Sunday once again and time for an update.
Got back into the resistance work this week and feel better for it. Also, despite missing a day and having to reduce mileage on another, I ran the furthest today that I've run in a couple months. Making good progress toward my goal for my half next month.
Not really a lot of change in life this week, workouts continue basically as planned, getting Lara into the spirit of exercise isn't easy but she's warming to it and will get there in her own time. Got a new pair of shoes to run through my rotation today. A pair of Vibram Komodo Sports. I'll put together a "review" when I have worn them a bit and have some useful things to say. Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of things to say in these posts, and then other times I have plenty to say, so I may start reducing the frequency of these posts to only happen when I have interesting things to say, we'll have to see how that goes.
So what does the scale have to say about my week? 210, same as last week. So not too bad. Hopefully next week will see it go back down a bit.Until then, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 97)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Back into the swing of things with the running this week. If I can put up with a sprint session this week then things will be nice and back to normal. Eating stayed pretty well in line with things I'd like despite Thanksgiving. Had some good time with family and friends this week.
So what about the future? Lara's going to be starting up on some more working out now than she had been doing previously, which is good for her and means I can start having a local workout buddy for some of my workouts now. Start her off easy and then see where life takes us. Also going to be trying to further clean up our diets from what they are now by doing the majority of our food production at home. We've been doing better with that recently but there's still plenty of room for improvement over the longer scale. Liking where the future is heading in so many areas of our lives these days.
So what about my numbers? 210 this week. Same as last week. Holding steady is good but I'd like to be down a bit from where I am right now. We'll just have to see what happens as the future unfolds. Until next week, keeping striving to be the you you want to be.
Back into the swing of things with the running this week. If I can put up with a sprint session this week then things will be nice and back to normal. Eating stayed pretty well in line with things I'd like despite Thanksgiving. Had some good time with family and friends this week.
So what about the future? Lara's going to be starting up on some more working out now than she had been doing previously, which is good for her and means I can start having a local workout buddy for some of my workouts now. Start her off easy and then see where life takes us. Also going to be trying to further clean up our diets from what they are now by doing the majority of our food production at home. We've been doing better with that recently but there's still plenty of room for improvement over the longer scale. Liking where the future is heading in so many areas of our lives these days.
So what about my numbers? 210 this week. Same as last week. Holding steady is good but I'd like to be down a bit from where I am right now. We'll just have to see what happens as the future unfolds. Until next week, keeping striving to be the you you want to be.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 96)
Sunday once again and time for my weekly update.
Missed last weeks update, was busy with life and didn't get around to it. So this week here we are.
Finally back to running in my Vibrams after the toenail procedure. I'm definitely down a bit in terms of my overall fitness but I seem to be regaining it steadily. Hopefully within another week or two I should be back to full and working on increasing my fitness beyond it's recent peak. My sleep has been improving of late as well which is always a bonus. Hoping to increase the rate at which I'm complying with my planned resistance workouts by moving them from Monday and Friday to Sunday and Thursday, so that in coincides with as few other recurring events in my life as possible.
So what else have I been up to? Today it was cookery. Trying to find some replacement options for the smoothies we've been doing for breakfasts. Made up a batch of the Primal Energy Bars I've done a couple times before, playing around with things trying to find a good match. Also tried out two new recipes, some Primal sausage balls and some hash brown omelette "muffins". Both of them seem pretty decent so we'll have to see how things pan out. For the sweet tooth we whipped up something a bit odd, cookie stuffed brownies, chocolate chip cookies contained within fudge brownies. Those were indeed rather delicious.
So what does the scale have to say? 210, up a pound from last time. Gonna cut back a little and try to get that back down a bit. Bodyfat holding pretty steady. So until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Missed last weeks update, was busy with life and didn't get around to it. So this week here we are.
Finally back to running in my Vibrams after the toenail procedure. I'm definitely down a bit in terms of my overall fitness but I seem to be regaining it steadily. Hopefully within another week or two I should be back to full and working on increasing my fitness beyond it's recent peak. My sleep has been improving of late as well which is always a bonus. Hoping to increase the rate at which I'm complying with my planned resistance workouts by moving them from Monday and Friday to Sunday and Thursday, so that in coincides with as few other recurring events in my life as possible.
