Over the weekend, while reading posts from Richard Nikoley about Leangains and Primal Toad about his 30 day Paleo challenge, I got to thinking. Why not do a 30 day challenge of sorts myself?

Why of sorts?

I’ve never been one to stick to anything every day for an extended period of time. Even 30 days is extended for me. After a couple of weeks I tend to get bored or distracted and generally change things or abandon them altogether. This blog is a perfect example of the sporadic nature of my hobbies. I tend to make permanent changes to my life gradually. A little change here, another complementary change down the road, and so on until they add up to a big change. How I ended up in my current state of Paleo illustrates that progression pretty well. So I’m not taking this challenge as seriously as I perhaps should, but I’d like to try something.

I wrote previously that I weighed in at about 172 pounds. Well, that was three weeks ago and I’m still hovering around that number. A friend of mine, @augmentedfourth on Twitter, started tweeting his daily weight. Last week I decided to give it a shot.

Granted, the data are rather limited, but the first thing I noticed is that I haven’t just plateaued, but my weight appears to be trending upward! I decided that I had to do something to break through my plateau. Fortunately, this coincided with reading the aforementioned posts. So I put a plan together.

First, I will start using the FitDay account that I opened way back on 14 September 2010, when I weighed in at 186 pounds, and hadn’t touched since. I’ll have to get over my initial annoyance with entering food and activities and my displeasure at discovering that I’ve only lost 14 pounds in the last five months.

Second, I will re-craft my workout based on the Leangains descriptions. Today I performed deadlifts, chin-ups, and some crunches. More importantly, I will stick to a gym schedule and track my progress.

Third, of course, I will stop cheating on my diet. My biggest problems are drinking milk and going back for seconds (and sometimes thirds) at dinner. It’s not like I ever eat bread or candy, but I did have a few chips at a Mexican restaurant last night.

I’ll do my best to stick with this plan for at least 30 days so I can give it a full and fair evaluation. Maybe it will help me break through my plateau and become one of those incremental lifestyle changes. As a bonus, I may even see some muscle definition.