I have been faithfully following my workout routine for a while now, and have so far lost a staggering one pound (margin-of-error plus or minus one pound).

Ugh.

Honestly, it’s probably actually working, but the payoff is not being reflected on the scale. I have been doing exhausting full-body workouts every other day, pushing myself to the point of (nearly) puking every time. My body is constantly sore from head to toe, and when I wake up most mornings I can barely move. This past week the soreness was actually getting so bad that I decided to take a few extra days off to help recuperate (and avoid potential injury). Hopefully my body weight is hovering steady due to a combination of both fat-loss and gains in new muscle and bone-density… rather than simply a total lack of progress. I imagine that I look slightly better in the mirror, but I can’t say for sure. I definitely feel better, though… excruciating muscle soreness aside.

Clearly my diet has significant room for improvement, but at least I am making some effort. However, because I am doing so much weight-training I am trying to eat a lot more protein than before, and as such I probably am taking in many more calories than I should for a pure weight-loss approach. I also have largely abandoned all cardio workouts since my full-body circuit has my heart constantly pumping as hard and fast as it does on the treadmill, and I am sweating even more. I wouldn’t have expected that doing weighted lunges or step-ups could be so aerobically intense. Even worse, I finish most of my workouts with weighted jump squats (to improve speed and vertical leap) that always threaten to empty my stomach onto the gym floor. At the end of my gym session I can barely stand, let alone ride a bike or elliptical. My days off are apparently crucial for allowing my body to recuperate and rebuild, so I am extremely wary of filling them with cardio sessions. I worry that doing so may actually cause me more harm than good.

My current routine has been vigorously attacking muscles that I had never bothered to exercise before. Presumably that is where all the pain comes from, and hopefully it will ease up soon, but eventually I expect that the new muscle will start arriving at the expense of my unsightly belly fats and not simply as an addition. I’m going to Hawaii at the end of the month and after that it will be coming up on pool-season here in Vegas. I need to get this bod ready for public consumption asap.