Week 22 on my Six Pack Quest had the challenge of trying to bounce off a posted weight gain from the previous week, combined with the challenge of trying to keep the meal plan in check with my weekend-long seminar.

I’m curious to see the results so let’s get to it!

Here’s the summary for the week.

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 44, 38, 55, and 43 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with improvements in time.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Continued on my own meal plan but my water drinking ritual suffered again this week.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Increase weights across the board this week and drop down into the lower rep range to accommodate a larger weight increase.
• Stick to my meal plan and get back into drinking 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

Let’s see what the scale says this week…
 

Analysis

Talk about unpredictable! Last week we had some weight gain, this week we probably saw the single largest weight loss in a single week. The weird part is, I didn’t really change anything. Oh well, I’m not going to complain about that. In fact, I’m pretty sure my scale was just in an extra-good mood this week so I wouldn’t be surprised to see that number a little higher next week.

Well, let’s not jinx anything so we’ll stop the analysis here.

Changes This Week

As mentioned in my goals, this week I’m going to change up the exercise routine a little.

The plan moving forward will be to increase the weight across the board and decrease the rep range as Vince recommends you do while working your way through the program.

Six Pack Quest, Week 21 was all about improving my workout times. In the last few weeks, I’ve been focusing on increasing my weights. In doing so, my times have started to slip, so the goal this week was to get my workout time down.

My winter hockey season is over now so although that’s not part of the program, I have effectively lost a day of exercise. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference.

There wasn’t much exciting this week so let’s get straight into the weekly report.

Here’s the Week 21 summary:

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 58, 45, 41, and 59 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with increased weights every session or improved time.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Continued on my own meal plan and drink 3L of water every day. I must admit that I did slip a couple days this week and didn’t quite make it to the full 3L of water.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Stick to the same plan by keeping the weights the same this week and working on improving workout times.
• Stick to my meal plan and continue to drink 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

Here are the measurables:
 

Analysis

Yikes! A slight gain in weight this week isn’t what I was hoping for. I’m not quite sure where that came from, but it happens. Unlike weeks in the past, I’m not that disappointed this time. It seems the numbers fluctuate every now and then so hopefully I just got on the scale on the wrong day. On the other hand, perhaps the loss of the extra day of exercise may have played a role in the weight gain…

Changes This Week

As far as exercising goes, I’m going to stick to the same plan this week. I have a weekend-long seminar this weekend so that will interfere with my meal plan so I’ll have to be extra careful with my food selection over the weekend.

Check back in next week and we’ll see how things go.

Now that I’ve been through 5 months of Six Pack Quest, I’m officially into weight numbers I haven’t seen in well over 10 years. And yes, even when I was working out for 4+ years straight, I didn’t make it this low back then.

In Month 5, I started the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program which I’m sure played some role in getting me over some big humps. Not only did I crack a new personal low weigh-in, but I also managed to get within 5 lbs (2.3 kg) of my overall weight goal of 175 lbs (79.4 kg). I have no doubt that I will be able to reach this goal now - it’s just a matter of time, patience and dedication to finish the race.

The Numbers

Here are the full official measurements after 20 weeks on Six Pack Quest (plus the warm-up week):

Pictures

My Before Pictures (Taken October 6, 2008)

After 4 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken November 10, 2008)

After 8 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken December 8, 2008)

After 12 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken January 5, 2009)

After 16 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken February 2, 2009)

After 20 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken March 9, 2009)

Analysis

Once again, the fat loss progress wasn’t that exciting this month. The progress has slowed down, but it should be expected when you’re trying to lose the last few pounds. Having come a long way, I’m actually pretty pleased with where I have ended up.

As I lose more and more fat, the abs are slowly (read, “VERY SLOWLY”) starting to show. Again, these pictures aren’t the greatest, but there is some noticable difference from last month. Now I just have to stick to it and cross the finish line!

Month 5 Review

In Month 5 I started the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program. This was a great change of pace and gave some new life to my workouts. Furthermore, the new program helped kick-start the numbers into moving back in the right direction and that was shown by cracking the 180 lbs (81.6 kg) mark for the first time for over 10 years!

