Like Fergie, I'm up at the gym just working on my fitness...

So it's been a couple weeks since I began my attempt to build some upper body strength. So how's it going?

Eh. Hard to tell. The thing about when I started losing weight is that it was pretty simple to see if what I was doing was working - the numbers on the scale would be smaller and my pants would be looser. Gaining muscle isn't quite so easy, because it doesn't happen as quickly or dramatically. If I flex at the right time and look at the right angle and sort of squint, I maybe have something that sort of resembles a bicep. But I don't think anyone is going to notice anytime soon, because there isn't a whole lot to notice.

I'm taking a somewhat different strategy than what most people do - most of the people I know who do strength training do 45 minutes or so a couple times I week. I've been doing about 15 minutes at the gym, and maybe another 15 at home, pretty much every day. It fits into my existing workout schedule, and is easier to get myself to do, but I'm not sure if it's as effective.

A friend of mine showed me a ton of exercises, and I've been doing, well, a few of them. So I'm probably not doing enough, or the right ones. But I figure anything is better than nothing, and hopefully I can get myself to work up to both more variety and more reps/more weight/less assistance as time goes on. I'm hoping I'm at least in decent enough shape before school starts and the flood of students comes back and makes me look bad.

I've also started drinking protein shakes - 1 a day. At first the idea seemed kind of silly to me - I don't feel like I really exercise enough to justify it. But I figured it can't hurt - it doesn't add that many calories to my intake, and I don't get a whole lot of protein in my diet. Besides, anything that tastes as bad as it does has to be good for me.

So I'm not sure if I'm actually doing enough to get anywhere. But I figure it can't hurt and might help, and it's not like I have anything else better to do with my time, so I'm going to try to keep it up. I haven't had to open any pickle jars recently, though, so I don't know if it's working yet.