live healthier

I made the 300,000 goal. I had two goals, my “realistic” goal of 200,000 to get the t-shirt and make the first drawing. And then I had my “super motivated” goal of 300k. I am astounded that I made 300,000. I am equally astounded that 33 people had 30k steps per day for 900,000 steps. That is just jaw dropping.

I’m not sure when and how they announce the winners of the drawings. With this new diet, I sure could use the $500 card to Whole Foods. This fresh, organic, home cooked thing is not, in any way, cheap. I’ll let you know if I win. I’ll buy you a carrot juice.

I haven’t seen 160’s for a good long while. Probably since the marathon, which I ran at 165 (which was really 10lbs over my running weight). 169.8 is not safely in the 160’s but it is in the 160s, so it’s a milestone nonetheless. Fat was 15.3.

Neither number is where I want it to be, but I’m finally headed down again. I was stuck at 185 for a good long while, then 175 for more time. I think I have set points every 10 lbs.

I have been playing a ton of Beach Volleyball, working out, running, and now with this diet, eating twigs, grass and small stones. My speed and endurance is getting better and dropping the weight is helping that, and then helping to take some weight off. Nice feedback loop, that.

I should write something about Beach Volleyball.

I feel like I’ve been getting more exercise than I have since I trained for a marathon. Yet, I have a THIRD of the steps of the leaders. I am impressed that so many of these people can keep up such a pace. I am not judging my performance a failure in comparison with them. In fact, when I was first deciding if I wanted to try a contest, I had hoped to average 7k steps to make the 200,000 step T-Shirt thing. Which I have already done with 7 days to spare. A lot of my points have come from Beach Volleyball which is a fair bit more work than walking around.

All in all, I’m doing much better than I had planned to.

I’m torn on whether I want to try to make the 300k mark in 7 days. I am due for a 20k day. That’d move me forward.

The first week of the HealthMiles challenge is over (22 days remain). I ran and worked out with more determination in the weeks leading up to this thinking that would help get me “in mode.” Maybe it did, but to a large degree, I keep feeling like it’s groundhog day: I work my butt off to make a meager 12k and then I wake up at 0 the next day only to face it again.

Here’s my first week’s steps. As you can see, I took a rest day:

13,171
12,235
20,177
12,358
12,256
4,108
12,167

Totaling 86,472—which is enough for 311th out of 1,416. My daily average is 12,353. At this rate, I’ll get entered in the $500 drawing for 300,000 steps. We’ll see.

Even with the rest day, the “challenge” part has been spot on. As far as the contest goes, I don’t really understand who these people are, but around 50 people are consistently uploading 30k steps a day. They must be aerobics instructors and postal delivery people.

As I am a computer programmer and work from a home office, pretty much every step in excess of 500 is added only as exercise of some sort. Given that, I am proud of my daily average, particularly because I stressed my back out one day and my mom, aunt and cousin have been in town this week and I’m still managing to get in exercise.

But, I am tired and 22 days seems like a long time to keep this up. I also think I may be getting a cold. Nonetheless, I am also very competitive and I have a strong desire to bump up my standings. Plus, I’m on a team and that gives me a sense of responsibility. I don’t want to be lazy and bring the team down.

This morning I woke up thinking about the cast of the movie 300 and how they trained like madmen, eating only enough calories to barely feed their workouts, for 8 solid weeks. How did they do it? What incredible mental toughness.

About 6 months ago, I joined the Health Miles program at my gym. It basically involves wearing a pedometer, uploading the ped points to a web site that tracks these and taking some bio-measurements at a machine at the gym. Aside from being a nice way to track progress on weight, body fat, blood pressure and have a nice history, it is pretty motivating to have a daily number of how lazy, or not, you’ve been.

Now, I’ve joined a challenge team. It is a contest, both for individuals and as a team. I joined a random team because I liked the name.

Prizes
Individual with the Most Steps: $1000
1st Place Team: $300 per team member
2nd Place Team: $100 per team member
Each Participant with 300,000 Steps will be entered to win a $500 gift card to Whole Foods Market
Each Participant with 200,000 Steps will earn a Spectrum Walk it Off T-shirt AND an entry into a drawing for $200
Each additional 100,000 steps (after 200K) will earn the participant an additional entry into the drawing for $200 (15 Winners)

I am hoping to average between 7k and 10k steps per day. I really don’t know how this will compare to others’ efforts. Since I work from home, pretty much none of my pedometer points are “free” points. I can pretty much get through a day with 500 steps or less. Maybe once we get into it and I see how remedial a 7k effort is, I can try to boost that a little.

