308

Was I Sick ...

I have been sick for the last couple of weeks. 

And really sick the last couple of days.  But, I won't go into details on how sick I was. 

Ouch. 

When I work out, I use what I call "layers".  The first layer is jogging and I usually go four-five times each week.

The second layer is doing "floor exercises, which is push-ups, sit-ups/abs in various forms, and something called planks (google it for more info).  I will do this three times a week.

The third layer is weight lifting which I do two or three times each week. 

But, in the last two weeks, I went jogging four times, did some floor exercises four times, and weight lifted three times.  Normal numbers would be like nine, six, and five.  And, Monday when I worked out, I thought I wasn't going to make it. 

Alas, I am feeling much better today. 

But, where am I going with this ramble? 

Well, this is the bottom line.  We will hit hiccups in our desire to achieve better fitness.  And there are things that are beyond our control ( like when a sick child keeps us up all night or we get seriously ill).  No one is going to hit their work out schedule 100% of the time.  It just doesn't happen. 

If we let it frustrate us, we will get off track and think about quitting.  This obviously is bad. 

We need to focus on what we CAN control and be able to let go of that which is beyond our control. 

However, there is a huge difference between things that are beyond our control and saying "I can't help myself."  This is probably a lesson for another day:)

So, when you fail to meet your goals, DO NOT give up.  Learn.  Apply what you have learned.  And get back on track. 

Milestones and Jogging

I weighed 241 pounds on the first of March.  Pretty good number.  My weight loss has slowed down, but that is to be expected.  This week I will do a weigh in at the gym where they have one of those scales that does body fat measurements.  I did this about six weeks ago and my body fat at 249 pounds was the same as the standard BMI for a person who weighs 203 pounds.  I am not sure how to interpret this data, but I found it interesting. 

One side note is that if I tried to loss the same amount of body fat without increasing muscle mass (working out), I  would have had to lose more than 100 pounds.  As is, I still lost alot, more than 6o pounds.  But, the working out adds a healthy dimension to the equation. 

Another big step was that I jogged 10 miles.  This took me two hours.  I was pretty happy with the event over all.  I was pretty worn out, but not exhausted.  I did my regular day of life & work afterward. 

Right now, I do interval training, which means I jog and then walk.  I normally do this in the spurts of between 10 to 20 minutes of jogging to one minute of walking.  If I jog for 30 to 40 minutes, I normally will not walk at all. 

I also vary my distances.  Every other week I do a long run as I build distance.  Last week I did about 42km (around 26 miles) with a long run of 18k (around 11 miles).  This week is an "off" week, so my total mileage will be about 35k (around 21 miles).  I am slowly working up to 65k (about 40 miles) per week.  I should hit this mark in four to six months. 

Seven months ago I jogged for the first time.  In that first week of August, I jogged for 30 minutes and walked for 2 hours.  That was about good for 12k (8 miles) of training.  I have come a long way since then. 

So, here is a typical training week: 
Monday - 40 minutes (6k)
Tuesday - 80 minutes (12k)
Wednesday - 40 minutes (6k)
Thursday - off
Friday - 40 minutes (6k)
Saturday - long or 80 minutes (18k or 12k)
Sunday - off

A couple of other notes are that once a week I will run hills or do speed type work.  This is normally on Wednesdays.  There are lots of hills around and speed work consists of going faster than normal. 

The variety of distances and types of workouts has kept it interesting and challenging.  I now look forward to running and feel odd if I miss a day.  I am thankful that my joints have held up pretty well.  I have not had any significant injuries during this time.  That is mostly due to the long, gradual build up in mileage that I am focusing on. 

I still include two other elements in my workouts.  Weight training and floor exercises.  But I will delve into that subject on another day:)

A journey of a thousand miles...

begins with the first step.

A week ago I jogged 10 miles.  Not too bad, considering where I was a year ago. 

Here are a couple of links I want to share and comment on briefly...

SECOND LIFE  This is the story of Matt Long, a NYC Fire Fighter.  He was super competitive, in great physical shape, and had the world by the tail. 

Until one day, when he was riding his bike to work.  And a bus ran over him.  And the handle bars jammed into his stomach and tore out his insides. 

The story is truly inspirational to see how Matt overcame incredible odds, more than 40 surgeries, and emotional struggles to complete the NYC marathon. 

My life and injuries don't look so bad any more. 

FOR BIG GUYS WHO RUN  is a common sense look at the fact that even though we are exercising, we still need too be aware of what we eat. 