So what else have I been up to? Today it was cookery. Trying to find some replacement options for the smoothies we've been doing for breakfasts. Made up a batch of the Primal Energy Bars I've done a couple times before, playing around with things trying to find a good match. Also tried out two new recipes, some Primal sausage balls and some hash brown omelette "muffins". Both of them seem pretty decent so we'll have to see how things pan out. For the sweet tooth we whipped up something a bit odd, cookie stuffed brownies, chocolate chip cookies contained within fudge brownies. Those were indeed rather delicious.
So what does the scale have to say? 210, up a pound from last time. Gonna cut back a little and try to get that back down a bit. Bodyfat holding pretty steady. So until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Weekly Weigh-In (Week 94)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
For some reason it seems my update from last week didn't post. Nothing of real value missing though, mostly just a plan for recovery from the toenail repair I had done last week. Didn't quite stick to that plan but it was good to have had one. Wasn't able to do any real running last week, though I did get in some cycling and a couple walks instead. Hoping that by the middle of this week I'll be able to do some running in addition to some walking I plan to add to my routine. At least in part due to wanting to get into better condition for walking around the parks at Disneyland before and after my race. That and the walking is beneficial to my mental state I've found, in ways that are similar to if not the same as my running but some experimenting will help hammer that out.
Anyway, what's the numbers this week? Weight at 209, same as last week and the week before, BF down from previous two weeks, RHR up a little (but still only at around 50). Everything's going pretty well with my fitness, and that's just the way I want it going into the Fall. Until next time readers, keep being the you you want to be.
For some reason it seems my update from last week didn't post. Nothing of real value missing though, mostly just a plan for recovery from the toenail repair I had done last week. Didn't quite stick to that plan but it was good to have had one. Wasn't able to do any real running last week, though I did get in some cycling and a couple walks instead. Hoping that by the middle of this week I'll be able to do some running in addition to some walking I plan to add to my routine. At least in part due to wanting to get into better condition for walking around the parks at Disneyland before and after my race. That and the walking is beneficial to my mental state I've found, in ways that are similar to if not the same as my running but some experimenting will help hammer that out.
Anyway, what's the numbers this week? Weight at 209, same as last week and the week before, BF down from previous two weeks, RHR up a little (but still only at around 50). Everything's going pretty well with my fitness, and that's just the way I want it going into the Fall. Until next time readers, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 92)
Still Sunday, if only barely, and time for another update.
Good week on my feet this week. Logged the most miles I've yet logged in a week, crossed the threshold for most runs in a week, and most runs in a month, had my best average pace for a week, and just generally kept in good shape with my runs all throughout the week.
This week though I'm gonna talk about what I've been doing for resistance training. It's much reduced from what I was doing a month or two ago with the weights, but it's meshing rather well with my running and it's progressive so I can keep working at it until I manage to see the results I'm looking for or nothing happens.
So what is it? It's a progressive bodyweight program derived from the book Convict Conditioning. A strange name sure but it makes a lot of sense, in prison you don't have a lot of gym equipment to work with, and in many cases you get your body and your cell. Now I have no intention of going to prison but the kinds of lessons from people who have can help me with my own strength work in terms of keeping things simple and natural, and in terms of making sure that my workouts are not tied to any specific equipment or location.
The program consists of 6 basic movement progressions, pushups, pull-ups, squats, leg raises, bridging, and handstand pushups. Each of the 6 movements has 10 steps that go from complete beginner to things like 1 arm pushups, pull-ups, or handstand pushups, 1 legged squats, and hanging straight leg raises and stand-to-stand bridging. Each of the 10 steps has goals for beginner, intermediate and advancement ratings so the goals are always very clearly laid out. Right now I'm working on the pushup, pull-up, squat, and leg raise progressions, the bridging and handstand progressions are recommended against until you reach set levels of some of the other exercises and I'm going to work within that restriction for now to see what kind of results I get following the program as directed.
I'm not sure how this program is gonna work in the long run but so far it seems to be going rather well for me.
The other thing I've been trying out recently is trigger point therapy on my legs using a lacrosse ball. Essentially you just push the ball into areas of tightness in the muscles, ligaments, and fascia and activate the muscles. Doing so is supposed to help relieve the tension in the muscles and help loosen your joints and prevent injury. It's another situation where I don't yet have any proof of whether or not it doesn't what it is supposed to, but as with the resistance training, the best way to find out is to try it.
So what does the scale tell me whit sweet? 209, up a pound from last week. Bodyfat staying about the same. Al this is about what I expected, and I look forward to seeing where things go from here. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Good week on my feet this week. Logged the most miles I've yet logged in a week, crossed the threshold for most runs in a week, and most runs in a month, had my best average pace for a week, and just generally kept in good shape with my runs all throughout the week.
