How To Get Ripped Abs Challenge – Day 2
Today is end of day #2 of my How to Get Ripped Abs challenge. The first thing I can say is that when I woke up I was very sore from my Day #1 workout. I can honestly say that every single muscle in my body was sore including my neck and I didn’t do any direct neck exercises. It’s amazing how the exercises are put together so that they work every primary muscle and all of the stabilizers at the same time. The one thing I forgot to do at the end of the workout was the stretching routine. I’m going to make sure that I include this from now on. The stretching that is included in the workout really helps to loosen up the hamstrings, lower back, and glutes which are the tightest muscles in most people. When these muscles are tight it can cause lower back strain and some pain so it’s a good idea for quicker recovery and overall health to do your stretching.
It’s about 10:30pm as I write this on day #2 of the How to Get Ripped Abs challenge and I can already feel the fat loss. One thing that is immediately noticed is the excess water being flushed out of my system from eating such clean and healthy foods. When you eat processed foods your body tends to hold a lot more excess water. It’s important to drink a lot of water so that all the toxins can start flushing themselves out. After two days I already feel better from starting to clean out my system.
Once again I wasn’t able to eat an entire 5 meals. I ended up having 3 meals and 2 healthy snacks so I fell short on my calories by around 500. I am going to work on getting that up. The most important thing is to not skip any of the 5 meals. I wasn’t hungry enough for a complete meal so I added snacks in between to make sure that I was still taking in food. This is critically important to keep your metabolism lit of for fat loss on the How to Get Ripped Abs program. I don’t spend a single minute of the day hungry and I have plenty of energy from eating the brown rice, beans, potatoes, and oatmeal as my starchy carbs. I get a little bit of caffein during the day but not too much. The green tea capsules that I take have around 40 mg of caffeine each. I take 2 of those in the morning so that gives me the equivalent of a small cup of coffee and the antioxidants from the green tea are very important for health.
Today was my first cardio workout. I decided not to go to the gym and stayed home and did the bodyweight exercises cardio routine. It is a circuit of jumping jacks, mountain climbers, and squat thrusts with no rest between exercises and no rest in between circuits. It was extremely difficult for me and I had to rest in between most of the exercises. Since I’m so heavy I found the bodyweight exercises to be very challenging. I’m used to doing high intensity cardio on an elliptical machine and I can fly on that fairly effortlessly. The problem with the elliptical is the movement is so efficient that your body can do a lot of moving without using as much effort and energy. The 15 minutes I struggled doing the body weight circuit was about 10 times more difficult than the cardio I do on a machine. I was in a full blown sweat after 15 minutes, was breathing heavy, and I saved a lot of time by not driving to and from the gym. I know that these types of workouts burn a lot of fat because it is similar to how they work you in boot camp in the marines. The drill instructors will make you go from running in place, to mountain climbers, to jumping jacks, to push ups and whatever else they can think of non stop for 5 to 10 minutes throughout the day. Those short bursts burn a lot of calories and supercharge your metabolism for fat loss. I have no doubt that my 84 days on the How to Get Ripped Abs program will get me back in shape like I was after Marine Corps boot camp. Now I need to get some rest. Sleep is also a very important part of a fat loss program. If your body is overworked, tired, and never rested your cortisol levels start to become elevated and that is one of the primary hormones that leads to muscle loss and fat gain around the belly so always get your sleep!
