Week Two

'Week Two' is named in relation to when I seriously started hitting the gym and gained a Personal Trainer.

So last week I managed to go to the gym from 3 to 5 times. Three is the minimum number of times that I am allowing myself to attend the gym in one week and do cardio plus my routine on the weights. The other two times I did go to the gym on my 'off days' to do Aquafit, which is like aerobics in shoulder-deep water.
I really respect Aquafit because even though it looks like it is the exclusive province of fat housewives, you can really work up a burn in water. You push harder and it just pushes right on back. I have given myself just as sore muscles doing Aquafit as I have lifting weights at the gym.

This week I have done even better at gym attendance: weights Monday, Tuesday, & Thursday with Aquafit on wednesday. As it is only friday, I can say that I'll be going to do my weights routine again saturday morning. That is definitely the routine of a gym junkie. I don't expect myself to keep to the four-times routine (because eventually I'll need to watch out for overtraining), but I want to do cardio as close to daily as possible and still want to stick to the minimum of three sessions a week.

I've also been monitoring my food very carefully. On advice from my friend Bryan (was 'Chinese Dumpling' now 'Beefcake', as he humorously puts it), I have moved from three meals with snacks to five palm-sized meals a day. I'm also supplementing myself (which counts as one of the meals on a gym day) with a post-workout drink of Whey Protein Isolate plus added carbs and L-glutamine.
Glutamine supposedly provides me with the nitrogen for building decent muscles plus its main job is preventing my body from catabolically eating my muscles away as it undergoes weight loss. See, I want serious gym time to result in serious muscle gain, but its hard to do that when you're also trying to do serious cardio resulting in serious weight loss.

Still, I'll be consistent, stick at it, improve slowly and I'm sure I'll achieve all of my goals.