Getting Back on Track
By: TV Personality & Naturalist David Mizejewski
My last post was a bit of a downer. At three months into this fitness journey, I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted to see. There are a lot of reasons for that, mostly a massive amount of travel which meant eating out, making it much harder to eat healthily and track my food, and just being away from the VIDA — not to mention my learning curve on how to effectively lose weight and build muscle at the same time. I’ve had some stumbles.
As I said in that post, I’m not giving up. Far from it. In the last two weeks since then, I’ve totally refocused and made some changes to get me back on track. Here’s my “VIDA Fitness Journey Course-Correction” plan:
1. Get in more workouts. On some level it’s just simple math: hours at VIDA translate to results and 2-3 workouts a week has proven to not be enough. Though it’s incredibly difficult with my work travel schedule and three hours of roundtrip commuting to the office each day when I’m actually home in DC, I’ve been able to get in 4-5 workouts in each of the last two weeks.
2. Track my food. Under the advisement of VIDA Registered Dietitian Addie Claire Merletti, I’m back on course to track all of my food using the MyFitnessPal app. I did this for the first two months and mistakenly thought I had a good handle on things like portion control and nutrient balance, and so I stopped tracking. I’ve begun tracking again, with even more militancy. I’m also paying more attention not to just my overall caloric intake, but also to making sure I meet Addie’s recommendations on the balance of protein, fat and carbs. For example, I’m now sure to have a post-workout protein shake and/or bar so I’m getting the right amount of protein and carbs at the right time to help me build and retain muscle.
3. Balance my weight training and cardio. For the first few months working out with VIDA trainer Susie Powell, our sessions were focused on body resistance workouts. We did circuits of every iteration of squats, lunges, push-ups, TRX, crunches, battle ropes, etc. and I saw some initial good results in building muscle, losing body fat and increasing my resting metabolism. Then we graduated up to working with free weights and cables. I was excited about that because I was eager to build even more muscle. However, lifting heavier weights with lower reps results in less cardio during my workouts compared to doing the resistance circuit training and I wasn’t making up that cardio difference. So Susie and I made a new workout plan to mix up the resistance circuit training and the weight training, and for me to get more cardio in when I’m not working out with her.
Guess what? It worked! After not seeing any progress for over a month, in just the last two weeks I’ve been able to turn the ship back in the right direction.
I met with Addie for my latest InBody assessment and I’m thrilled to report that I’ve lost another 4 lbs. of total body fat. That’s 2 lbs. a week, which is double the rate of fat loss than I’ve been able to achieve so far in any other week. I’ve moved down a level of visceral fat as well, which decreases my risk for chronic disease.
If you focus and are disciplined, fitness is achievable. I’m not saying it’s easy, that it’s going to happen overnight, that you’ll get it right immediately, or that I still don’t have a long way to go to reach my goals, but right now I’m just going to celebrate this success and the fact that I’m back on the right track.
