Weight matters

Over the past few years, I've tried to get back into shape.  Up through junior year at The Citadel, I was in quite good physical shape, although probably not great swimming shape.  After that summer, though, I started to gain some weight, so tried to develop new forms of exercise.  I tried running, and then hurt my left ankle, which stopped me from running more than the semesterly PT test at school.  The pool at school was out of the picture, given my class schedule, the crappy pool hours, and the horrific shape its piping and overall level of maintenance was in.

After I graduated in August 2009, I got a full time job and started taking evening classes for my MBA.  The ridiculously high level of stress that produced, and the lack of time to exercise, led me to start packing on the pounds.  Towards the end of the MBA program in fall 2010, I started running and working out during my lunch breaks at work.  That helped out a lot through this past spring, when work started ramping up.

Since stopping swimming in summer 2005, I've put on a substantial amount of weight, the majority of which has been muscle, at least until relatively recently. I weighed about 145 when I stopped swimming and was a complete beanpole.  Freshman year at The Citadel saw my weight go down as low as 135 in the fall semester, then I started packing muscle on and finished the year back at 145.  Sophomore year I started to pack on a lot of muscle and hit 165.  Junior year, more muscle and some padding, and hit between 170-175.  Senior year I stayed around 175.  The first year after graduation, when I wasn't exercising my weight went up to about 185.  The next six months, when I was running and working out, I dropped a belt size and kept my weight constant, so I presume it was muscle mass that I added.  Comparing pictures of me back in highschool and me now, I have substantially bulked up, with my chest and shoulders being a lot wider and thicker than they were back then, same with my thighs and arms.  The area between my thighs and my ribcage, though, has bulked up in a *cough, cough* less pleasing way.

Since April/May of this year, though, work, a move from Charleston to Alexandria, and a lack of a convenient workout facility like I had in Charleston at work have mostly prevented me from working out like I'd like to.  Many days, I don't get home from work until 7:00 or later, and I'm too exhausted from work by that point to workout afterwards.  So, that leads me to where I am now.  Provided my scale is working properly (with this scale, that's an iffy proposition), as of yesterday, I weighed 198.2. 

Over the last month, I've been trying to come up with an achievable workout regimen that I could implement about now.

...To be continued...