The last day has finally arrived! The typical schedule was re-arranged. Instead of doing my kettlebell workout in the morning, I decided to do it in the afternoon. This was partly due to maximizing my time working but also to go back to the normal routine that has worked for me since I started losing weight in the early months of 2018.
Morning Weigh-In
Now, these results are more in line with my expectations. Doing the math, from Day 1 to Day 5, a total of 6.8 pounds were lost. Although I didn’t hit my 10-pound goal, this drop is still very encouraging. Yes, another bathroom trip occurred which certainly throws an unexpected (and uncontrollable) variable into the mix.
In hindsight, even though my overall goal probably wasn’t all that realistic, it still pushed me to try my very best in achieving it. Maybe some more daily exercising and staying strictly on Paleo would have made it a success. I’m still pretty happy about the progress, especially after being essentially stuck for a few days at 199 lbs.
Breakfast & Lunch
Keeping busy with work and not doing the kettlebell workout in the morning made reaching 2 pm that much easier during this week of intermittent fasting. Although 5 days isn’t a very large sample size, I think I can get similar results with my prior eating schedule and working out in the afternoon. My wife, on the other hand, hasn’t exercised in a while and is getting phenomenal results with intermittent fasting. I suppose everyone reacts differently to it!
Pistachio Cherry Smoothie
For this last day, my wife made this pistachio cherry smoothie. It pretty much contains just said items plus a couple of other minor ingredients. It’s thick, filling, and perhaps my 2nd favorite smoothie behind the coffee chocolate one.
Garden Salad
As I’ve mentioned before, having the salad every day for lunch doesn’t make for interesting blogging. However, it’s adequate sustenance and is still very enjoyable. Even after this challenge, I plan on continuing to make these salads a staple of my daily lunches. At least until I reach my goal weight.
Snack
Some more random candy comprised the last snack of this challenge. This small portion pretty much finished the little leftover candy there was from my wedding goodie bag. Ironically, once this challenge is over I’ll most likely go back to my healthy snacks like nuts and fruit.
Kettlebell Workout & Dinner
Stack 52 Random Exercise Card Kettlebell Workout
Since today’s kettlebell workout is being done in the afternoon, I figured I would go back to my old routine by doing random kettlebell exercises. All that is involved is shuffling the Stack 52 deck and flipping over 1 card at a time during this 20-minute session.
I was able to do 16 cards. I doubled the number of reps indicated on each card effectively performing 2 sets per card. The background color for each represents the muscle group or beneficial area worked. For instance, yellow cards will work the leg muscles primarily. Cards that have red will target your abs. Doing this randomly ensures that no workout will be exactly the same.
The difficulty of each exercise varies from beginner, intermediate and advanced. In some cases, a card can fall on each of these difficulty levels, depending on what size kettlebell you use. Each description is simple enough to follow, but in case it doesn’t fully make sense, a QR code leads to a video demonstration of that exercise.
Egg Roll in a Bowl
It’s fitting that the final dinner of this challenge was also the first dinner way back on Monday. No, we didn’t make another batch. We just finally got around to having the leftovers from that first night. The Egg Roll in a Bowl keeps well in the fridge, even several days after the fact.
Evening Bike Exercising & Dessert
The 334 calories burned are roughly the same as the past couple of nights. After a week of biking at night, I’m looking forward to making it an optional exercise activity instead of mandatory. Even though it isn’t as exhausting and more than likely burns many fewer calories in 30 minutes than kettlebell exercises do in 20 minutes, it still felt like a chore after a long busy day. It might be easier mentally to do a 10-minute kettlebell session at night if I really wanted to keep up the pace.
Dessert
This makes the 2nd night in a row for having ice cream. If you’ve been keeping track it’s just been this and the almond butter cups (with eggnog) throughout this challenge. Not a whole lot of diversity, but then again, many of the other meals have been repeated as well. And really, who can complain about ice cream?
Wrapping Up Day 5
Wrap it up and put a bow on it, this challenge is done! No, I didn’t lose 10 pounds. In fact, my final weight (tallied the morning after the last challenge day) was 197.6. That is slightly up from the day 5 morning weigh-in. The total weight loss is now at 6.1 pounds. Still not too shabby!
Am I disappointed at not reaching my goal? Yes. I think any time you set a challenge, you put in the best effort possible to pass it. I think I’ve done that, despite not being 100% strict on my diet. For the record, I don’t think I would have passed even if I were doing 100% Paleo. Although I technically failed, I still lost some weight quicker than I would have without this challenge. So to say nothing came of this wouldn’t be true!
