Aim for the Head

I am no longer doing 100 push-ups a day. The reason I began doing them is because I recognized that the first step to getting fit is actually starting. Honestly, getting started is usually the hardest part of almost any project.  For me, anyway. I’m not an amatuercrastinator, I’m a procrastinator. So to get started on the road to fitness I needed an easy way to get into the habit.  Push-ups are simple in that practically anyone can do them, even if you have to start on your knees instead of your toes and it takes you all day to do the whole hundred. Eventually I did get myself down to being able to do the hundred, on my toes, in under ten minutes.  But the real achievement was that I was doing this (nearly) every day.

The second phase of my journey was portion control. One of the main issues many people face in getting thinner is that they overeat. And I’m not talking about sitting down with a bucket of chicken or a tub of ice cream and polishing it off. I’m talking about eating a little too much at every meal that adds up over time. Before starting this road to fitness for real, I wrote about cutting my morning cereal down to one cup. I started doing this again, and limiting my lunches, and watching out for sizes of dinners, and cutting out extra snacks. I also switched to drinking mainly water except for special occasions and sometimes for meals. And I also trained myself to order smaller when we eat out, or order with the expectation that half the meal is going home in a box for another time. Eating at restaurants is really bad for you when it comes to portion control because they often won’t let you control the portions, you just get the plate of food they serve and it is left to you to stop eating. Of course, having a spot of unemployment and being broke really helps here since eating out is one of the first things to go. Fast food is also a pain here since many places have eliminated their old “small” size and made “medium” the new small, “large” the new medium, and the bucket of soda with a barrel of fries the new large. If you are in the habit of ordering the large or medium combos, you might need to reevaluate and switch to the small, or even start ordering off the kid’s menu.

Following these two phases I was able to reach one of my big goals: 200lbs. Phase three is now in full effect.  What is phase three?  Realistic expectations.

Look, I didn’t get up to 250lbs overnight, or even in a couple months, not even a year.  It took a long time for the weight to creep up on me. With that in mind, I don’t expect to lose it all in a short period of time either. I’ve seen tons of propaganda for diets and exercise plans that claim I can shed thirty, fifty, even a hundred pounds in a matter of weeks or months, but the largest problem with losing weight fast is that you usually lack the discipline to keep the weight off. The “crash” in most crash diets isn’t the sudden loss of weight but the crash of depression when months later you find you’ve gained most or all of it back.  With that in mind, my current goal is to lose just one pound a week.  That seems very small, and it is, purposefully so. Each pound that goes away I am determined to keep gone.

I’ve stopped doing my push-ups and sit-ups routine. It served its purpose of getting me in the habit of exercising and now it is time to move on. I was a big fan of the idea of the Wii Fit, but the implementation was lacking. Since I already owned the balance board, buying Wii Fit Plus for under $20 was a no-brainer. Having used it for a month now, I can say that this sequel successfully fixed all the issues I had with the original. The main fix being that I can build a workout, not have to stop between exercises to choose another and also not have to see the scores and rankings which I really don’t care about. The best part being you can simply select an amount of time, select a type of workout (yoga, strength, or a mix of both) and hit start. I now do a random selection of yoga three days a week, and a random selection of strength exercises two days a week, each workout for thirty minutes. Of course, I continue to examine what I eat, making small changes as I see places to improve without throwing out all the foods I love just to see an improvement in my waste line.

If I can maintain my goal of one pound a week that is fifty-two pounds in a year.  148lbs is my new goal for October 2010. I’m looking forward to it…

It has been very close for a while now, but I finally hit the mark, and maintained it for a few days (maintaining is the key).  Two hundred pounds.

The best part about this is that I am doing it slow and steady.  I’m watching my diet, but I don’t feel like I’m starving or cheating myself.  I’m exercising, but I don’t feel like I’m “working out”.  I’m just getting leaner, and stronger, and feeling better.  I don’t think I would ever actually want to do one of those crash diet and exercise programs where you lose fifty pounds in two weeks because I don’t think I’d actually keep the weight off.  But the way I am approaching it, breaking one bad habit at a time and instilling one good habit at a time, it feels good and I doubt I’ll have trouble sticking with it.

