The World According to Mitch

This morning I stepped onto the scale and got an unexpected surprise… I was, for the first time (since I started losing weight last August) under a certain multiple of ten (I am still not telling you what I weigh, so you can try to guess but you will be wrong).  It was a very nice feeling, but I also knew it was likely to be a short-lived euphoria, as tomorrow morning I will likely be above that number again.

Don’t get me wrong… I am not planning on binging today – that is not what I do. ‘Hey I am under a certain weight so I can inhale a large bucket of Buffalo wings! 🙂 …’ That is not the way I do it.  Yes I do binge, but not based on things like that.  I just know that weight loss – especially when you weigh yourself every morning – is not going to be a consistent linear drop.  As you can see, even when there is a downward trend, there are days when it goes up… when it does so two days in a row it sucks but over the course of the week if you are down then you are doing something right.

I have decided that at each ten pound milestone I am going to introduce something new into my regimen. This morning I introduced morning exercises (something we should all do). I am sure you know the difference between aerobic and anaerobic (strength) exercises, and if you don’t then you will have to wait for a future article for me to explain the differences.  I decided that every morning I would be doing a few minutes of anaerobic exercises – I have a set of dumbbells which I will use, but I will also do push-ups and sit-ups. 

A few years ago (around the time when I bought the nearly pristine and unused dumbbells) I bought a yoga mat.  No, I am not going to be doing any yoga… I bought it to do stretches at home.  When I moved out of the house I took these, in the hope that I would start using them.

By the way please remember, if it sounds like I just discovered the need to exercise, that I teach Taekwondo five days per week, and yes I do work out, I just don’t do it in the morning.  I am also not going to be changing that I work out in the evenings – that is when Taekwondo is.  However I said that at the milestones I will be introducing something new, not changing something.  So in addition to the TKD, I will do my dumbbell curls, push-ups, and sit-ups in the morning as well.

I also do not know if I will be adding something drastic every time… I will be trying to work up my levels.  At this weight I am doing a minimum of ten push-ups, twenty sit-ups, and three sets of dumbbell curls.  At the next milestone I might double the push-ups… who knows.  I might even add a morning jog, if I can figure out the timing.  We’ll see. 

In the meantime this morning is a bit of a high… partly because of the new low, and partly because exercise just feels good – even if we have to force ourselves to start.