By Coki Cruz, My Journey and Journal to the Arnold’s
*This journal has multiple entries, please use the menu at the bottom to navigate between them*
3 days out: March 2nd, 2020
TRAINING
Today was a SPECTACULAR day. OK to be fair I didn’t go above 80%, but everything felt right. I know what you’re thinking: This isn’t the Coki that was writing on Saturday, how is he chipper all of a sudden? I’ll explain more in the last section.
I got some light stretching in earlier in the as it was a slower day at work and did some ankle manipulations as mine tend to get stiffer after a long drive (remember I went to my parents?). I think it really helped as I felt super loose in my ankles and all my catches. Check the videos below to see what I mean.
NUTRITION
Who else knows how hard it is to plan what to eat when you’re on the road? So I ended up staying the night at my sister and her husband’s apartment (shameless plug) to spend more time with them, my nieces, and of course my wife before she left for her missions trip. Was up earlier than normal and although my sister did me the kindness of leaving me her leftover spaghetti beef, I still needed to make sure I got in the calories and protein for my day. Long story short, my dinner was 1/2 an oz of jerky and 1/2 an oz of honey roasted peanuts. I’m not doing too bad with hunger though. Fun facts coming at you:
If you guys didn’t know, hunger actually comes in waves or cycles with peaks rising during the times your body has gotten used to eating (thanks ghrelin…).
You don’t have to eat when you’re hungry.
That last point might shock you, but when trying to lose weight, there’s a good chance you will feel hungry. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to eat, though. We’ve grown up understand that when we’re hungry we eat. Which normally is not a bad thing. But again when trying to lose weight understanding that hunger can be a byproduct I think sets us up for success. How? Well, like I said, hunger comes in waves, so if we have a limited supply of calories typical of weight loss, we know that to some degree we’ll experience hunger and that it’s normal. We just need to ride the wave until the hunger (kind of) goes away.
WHAT HAS BEEN ON MY MIND?
As I had mentioned earlier, today’s training went super well and I’m in good spirits. After the depressive moments from Saturday, I received a lot of encouragement from my wife and a bunch of you guys reading and commenting on my videos on Instagram.
Thank you.
The kind words went far, and if you prayed for me, God bless you.
I feel like I have to say this and say it often: Training is no joke. There are days when I don’t feel like lifting. I’m not always motivated to go into the gym. I’m just not. I’m also not the person that is going to fake excitement and make you think this life is glorious or sunshine and rainbows… It’s not. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy the process, I enjoy working towards some end goal, I enjoy being strong, but I’m not always thrilled to go to the gym. It’s just become such a habit now that I don’t know what else to do with my life. I don’t mean this to be a downer. But I think if you’re going to set your mind to do something you should know what you’re getting yourself into. Be it weight loss, training for competition, marriage, school… You have to put in work and you’re not always going to enjoy it.
That’s OK.
Eventually, the work becomes habit. Habits stick around when motivations disappears. Develop habits.
I’ll end with these words from Proverbs 13:4:
The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.
Are you caught up yet? Or have you not even started… Well here’s Entry 1
Finished reading the first? OK here is Entry 2
If you liked 1 and 2, here comes Entry 3
Ah, my favorite number: Entry 4
Entry 5 is right around the corner
