There are 4 weeks left in the Kombat Arts 9 week challenge. I started on April 23rd and over the last 5 weeks, I’ve cut 15 pounds, increased the number of push ups I can do from 24 to 31 and gone from barely being able to hold myself up on the pull up bar to almost being able to do a full pull up. I’m not sure how much my broad jump or box squats have improved, but I’ll set something up soon to get some numbers on those. I know 15 pounds might seem like too much, too quickly, but some of that was vacation bloat / retained water

I’m going to push myself really hard over the next 4 weeks and I’m going to track everything religiously. I’m good at eyeballing portion sizes and estimating calorie counts, but it’s been a while since I’ve really tracked what I’m eating. I did it for a week once a little while after I started and it was both revealing and educational. This time I’m going to track everything I eat for the remainder of the challenge.

I’m shooting for around 2000-2300 calories a day and about 200-230 grams of protein a day. I used a Metabolic Rate calculator and activity included, my caloric needs are about 3300 per day - so a deficit of about 1000 calories which should equal close to 2 pounds of weight loss per week. I still have a good amount of body fat to lose so I’m comfortable with a bigger deficit for now, but when I go under 200 pounds, I’ll likely have to drop the deficit to 500. If I’ve figured it out properly and stick to it, I should finish the 4 weeks at about 215, which was what I wanted to get down to over the course of the challenge. Unfortunately the human body isn’t quite that simple, so who knows where I’ll actually end up.

I’m going to track my workouts better too and am going to shoot for the following daily minimums:

100 Push Ups
20 Pull Ups / Negatives
10 Chin Ups
40 Squats
20 Squat Jumps
50 Crunches
20 Oblique Crunches (each side)
20 Leg Raises

I’ll count anything done at class towards these totals and make up the rest as necessary.

The last thing I’m going to really work on is my sleeping habits. I typically sleep 5-6 hours a night and I’ve read enough to know that this is hurting my progress. I’m going to try very hard to get 7-8 hours a night of solid sleep. It will be interesting to see how much progress I make this month - with these changes to my habits and consistency, it should be my best month ever. I’m looking forward to it!