The thought that I can eat whatever whenever is a myth.  No one lives like that and leads a healthy life.  For a limited time in high school and maybe into our early 20's, our body can stand that type of treatment. 

But, not for long. 

It is not just about the gym or working out more, it is about finding balance in life. 

Enough said. 

Stay motivated. 

Think long term.

Don't expect overnight results. 

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare." --Juma Ikangaa, Tanzanian marathoner

You Are What You Eat

How many times have you heard that?

Plenty.  I don't doubt it.  From those very first nutrition classes in grade school up to the present and now we use it, or some version of the expression, on our kids. 

We know diet and nutrition matter. 

We know, by instinct if nothing else, that 500 calories of Coke (or any soda) is not the same as 500 calories as fruit and vegetables for our body. 

We don't need to study nutrition.  We don't need to surf the web to find the answer.  We know it.  When we consume it, we feel it.  And when we look at it, we can see it. 

I have said in past posts, one of the biggest changes I have made in the past year is to eat healthier.  So, instead of looking for a greasy snack or a candy bar or a soda or some other non-nutritious snack item, I grab an apple or a banana or something similar.  This has been a huge success for me.  I am one of those people that gets hungry between meals, no matter what.  So, instead of grabbing  whatever is closest, I plan for success. 

At this very moment, I have an apple sitting on the desk next to my elbow. 

I will probably consume it within the hour. 

The challenge for us is to move away from the sugary and fatty food that we have grown accustom to consuming and start eating healthier. 

here are two of my favorite "secret" foods when I have a hankering for something sweet.  Non-fat (or low-fat) chocolate milk.  This is awesome as something sweet but without those fatty consequences.  The other is a spoonful or two of Nestle Quik or a similar powder mix.  No fat.  But, it meets the sweet urge.  I was surprised also.  Much better than a cake made with a bunch of butter and/ or Crisco. 

Exercising without Dieting

I trust that people that read this have been walking.  If you have been walking for the past month, at the minimum, you feel better about yourself.  And, hopefully, you will start to see some results.  The main thing is that you have to get STARTED!  I recommend that you just start out walking for 30 minutes each day.  Just walking.  Many of us only get the exercise of walking between the car and the house or the store.  Not too much.

But here is a BIG key to success - when we start to exercise, we tell ourselves we can eat whatever we want since we are burning extra calories. 

NOT TRUE!!!

We have to watch what we eat.  We need to healthy, well, and nutritious.  Eating junk food and drinking 64 oz "Thirst Busters" will not get us where we want to go. 

In order to make the exercise pay off, we need to eat the right stuff.   If not, we are wasting our time and energy.  What we eat makes a difference. 

And to make it perfectly clear, I lost 65 pounds last year without dieting.  That's right, no South Beach, no Adkins, no Voodoo.  I will talk more about that next week. 

Reality for us is that we have to start burning more calories to loss weight.  And this mean exercising more. 

Have you been walking for a month?  All right, stretch it out.  Alternate days, one day walking 45 minutes and then 30 minutes.  Then, every week you have three days at 30 minutes and three days at 45 minutes. 

Forget about the glory days of high school.  Just start walking and see the difference it makes. 

One Year Can make a difference

February, 2008

February, 2009

Besides Samuel not being in the photo, I lost about 65 pounds.

That is some action.  Notice the chin, the cheeks, the collar bone, the puffy eyes. 

One little story... I went out to a community where I have been in the past.  One person said,"That guy looks alot like that other really big guy that use to visit here."

My friend and another Brazilian pastor said,"Well, it is the same guy!"

Sharing resources

One of the realities I have faced over the last year is that I was pretty uneducated in the area of health in general.  We tend to think we are educated about health, but mostly we can repeat 30 second sound bits from TV or a couple facts from a two paragraph article off of Yahoo! Health.  Actually, this is a good resource, but you have to dig a bit to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

A key to success is to begin to educate yourself in the area of exercise and eating.  I know, my personal mantra is "eat less, exercise more".  However, there are a couple of things to fine tune in that whole area.

So, without further ado, here are three sites that I have I found in the last year that I use over and over. 

Runnersworld.com - This is not just for runners.  It has tons of information on diet, treating injuries, aches, and pains, stretching, and other areas related to health.  I find that the information is well researched and interesting.  This has become my personal #1 resource area. 

Get Fit Slowly - Great site, practical advice, general motivation.  Two regular 30 something year old guys decided to get into shape.  They share their experiences and learning on their blog and have the occasional guest blogger.  They post often.  They also have a long list of links on the lower right hand side of their blog.  

