here.

Regardless what you choose as your daily task, leave a comment below stating your commitment and then come back in 30 days and post another comment saying you’ve completed it.

You’ll be very surprised how much this simple, but ultra effective mind-conditioning exercise will do for you in your life.

 

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 1

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Today is my the official first day of my new Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan.

Technically speaking, I announced that I started working on putting together my new diet plan back on February 23rd, which is almost two months ago, but I didn’t actually START the plan until today.

I took that time to get my thinking straight, and to get a whole bunch of stuff prepared and figured out.

The toughest part was changing my mindset / attitude around weight loss and fitness.

I had to do some soul searching, journaling, researching and meditating to get more clarity around what I want to achieve with my new diet and fitness plan.

More importantly, I had to figure out how to change my beliefs and my thinking related to health and fitness so that I can implement a life-long plan into place and not just lose weight for a few months and then gain it back.

Even though I know that I’ll always be working on and tweaking my mindset in this area of life, I do feel confident enough to get started and to see where my new thinking and my new beliefs take me.

Once I got my thinking right, the action steps of getting ready to get started weren’t that hard to implement.

I bought a new strength training gym and got that setup.

I got an infra-red sauna installed, and setup my workout room.

I have been researching and testing out various different nutritional supplements I will need during my journey of re-shaping my body.

I’m also meeting up with and considering hiring a personal trainer to work with me on the strength training side of things.

My Stats

My starting weight as of this morning is 245.1 lbs and a body fat percentage of 32.8% according to my Fitbit Aria scale.

Now, according to my Skulpt Aim my overall body fat percentage is actually 37%, which is think is probably more accurate than my bathroom scale, but it will be interesting to see how the numbers change as I lose weight and get in better shape.

My MQ (Muscle Quality) scores for all my major muscle groups are shown above… Most of my muscle groups fall into the yellow category which is “average”, except for my calves which are showing up as a a bit lower than average which I find a bit surprising.

I may need to re-run the tests again as I wouldn’t have thought that my calves would get a lower score than for example something like my lower back or my hamstrings which I would have guessed are weaker than average.

In either case, these are all just beginning stats and I’ll see how things change as I make progress.

If you’re wondering how I got these stats, check out this device by clicking here – Skulpt Aim.

My Tracking Tool

I did some testing on various apps I could use to track my meals and calories and the macro-nutrient composition of my meals, and I think I’m going to stick with an app called MyFitnessPal as it seems to do everything I need.

I tried out an app from Weight Watchers which also allows you to track your meals and it breaks them down into their point values, but the problem I found with that app is that it is very slow, and it has a very limited database of food compared to MyFitnessPal, AND you can’t search or add new foods on your mobile device.

Meaning, you can use the online Weight Watchers website application to search their food database and then you can add certain foods to your favorites list, and then the mobile app they have will show you those foods, BUT you can’t just arbitrarily add a food from your app by searching for it.

So if I’m at a restaurant and I want to search for a food I’ve never had before on my phone, I can’t do that with the Weight Watchers app… at least I haven’t been able to figure out any way to do it.

With MyFitnessPal you can do it pretty easily.

If you’re using MyFitnessPal and would like to add me as a friend on there, you can find my MFP Profile here.

Blogging About My Journey

One of the benefits of being a blogger is that when you embark on a new journey in your life like the weight loss / fitness journey I’m starting right now, there is an opportunity for you to document your journey by Blogging about it, and to help other people who are on the same journey and potentially even make money by Blogging about it.

If you haven’t already, check out my video on how to get paid to lose weight for more details of how that works.

I’m really excited about my new journey and I’m looking forward to blogging about it as well, so that maybe I can help to inspire someone else to also make the decision to lose weight and get fit and healthy.