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Lately after exercising I’ve been having some smoothies. These are definitely the way to relax after a good work out. They taste great, and they’re some of the healthiest things that you’re going to eat.

I get some frozen berries; commonly strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. I toss in some vanilla yogurt, ice, and soy milk, and I will sometimes put my double chocolate flavored whey protein into the mix as well. I blend that up and there you go. Tasty-as-can-be healthy post work out food.

One thing that I have to admit though is that the whey protein definitely changes the taste of the smoothie. It tastes better without it, but I can’t say that it tastes bad with it added either.

Tonight I also added one of my Mega Men’s dietary supplements to the smoothie. This was a mistake. The idea was that the vitamin would be ground into itty bitty bits and wouldn’t significantly change the taste of the smoothie. I was wrong. Do not do this. The after taste is not what I could call a pleasant thing.

I finished it (two cups actually!), but I won’t be doing it again lol.

Ah, it’s great being healthy. Now if only I hadn’t missed the first 30 minutes of the Stargate Atlantis season premier…

~Steph

Technorati Tags: health, smoothie, smoothies, fitness, weight loss, exercise, treats, healthy treat, healthy snack

09/17/07’s fitness data:

• Definitely 10,000 steps taken and then some
• Sit ups
• Push ups
• Various stretches
• ~110 cumulative minutes of walking to and from campus (before starting today’s 10k steps)
• Two hours spent walking & jogging, not counting the above ~110 minutes
10k steps were definitely achieved during those 2 hours

This is my routine for every day of the week except for Tuesday & Thursday. Sit ups, push ups, and some stretches may be left out simply because I forget to do them.

Tonight I walk/jogged around the usual field, walk/jogged around the Weede itself, and then noticed that the track was open on the inside so I finished my laps in there. In completely unrelated news I noticed that I’m really needing some new running shoes, but I digress..

Tuesday & Thursday I have karate class, and that (generally) burns more calories than walking (according to what I’ve read online, so whatever). Tuesdays & Thursdays will still have roughly 70 to 80 minutes of walking as that’s required to get to & from each of my classes.

My car’s windshield getting smashed sure was a good incentive to get some extra walking in. Just think of the gas money that I’m saving!

~Steph

Technorati Tags: weight loss, exercise, diet, health, fitness, jogging, running, walking, calories, fitness log

Tonight’s walking + jogging total is insane. I’m in a piss-poor mood this evening… for so many reasons.. so I had no idea that I had been gone for so long until I got back home.

Turns out I was out for just a hair under 3 hours. The entire time was spent non-stop jogging & walking around an area that could easily hold a football field. This, on top of the total 120 minutes I spent walking today outside of the 3 hour stint.

Yeah, it was a very productive night. Let me tell you, exercise is the best thing to do when you’re depressed. You’ll just keep going through the motions and have no idea what you’re doing to yourself. Heh. Is that a good thing? Well, I think so, but maybe it wouldn’t work for you..

All in all there were roughly 925 calories burned today. Sweet.

Later folks.
~Steph

Technorati Tags: weight loss, exercise, jogging, walking, work out, health, fitness

I’m now using a web service called Traineo. They’re a bit limited in that (as far as I know) you can enter data for only 3 exercises on a given day. This means that some of my exercises - especially walking - must be lumped together to get all of the day’s data into the service.

Other than this issue it seems like it could be a very useful service. It’s definitely a good idea to keep track of your fitness progress, and even though the the data is “approximate” it should be very useful.

You can see the tag from the service at the right that is currently displaying how many calories I’ve burned this week. I’m doing pretty good so far, and it’s only been a couple of days.

I look forward to seeing a month’s worth of data.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: fitness, exercise, health, weight loss, calories, walking, jogging, blarrrrgh!, so many tags so little time

I’m happy to say that I definitely got my 10,000 steps in today.

It wasn’t accomplished without a bit of random good luck. The track / basketball room was locked again today, and obviously this is going to be a reoccurring problem with those monkeys. On the bright side, I managed to bump into someone who was just getting off of their shift and the guy turned out to be a helpful, kindly gent.

He told me that he didn’t know why the door was locked and he not only opened the doors for me at each end, but he turned the lights on for me too. The latter is worth mentioning because apparently you have to flip some circuit-breaker-like switches to turn them on and I doubt that I would have gone looking there for the on switch.

Thanks to this kindly gent I was able to get my exercise of 10,000 steps today. I combined jogging and walking around the track for a total of 30 laps around the track. If my information is correct then that should be roughly equal to 5 miles, which is roughly equal to 10,000 steps.

After the 30 laps were complete I took the time to do some stretches because I’m still trying to become limber enough to do the splits (especially since I’m practicing karate now). I also done about 20 or 30 beginner push ups… I don’t remember exactly how many were done because they were an impromptu addition before leaving.

Of course, I walked to the activity center and walked back home, so that should definitely have picked up any slack in the 10,000 steps. that’s 500+ extra calories gone… huzzah!

All in all I got bloody well soaked in sweat and it was a pretty good day, as far as both fitness and health are concerned.

Oh! and of course I hit up the whey protein once I got home. I’m not sure if it makes any since to take that stuff after a simple cardio work out so I may not do that next time… that’s undecided for now.

