This year sees a more solid plan for health and fitness for me. Previous fitness attempts were nebulous: Work out and aim for food that’s better-than-usual, and go for it. Today I’m reading labels, eating more often during the day (but smaller meals, of course), as well as exercising.

Most of this new direction in fitness and health came about when I found Scooby’s channel on YouTube. There’s a ton of useful information there, and the fact that he’s about 15 years older than I am yet has a physique that just blows me away was enough for me to really pay attention. He knows what he’s talking about, and it works.

If you’re looking to diet and lose weight then I highly recommend his YT channel. He doesn’t sell a single thing. Scooby has a web site - Scooby’s Workshop - with a load of useful information and, again, as with his Youtube channel he doesn’t sell a thing on his website.

This guy has been very helpful as I’ve moved toward losing weight and building muscle for 2009. My diet is much better and I’m eating tasty food in spite of that fact.

As always, the changes that you make will have to become a permanent change to your life style if you want to keep the weight off, so what it boils down to is: Are you unhappy enough to actually change, or are you comfortable enough with your weight that you won’t? You may complain about your weight, but will you actually change your life to change your weight? Those are questions that only you can answer.

As my Twitter mentions (Stephen’s Twitter), I’m no longer sick (thank goodness) and I’m going back to the gym. Last night was my first time back to the gym in a week.

I’m sure feeling it today. Especially in my calves, which are a new addition to my exercise routine. They burn the next day, particularly on the treadmill (which I need to set to a lower speed in order to complete). Hopefully those muscles will quickly adapt to the new stress.

Speaking of calves, every time that I use that machine I’m reminded that I need to buy some new shoes.

Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll stay at the gym tonight. I’ve only had a few hours of sleep. Maybe I’ll take a nap before I go.

Later.

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, exercise, weight loss, muscle building

I screwed up and forgot the push ups AGAIN yesterday.  Will have to do it tomorrow.  I tell you, if it’s not routine for me then it’s not remembered.

I was at the rec center for about two hours this evening.  Amazing.  When I finally showered, got dressed, and walked out of the locker room that’s when I saw some friends playing badminton.  I decided to join them for a game despite the fact that I was wearing street cloths at that point.

Hopefully they’ll forgive me for working up a sweat on a simple game like that, and realize that I was already quite tired from a lengthy exercise session.

At the end of tonight’s long session I decided to return to lifting (before the shower), but this was mostly out of curiosity.  Tonight was the first time that I lifted actual weights in the machines at the rec center rather than using the resistance machines (I’m a sucker for simplicity).

If I remember correctly, I lifted about 30 pounds on my biceps, about 130 or 160 pounds on my shoulder / back (I can’t remember which at the moment, but it surprised me that everything felt so light), and 190 pounds on the Hip Abduction and Hip Adductor (outer and inner thigh).  Laying leg press was at approximately 130 pounds, but I’m not sure because I left it at whatever it was set to when I got onto the machine.

Unfortunately I don’t remember the weight amounts on the others, but in all I was fairly pleased with what I was able to do.  In so far as strength training is concerned I’ve been doing resistance training exclusively for the past two semesters, so I’m impressed with the results.

Granted, the bicep amount of 30 lbs was quite light, but I’ll hopefully be improving those through push ups – assuming that I can remember to do the confounded things.

I’m wonderfully tired this evening.

Good night folks!

Technorati Tags: health, exercise, fitness, weight loss

This semester I’m going to begin the Hundred Push Ups Challenge (click for info).  I’m one of those people who can only sometimes do 10 push ups and I frequently need to do a beginner’s push ups on my knees.

That’s pretty sad considering how much effort I’ve put into increasing my health, strength, and general fitness.  This has always been the case for me though, and pull ups / chin ups are the same way.  I wonder if there’s a hundred pull ups challenge?

So anyway now I’m going to do something about it.  In addition to going back to the recreation center this semester I’ll also be doing the Hundred Push Up plan every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (I go to the rec center on Mon., Wed., and Fri).

I look forward to the results of all of this madness by the end of this semester or so.

Update:  This will have to begin tomorrow, February 5th.  I can’t begin it this evening because I just got back from the recreation center, and I was there for about two hours or so.  It’s time to relax.

Technorati Tags: exercise, health, push ups, hundred push ups, 100 push ups, hundred push up challenge

Two totally unrelated subjects in one delicious post.

I went to the recreation center today a little earlier than I have been going. As my tweet says, I’m very pleased with the range of exercises that are available. I don’t lift weights (the machines that I use make use of levels of resistance), but I nonetheless receive a considerable work out.

Since I’ve begun using the recreation facility I have noticed people doing certain sit up routines on the manual machines. By “manual machine” I’m referring to devices that do not make use of resistance nor weights, but rather it’s up to the person to do what is done.

Anyhow, I’ve copied the abdominal work outs for my own routine. That’s a good thing because I was really wanting a second work out for my abs as everything else is worked multiple times.

Basically you stand on the device, face forward, and tip the top of your head toward the ground. The actual muscular work is done when you pull yourself up and you can add resistance on the way down as well by moving slower. One has to be careful to not use momentum from the swinging motion to bring yourself up rather than using the abdominal muscles. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quick update on the health front.

What I’m doing:

• Treadmill for 30 to 40 minutes.
• SLIM IN 6’s Slim & 6-Pack [Amazon.com]
• Sun tanning (when there’s, you know, actually sun. unlike today)

What I want to do is complete these three every day of the week, but so far I’ve been hitting it six or five days per week. I figure that that’s not bad, but it’s also not where I want to be. On the other hand, I’m pretty comfortable with what I’m doing. This is definitely not a collection of healthy habits that I dread doing.

The worse part about this exercise plan is that it requires about two hours to finish, mostly because of the sun tanning. The treadmill is done in 30 to 40 minutes and Slim & 6-Pack requires 10 minutes. That’s pretty much an hour right there. Toss in sun tanning and you have another 40 minutes (20 minutes front & back).

The excellent news is that I can now occasionally jog about half of my time on the treadmill. That just rocks, especially for a guy like me who’s had problems with asthma.

My diet is typical for me, but I’m leaning more towards a better diet. For example, my dinner today is going to be orange roughy [Wiki] and this delicious spinach stuffed with cheese and more bits of spinach. It’s similar to ravioli only with out all of the unhealthy stuff.

edit: Well damn, I didn’t know that this fish was nearly endangered. Blast it. :-/ (I just read the wiki)

I’ll have to get the correct names later, but it’s a nice, healthy dinner that’s not terrible on the taste.

Anyway, that’s all from this rambling health nut for today.

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

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