Burn the Fat - This blog is done by Tom Venuto, a body builder.  He sells stuff and is pretty shameless about it.  However, he also has good information on his site and links to many other sites.  He also has a long list of web sites and blogs, mostly focused on body building.  Since the focus of bodybuilding is to loss fat and  build muscle, the fundamentals are practical for those that, well, want to loss fat and build muscle.  I find that here I need to be a bit more discerning, but the effort is well worth it. 

There is more than enough info and links through these sites to keep a person busy for the rest of the year! 

Good reading and research as you educate yourself in the art of managing your body.

How Much We Eat

How much we eat... this is the key to our life and to our weight. 

There are a ton (pun intended) of reasons why we sit down to eat.  This is the challenge for our life.  Look at this short list of reasons that we will serve ourselves (or allow others to serve us):

• Others are eating
• We don't want to "offend" some one
• It looks good
• It smells good
• I'm tired
• I'm bored
• I'm depressed
• I'm watching a movie (and therefore want to munch on something)
• It's a buffet so I may as well get my money's worth
• It's a holiday
• It's a birthday
• It's a weekend

I think we get the idea.  There are a hundred and one reasons that we eat and many have nothing to do with hunger nor with proper nutrition. 

So, what should be my motivation and my guidelines?

Well, here are a couple of tips - each pound that you weigh times 13 calories daily and you will maintain your weight.  So, if you weight 150 pounds times 13 calories equals 1950 calories per day to maintain your weight.  You need to eat less and/or burn more calories to change the equation.  You know, I weight 150 pounds in the sixth grade.

And, a simple guideline is to eat one plate of food at each meal.  Do not eat more.  If you need to snack between meals, do strictly fruit.  Bananas and apples are what I eat between meals. 

The key element in the food department is to eat one plate of food at each of your three meals during the day.  That is it.  If you follow the advice from last week and this week, you can probably lose 15 pounds this year just doing those two things.

Be careful.  It is amazing how food-centric our society has become and how we get swept up in that type of culture. 

My son, Daniel, celebrating his 9th birthday.  My daughter Anna looks on. 

Starting out

As we enter the new year, it seems that one of the classic goals that we set for ourselves is to "lose weight". 

Here are a couple of ideas in the area of exercise that can help that become reality.

1)  You have to get started.  Exercise is just like anything else - if you only talk about it and never do it, nothing ever really happens. 

We often suffer from a few barriers in our desire to get started.  We wait for the perfect moment to start.  The excuse is that it is too hot, too cold, we are too tired, to fat, to cranky, the kids are too young, too active, too busy, etc, etc, etc. 

Reality is that there is no "perfect" moment.  We have to start. 

2)  Pick a time that works for you.  Normally this is early morning for me, but for you it may be mid-morning when kids are in school or in the early afternoon. 

Here is our exercise plan.  Just start walking for 30 minutes a day, taking Sundays off.  Walk with a purpose, like you need to get somewhere on time.  But don't walk so fast you get breathless. 

Just walk, each day for the rest of the month. 

You can do this in the neighborhood, at Walmart, Sam's club, at the mall, or the location that works for you.  Just do it.  Chances are there is some way to fit this into your schedule.  The simple act of doing a basic walking exercise will help get your body back on track.

So, just make it happen.  This is the best thing you can do to starting getting your life headed in the right direction.

Looking ahead to 2009

As we get to the point of turning over the pages on the calendar to 2009, I have reflected on the future of this blog. 

And, here is what I think.  I think I want to use this place to serve and help others.  So, the plans for the this blog are simple.  I think that there are ALOT of people that would love to get rid of about 50 pounds and this blog is pointed towards them.  People, who like me, always saw that goal as to tough, to distant, did not have enough time, or know how to make it a reality. 

This blog wants to focus on helping people be both happier with themselves and healthier. 

There will (probably) be weekly posts, about four post each month.

One will deal with exercises ideas (burning calories).

One will deal with eating issues (calorie intake).

One will deal with motivation (Keep moving in the right direction... please!)

One will deal with other resources on the web (pointing to other places to explore). 

Of course, there will be some overlap and of course there will be weeks missed and of course, I will toss things in that do not fit neatly into the pattern.  But, hey, this is my blog, so I plan to take a bit of license when I need to:)

So, here is to a happier and healthier 2009.  Please feel free to invite others to look at this space.  I hope that it will make a difference!