The second month saw no major tweaks to my regimen as it was already working quite well. I continued to eat 2000 calories per day and do 45 minutes of exercise.
During this month, I still wasn’t able to do my full 15 minutes of cardio at once, however, each set of 5 minutes was slowly getting easier and easier. This gave me a renewed confidence and allowed me to avoid the classic burnout that can plague many workout regimens within the first weeks or months.
As far as weightlifting goes, I had increased my pectoral fly amount to 100 pounds for 7 sets of 5 reps. My leg press had increased to 175 pounds for 7 sets of 5 reps. Lastly, my chest press increased to 60 pounds for 7 sets of 5 reps. Even more than my cardio progress, my weightlifting progress gave me an immense sense of accomplishment which pushed me to keep going. I wanted to see how much I could lift and how quickly I could do it.
It was at this point that I discovered a major pitfall of exercise. Your body eventually gets used to each exercise and as a result you end up getting less out of it. While this particular issue hadn’t affected my cardio much, it had taken my weightlifting efforts by storm. I was quickly realizing that each exercise I did was less and less effective each time I did it. Eventually, during the last week of the month, I decided to add Outward Hip Abductions to my mix of exercises. This meant, my regimen would change slightly from 10 minutes of each exercise (pectoral fly, leg press, and chest press) to 15 minutes each day on a two day rotation. Chest days would consist of 15 minutes of pectoral fly and 15 minutes of chest press while leg days would consist of 15 minutes of leg press and 15 minutes of Outward Hip Abductions (OHA). The OHA’s started out at 50 pounds for 7 sets of 5 reps.
I closed out this month with a regimen of 2000 calories per day (with Sunday as a cheat day) in addition to 45 minutes of exercise for five days a week. This workout was broken down with 5 minutes of rowing followed by 15 minutes of either pectoral flys or leg press (depending on the day). Followed by another 5 minutes of rowing and 15 minutes of chest press or outward hip abductions (again, depending on the day). I finished each day off with 5 minutes of rowing. As far as progress, I had fallen from 203.2 pounds to 194.5 pounds for a monthly weight loss of 8.7 pounds and a total weight loss of 15 pounds.
Right: This month was more productive than the second which is always great. I did well in the fact that I stuck with my regimen and didn’t allow myself to fall off of it.
Wrong: I feel like I could have added a bit more cardio at the end of the month as I wasn’t really feeling it after my first set of 5 minutes. Knowing about switching up exercises ahead of time would have also been helpful.