I’m still doing my 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups daily (most of the time, some days I skip but I’d like to think I still hit 5 days a week).  Before spring got here I was doing a cardio step thing once a week, but I’ve since replaced it with mowing the lawn and other yard work.  I use a push reel mower for the lawn.  Look it up, you’ll think I’m crazy.  But crazy like a fox…  I’m to the point now where I’ll keep the yard work and try to add a cardio bit somewhere in the middle of the week.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now.  199, here I come…

One of my goals when it came to working out and getting in shape was to see my weight fall south of two hundred pounds.  At my heaviest, I was probably close to 250.  I can only guess because once I crossed 240, weighing myself became too depressing.  Last week I finally decided to weigh myself for the first time since I started my new routines (Mid-December).  Previously I had weighed myself a couple of weeks after kicking caffeine and sodas, and I had been at 221.  Now I am down to 206.

In addition to dropping the weight, I also generally feel a whole lot better.  I have more energy and my back pain, which has been fairly constant for years, is much less, almost non-existent.

Currently, my workout goes like this:

• First, I do some stretching.  This is a mixture of some straight muscle stretching and some yoga poses.  This, more than anything else, has led to me feeling a lot better.  Good stretching really opens you up.
• Second, I do my push-ups.  I’m still doing them slow, and I have no expectation of speeding them up.  Fast isn’t the point.  Each one takes a little more than a second to complete, and I’m at the point now where I do five sets of twenty to make my 100.  A short (30 second to 1 minute) break between sets.
• Thirds, I do my sit-ups.  Same at the push-ups.  Slow.  Sets of twenty.  Break between sets.  Five sets.
• After that I do some more stretching and some breathing as a cool down.

I do want to put some leg work/cardio in my workout, but for the moment I’m happy because this is a workout that I can do anytime, anywhere.

Of course, I can’t attribute everything to the workout.  I’ve also been watching my diet.  One thing I’ve learned reading books and listening to trainers and specialists is that the most important element is portion control.  So I’ve been learning to eat leftovers and make sure I’m not stuffing myself at mealtimes.

All in all, I am very pleased so far and really looking forward to the day I get myself under two hundred for good.

It has been a bit over a month since I started my most recent run at getting in shape.  Phase 1 was 100 Push-ups, and at this point I am actually doing my 100 within ten to fifteen minutes.  I’m still a bit away from my goal of going it in three minutes or less, but I have definitely seen huge improvements.  So, I feel it is time to institute Phase 2: 100 Sit-ups.

Now, doing sit-ups is both going to be easier and harder for me.  My abdominal muscles are actually in pretty good shape… however, I have cleverly hidden them under a plump gut.  See, I actually use my abs quite a bit, getting on and off the couch, lifting things incorrectly, and other stuff, much more than I use the muscles in my arms (as a computer geek, my arms spend a lot of time resting on the desk while my fingers do all the real work).  That said, I did my first 100 Sit-ups last night in well under an hour, probably less than half an hour, but they were more crunches than sit-ups.  That gut covering my six-pack does a decent job of preventing me from completing the full sit-up (and I can’t touch my toes either).

I see getting through Phase 2 much more quickly than Phase 1, so I already need to start looking for a Phase 3… I’m thinking it is going to be some form of cardio… I do own an elliptical machine, so I might as well start using it.  The key here is that I am not currently in any life-threatening danger, but I do want to make sure I never am, so I want to add and make changes to my life a little at a time.  Small changes are easier to keep than drastic ones.

As another year draws to a close, I again find myself still not in as good a shape as I’d like to be.  I mean, I’m not morbidly obese or facing serious health issues… and if the zombie apocalypse comes, I am confident that I could fight off the hordes of the undead and be able to outrun them when needed.  However, while sheer will and adrenaline can get you through many ordeals, it would be nice to be in better overall shape.

So, to that end I have (once again) decided to try to get more healthy.  Since many of my previous attempts has failed, I am going to use an approach that has worked in other areas of my life.  See… the problem is that my lack of good health can actually be chalked up to a large number of bad habits, and rather than to simply try to cram a new lifestyle on top of or around my current one, I need to identify my bad habits and break them one by one, and to instill new habits one by one.

About a year ago I broke my habit of drinking sodas.  I was literally drinking a half dozen cans of soda a day.  The first step was to cut out caffeine, so I switched from Coke to Sprite.  After I got used to that, I switched to water, and sometimes lemonade (Crystal Light to be exact).  Overall, dropping soda for water caused me to drop about ten pounds, maybe fifteen.

My next step is to add in a new habit.  My goal is to do 100 push-ups a day.  That is in a 24 hour period.  Right now, it takes nearly twelve hours for me to do my 100 push-ups.  I can do 10 at a time easily, and I can do 20 at a time alright, but beyond 20 in a row my arms get tired.  So I do 20 when I can, and 10 when I can’t, and take long rests in between.  My goal is to be able to do the 100 push-ups in a couple or three minutes.

That’s where I am… I’ll post updates as I feel inspired to.