Pedal, pedal, pedal.
Watch the people lift. Watch lips move on TVs.
Pedal, pedal.
Listen to that Lady Gaga song again. Wipe away some sweat.
Pedal, pedal, pedal.
It’s okay. Only 45 minutes.
Certainly beats burning no calories playing Halo or over stressing at work. And I am ripe with endorphins when it’s over.
Made a fitness timeline.
Screenshot:
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.
There’s something to be said about doing weights in the morning and cardio at night.
Each can have it’s own fresh energy because they each follow extended rest periods. Weights after a night of sleep, cardio after a day of sedentary work.
Tonight I cranked up the treadmill more than I could have if I was doing it right after weight lifting. There was energy built up from the day that I could get out.
I ran more than usual and burned 500 calories in 45 minutes instead of 350. (Hey, 150 calories takes some effort to burn, especially in the same amount of time.)
I’ve mentioned what my cardio looks like: treadmill walk/jog/run intervals measured in calories.
Arnold said that you burn a set amount of cals in a given distance, regardless of whether you’re walking, jogging or running. If you run, you just burn the same cals faster. So I guess my measuring intervals based on calories isn’t totally weird. It’s like each interval is the same distance.
Previously I would walk 25 cals, jog 25 cals, run 25 cals, and repeat. Tonight I walked 25 cals, jogged 10 cals, ran 40 cals, and repeated. Pretty happy that I could run longer.
Maybe I’ll sleep better too, since I’m genuinely exhausted now. So, off to bed. Doing “back and biceps” in the morning.
Looking for gym parking while only having spots marked with “no gym parking”, is a bad first impression. If they had to paint that, you know there’s a problem.
I am on a mission to find an open treadmill after work. Failed at that location. Too bad. It would have been convenient. Guess a little too convenient.
Found one at another gym, a little farther away, one I had visited maybe 15 years ago. It was a little dated and ghetto, but it had an open treadmill. Bam. Let’s see if that’s the same story on Day 2.
This night cardio should compliment my morning weights nicely.
This week, coming off a day low on motivation, I slipped out of my cardio routine, opting to do only weights for an hour a day. Also my calories weren’t high enough to justify cardio.
I read more of my Arnold book last night. Got to the part where he was talking about diet and exercise for body building.
He talked about the importance of carbs, protein, and fat, and avoiding empty calories in processed foods. Carbs are the fire that burns the fat. Inadequate carb intake (which can be tested with the diabetic tool, Ketostix) leads to an undesirable muscle-eating mode. When starving ourselves of carbs, our bodies eat 60% muscle and 40% fat. That’s not good at all.
He mentioned that body builders want a gram of protein for each pound of weight. Sounds like what trainers say, huh? Other people want a gram of protein for each kilo of weight (lbs/2.2). In my case, weighing 183 lbs, I want between 83g and 183g of protein per day.
My carbs need to be sufficient to power my exercise. I want just enough carbs to make it, not enough to store excess as fat. Carbs also keep the brain working. Maybe that was why I felt light-headed when I started dieting – carb intake drop.
Fats, good ones, should be kept around 12%. So that would be: fat 12%, protein 20%, carbs 58%.
Arnold says 45 min/day of cardio after 1.5-2 hrs of weights. A 3 hr/day workout would be a complete luxury, however. 1 hr/day is totally doable. Anything more in one visit starts to abuse other aspects of my life.
I might consider 2 gym visits per day. The morning for weights, the evening for cardio.
So the calorie intake needs to go up to power 2 workouts. I’ll just not hold back on eating healthy stuff constantly throughout the day. I should write a post about what I am eating these days.
And I need to do cardio. We’ll see if I can squeeze in some after work. Maybe a good excuse to try out the gym by my work on the way home one night. Bring my workout clothes along that day.