Bill's 20/20 Lifestyle Program

I have several end of phase 1 appointments coming up. First, I have to get a blood test to see how my blood chemistry has changed over course of the program. Next, I will get a second fitness evaluation to see if my fitness has improved (somehow I think it has!) Finally, I will meet with the doctor again to go over the results and talk about next steps.

Tuesday was the first day of my maintenance phase. What this means is I cut back to 2 trainer days a week and a dietician visit every other week. This goes on for another 10 weeks.

What this means is that I didn't meet with Megan today, so I had to do my weigh-in on my own. My weight when jumped on the official scales was 189.0 lbs.! This means I have met two of my weight loss goals: 1) get out of the 190s, and 2) get down to "normal weight" according to BMI.

This means that for my entire 10 week 20/20 program, I have lost 33.4 lbs., or 3.3 lbs. per week on average. I've got to say that I like the way I look and feel a lot more than I used to. That said, I've still got a fair amount of belly fat that I would really like to get rid of. I have lost about .25" of unsightly wrist fat which makes my watch not fit right.

Just to give a quick running update, I've done 21 miles per week the last 2 weeks, and am going to do 24 miles this week. This will include an 8 miler either tomorrow or Saturday and a 5 miler either Saturday or Sunday. My training for the Beat the Bridge is going well and my pace is slowly getting better and better.

In case anyone is interested, here is my current running program. I am focusing on heart rate zone training, and adjusting my pace to keep my HR in the right range. The one exception to this policy is that for most runs I will not drop below a certain pace. Usually this means that for the last half mile or so I will allow my HR to drift above the upper limit. This starts to happen around the end of some of my longer runs, especially if I've run a few days in a row.

My schedule is as follows:

Sunday - Rest day
Monday - Short easy run (3 miles with my HR in the 133 to 146 range)
Tuesday - Medium distance easy run (4-5 miles with the same HR as above)
Wednesday - Rest Day
Thursday - Short threshold run (3 miles with my HR in the 161 to 173 range)
Friday - Medium distance easy run (same as Tuesday)
Saturday - Long run (6-8 miles with my HR in the 147 to 160 range)

Once I finish Beat the Bridge, I might mix up my schedule some. I think that I'm doing well enough on my training and endurance that I am probably going to go straight into training for the Seafair Half-Marathon that comes in July.

Well, I had my week 9 weigh-in today and it was a really good week. I managed to drop 4.0 lbs. This was really a boost after my 0.6 lbs loss last week. I weighed 190.6 lbs. today, a mere 0.8 lbs away from the 180s.

My trainer is out of town this week, so I worked out on my own. I was a bit rushed for time so I skipped my core workout. I'll hit those again on Thursday. I did run 4 miles though, and went up 10 lbs on 2 different exercises (leg curl and overhead press).

There were no changes to my diet this week. Megan said I could eat cook grains, but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. I have been eating ham or turkey sandwiches on my Orowheat Light Whole Wheat bread. As long as I load up on the mustard, these are fine sandwiches.

Today I registered for the Nordstrom Beat the Bridge to Beat Diabetes 5 mile race. I am running this race as a celebration of my return to fitness after being overweight and unhealthy. In fact, my blood test results indicated that I was a few points away from being diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic myself before I started the program.

This race is a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. If you are interested in sponsoring me, please visit my fundraising page.

This week I ran 4 times, and did an indoor cycling class on Friday. I ran the following:

Sunday - Rest
Monday - 3 miles
Tuesday - 4 miles
Wednesday - Rest
Thursday - 3 miles
Friday - 5.5 effective miles (cycling instead of running)
Saturday - 7 miles

The grand total was 22.5 miles.

Next week I'm scheduled for 21 miles again.

I know you were wondering when I'd provide an update for my 8th week on the 20/20 program. Well, here it is: I lost 0.6 lbs. this week. I must admit this was a bit of a disappointment, but it could definitely be worse.

In response to this almost a setback, I am going to try to keep my calories toward the lower end of the acceptable range (1500 calories). We'll see if this has an impact next week.

I've been running now a bit over 7 weeks, and I'm very pleased with my progress. Last week (Sunday to Saturday), I ran 22 miles. On Thursday I ran a hard 2 miles, and did it in about 18 minutes and 20 seconds. This may not sound very fast, but it's almost 3 minutes per mile faster than I typically run.

On Saturday, I hit another of my running goals: I ran 5 miles. In fact, I ran 6 miles...