Since I set my goal to climb a mountain, I’ve been exercising 5 days a week. My first concern is to start losing weight. Over 2018, without exercise, I’ve put on 20 pounds after shedding 25 lbs the summer of 2017.

The working out part has been easy so far. My gym has a good selection of cardio equipment: ellipticals, a stationary bike, a rowing machine and my personal favorite, the stair spinner

It hasn’t been hard to push myself for 50 minutes of exercise, elevating my heart rate to maximum levels at times.

All I have to do to push harder is to tell myself that I can’t let the mountain defeat me. I don’t know how hard it is going to be to carry my backpack over 18 miles, up and down a total of 12,000 feet of elevation in a day at altitudes between 10k-14k feet, so I just say “It’ll be harder than this” and I push on.

In the first few days with my excitement peaking, I tried jogging 2 miles wearing my my backpack loaded to 15 pounds which pushed my heart rate up to 198 bpm, which in retrospective was probably too intense, but in the determined drive to beat this mountain, I felt no fatigue until the end.

No, the thing I’ve been struggling with is adjusting my calorie intake. I’ve switched about 75% of my meals to smoothies, lean frozen dinners, and high protein options like omelets loaded with veggies, but either I’m still eating too much of those, or the other 25% is still too many calories because I haven’t lost any weight in the 13 days I’ve been at it.

I know it takes time to achieve results, but it’d be nice to see something lost besides sweat.