So, by way of warming up to the challenge, I decided to see if I could average 7k steps for a week. And I did! 7,442 (on average) steps per day for the last 7 days. And that’s not counting whatever I do for the next 2 hours… which I think is going to be eating and watching Wimbledon on TiVo so that isn’t really going to boost my average much.

But I did 7k and even with a rest day in there.

The challenge begins on the 18th. I hope by then I will be fully in the swing of getting some steps in every day. The challenge lasts 4 weeks and I would very much like to see myself at 165 lbs. at the end of it. That would be grand.

4 weeks of 3 times a week. 2 of those I only went so as to not mess up this resolution so I think the resolution was a good idea.

sanvea said to me that every time you set an intention and follow through, it makes you stronger. Everytime you set an intention and fail to follow through it makes you weaker. This resonates with me and in this intention, I intend to get stronger.

So, anyway, 12 trips to the gym behind me. The last 5 or so I have insisted on the various machines, in any combination, totaling 500 calories burned. Depending on the machines and the combination this can take 40 min to 1 hour of cardio machining.

Rowing is the fastest burner, at least it boasts such. I’m not sure we can believe the machines, but the rowing machine seems so modest in every other way I have no reason to doubt its veracity.

Then I also lift some weights, which burns some more and hopefully results in doughyness reduction.

After one month, my weight and fat percentage is (drum roll….) exactly the same! No change. Am I discouraged? No! I think I hit a new set point and it’s going to take some convincing to get my body to abandon this new set point. If I keep this up for 3 months and haven’t seen any downwardly tending trends, then I’ll feel some concern.

All in all, though, my cardio is improving and I am increasing strength (somewhat). I do enjoy the gym when I convince myself to go, so this is going swimmingly.

5 months have gone by since I added this goal. My gym attendance has been neither as regular nor as vigorous as I had hoped, but on the bright side, I have been going. I’ve also been eating smaller portions and been more cognizant of the choices I make.

Unfortunately, I am the exact same weight and fat percentage that I was 5 months ago that put me into the mild state of alarm described in the entry (180/18%). Again, on the bright side, the upward trend stopped, but it has not been replaced by a downward one. The only number I really care about is fat percentage.

I am controlling the amount that I work and haven’t put in nearly the hours that I was putting in 3 months ago. I am to a point where I can really make the gym non-negotiable and go regularly. One thing keeping me from going is that I have had an unusually sickly year with a lot of colds, sinus infections, migraines… Seems like I go to the gym 3 times and get sick. I have to get better about going when it’s just a head cold and I’m passed the contagious phase; apply the “above the head rule” I used to use as a runner.

I need to do this and it isn’t about vanity, although there is an element of that. I look doughy and I don’t like that. But mostly, it is a question of health. I am not healthy at this weight and I have much less energy. It’s also financial as I’ve been buying larger pants when I have perfectly good pants that should fit me ;)

So, starting when we got back from Denver, I made a commitment to go to the gym 3 times a week, every week, no matter what. I’m on week #2. Week #1 was enjoyable (Tues, Fri, Sunday – I couldn’t move on Monday).

I like the gym, but it is hard to leave the house when you work from a home office. After a few years of working from home, going anywhere seems like a major production. I think, though, if I can just get it in my mind that M,W,F I go to the gym, period, that’s just the way it is, then it’ll get easier to do.

I don’t want to call this a NY’s resolution. It is an intention that happens to coincide with the new year.

I got on the gym scale and I’m heavier than I’ve ever been in my life. It isn’t that I have a weight problem, but I can see how I could get there from here. Time to take evasive action.

Steps have already been taken, but if I needed additional motivation, well, there it is.

I have already been trying to eat better—less processed food, seriously reduced intake of high fructose corn syrup (it’s in frickin’ everything), more vegitables, more fruit, less or none of those evil nature valley salty peanut bars… etc.

I joined a gym last weekend and I went Mon, Wed and Friday. I am really loving being back in a gym. I took it very easy as I haven’t lifted for 5 years now and I was afraid I would paralyze myself. I’ve been doing the circuit training on the machines, going pretty easy, then 20 min on a treadmill trying not to induce cardiac arrest.

It is very hard to believe that I ran a marathon 6 months ago. I can’t run 3 miles without my heart rate going over 180. I know it’ll come back, and I know it’s because I was 10 lb too heavy when I ran the marathon and now I’m 10 lb over that. Not that I’d care if my fat percentage didn’t indicate that it really isn’t that somebody has been sneaking in at night and taking in my pants waistlines as I had been suspecting.

Well, maybe somebody has also been taking in my pants. Just because I’m also a little doughy doesn’t mean they aren’t.

Anyway, I’m not going to over do it, so that perhaps it’ll stick, but it’s time I reverse this tread. I worked very hard at running for 5 years, 6 months “off” is silly—back on the path of heath with me.