Ok, the picture was taken last weekend on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. I won't be to the Bahamas until Thursday but you wouldn't have known if I didn't tell you.
I have a client from Canada who is doing a show in the Bahamas. Had she wanted me to come to a show in Canada right now where the temperature is probably 15 below, I may have been tempted to come up with some lame excuse as to why I couldn't make it. The Bahamas? Yeah, I'm there - no problem. The flight isn't even 50 minutes from Fort Lauderdale, anyway.
I have scheduled my training this week to go M-W again so that I don't have to train Thursday when I get there and will only train again on Friday (legs) while I am down there. I prefer to stay with my normal split, but last week was Thanksgiving and this week The Bahamas. I will be back on my regular schedule next week.
I planned to not treat Thanksgiving any differently than any other day but at the last minute, decided to make a healthy Thanksgiving dinner for myself and my wife because this was the first year in over 20 years that we didn't have any of our kids at home. I went and picked up some Chilean sea bass, some vegetable salads with beans and a pear and vegetable combo from Fresh Market which is a lot like Whole Foods but probably even more expensive. I also got a couple cheeses and some organic crackers (all they sell is organic stuff and they were open on Thanksgiving so that should explain it) and a couple Turkey Burgers (precooked). I managed to knock a bottle of wine over while in the store that completely blew up, covering me in wine. It was fun times. I was hoping I didn't get stopped by a cop on the way home because I would have smelled of red wine something terrible.
Even though the holiday meal was healthy, I made enough for 2 meals so we were pretty full by the end of the night. I don't eat sea bass very often - primarily because of the price - but damn it was good.
Because the meals on Thanksgiving were pretty healthy, I still Skiploaded on Sunday, as well.
My weight had bottomed out at 222 Thursday morning which is the lowest it has been since going back to the gym. I am clearly getting leaner and the pictures I took this weekend show this, as well. I wasn't sure, based on my last coach log, whether the changes in condition were going to be as dramatic as the first 4 weeks but they certainly were still dramatic. It's funny because if you aren't taking pictures to gauge your progress, you are not getting a full understanding or a completely accurate measure of how you are progressing. Pictures do NOT lie. You can feel lean and feel like you are leaner than you are until the pics show differently. I always have to laugh when a client will say something like, "I am much leaner in person." No, you're not. I know this because the same things happen to me. I take the pictures and while looking at them I am thinking, "That's bad lighting, I am much leaner than that." No, you are not Skip. My pictures don't lie, either.
Still, progress has been really good and I have no complaints to this point. I only have 4 weeks left for this 12-week phase and I am excited to not only see what the progress will be but also to move to the next phase where the focus is even more on growth.
I said I would be around 220 by the end of this 12-week phase (ending at the end of December) and I still believe this is where I will be. However, I will be stronger than I have been at that weight in almost a decade - if not longer.
My back feels great - everything feels great, really. However, I am planning a cruise week where I will train light the last week of the year to make sure that as the year turns and I turn up the intensity and focus, I want my body ready to go and to be 100%.
I know I say it a lot and it might sound boring or predictable right now but training is fun again. It is exciting from workout to workout to see what I can do and what new numbers I can hit. I anticipate 2019 being a great year provided I can keep up this type of pace. I am confident that I can.
