By: Jonas Talkington
Okay! Things are finally starting to go right! Well, they were going well before, but now they are becoming noticeably better.

It’s becoming easier. I actually slept very well every night this week (8 hours every night) and woke up without an alarm. The first time in my adult life, actually. I had more energy than normal and felt better than I normally do during the day. It was a strange feeling to be walking up the stairs and not be super tired or out of breath at the top.

This week, I felt my body begin respond to things. I started to buckle down on the diet. I had a Casein and sometimes Casein and raspberry shake for breakfast every day. I took two calcium pills and 3 fish oil capsules with that. For the two lunches, normally 3 hours apart (I try to do 5 meals 3 hours apart), I had mostly cold cuts or the local version of beef sticks (had buffalo sticks and ostrich sticks too. They were GREAT!) and some cheese. Galya also made two batches of protein bars for me this week. One batch was blueberry/cashew/chocolate and the other was Lost Dog’s carrot cake bars, but with chocolate casein ( Lost Dog is now one of my protein bar heroes ). I had one of those for each meal, except for breakfast and dinner. The fourth meal of the day was usually one of the bars and one beef stick or something similar. Dinners were meatballs, cold cuts one night, grilled chicken or scrambled eggs and cheese.

Okay, now the best part. I started losing weight again. AND, I made a mistake. In the original Husband Project proposal, I said that I came to Bulgaria at 225, lost ten pounds, and began to gain. That is NOT the case, embarrassingly enough. I looked at my Peace Corps medical records, and I came to Bulgaria at 233 (2nd day physical), which was on June 16th, 2000. I lost 9 lbs, putting me at 224. Then I began to gain again. Sorry about the mistake, but not so much considering what you are about to read! This week, for the first time since the year after college (which was 7 years ago), I weighed in at 221 lbs! How exciting!

I also went from 18.5% bodyfat to 16.7%. Almost 2 percent in 2 weeks (3 counting prep week). Galya and I have also noticed a big change in my arms. I have lost most of the fat on them, and they have become very hard to the touch, compared to what they were before. She also says that the deposits on my body are becoming soft, especially on my legs. Good to know, because hopefully that means that my body is eating into my fat deposits. I hope to see good change again this week

This week I pretty much did 3 sets of 8 for everything, and moved up in weight for most exercises. Galya says that I am slightly sacrificing form for more weight on some things, though, so I will drop back down on a few until I can do them perfect every time and move back up. The only thing that I really changed was doing cardio on my non-gym days and changing abs to 3 sets of 50 crunches.

The biggest high this week was actually SEEING change, not just knowing that it will come. I saw definite improvements and change in my body. The biggest low was coming to grips with just how much farther I have to go. It’s easier, though, knowing that at least in some way, most of you are going to go there with me through these logs.

Feeling great, both mentally and physically, although it is still an effort for me to mentally make myself do it every day. I have to fight the feeling that I want to be lazy and just not go. If I can get to 15% bodyfat in another 3 weeks, I will be VERY excited. Let’s see, shall we?