Making the Survival Workout tougher

Sunday, June 19, 2011

I went to the park while the Holly and Jack were in church to do my workout. I had to get it in early…Savannah and Jack were taking me to see the Indians for Father’s Day and then the family would be coming over for dinner. It was the only time and since it’s all I’m doing right now, I can’t afford to miss it.

I’ve added some new exercises…doing sets of dips on rocks and benches and using heavy rocks to perform my bent-over rows. I’ve also added another set of push-ups at the end of the workout, which is extremely hard to perform since my arms are completely spent at that point. Still, I’ve managed to get in another 35 at the end, which is decent for an old guy and made this workout the toughest Survival Workout I’ve ever done.

I returned from the workout and decided I needed to see how much weight I’d put back on before continuing the day. Holly was making chicken and flat dumplings…we’ve been over this so let me just say as a refresher that if I ate what I would before the Paleo Diet, I would consume about 4,000 calories during this meal. I wasn’t planning on eating the dumplings or whatever tasty dessert she would offer up, but figured a weigh-in would seal my commitment. I stepped aboard and was shocked to see that I’d actually lost another pound since hurting my knee last Tuesday, weighing in at 185.5. Not only does this not make me want to splurge and have the bad stuff, it actually fires me up even more to maintain the discipline. I’m so anxious to get down to 175 that I’m starting to get a little obsessed.

The walk to the stadium was tricky with the knee squawking on each step. We were in the upper deck and opted for the stairs (what else?) which was a good idea except I was sweating heavily when we finally arrived in our seats. Jack was really getting into it…asking all the right baseball questions…and Savannah always is. She entered the link for MLB (major league baseball) into my phone so I could get instant baseball score updates on any team playing simply by texting the name of the team. The girl is whacked about the Indians.

Rains came in the 8th inning and we had to leave to make the dinner back at home. The Indians would complete a 3-game sweep of the Pirates in the bottom of the eleventh inning when our new second baseman, Cord Phelps, would make his first major league home run a 3-run walk-off shot for the win.

I managed to eat only a small serving of dumplings, instead filling up on broccoli salad and a squash, mushroom and onion thing Holly baked just for me. Though I continue to work at following the Paleo principles for most of my diet, I truly believe that the thing having the greatest impact on my weight loss is the way I evaluate everything I eat and have really given up the hollow calories I was eating at record rates a few months ago. No matter how much working out you do, you can still keep…or gain fat if you eat too much crap.

Survival Workout duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 100 to 150 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 600