Evaluating

I'm in the middle of my Progressive Cycles Program and I've found a few of my weaknesses. Now it's a matter of tweaking the program so I can overcome it. I found that after a few weeks, I began to wear down. I was just finishing the 4th cycle when I was hit with a whole lot of exhaustion. I tweaked the program to allow me to rest which is good, but I also tweaked it so I don't do as much and staggered the exercises so I can recover better (alternating upper body and lower body exercises). I did the first few days of the 5th cycle, but I slacked and just stopped after that.

A few reasons: I was still exhausted and it didn't help that I didn't eat the necessary amount of food and the right kind of food that I needed for such a demand on my body. Also, I wasn't sure how to go about staggering the exercises and I allowed that to keep me from what I needed to do. I tried to exercise during the day as well, which doesn't work because of the baby feeding schedule. The best time is when I have a good 45 min to an hour all to myself and that only happens after I get home from work. Finally, I realized I need to challenge myself instead of doing half of what I do. So even though staggering helped me save time, it also made me think I don't need to push as hard and I lost motivation.

Solutions (for now): I will do 5 days of exercising, still focusing on 30 min cardio (20 min with weights or if doing a sprint), 100 reps of any ab workout, upper and lower body workouts, and go back to doing it all in the same day. Weekends will naturally be the rest days. I'll start up on the 5th cycle again next week. The next two days, I'll revisit the 4th cycle so my body can get used to it again. I exercised only three times this past week and a half. Now I just need to figure out how to get highly nutritious food without busting the bank.