Giving free weights training another try out at age 68.
I think of my series of minor strokes now as a huge wake up call : one that could have killed me and didn’t (the strokes not the subsequent wake up call). Although I can honestly say that the effects of those strokes are a total PITA but in a different way of looking at life they were a bit of a blessing in disguise as they forced me to realize how poor my metabolic health was ; strokes plus overweight almost to the point of obesity and some blood numbers going the wrong way.
Eight months ago I started on my grand personal project to regain as much of my health as I could and at first I mainly concentrated on weight loss which was the most obvious metric to use ; I know better now. As I write i;m some 37 pounds plus small change lighter than when I started and more importantly around 4-5 inches smaller around the waist. I had a trying on session of the new clothes I bought but never used and I find that i’m at least a clothes size down and i’m running out of belt notches.
Things were going great : although i’m not enthusiastic about the numbers on the bathroom scales I was glad to see my actual weight coming down as fast as it was. Then, just after our summer holiday my usual 2 Kg per month weight loss seemed to hit a brick wall and plateau’d out for the next 2 months. For sure it was a hot two months and I can maybe put a lot down to water retention but even so I may have hit a temporary stall or weight plateau point. It might be that my actual weight loss has reduced even while the actual volume of fat on my body has definitely reduced. Iv’e had many long walking thinks while I try to work out what has gone amiss and there may be a couple of dietary causes but nothing to suggest a change of 2 Kg per month to nothing for 2 months.
Iv’e long suspected that my success with weight loss and reduction of visceral fat so far has been mainly down to the changes I made with my diet and the reduction in weight loss may just demonstrate that iv’e been a bit slack and relaxed with that recently. My exercise, such as it is, I feel is of secondary importance although it has contributed in some way – perhaps in my need for anti hypertensives and the reduction of my Q risk (cardiac risk). Iv’e tried a few times to add a simple weights routine to my exercise as it was free weights training in the past that got me to my lightest, fittest and healthiest state although I found it difficult to sustain that level of training which is why I had to leave it behind. I kick myself now because I would be so much further on and much less likely to end up as I have but : could have should have and all that jazz.
If my strokes were a great kick up the bum then it feels as though my weight loss stall is a second one. There’s a few things that iv’e had to tweak about my diet but I have an inkling that I need to add some daily resistance training ; I almost added it into my routine entirely outside my usual routine but I keep coming across mention of other people that seem to be doing everything just about right but their progress stalls until they start pressing weights.
Having tried and failed with free weights twice this year I was a bit reluctant to try again to make free weights a regular part of my routine but just before our early Autumn break I may have come up with a routine that works. I think that my attempts this year were still based on the knowledge I had before my strokes : back then I was used to the idea of going hard and heavy or just going home – my attitude then was that I only did the big compound exercises with a few accessory moves thrown in or nothing at all. This time around iv’e finally had to accept how my strokes have affected my ability to work with free weights and come up with exercises and solutions that work for me. What I really need right now is a personal trainer that has experience of working with clients that have had strokes : I can tell you that there aren’t many of those around because iv’e looked.
