Well fellas, it's hard to believe that it's been six months since I started this challenge, but the time has come to see where I stand. Just to recap, I started my journey at 12.9% body fat (pictured below on the left), and my goal was to get to single-digit body fat. I tried to schedule a DEXA scan for this week but the technician is out all this week due to a "medical procedure". The soonest they would let me schedule it is the day after tomorrow, which will be Saturday, July 27th, so that's what I did.
The good news is that I definitely look leaner than when I started. The bad news is that I did lose some muscle due to the calorie restriction, which was to be expected, but it still sucks seeing that. I will say this though: Even though I'm smaller, I do prefer the new look better overall compared to the bulkier look.
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Regardless of what the scan says, I plan on continuing the diet protocol because I know I can get better than this. So the next date that I'm shooting for is September 21st, which will be my 48th birthday.
The most important result of this challenge for me personally was that I improved as a person in several ways. I eventually started getting up earlier every day which provided me the time to not only work out but to also get in some stretching and meditation time, both things I rarely ever did before I started all this. I also learned a variety of cooking techniques for quickly making most of my meals every single day. And on those occasions that I did go out to dinner at a restaurant, I learned to say NO and come up with alternative menu choices that were lower in calories. For example, we always go the local steakhouse once a week with friends, and before this challenge, my go-to meal would be the bone-in ribeye. Once I started dieting, I replaced that with the blackened redfish entree they have and guess what my favorite meal of all is now? You got it, the blackened redfish. So the menu item that would have never appealed to me before this challenge started (like who eats fish at a steakhouse?) is now the thing I crave most of all.
So what it all boils down to is patterns of behavior than need to be broken and changed, but our minds don't like change, and they fuck with us by convincing us that we are ok just as we are. In fact, our heads try to tell us that we actually like our current patterns no matter how unhealthy or destructive they may be. The trick to all this in my opinion, is changing one small thing at a time, so that over the course of months or years, those incremental small changes add up to you becoming a completely different person, one that's better both physically and mentally than the person you were before.
It will be interesting to see if I can make some further improvements in the next couple of months and I can't wait to get on with it, not only to see the final results, but to become a better version of myself along the way.