End Game

In a game of chess, the final few moves are called the end game. There are some pretty good chess players who play a strong opening, are capable and logical in their defense, but can't finish off the opponent once they've established an advantage. In other words, they've got no end game. In raquetball or tennis, there are players who can volley all day long but don't win because they don't have a kill shot. In sales, there are some salesman who can't close a deal. In the stock market, it's not just which stock to buy and when to buy it, but when to sell. In many areas of life, it all comes down to the end game.

In highschool, I played chess against the second ranking chess player in my school one day and he accidentally sacrificed his queen. So I pushed my advantage and quickly took most of his other key pieces (I wasn't such a bad chess player myself, you see). Then I methodically set him up for checkmate. While I was still several moves from finishing him off, he stopped me and suggested that I could beat him in one move and showed me an elegant solution to our current position. Even while losing he had an end game.

So, here I am in the last week of the Body for Life Challenge and I'm hoping I'm playing a good end game. Last Friday and Saturday, I tried for a slightly higher calorie burn by doing extra aerobic work. By Saturday afternoon, I had a persistent headache of the kind I used to get when I ran long distances and didn't refuel properly. On Sunday, I was a little more careful about keeping my nutrition stable and not overdoing the cardio, but I still burned more calories than usual and the headache started to come back. I ate a little more than usual for the evening meal and gradually felt better. Back when I started the challenge, I set out to lose 17 pounds of fat. As it's turned out, I'm going to be closer to 10 pounds, or maybe a little more. It seems if I push my fat loss much faster than about a pound per week, I start to have problems.

So, I'm going to be short of some of my goals. I won't have a completely flat stomach and those annoying love handles won't be completely gone. I haven't really gained much muscle at all. But I've decided not to do anything drastic this last week. I'm going to up my cardio slightly and I'm going to make my remaining weight workouts count as much as I can, but I'm not going to add any workouts or change my diet in any major way, except possibly for the last day or two.

After all, I've made a lot of progress. My aerobic capacity is higher. My basic metabolic rate is higher. My body fat percentage is down while my lean mass is up. I look thinner, my jawline is back, my face is less rounded and I have muscles (or perhaps they just show better now). I don't want to do anything to mess any of that up.

So, really, the end game plan is to keep doing what's been working so far and to do a really good photo shoot to document all of it.

And then, I can think about the next challenge.