30 ¼ lbs

This is the amount of weight I have lost in the last six weeks with The Second Expedition. Though I celebrate this win, with respect to The First Expedition, I was unable to beat out the percentage loss: 12.6% to 10.7%. It could have been due to several factors, though I'm leaning toward something as simple as the contribution of the initial water loss. Of course, there were shifts with regards to the increased calories midway (204 / day), yet in the context of more workouts. Still, I believe it was the water weight aspect of an initial weight loss especially with respect to a sub-1000mg sodium diet.

A truer contest is now before me as I am within The Third Expedition; I'm gunning for The Second Expedition‘s percentage. I'm moving past the afterglow of today's victory and seeing it as a challenge to beat.

The diet is the driver for change. I'm got a new one for this expedition and it's going to make a HUGE impact. I want to return with a more dedicated focus on cardio, though I'd like to implement more body movement and running, though I'm unsure as to what that will look like. This morning, I tried out my two-day-a-week resistance and discovered it needs an overhaul. I was about 30 minutes in and was about half-way through, and already spent. Thirty minutes is really all the time I want to invest with my iron. Clearly with my low calories, I have no interest in building muscle. I'm just that guy in the yellow shirt at the front of Best Buy: I'm just doing loss prevention.

I'm excited by new diet. It's 436 calories a day less than what I've been for the past 3 weeks. I'm also intrigued as to what impact is there in adding a 750 mg of a green tea extract. Up to now, I've been trying to squeeze 2 or 3 green tea cups into my day, though I've been failing to do so as my Japanese sencha stash is just about out. Of course, the $35 I paid for the green tea extract seems expensive—it is on the front end, but I'm set for 200 days with it, putting it somewhere in the 18 cent per day range. Now, I'll steep my sencha twice, so the $0.24/cup becomes $0.12, but compare that with what basically amounts to 7 cups per capsule with the extract—somewhere just $0.02 per "cup."

And I recognize that like any supplement, there's not a 1:1 equivalency, as there remains to this day, undiscovered nutrients. No doubt, those who come after me will have the opportunity to take supplements that include everything, a magic pill of complete nutrition.

Initially with yesterday's dietary walkthrough, I wasn't a fan of adding potassium chloride into my morning soymilk mixes, but after a hard-hitting workout, I'm really glad I added that No Salt Original into it.

The hour of cardio before my resistance was fantastic. I'm unsure as to why, but there were a few factors: 1) back from the rest of a Sunday; 2) I drank coffee instead of black tea for my morning quiet time; and/or 3) I began my UFC videos (#60). So far, it's been more motivational than any movie I played during The Second Expedition.

It's time to put the streamers away and get back to work.

Less than a day remains before the kickoff The Third Expedition. How I have looked forward to tomorrow!

So what will be The Third Expedition look like?

DIET

While, I am still in the second six-weeks, I began the diet for the 3rd today. I reference its nutritional data on the diet page. A quick overview:

Supplementation: green tea extract, vitamin D, iodine, choline, zinc, and B-complex stress formula.

Meal 1, 6:20AM (post workout I)

• Soybeans, 7.1 oz
• Flax seeds 0.78 oz
• Sunflower seeds, 0.3 oz
• Cinnamon, 1 tsp
• Coffee, 8 fl oz
• Original No Sat Alternative, 0.25 tsp

Meal 2, 10AM

• Louisiana Hot Sauce, 2 tsp
• Frozen Spinach, 12 oz

Meal 3, 1PM (post workout II)

Soybeans, 7.1 oz Cinnamon, 1 tsp Coffee, 8 fl oz Original No Sat Alternative, 0.25 tsp

TRAIN

Workout I: 4-6AM

1st hour: 5-minute bike warmup. For the next 55 minutes: begin with incline treadmill and every 10-min mark on the clock, switch over to elliptical or visa versa.

2nd Hour:

*Resistance: Could be specific muscle groups OR upper body. *Cardio to bring the workout to 6M.

Workout II: Lunch Cardio (1 hour)

• 30 minutes of running transition
• 30 minutes of general cardio

BELIEVE

• 3AM quiet time
• Year-long chronological reading of the Bible
• Sequential plans of books on reading lIst
• The return to the visible church

No movie trailer today, because Warcraft ran over into today. A fitting movie to end the last workout of The Second Expedition. I enjoy viewing my life as an epic adventure and the WoW universe was a companion of mine for a very long time. While I have no plans to return to Azeroth, Thundercast—my Night Elf-turned-Tauren druid, a carryover from my EverQuest days; and Makyah, my Orc hunter, both have a special place in my heart.

While there will still be movies for my cardio time, it will be much less dominant. I look forward to my UFC DVD collection. My only regret is that I didn't pick up more from the now-closed video rental store as I made the purchase on its last day of operation. I picked up 20 UFC videos or so for $10—not each, total—so, 50 cents each. As a martial artist myself, it fires me up to watch it, which, in turn, ought to squeeze more performance out of me.

Ahh...cardio. It was my all-cardio Saturday morning. Two hours of exhilaration! Am I overselling it? Seriously, I'd put today's effort in the top-5 of my workouts for these past 12 weeks. It's funny, too, because as I warmed up, I really didn't think it would be a good day. But, I guess it was just something about the ol' Horde bashing the Alliance that revved me up! About 80 minutes into my cardio, it was like a switched flipped on in me, opening up all sorts of energy, so naturally I pushed harder. As what I like to do on Saturdays, I closed out with an all-out in the waning minute. It was another every-inch-of-my-shirt-was-drenched kind of workout.

Tomorrow is a rest day that will bridge over into my weigh-in while The Third Expedition lies beyond.