This week though I'm gonna talk about what I've been doing for resistance training. It's much reduced from what I was doing a month or two ago with the weights, but it's meshing rather well with my running and it's progressive so I can keep working at it until I manage to see the results I'm looking for or nothing happens.
So what is it? It's a progressive bodyweight program derived from the book Convict Conditioning. A strange name sure but it makes a lot of sense, in prison you don't have a lot of gym equipment to work with, and in many cases you get your body and your cell. Now I have no intention of going to prison but the kinds of lessons from people who have can help me with my own strength work in terms of keeping things simple and natural, and in terms of making sure that my workouts are not tied to any specific equipment or location.
The program consists of 6 basic movement progressions, pushups, pull-ups, squats, leg raises, bridging, and handstand pushups. Each of the 6 movements has 10 steps that go from complete beginner to things like 1 arm pushups, pull-ups, or handstand pushups, 1 legged squats, and hanging straight leg raises and stand-to-stand bridging. Each of the 10 steps has goals for beginner, intermediate and advancement ratings so the goals are always very clearly laid out. Right now I'm working on the pushup, pull-up, squat, and leg raise progressions, the bridging and handstand progressions are recommended against until you reach set levels of some of the other exercises and I'm going to work within that restriction for now to see what kind of results I get following the program as directed.
I'm not sure how this program is gonna work in the long run but so far it seems to be going rather well for me.
The other thing I've been trying out recently is trigger point therapy on my legs using a lacrosse ball. Essentially you just push the ball into areas of tightness in the muscles, ligaments, and fascia and activate the muscles. Doing so is supposed to help relieve the tension in the muscles and help loosen your joints and prevent injury. It's another situation where I don't yet have any proof of whether or not it doesn't what it is supposed to, but as with the resistance training, the best way to find out is to try it.
So what does the scale tell me whit sweet? 209, up a pound from last week. Bodyfat staying about the same. Al this is about what I expected, and I look forward to seeing where things go from here. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 91)
Another late update this week, sorry about that.
Increased the bar on my running yet again this week with increased paces, mileages, and days. Days will probably peak next week at 7, if all goes as planned, but mileage and pace will hopefully keep increasing for a while. Need to map out a hilly route in this area so that I can reintroduce my hill training. I've recently decided to add some mobility work based on things I've been picking up over at MobilityWOD and Strength Running. Increasing my mobility and working my joints daily should hopefully help keep me injury free as I increase my running to prepare for my race and beyond. I'm also increasing my strength training overall, though not really my lower body disproportionately to my upper, more on that next week. Sadly my stats will take a bit of a dip after I get this ingrown toenail taken care of, but that should only hinder me a few days.
So how about my weight? 208, same as last week. Staying rather constant throughout is fine with me. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Increased the bar on my running yet again this week with increased paces, mileages, and days. Days will probably peak next week at 7, if all goes as planned, but mileage and pace will hopefully keep increasing for a while. Need to map out a hilly route in this area so that I can reintroduce my hill training. I've recently decided to add some mobility work based on things I've been picking up over at MobilityWOD and Strength Running. Increasing my mobility and working my joints daily should hopefully help keep me injury free as I increase my running to prepare for my race and beyond. I'm also increasing my strength training overall, though not really my lower body disproportionately to my upper, more on that next week. Sadly my stats will take a bit of a dip after I get this ingrown toenail taken care of, but that should only hinder me a few days.
So how about my weight? 208, same as last week. Staying rather constant throughout is fine with me. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 90)
Monday and time for a delayed update.
Set a new record for most activities on Runkeeper in a week last week with 5, my steady increases in mileage are continuing rather well. Been setting some pretty blazing paces on some of the more recent runs and I'm hoping I'm not overdoing it with tacking on the speed. In addition I've been tweaking my strength routine to help increase my overall strength and will be throwing in more running specific strength work as time goes on.
I'm really liking where I'm at with my fitness of late, and we've been making an effort to both cook at home more and try out more recipes we've never done so all in all I'm pretty happy with where my diet has been heading too. Right now I just have to take precautions to make sure that getting my toenail fixed in a week or two doesn't set me back too far, but I'm not too worried about that as my cardiac system seems to be improving steadily (resting heart rate is down to the low 50s now, making steady progress in the direction of the 40s), and my respiratory system seems to keep up pretty well to longer runs. That combined with my strength training should allow me to keep up a sufficient pace over the distance to meet my goals.
