Starting 12-Week Fitness Challenge – Going for a Summer Bod

Last Updated on March 11, 2024 by Michael Brockbank

Perhaps the most difficult part of losing weight and starting a fitness journey is being in the right headspace. If you’re not feeling it for any reason, you’ll wind up restarting or giving up. It’s your mentality that makes the biggest difference.

For instance, this is my fourth attempt in a row for my 12-week fitness challenge, and I only managed to maintain each of them for a few days. The first few were for physical issues. This last one was more of wallowing in a ton of negative thoughts.

After spending the weekend working on popping my head out of my ass, I think I am ready to give this one final shot. And with the exception of going to Utah for a long-awaited vacation with family, I am going to keep the entire challenge in the green.

I’ll explain more about that in a moment.

Your Mentality Makes All the Difference

It’s not enough to simply put a plan into place. Without action, no goal is achievable. But it’s not always easy to get your head in the game, especially when you have an eating disorder.

In my case, I am a stress eater. And over the past six months, I’ve been under a constant barrage of events that make it very difficult to stay positive. It’s getting to the point where a lot of my tricks for relaxation aren’t working as well as they had in the past.

A big part of the problem lately has been the fact that I haven’t been having much fun. Usually, I am pretty good at gamifying just about everything. But the weight on my shoulders today is tapping all of that positive energy.

After taking a long, hard look at my life and career over the weekend, I think I’m finally on a better track. It’s not going to be an overnight explosion of positivity, but I feel I might be moving in the right direction.

The Challenge This Time Around

The biggest challenge I face is making sure that I’m committed to this goal, as well as the ones I make as a writer/author. I haven’t been the most focused individual this year, and a lot of things are starting to suffer because of it.

The sad part is that I know I am completely capable of achieving every goal I set. Lately, it’s just been very difficult to get myself into the right frame of mind to crush them.

But I’m working on it, and as I’ve said many times before, I refuse to give up…ever.

Starting Weight: 235.2 lbs

I am starting this time around at 235.2 pounds. That’s about two pounds lower than when I tried to start this thing last week, but it’s still 20 pounds more than when I wanted to start the fitness challenge at the beginning of the year.

It’s still a bit of a battle to keep myself focused on my goals, and I’m not entirely sure why. I come out of the gate strong, but then pitter out quite quickly. Perhaps a big part of that is because of how I feel tethered to my house all day every day.

The Exercise

For this fitness challenge, I am maintaining my routine schedule of going to the gym. It’s now a habit for me to head out to Planet Fitness every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There, I spend between 50 and 60 minutes doing various exercises. If it’s incredibly busy, sometimes I’ll exchange weight machine time for walking on the treadmill.

Then, the plan is to get more time being physical in a variety of ways. This often includes Oculus and Kinect time playing various games that work up a sweat. Something else I am getting back into the habit of doing is taking my walk breaks between work projects. For one thing, I have a vitamin D deficiency and the walks in the sun make a world of difference for my psoriasis.

On a good day, I should be able to hit 12,500 steps through various activities. So, that’s going to be something to keep an eye on overall.

The Diet Plan

I am sticking with my Net 600 Calorie diet for this challenge. Even after hitting my goal weight, the diet should still make a huge impact on my body fat percentage. That’s because this particular diet focuses on burning twice as many calories as I consume.

How it works is that I set a goal for 600 calories in MyFitnessPal. Then, my physical activity recorded from my Fitbit adjusts how many calories I can eat. This means that I am working on “keeping the calories green” according to the data in MyFitnessPal after those adjustments.

Essentially, the more active I am, the more I can eat. And if I want those extra goodies, I’ll need to “pay” for them. For instance, a 20-minute walk usually burns enough to have a medium slice of pepperoni pizza.

I am also being more mindful of protein and carb intake. According to how much protein you should eat in a day, I am grossly under the minimum. That probably explains why I am so exhausted all the time. Well, outside of having a crappy bed and difficulty sleeping at night.

Accountability of Sorts

This time around, I’m going to try to remember to add a bit of accountability. I’ve mentioned this before, but I would really like to use social media to keep me motivated. The problem is that I often forget what I want to post until I am just about to head to bed.

I think I’m going to try to keep myself motivated by helping my followers stay motivated. So, perhaps I’ll share what I eat throughout the day, my daily workouts, and perhaps a few insights at the end of the night.

It won’t be anything fancy, mind you. Maybe a few pics on Instagram or sharing things on Twitter and Facebook. I would love to make more YouTube videos, but I just don’t have the time to do that if I maintain my normal work schedule. Still, a Short here and there might help me keep my head in the game.

Again, as long as I remember. That’s the biggest hurdle when it comes to sharing my weight loss journey on social media…memory.

I would take some Ginko Biloba, but I would just forget to take it.

New V Shred Commercial Triggers Me

There’s a new V Shred commercial that pops up on YouTube featuring a guy over 40 peddling the defunct and disproven products he hawks. I guess this one kind of lit a fire under me as now V Shred is targeting my age group.

It’s the fact that V Shred shares misinformation and partial truths based on studies performed on rats that gets my goat. Not to mention the slew of unsubstantiated claims regarding health and fitness.

I hate when “influencers” prey on desperate people just to make a buck.

In any case, this latest commercial set me off slightly – throwing gas onto the small fire, so to speak. And I would love nothing more than to call out V Shred and demonstrate what a man at 48 can do without his crap products.

As Al Bundy would say…

Getting Out of the House!

I found that getting out of the house more often vastly improves my mental state. Simply going to American Furniture Warehouse for a couple of hours this weekend put me in a much better mood.

Since the weather is starting to warm, perhaps I can get back into the habit of walking around the lake in the afternoons. It’s only a couple of blocks from the house, and I enjoy the scenery. I’m not sure why I stopped going to the lake in the first place.

The bottom line is that I need to get out more and separate myself from the home office. Even if that means spending an hour or two in the garden, which I love to do when the weather is good, I need to get out.

Keep Looking Forward!

I’m going to do my best to keep this challenge going. That begins by doing what I can to improve my mental state. I’m feeling pretty good today, but I also said that the last few times I attempted this challenge.

I’m working on keeping myself psyched up to build a summer bod. I would still like to see what I look like with abs just out of pure curiosity. Regardless of the physical goals, I need to work harder on keeping my head straight.

Let’s see if I can make it happen this time.

About Author

Michael Brockbank

Since 2015, Michael has put in the effort to lose more than 80 pounds by gamifying fitness and eating proper portion sizes. He conducts extensive research into various health and fitness products to provide the best answers possible according to his own experience and knowledge.

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