Another week of Operation Melt is behind me, but it was one where my progress was very slow despite lots of effort. It is getting much harder to keep up the same rate of weight loss and ongoing progress. It is particularly hard when my routine is so unpredictable given my current work status. Here are some highlights from this week.

Killing it at the gym

I have been able to spend lots of time at the gym and I continue to ramp up the intensity of the workouts. This week, I was at the gym 5 out of 7 days and each workout included a blend of treadmill running and weights. Plus, I have started making every treadmill session into at least a 5k as I want to get to the point that I am comfortable running a full 5k – right now, it is a blend of walking and running.

In addition to the gym, I continue to layer on additional exercise where I can. One day this week, I added a spontaneous walk around the full perimeter of German Village in Columbus which was an extra 3.14 miles on top of my morning workout that day which was already 3.5 miles on the treadmill.

Here is a picture from the treadmill when I hit my first 5k with a mix of walk/run. About 33-34 minutes total time.

I am really pushing hard to work off the weight and pack on the muscles whenever I can.

Now, I do Yoga

One of the other areas where I have layered on some additional exercise was by taking my first yoga class. I went to a free beginner’s yoga class at a local community center, Central Community House. It was called Saturday Stretch and was a good intro level class that focused on back, hip and leg stretches for this particular class.

I was surprised at the places where I am and am not as flexible as I would like to be. Plus, I was surprised at how intense some of the stretches / poses could be with just body weight. It was good and I think I would like to do another one.

My heart is getting healthy

One of the things I have been tracking through my journey is my heart fitness. I measure this through my fitness tracker which monitors something called my VO score which indicates the healthiness of my heart. It does this through some formula based on height, weight, age, resting heart rate and other stuff. I know, pretty informative, huh?

When I started my journey, my cardio fitness was in the “Poor to Fair” range and my resting heart rate was really high. As I have gone through this journey, I have watched the cardio fitness scores tick up into the “Fair”, “Average” and “Average to Good” range. This week, I hit a new milestone in my cardio fitness. I am fully into the “Good” range now.

Between the cardio fitness, the continued personal records I am setting in exercise and the perpetually smaller clothes, I am continuing to see progress. Unfortunately, the most important area to me is not performing as good as I’d hope.

Weight rollercoaster

On Tuesday of this week, I hit my new record weight loss at 98 pounds down. That was great and I was really excited.

Unfortunately, I have learned that my weight losses follow a cadence based on my lifestyle. Mondays and Tuesdays are great days for weight loss and I tend to be at my lowest weight on Tuesdays. Then, in the back half of the week, my weight tends to have fluctuations up. I think this is related to early week being more home cooking and less restaurant meals plus, I make the beginning of the week non-alcohol days too.

So, this week followed my traditional cadence of loss and gains. I ended up fluctuating up by 3 total pounds from my Tuesday low point. That is very frustrating!

My updated goal is at risk!

Over the past few weeks, I have said that I should reach the 100 pounds lost mark by St. Patty’s day, which is this coming weekend. I secretly wanted to reach it by 3/15 since that is the 9-month anniversary of starting my journey. This is all well ahead of my original goal of over 100 in under a year, which means June.

Based on my cadence of weight loss and fluctuations, my current rate of loss and the fact that March Madness starts this week (alcohol and junk food), I think my revised goal is at risk by a few days or a week.

Plus, the other factor influencing my weight loss is that my muscles are growing from weight training and packing on muscles. This is good, but it is still impacting me reaching my weight goal that has been the focus of this journey.

Staying the course

While I will be a bit disappointed if I don’t hit the 100 pound mark by St. Patty’s day, it is not going to shake my focus. I am going to be successful on this journey and have been very successful so far. This is still a top priority for me and I am still as committed as ever.

One thing that is helping me stay focused right now, during a time that would be very easy to quit, is my newest project. I mentioned before that I think I am going to write a book about this journey. Well, I have made progress and I am about one-third done with the first draft of the book. I am pretty excited about that!

Check back next week for more!

Last week’s stats (2/26 – 3/4):
Distance walked/run: 38.9 miles
Total calories burnt: 25,156
Total calories consumed: 14,280
Weight change: 2.3 pounds lost