Later folks!
~Steph

Technorati Tags: 10, 000 steps, health, fitness, weight loss, exercise, walking, jogging

Today I walked to my university to use the athletic center. After all, I’m going to have to do a lot of walking every day to meet my fitness goals. My target is five miles per day and I know exactly how many times one needs to walk around the track at the Weede to walk one mile, so that would have definitely simplified things.

Unfortunately it’s not to be. Their signs state that their facilities are open from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday, but I arrived at 3:30 PM to find what? Locked doors everywhere. Sure I eventually found the ONE door that gave me access to the building itself, but all but two of the rooms in the entire building were locked.

Isn’t that just peachy? It’s just so difficult to unlock doors, by golly you bet’cha! Why am I giving these jokers so much money again?

I tell you, it kind of chaps my ass.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: university, fitness, exercise, weight loss, health, walking, 10, 000 steps

Today I received the results of my physical assessment. Here are some of those results:

• Blood Pressure: 120/80 - Literally right on the line between “good” and “prehypertension”
• Weight: 200lbs (200.21 pounds on the data sheet)
• Body fat percentage: 17.6%
• Waist / Hip Ratio: “At Risk” (this is what I need to work on the most. see below)
• Heart Rate: 117 beats per minute (a little below average)
• Grip Strength. Right Hand: 59lbs, Left Hand: 62lbs
• Flexibility (Trunk Flexion): 17 inches
• Number of sit ups in 1 minute: 62

What does all of this mean?

My target ideal weight is somewhere around 165 pounds. This means that I need to lose only about 8 pounds per month to reach my optimum fitness goals by the end of this semester. Doable? You bet’cha! I’m much more optimistic now about reaching my ideal fitness goal.

Now that I have a hard number to aim for it should be a lot easier to measure my progress and to develop a more effective exercise plan.

The most curious piece of information that I received from this assessment is that I was measured at 6 foot 3^1/2 inches tall. What makes this so curious is that for several years now I’ve thought of myself as 6′5″.

The same night of the assessment I used a measuring tape at home to check myself, and sure enough, it was 6′3.5″.

The height of 6′5″ was data from a nurse, and I stopped growing loooooooooong ago. This is also probably why I haven’t been measured at a doctor’s office in quite a long time; I stopped putting on height more years ago than I care to count, so there has been no reason to measure me in the last several years.

Huh, what do you know..

Anyway, I will definitely have another assessment done at the end of the semester to see what my fat percentage is then compared to now, and of course to see how the rest of the data compares.

My weight loss and fitness goals have never seemed easier.

Later folks!

~Steph

Technorati Tags: weight loss, exercise, diet, fitness, health

Today I finished the physical exam that’s required by my Lifetime Fitness Concepts course.

There wasn’t a whole lot to it:

• Blood pressure is taken (mine was pertty good, woot!)
• Flexibility is measured (you sit & stretch forward 3 times)
• Height is measured
• Weight & other related data is taken (I think I was at 200 lbs? woot!)
• Heart rate is taken at rest & after stepping
• A step aerobics bored with 3 risers is used for 3 minutes to get the heart rate up
• Max number of crunches (small sit ups) in one minute are counted
• Waist & hip size is measured
• Grip strength is tested

There may have been one or two other items that I don’t recall.

I will not have the hard data for one or two weeks due to the fact that the class is only in session once per week. I’ll post the results when I can.

Most of the data was rated as either good or close to “excellent” (I guess all of that exercise has been paying off a little, eh?). There were a couple of things just below average, and one item that was rated “at risk”.

I still have a bit too much weight around the belly. My actual physical weight of 200lbs (If I read the machine correctly; mind I got little more than a glance) is not bad for my height and age. In fact it’s fairly good. However, there’s still more weight on the belly than is healthy.

Unless I get injured, that extra annoying width around the belly should be gone by the end of this semester.

Later folks!
~Steph

Technorati Tags: weight loss, health, fitness, physical, exercise, work out, exams

My feets* are hurting from last night’s karate class. I was hoping that they would heal up over night, but it’s just the opposite: They’re aching more this morning than they were last night.

Worse is that they’re also kind of sticky. Kind of gross, huh?

I’ve been walking around the house on the sides of my feet this morning but that’s only helped a little, and I’m not looking forward to putting on my shoes and socks. The walk from the parking lot to Porter Hall isn’t on the top of my list either..

Freak’n blisters… just argh. It’s all part of the growing pains from karate class though, eh?

Come on callouses, you can do ittt! >.<

~Steph

* I’ve deliberately used the expression “my feets”. Yes, I know that’s incorrect grammar.

Welcome back to this much ignored food log category. I’m not going to try to keep a daily tally of what I’m eating because obviously that didn’t work out (it was too much of a hassle). Perhaps it’ll be of use now and then, though..

For now, I may as well post what I ate last night after karate class.

• First thing I hit up: 100% Gold Standard Whey Protein. One full scoop, half a glass, using 8^th Continent soy milk. Half a glass was used because that’s all the soy milk that was left!
• Dinner, after the shower, was a couple of mini steaks (mmm, more protein) and a peach

A bit off topic, but this morning’s breakfast was my usual granola cereal. Unfortunately I had to use cow’s milk (skim)… cow’s milk just doesn’t go over very well for me.

~Steph

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, food, diet