Month 5 also saw some new changes in how I do things. The most major change was definitely letting go of the grocery lists and meal plan. As the month progressed, I have been quite successful at creating my own shopping lists and preparing healthy meals. So, although I don’t follow a meal plan as I did before, I have taken what I learned and have started applying it to everyday life. Admitedly, I did have a few days where I “fell off the wagon” so to speak where I cheated a little on my meals. Personally, I don’t think that’s too bad considering I’m not trying to enter into any sort of fitness competition. Furthermore, you can’t be a slave to your program all the time or you’ll begin to hate it so a little cheating is ok here and there but ONLY IF it is actually “here and there” and not more often than not!

After complaining about it for a couple months now, I think my body has finally gotten used to drinking 3L of water each day - either that or I’ve gotten used to going that frequently! While I am still going to the bathroom quite regularly, it’s not as frequent as it was when I first started. Thank god because that was ridiculous!

Changes For Month 6

Month 6 is the last month to reach my goal of getting six pack abs in six months. While I highly doubt I’ll have abs ready for a photo shoot for Men’s Health magazine, the final results should be pleasing. That said, I still want to push as hard as I can to get to my 175 lbs (79.4 kg) weight goal.

So, here are my goals for this month:

1. Push extra hard in the gym this month and make sure there is progress each workout.
2. Continue creating my own grocery lists and eating according to my own healthy meal plans.

That’s it for now. Check back again for my weekly posts and in a month’s time for the next batch of pictures.

I can’t believe I’ve managed to continue blogging my exercise progress for 20 consecutive weeks now. This Six Pack Quest idea has been quite successful. The weight loss is awesome and the changes to my body feel incredible.

This was a good week as far as motivation goes. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I don’t always look forward to working out. In fact, more often than not, I usually would rather not workout. But in the end, I have yet to EVER have a workout and leave the gym thinking “wow, I wish I didn’t do that!” Personally, I never regret working out, but I always regret NOT working out!

As far as the workouts go, I continued increasing my weights again to reach the failure point, but still managed to finish my sets. I have noticed the workout time increasing, so this coming week I will focus on getting that time back down before increasing my weights again.

Here’s the summary for Week 20:

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 41, 59, 51, and 42 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with gains in reps or weight every session.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Continued on my own meal plan and drink 3L of water every day.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Keep the weights the same this week and work on improving workout times.
• Stick to my meal plan and continue to drink 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

Ok, let’s take a look and see what the scale says this week:
 

Analysis

I think the most fun I’m having right now is breaking new ground each week. I cracked the 180 lbs (81.6 kg) barrier this week for the first time since… I don’t even remember! I’m now only 4.8 lbs (2.2 kg) away from my original goal and I have one more month to do it.

The weight loss this week was lower than desired so that means it’s time to put things on “high alert” again this week. Ideally, I’d be happy to be losing close to 1 lbs (0.5 kg) each week at this stage of the game. I did “cheat” a little this week and a Tim Horton’s donut on Friday and had some french fries on Saturday so maybe that’s to blame.

Changes This Week

I’m not sure if those 2 small “cheating” episodes are responsible for the slow progress last week or not, but this week I’m going to be extra careful and see if I can get the weight loss going again.

Stay tuned later this week for the Month 5 post which will include another set of pictures! The pictures and measurements have been taken so I’ll get that up as soon as I can.

Week 19 of my Six Pack Quest was quite motivating. Failing to reach my failure points in the first 2 weeks on the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program made me that much more determined to discover them this week.

Unfortunately, despite increases across the board for all exercises, I was STILL able to complete the entire routine. On the bright side, I’m obviously getting much stronger and this upcoming week will see many weight increases again.

Also, this was my first week away from the meal plan. I created my own shopping list and made my own meals based on what I felt like having. Of course, I would stick to the lessons I learned about proper healthy eating in the first 18 weeks so it wasn’t that much of a deviation. I think I said it best last week when I described it as “taking off the training wheels.”

