For Colder or Worse

This week I noticed a trend with the blog that has started. The first week I feel one way about something then the next week my feelings become the complete opposite. Last week I raved at how great the cold showers felt, it helped that Dubuque was abnormally warm those days. Now that the weather is cooling off, I get out of the shower and am freezing cold. A similar thing happened during the last trial with the diet. I struggled the first week. In the second post, I felt I was enjoying it much more. We’ll have to see if this trend continues.

A big thing I wanted to focus on moving forward was objective measures of benefits, or hindrance, in trying something new. Last week, I mentioned using the time I spend in the shower as that measure. I’ve been timing myself the past week and I am showering for an average time of 2:30, 3:18 including drying off. It’s tough to determine how knowing that I am being timed is impacting my time in, but with the cold, I was already trying to get in and out as quickly as possible.Regardless, I am cutting the time I am spending by more than half, based on a rough guess of 6 minutes prior.

Something I was hoping to see based on some reading with cold showers is it’s helpfulness with muscle soreness as I’ve started to workout again, but damn does my body still hurt. Maybe the years of neglect aren’t really helped by just a few days of cold showering, but hey maybe it will help someday? I’ve tried to throw in a morning stretch routine to help with this, so fingers crossed that will do the trick. All in all, still not seeing the health benefits there.

One place that I think I am seeing some of the positive effects of cold showers is weight loss. I do want to state for the record here, I am not a medical expert or even close to someone who really understands how the human body works. In other words, I really have no idea what I’m talking about, seek professional guidance before seeking certain results, whether following a trial I’m running or something on your own. I’ve read that colder showers can help lose weight. I didn’t read anything with deep scientific evidence, but was an interesting insight. I did find myself under 160 lbs for the first time in years though. Though, without a good control measure, it’s tough to say what impact the showers may have had if any at all.

Overall, I don’t hate that I’m taking cold showers, but damn it got a lot harder this past week. I think the benefits thus far are outweighing the pain caused by doing so, but then again the winter hasn’t rolled in yet. We’ll have to see how this week goes, will it get better? Will it get worse? Find out next time on Dragon Ba..wait I think I’m in the wrong place.