Well, I’ve lost track of the weeks since I started this training malarky, however, I’m glad that I didn’t stop.

Christmas brought extra weight, resulting in me weighing in at a cuddly 205 pounds, (14.6 stone).  Well, that was somewhat detrimental to my prior training aims, so I decided that enough was enough.  From the first working Monday of the month, the 4th of January I decided to, as they say, “smash it”.

The first week was good, from Wednesday through to Friday I awoke at 6.10 - 6.20, and attended the gym at 6.30 mixing interval training and resistance training.  I had a rest day on the Saturday and went for a run on the Sunday, only to start all over again from the next Monday, where my plan was to interval train Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with resistance on Tuesday and Thursday.

Well, I pulled my back on the Tuesday, so skipped Wednesday.  However everything else went ahead as planned, (I even did an extra interval session on Saturday morning to make up for it.)

Its now my third week in to my new training pattern, and Nick and I have also successfully changed our food habits at home, and I have increased my meals from 3 to 5 small meals a day (Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner).  - The result, I now weigh 197 pounds, (14.1 stone).  Thats a loss of 8 pounds in two weeks, and I’m chuffed.  I really need to keep this up, I’ve never been so determined to just lose weight, and am trying as hard as I can to, and I’m going to put it into writing, get to 13 stone by the end of April.

Damn it, and blast it.  I somehow managed to hurt my back, right under the shoulder blade on the right hand side, which made the session on Friday 11th a little painful.  That session in turn also led to me not being able to move any way that I used my back, which is to say, every way - so I ended up not being able to train on Sunday 13th.

So balls, I am one session behind already, and with christmas coming up, guess I’m going to be even further behind by the start of January.

Despite this though, I went again today, and increased the number of intervals, as per the instructions, from 6 to 7.  This.is.really.hard.on.the.gym.machines - due to the silly touch screen that doesn’t know if your touching it or caressing the person on the tv.  It didn’t seem to affect me too much, so I’m considering going for 8 sets next time, and when comfortable with that, I’ll reduce the sets again, and the rest period from 2 minutes to 90 seconds.  Then over the weeks build from 6 - 8 sets again.

As for the weigh in, it is coming up to christmas, but I haven’t got a great deal of recollection as to pigging out, but have gained 2pounds since my last, so am back to 14stone 5.  Which is really annoying!

I think that from Christmas I’m going to add resistance training in on the days between the intervals and take only one full day off a week.  Bye excess weight, tired of you now.

So, I’ve wanted to get fit and lose weight again for the best part of a year.  Its currently coming to the end of 2009 and it’s been over two years since I was in the best physical shape of my life.  In November of 2007 I ran the New York Marathon, when I got home, I stopped running.  Skip to two years later and a bunch of on off training sessions and the weight I once lost is now back on.

I found this neat idea and theory of weight loss based on interval training, more specifically high intensity interval training, basically consisting of sets (between 6 and 12) of high intensity-low intensity exercise, i.e. run for two minutes, sprint for 1, run for 2, sprint for 1…and so on.

After running on and off for two years, and a pretty good attempt some months ago I’m not happy with progress so have decided to try this HIIT system out, and here is a place to chart my weight loss progress!

CURRENT PROGRESS

Currently I have had four sessions of training, with my latest looking as follows:

Six sets of:

Two minutes @ 8 km/h

One minute @ 16 km/h

I’ve found, through trial and error that these are the best speeds so far, and hope over the next weeks to reduce my rest time of two minutes to 1.5 mins and finally 1 minute.

CURRENT WEIGHT

I weighed myself prior to starting my training, and had ballooned over the previous weeks from 14 stone to 14 stone 7 pounds, (~ 92kgs).

I weighed myself today, after four sessions and have lost 2 pounds, and am now down to 14 stone 5 pounds (~91 kgs).

It’s too early to see if this is the direct result of the HIIT or a combination of factors, but needless to say I intend to keep it up as long as I can, and hopefully, I’ll start seeing some results!

Here’s wishing me luck.

I’d also like to wish luck to shep, who is taking part in this HIIT challenge with me!