About nine days ago, I refocused my weight losing energy, reset my goals, and created a mountain of a goal in trying to climb a 14er the weekend after my birthday. What an interesting experiment! I decided that the way to continually be motivated was to force success or failure. So, I eliminated all track of my progress. I told myself that I had lost ZERO pounds, and set the goal to lose 20-30 pounds by the time I was ready to climb the 14er.

I bought the book, Fat Smash after seeing the diet work for a bunch of various people on television. (Yes, I saw the Tyra Banks episode where Dr. Ian Smith showed the success of his diet) I committed to it. The first phase of this diet is a “detox” where one eats mostly fruits and vegetables, some good carbs and fiber. No meat, no cheese, and the hardest thing, no coffee. The first three days sucked, but by day four I had all my energy back, and the diet really wasnt that hard.

In addition, my trainer Heath, gave me the following workout for the week:

3.5 continuous mile this week and a half mile more each week.

To work on elevation gain you will be working the step mill & treadmill with elevation. Each one to three times per week.

8/6 Monday - treadmill 20 min & stepmill 5 minutes.
8/7 Tuesday - treadmill routine with .5 elevation added throughout routine.
8/8 Wednesday - easy bike routine
8/9 Thursday - Stepmill 10minutes & treadmill 20 minutes
8/10 Friday - other treadmill routine with 1% elevation added throughout routine.

AN hour walk/hike on the weekend.

So how did I do? I lost 10.4 pounds in the last week! And on Monday of this week, I completed 60 minutes on the treadmill, with a pretty tough incline, finishing just over 4 miles! I am very proud of myself, but I know that its just the beginning. I need to continue to force failure or success to keep my motivation up.

While the success of the week certainly gets me excited; I know that for me, I need to have a failure, so for lunch I had a Bronx Bomber sandwich from Heidi’s Deli. I will have to overcome this failure this week. I focused back on the diet (the detox ends tomorrow, then I get coffee again! And some meat…) and am planning on another 60min on the treadmill tomorrow am, followed by another 30 minutes of weight training.

Now I am about 12 pounds from the high side of the weight I need to lose, and have about 6 weeks to go.

Here is my workout for this week:

8/13 Mon - 4 miles with routine

8/14 Tues - stepmill 15 minutes - can split time, treadmill - 20 minutes, easy.

8/15 Wed - Easy bike day

8/16 Thurs - 4.5 miles. Flat, outside

8/17 Friday - Other shorter routine with added 1% elevation

A 1.5 hr hike on weekend.

So who is coming with me on the big hike?