Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

Going for aesthetic or athletic?

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Usually diet is an appearance thing. We’d feel better if we appeared more in line with social ideals, or maybe turn back the clock on our appearance.

But there’s another option. We could be shooting for the “my top performance” ideal.

More difficult. Perhaps preferable.

Mary retweeted a good article from the New York Times, “Slimmer Doesn’t Always Mean Fitter”, that speaks to this. I think the title misleads it as an “overweight is okay” message, but it isn’t.

If I am the best performing me I can possibly be, I think I’d be okay with, or maybe too focussed on performance to worry about, love handles.

My fitness timeline, March 2009 – March 2010

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Made a fitness timeline.

Screenshot:
My fitness timeline, 3/09-3/10

My previous post was about progress made in the last six months. That is when the weight loss progress happened, but I wanted to start with my re-awakening of physical activity. This started with biking, nearly a year ago already.

Now that I am measuring weight lifting progress, I was also curious about when I started lifting any weights. This was started with light weights in my jump rope phase, and continued with weight machines in my early gym phase.

Found some great timeline code to help out.

For the dates, I looked at the timestamps on my iPhoto events – thankfully I am always taking pictures with the phone – and my order history at Nutrisystem.

Man I biked for a long time with limited results.  Got tons of pretty sunset pics though.  That was exercise with no good diet direction; hence no loss.

The weight lifting has only begun.

Six months of doing something right

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Helplessness not long ago

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August 2009, just 6 months ago, I felt helplessly fat. What happened to the thin kid I knew for 18 years? Gone forever. I hated seeing that I had “let myself go”.

It could have been worse, of course. So many people have severe weight problems and I feel for what they must be going through. I wasn’t morbidly obese. Not yet. Wasn’t getting any smaller though.

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It became impossible to take a decent profile photo. I had neck fat in each one. The extreme shadows were my friends. Had to zoom in super close to my face. And zoom back? Forget it! I couldn’t suck my stomach in far enough, or angle the camera down far enough.

The baggy clothes I had to wear just made me look bigger. I had a fashion problem. I wanted to wear skinny clothes but my 44-inch-and-growing waistline was pulling me out of normal clothing stores.

I felt like I was headed into diabetes. I really didn’t want to formalize my bad situation by being diagnosed with that.

It wasn’t for a total lack of trying. Sure, I had moments of eating large pizzas by myself and thinking taking out the trash was exercise. Consistent effort was a problem for me.

Occassional exercise didn’t help. For some reason I always expect to see a thin guy after workouts, but the fat dude is still in the mirror. Maybe I expect more payoff for my hard work. Exercise was unrewarding. In fact, I wrote it off completely, having never seen results from my occassional effort.

I would cut back on food and nothing would change. Cut out soda. Ate lots of celery instead of snack food. Skipped dinner. Skipped breakfast (yeah yeah).

Fast forward to now

Now, several months later, February 2010. Still working on me, but hey, big change, no?

The weight loss goal was either to lose 50 lbs, or see my abs.

After 45 lbs of loss and now weight training, here come the abs. I am starting to see them for the first time since 1992! They’re still a little covered but horizontal shadows are appearing when I flex just right. :)

And my hip bones — totally forgot about those! I can see my knuckles when I grab the steering wheel. In the mirror, I see my cheek bones and jaw line prominently.

Seeing bones and muscles appear is the greatest thrill in the world, the fruit of a complete lifestyle overhaul.

Little tweaks are worthless. I had to completely change everything I did and was about.

I am totally unrecognizable to the person I was just months ago, both in appearance and daily routine and attitude. I am a different person: I eat differently, I sleep differently, I do different things, I think about myself differently.

GoWear Fit Day 1

I had to start from scratch learning about types of food, buying and preparing food, portioning, my caloric needs, eating protein, biking, gym-going, exercise machines, weights, and muscles. It was a crap load of new stuff, I am not going to lie.

Muscle book has arrived

The learning is far from over. I started learning about food, and today I’m learning about muscles. I think I’ll be stuck on the muscle thing a while. Slow gainer, ironically.

What did it mentally: anger, vanity, declaring war

Ain’t nothing pretty about it. And it takes no less. I have to fight past myself.

I tapped into my limitless inner vanity and self-obsession. It can be my friend.

Get mad at the fat: point at it and it will never stop getting attacked until it is gone. Eliminated. After a couple weeks it will still be there. Get mad again. Attack again. After months and months and months of this, there will be victory. That’s the direction I am going, thankfully.

