Recent daily bodyweights:

8/29 201.8

8/30 200.2
8/31 201.4
9/1   201.0

9/6   200.0

Wow…week one is solidly under my belt, with 1.8 lbs of (hopefully) BF lost. I have a few interesting observations to share:

Morning Cardio

My morning cardio is already a daily habit I don’t see giving up for a long time.  For a confirmed “non-morning person”, you may wonder how that can happen and what proof I have that it will continue.  First off, as I’ve mentioned, my entire demeanor has changed in the morning.  Literally from the first day, I became a morning person, and all I’ve given up is a few minutes of lying in bed half awake anyway.  All the caffeine in the world couldn’t make this happen. The positive feeling from day one kept me going the first few days, and as I got my music and routine sorted out I began to look forward to my morning sessions.  Secondly, we just came through a three day Labor Day weekend and I didn’t miss a session.  I slept in a little on the weekend, knocked out my cardio, and then enjoyed a nice cool-down on my back patio by the pool with the weekend paper.  If that is not proof that a habit is forming, I don’t know what is.  I also love the fact that when I get home in the afternoon/early evening, I can totally relax and do other things like help my son with his homework….by the time I roll up the driveway, both my cardio and weight training has been done for the day!

In regards to the more theoretical aspects of morning cardio; I have to think that this is where Mentzer and McGuff, et al, have got it wrong.  Sure, running 10 miles a day has got to be catabolic and detrimental to muscle growth in the weight training arena, but 30 minutes of steady-state cardio at a brisk pace in my opinion is more likely to aid in muscle growth and recovery than to hinder it.  Getting the entire bodily system up and pumping blood has got to be a good thing; and by doing it fasted in the morning the main energy source is going to be body fat…not carbs/glycogen, and not your hard earned lean body mass.  How different can it be from the brisk hike that had to take place at the start of the day by our hunter-gatherer ancestors setting off to locate the day’s kill?

Alcohol Consumption

I have to tell you, a three day weekend such as Labor Day, would not have passed for me in the last 25 years without alcohol consumption.  And I didn’t miss it a bit.  I certainly didn’t miss the hangover or cranky lethargy that normally follows the next day.  And here is something else that hit me during the last week; I’ve always promised myself that I would have open and honest conversations about alcohol use and abuse with my son, as I know that demonizing it will do nothing but peak his interest, especially when peer pressure sets in during the years ahead.  So having a bottle around or a few beers in the fridge, or laughing about my alcohol breath when I put him to bed, were not big issues for me.

(Keep in mind, we are only talking about once or twice a month; I wasn’t a hard-core “drunk” !)  But now I realize that although I’m sure he hasn’t noticed that there is no longer any around the house, his memory of my use of it will also start to fade (he’s 9 now by the way.)  And what is he seeing instead?  Dad on the stair machine every morning in the garage.  We already have a routine of him waking and walking out about half way through my 30 minutes and having a morning chat.  He and his mom have always been morning people, and now I get to enjoy the mornings with them.