Fitness Update: Cookie Madness, Old Rotator Cuffs, And Progress

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Time for another titillating fitness update. I last posted at the end of September. Since then, I’ve been hitting it hard at the gym. Maybe too hard…

Table of Contents

Obsessed

When I get obsessed with something, I get obsessed. My obsession now is fitness. Fitness is the one thing I should have been obsessed with all along, but I never figured out how to exercise properly:

I have strength trained off and on most of my adult life with little change. It turns out that if you don’t go really hard and don’t eat protein, you don’t get results . When you don’t see results, you give up.
I once trained for and ran a half-marathon. I managed to put on bad weight during the course of this. It turns out that if you eat like crap, it’s easy to eat more calories than you burn, even if you run for hours every day.

It’s my own, stubborn-ass fault. I should have hired a trainer or read better books. Better late than never. And the good news is that while I’m late to the game, I’m not too late because I’ve had success.

Better Late Than Never

I already talked about my routine here, so won’t go into that again. Since my last post, I have tweaked one part of my routine. In a session, I keep track of my total number of pull ups and total weight bench pressed. I try to do more every session.

First, the photos:

I don’t see much change from September to now (middle and last photos respectively). Part of this could be my screwed up shoulder.

I usually sleep on my left side. Even though there was no pressure on it, my right shoulder started giving me fits in the night. The pain was enough to wake me up multiple times. (Funny enough, the shoulder never hurts when I’m working out. I can do pull ups and bench presses all day long with no pain.)

I went to the doctor in November. He told me that I am overworking it and that I also have minor osteoarthritis. He advised me to load up on Advil and take two weeks off. I did this and then gradually started my workouts again. Because I’ve been really careful and getting back into it slowly, I’m still not back to where I was before my injury.

The hardest part of the whole deal is learning how to sleep on my back. After being a side-sleeper for decades, this is no easy task. I’m slowly getting used to it, but it hasn’t been fun.

The other battle is desserts. I have a sweet tooth and the holiday season is filled with pies and cookies. I struggle around desserts, but knowing I had to go for a body composition test at the end of December made me behave a little bit better.

And the numbers from the test tell a better a story than the photos:

So, in the past 3 months, I’ve put on 5.3 pounds of muscle and lost a little fat. Yay!

If the photos don’t show much, what’s going on? Here is what I think it is: After I injured my shoulder, I quit doing pull ups and chest exercises, but ramped up my leg workouts. I’m guessing that most of my gains came from there.

I don’t like that I’m still close to 20% body fat. When I’ve been leaner, my resting heart rate and blood pressure are lower. In January, I’m going to back off on the calories and ramp up my zone 2 workouts to trim down. I’m still going to keep up the weight training, but building mass won’t be my goal.

One question you may ask is this:

Why the hell are you doing this?

Three reasons:

Having strength is important going into old age: If I can put on a little muscle now, I’ll be less likely to break my hip or have other injuries. I want to be resilient.
It’s now or never: I’m 51. It doesn’t get any easier. Joints get old. Hormones diminish.
Experiment: I just wanted to see if I could still change up my body at this age. I never believed that I could when I was younger, so I’m shocked that I’m seeing results now.

Writing about this publicly (the photos) feels strange. But perhaps it will help or inspire some of you. If you have any questions, hit me up!

In the meantime, Happy New Year everyone.

I hope 2025 is your best year yet!

Go get it!