What did it physically: diet, exercise, time

Sorry, I think the hard way is the right way. Just do it.

Diet. For the first time, thanks to Nutrisystem, I learned that starvation isn’t the answer. Not starving to lose weight is totally counter-intuitive for me. But I’d eat lasagna for dinner, and still wake up a pound lighter. Calorie control is the answer. I just ate a little less than what my body needed. Figured I burned 2200 cals in a day. So I ate 1600 cals, or so. After months, weight loss resulted. Yeah I had to count calories, more so after leaving Nutrisystem, but that is an excellent way to learn the caloric cost of eating.

Bring the heat

Exercise. Walk, bike, do an elliptical machine for 30 minutes a day. Like I said, I am frustrated by the slow results of exercise. Diet is what brings the results at first. I think exercise is icing on the cake, for reshaping the thinner body. I expected too much from exercise because I didn’t understand how secondary it was to eating right. These days I am happy with where the diet has taken me, and now I exercise like a crazy person to reshape and tone my body.

What will I be like months from now?

It will be interesting to see where my current extremism settles to.  I promised Lori I would go to the gym frequently for a period of 2 years. (More of a bet than a promise, I guess.)

I’d love to say this will continue. It needs to, of course. After I hit a physical state I’m happy with I’ll likely not go to the gym 11 times a week like now. Maybe. We’ll see.

Would it be easy to stop all this and go back? You bet — that was the easy life! Oh how I would love to sleep in, pound food, be on the computer all day! Except… it was f-ing miserable! The gluttony and laziness was destroying me from the inside out.

Now I am proud of myself. I have a great long term goal of excellent fitness. And I have no good reason to stop.

Shin ache

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Last night during my night cardio, during the second burst of 7.5 mph treadmill, my shins ached enough to cause me to tone down the rest of my routine. Injury is the last thing I want.

I Googled and came upon shin splints (here and here). That seems like something more extreme than my discomfort but it mentioned some interesting things.

Could be the sudden increase in running cardio. Hadn’t done cardio for a week, then suddenly started up again more vigorously than before.

Could be the length of my running spurts.

Could be the length of my stride putting extra pressure on that area.

I’ll take it slower tonight. Let’s see how it goes after a long brisk walk.

Monday workout journal

Monday, February 15th, 2010

Discovered a great workout journaling iphone app yesterday called iFitness. I think it’s been around at least a year. Still seems to be the best.

I like how it has exercises per body part, and photo (sometimes video) examples of each. It lets me create my own workouts and it checks off each exercise as I go along. Cool timer for between sets as well.

By body part
iFitness iphone app

My workouts
iFitness iphone app

My workout checklist for shoulders
iFitness iphone app

Log entry
iFitness iphone app

Log
iFitness iphone app

This is from it’s CSV output of the actual workout.

Cardio
Date Exercise Set Duration Speed/ Resistance/ Distance/ Jumps/ Sets Elevation/ Avg HR/ Incline/ Steps
15-Feb-10 treadmill 1 30 5.5 0
 
Exercise
Date Exercise Set Weight Reps Notes
15-Feb-10 ab crunch on a ball 1 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10   2 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10   3 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10   4 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10 reverse wrist curl 1 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 30 lb 10 to failure
15-Feb-10 barbell front raise 1 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 30 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 30 lb 10 try 35s next time
15-Feb-10 rear lateral raise 1 10 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 10 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 10 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 10 lb 15 maybe 12
15-Feb-10 shrug 1 55 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 55 lb 10 hard to lift, but easy shrug
15-Feb-10   3 55 lb 15  
15-Feb-10   4 55 lb 20  
15-Feb-10 wrist curl 1 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10 dumbbell lateral raise 1 17.5 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 17.5 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 17.5 lb 10 good amt
15-Feb-10   4 17.5 lb 10  
15-Feb-10 dumbbell wrist twist 1 30 lb 8  
15-Feb-10   2 25 lb 2  
15-Feb-10   3 25 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 25 lb 9 barely
15-Feb-10   5 25 lb 10 barely
15-Feb-10 abdominal reverse curl 1 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10   2 0 lb 15  
15-Feb-10 hanging knee raise 1 0 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 0 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 0 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 0 lb 10  
15-Feb-10 wheel rollout 1 0 lb 5  
15-Feb-10   2 0 lb 5  
15-Feb-10   3 0 lb 5  
15-Feb-10 bar military press 1 40 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10 bar upright row 1 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   2 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   3 50 lb 10  
15-Feb-10   4 50 lb 10 maybe 60 ok