Here’s the Week 19 recap:

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 48, 55, 44, and 39 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with gains in reps or weight every session.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Managed to create my own meal plan and drink 3L of water every day.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Keep increasing weights on all exercises to reach my “failure” point.
• Stick to my meal plan and continue to drink 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

This is where the fun part starts. Let’s see if my slight change of how I eat now affected the numbers on the scale…
 

Analysis

Sweet! I’m on my own meal plan now and I’ve managed to continue losing weight. This is quite an encouraging sign, but only results over time will tell if I’m successfully creating my own weekly meal plans.

Reaching 180 lbs (81.6 kg) is a new all-time low for me. I can’t honestly remember the last time I stepped on the scale to see a number this low. It was probably around the time I left home to go to university about 14 years ago. Boy, it feels really good right now!

When I first set out on this Six Pack Quest back in October, I dreamed of getting down to 175 lbs (79.3 kg). I set this as my goal, thinking I should be quite lean at that weight. Now that I’m only 5 lbs (2.3 kg) away, I think I’m going to have to go lower to lean out enough to have six pack abs. We’ll soon see!

Changes This Week

Well, everything is going great again so there’s no need for changes this week. I’ll continue on the road I’m on right now and we’ll see how the progress goes next week.

I managed to keep my 2nd week on the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program just as challenging as the first by increasing my weights across the board to try reach that “failure” point. Although I increased a lot of weights, I was still able to complete the workouts. That can only mean one thing: keep increasing weights!

Here’s a quick recap of Week 18:

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 59, 42, 42, and 53 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with gains in reps or weight every session.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Managed to stick to the meal plan and drink 3L of water every day.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Continue to increase the weight on many exercises so I can discover my “failure” point.
• Stick to my meal plan and continue to drink 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

I’m not sure what to expect this week on the scale, but let’s see what the scale has to say about my performance this week on Six Pack Quest…
 

Analysis

Phew! I’m back on the weight loss track and with a bit of luck, next week I should be able to reach a new all time low again. The weight is definitely getting tougher to lose; however, let’s also keep in mind that I’ve totally cut out cardio from my routine. And let me be honest with you, I’m really glad I have. I find cardio extremely boring. Regardless of how challenging I make it, I just don’t enjoy it at all.

The only other interesting thing I notice about these numbers is that although my weight went down 0.4 lbs (0.2 kg), I managed to lose 0.5 lbs (0.2 kg) in fat. This means that all the weight I lost on the week was fat and in fact, I managed to lose an extra 0.1 lbs (0.05 kg) somewhere which could have only been replaced by muscle gain. Sure, it’s nothing to get excited about, but a good thing no less!

Changes This Week

Since I’m losing weight again, there’s no need to make any changes but I’m in the mood to mix things up a little this week. This week I’m going to “take off the training wheels” and stop following the meal plan as closely as I have. Instead, I’m going to start creating my own meals and my own shopping lists. Of course I’m going to stick to 2000 calories per day by eating the right proportions of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, but since my goal is to make this part of my natural lifestyle, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to print off shopping lists and meal plans for the rest of my life.

I believe that by making my shopping and eating more “natural” it will enable me to stick to this healthy way of eating longer term. I will continue to log the time of day that I will be having my meals. So effectively, what I’m doing is cutting out the need to rely on the shopping lists and meal plans on a daily basis. Instead, I will create my own shopping list and create meals based on what I have learned during my first 18 weeks on the program.

This should also make for a more exciting results week next week. Besides, “learning only happens when it results in a change of behaviour” so this will be a test to see what I have learned since starting my Six Pack Quest.

It’s amazing what a week of rest and a change in programs can do for your motivation. This week was my first week on the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program and I had renewed motivation to get back into the gym.

The 4 Day program is quite different and it’s no surprise that it’s quite challenging. The program consists of 3 different routines that you rotate throughout the 4 day week. So this week I started with Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and finished off with Day 1 again. Next week I will start with Day 2, then move on to Day 3, back to Day 1, and finish off the week with Day 2. Get it? In other words, every week you do all 3 workouts and you also do one of the workouts twice.

I managed to complete the workouts; however, I have to figure out what weights to start with to really get into the groove. This is normal when starting a new program, so the trick will be trying to find out the right weights ASAP. The other thing to note is that the program advances you to triplex sets (doing 3 different exercises back-to-back-to-back) now so getting set up so you can keep the pace going took me some extra time. Again, this should be expected and will be improved as I work my way through the program.

