Plateau Busted!

I now weigh 283 pounds. The last time I weighed this little, I had just gotten home from my first overseas tour in the Army, "Hey Ya" was one of the top songs in America, the whole country was still worshiping George W. Bush like he was the second coming of Christ, the Iraq war was just starting to turn into a shit pile and I was wondering when I'd be taking a trip over there.

It was 2003, if you hadn't figured it out yet.

After last Monday, I got mad that my weight hadn't budged in about a month, so I took to the internets to get some advice. One guy said that I should lower my caloric intake by about 400 calories to see if that would help. It was an idea so simple you'd think I would have figured it out myself. So I did that. I also started a food log on myfitnesspal.com and have been maintaining it regularly.

The weight started coming off immediately after I cut back on the calories. Instead of getting my 200 grams of protein everyday through whatever means necessary (which was putting on a lot of fat calories), I started drinking a lot more protein shakes and limiting my meat to mostly lean meats like chicken or turkey. After a few days of this I started feeling dizzy after my workouts, so I have a couple of "carbo-load" days every week where I stock up my glycogen stores so I can workout hard without injuring myself. Those days I just drink Gatorade and eat some bread or potatoes with my meals.

Speaking of which, I had to stop running for a week because the treadmill was beating the shit out of my knees. Sadly, this has killed my run time and I won't have my 5K time down to under 30 minutes like I had planned when I do my race next week. It's alright, though. Eventually I'll get there if I keep working at it. In the meantime, the weather is just starting to warm up out here in Southeast Michigan, and I'm running outside now.