All in all, the new program feels like a great fresh new start. The added day of exercise will take a bit of getting used to, but even a creature of habit such as myself should be able to incorporate it into my weekly routine without much problem. The main problem is usually just between our ears so it’s just a matter of just doing it and not listening to your brain’s excuses!

Workout Statistics

• Completed 4 weight training workouts this week.
• Workouts took 43, 60, 48, and 37 minutes to complete.

Notable Accomplishments

• Completed all 4 workouts with gains in reps or weight every session.
• I kept my exercise commitment again this week.
• Managed to stick to the meal plan and drink 3L of water every day.
• Started the 4 Day Intermediate Metabolic Extreme 16 Week Program.

Goals For Next Week

• Complete all 4 weight training sessions.
• Increase the weight on many exercises so I can figure out where my “failure” point is so that I can ensure I’m pushing myself with every workout.
• Stick to my meal plan and continue to drink 3L of water every day.

The Numbers

Let’s see what the scale has to say about my first week on this new program on my Six Pack Quest…
 

Analysis

Isn’t that funny? Last week I took a week off and somehow managed to lose 1.6 lbs (0.7 kg) and this week when I get back in the gym I gain half of it back. Oh well, it’s not a big deal as I’m still below the numbers posted after Week 16.

It has probably been well over 10 years since I last weighed-in this low so I’m feeling great about this program now. I’m feeling leaner and leaner as the weeks go by even though the numbers aren’t necessarily proving that on the scale. On the other hand, the monthly posts which include my measurements have been showing exactly that.

Recently I’ve started to have doubts with my scale as far as it’s ability to measure body fat goes. I’m not quite convinced that I’m actually at 24.4% body fat right now. I think it should be lower, so I’m going to look into some other ways to measure body fat and see what kind of numbers I come up with.

Changes This Week

I’m going to keep the program going as planned for now. Despite the posted weight gain, I’m not overly concerned. Again, over the last couple weeks, I’m still down so I don’t see reason to look for changes yet. Furthermore, until I completely get in the groove with the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program, I’m not going to worry about it much. I just have to make sure I find that groove quick though as I don’t want to be wasting time!

After having a “crappy” last week on the 3 Day Metabolic Boost Program in my Six Pack Quest, I decided to take a break this week and let the body recover a little.

I’m not sure what to expect this week, but let’s see what happened on the scale. These will be my starting numbers for the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program:

The Numbers

Analysis

Well that’s a pleasant way to start the week! I’m not quite sure how or why that happened, but I’m not going to complain. There’s not much to analyze this week since it was just a week off, so let’s get right into the changes for this week.

Changes This Week

This week is going to be the start of the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program so that’s the exercise change for the week, not to mention the next 16 weeks!

The diet will also remain the same; however I started cutting off my dinner time a lot earlier. Previously, I was avoiding eating anything for 3 hours before I went to bed. During this rest week, I experimented with not eating anything for 5 hours before I went to bed. Well, the results above show it didn’t do any harm and it probably helped so I’m going to try stick to that moving forward.

This is just a quick post outlining the changes in what you can expect for the next 16 Weeks as far as the reporting of my Six Pack Quest progress goes.

Here are my commitments to you during the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program:

1. A weekly results post, as you have seen in the past, posted every Monday.
2. A summarized version of the workout report which will now be combined in the weekly results post. This means that there will no longer be a separate weekly workout report.
3. A monthly results post that will include photos and full-body measurements. This will be posted a few days after every 4th week.

Basically everything remains the same but I’m just combining the workout report with the results post.

I’m also going to experiment with something I’m going to call “bullet blogging” (I just made that name up). Rather writing full sentences and paragraphs, I’ll probably start writing a lot more of my posts in point form. The idea is to help the reader pull out the main points of the article much quicker and save them the time of reading the “fluff” of traditional writing. Again, this idea of “bullet blogging” is just an experiment so we’ll see how it works out. I’d love to hear your feedback.

After 4 months on Six Pack Quest, I have to say that I feel as though I may be in the best shape of my life. The “best shape of my life” is something tough to measure, but the strength and endurance gains I have realized in these 16 weeks have never come so quick for me. This should probably be of no surprise since I’m finally eating healthy meals every day and have cut everything out of my diet that works against my goals.

Month 4 provided some challenges which I managed to deal with quite successfully. The two main challenges were bouncing back after a week of weight gain and the challenge of keeping up my workouts despite a travel schedule. Both times, I managed to make it through without sacrificing my exercise commitments.

Let’s see how things “measured up” this month…

The Numbers

Here are the full official measurements after 16 weeks on Six Pack Quest (plus the warm-up week):

Pictures

My Before Pictures (Taken October 6, 2008)

After 4 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken November 10, 2008)

After 8 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken December 8, 2008)

After 12 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken January 5, 2009)

After 16 Weeks on Six Pack Quest (Taken February 2, 2009)

Analysis

The belly fat continues to melt away! The 3 lbs (1.4 kg) loss on the month wasn’t much in terms of weight loss, but the results are starting to appear slightly more dramatically.

I’ll be the first to admit that these aren’t exactly the greatest pictures in terms of photo quality so it’s really tough to analyze the pictures. From what we can see on the photos, the love handles went down again this month (yay!) and the fat around my mid-section is melting away and this is verified by the measurements above.

If you look hard enough at the front shot, you’ll see I’m starting to get a couple cuts down the sides of my abs (or maybe it’s just be dreaming!). But seriously, if you can take my word for it, it’s more visible in person than on the photos. This is actually quite exciting for me as I had to workout for years to get to THIS level previously. And let’s be honest, these photos should not be indicative of someone working out for years. Therefore, not only am I making great progress quickly, but if I continue, there should be no reason why I can’t reach my goal of getting six pack abs.

Month 4 Review

Month 4 was another interesting month. The numbers weren’t anything exciting; however the differences all over my body are a lot more noticeable. After 4 months of Six Pack Quest I continue to feel better and better as the weeks go by. I VERY RARELY crave junk food now and my meal plan now feels like a part of normal life for me now. The program is no longer a struggle and I’m really glad I made this commitment to myself and I definitely don’t regret the sacrifices I’ve had to make as far as dietary requirements.

The other interesting thing this month was my weekend trip to LA where I had 2 morning workouts with Vince DelMonte himself. One thing I haven’t mentioned about that workout is something I observed about how Vince runs his workouts. He uses a watch to time his breaks between sets and I found this was a great way to keep up the intensity. I know Vince has talked about this before and it may seem obvious, but having experienced it first hand for the first time, I must say that it’s a lot more effective than I thought it would be! To be completely honest, I actually feel pretty dumb for not taking this advice a long time ago! I have been monitoring my overall workout times but I really got to liking the idea of keeping my eye on the clock during breaks. I think I’m going to go out and buy myself a sport watch for this reason.

I also continued my “water drinking ritual” that ensures I drink that 3L of water every day. I managed to keep that up all month again. Surprisingly, my body hasn’t adjusted to it yet and I STILL keep going back and forth to the bathroom!

Changes For Month 5

Month 5 is the start of something new. This month I’m going to start the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program. Furthermore, I’m going to cut the cardio and abs session back out and see how the body reacts to the new 4 Day program. I’m hoping the addition of the extra day will eliminate the need for the extended cardio workouts to keep my progress going.

Here are my goals for this month:

1. Get used to the additional day of working out.
2. Build on the momentum and lessons I learned in the 3 Day Metabolic Boost Program by continuing to journal my progress and pushing for a better performance with each and every workout.

Well, that’s a wrap for the 3 Day Metabolic Boost Program. After having completed 16 weeks of Vince DelMonte’s Six Pack Quest, I couldn’t recommend this program more to anyone who’s serious about getting into the best shape of their life.

I fell 0.3 lbs (0.1 kg) short of reaching a personal “all time low weight” but I have no doubt that I will break into that new territory early in Month 5. As mentioned previously, I’m going to take a week off before starting the 4 Day Metabolic Extreme Program but then it’s back to business as usual starting the week of February 9th.