So how's the scale treating me this week? 208, same as last week. Body fat is down slightly but pretty much just holding steady, and that's fine by me. Until next time, keep on being the you you want to be.
Set a new record for most activities on Runkeeper in a week last week with 5, my steady increases in mileage are continuing rather well. Been setting some pretty blazing paces on some of the more recent runs and I'm hoping I'm not overdoing it with tacking on the speed. In addition I've been tweaking my strength routine to help increase my overall strength and will be throwing in more running specific strength work as time goes on.
I'm really liking where I'm at with my fitness of late, and we've been making an effort to both cook at home more and try out more recipes we've never done so all in all I'm pretty happy with where my diet has been heading too. Right now I just have to take precautions to make sure that getting my toenail fixed in a week or two doesn't set me back too far, but I'm not too worried about that as my cardiac system seems to be improving steadily (resting heart rate is down to the low 50s now, making steady progress in the direction of the 40s), and my respiratory system seems to keep up pretty well to longer runs. That combined with my strength training should allow me to keep up a sufficient pace over the distance to meet my goals.
So how's the scale treating me this week? 208, same as last week. Body fat is down slightly but pretty much just holding steady, and that's fine by me. Until next time, keep on being the you you want to be.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 89)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Been a really busy week this week. Due to careful planning we actually cooked most of our meals at home this week which is an improvement over recent weeks, and also a trend I hope to continue.
Didn't end up doing quite as much running this week as I'd planned, but I got a few good quality runs in. I also managed to get in a bodyweight routine every night for the last week, pushups, squats, vertical pulls (a precursor to pullups), and knee tucks (a precursor to hanging leg raises). Soon I'm hoping to add some bridging and handstand work to that routine as well. Making good progress so far on these workouts and hoping to continue doing so. Honestly not a lot of new developments this week otherwise.
So, what the scale got to say today? 208, same as last week. Even with that being the case I look better in a mirror now than I did two weeks ago, and that's worth more than any change on the scale right now as I'm fine with my weight, and to the stage of working on my Looking Good Naked factor. So far so good. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Been a really busy week this week. Due to careful planning we actually cooked most of our meals at home this week which is an improvement over recent weeks, and also a trend I hope to continue.
Didn't end up doing quite as much running this week as I'd planned, but I got a few good quality runs in. I also managed to get in a bodyweight routine every night for the last week, pushups, squats, vertical pulls (a precursor to pullups), and knee tucks (a precursor to hanging leg raises). Soon I'm hoping to add some bridging and handstand work to that routine as well. Making good progress so far on these workouts and hoping to continue doing so. Honestly not a lot of new developments this week otherwise.
So, what the scale got to say today? 208, same as last week. Even with that being the case I look better in a mirror now than I did two weeks ago, and that's worth more than any change on the scale right now as I'm fine with my weight, and to the stage of working on my Looking Good Naked factor. So far so good. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 88)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Big changes in my fitness plans this week that I'm really liking already.
Firstly, this weekend Lara needed some new jeans so like a good bored husband I went along to help. While out I realized I have only one pair of jeans so I might as well try some on. Turns out, I now wear a size 34. I cannot actually remember when I last wore a 34, the other pair I have is old, from a couple pants buying generations ago, and was a 38. I've dropped 8-10 inches from my waist size in these past 88 weeks, and I feel pretty good about that.
So what else have I been changing this week? Well, last week I mentioned that I'd probably be picking up a pull-up bar, and Sunday afternoon I did. So this week I actually worked out every evening after work with some squats, pushups and pullups. My arms are not liking the pullups, probably because I tried to go straight into full pullups without much lead-in, so I'm going to be pulling back from that and working on progressing toward pullups a little more gradually. I've also been working on increasing the range of motion on my squats and improving my technique on my pushups. I'll likely be adding a couple more exercises into my newly rekindled bodyweight workout fixation in the coming weeks. Handstands and eventually handstand pushups come to mind, leg raises as well (enabled at some stage by the pullup bar). I've found some interesting reading material on progressive bodyweight training recently that I've been going through and hopefully I can start putting it in practice in my workouts and see what kind of results it will get me. I will say that my upper body seems to have gotten a lot of increased definition for a weeks worth of time, so I'm hopeful.
The other big change in my workouts this week was that I started getting up early pretty much every day and going for a run. Some of them had to be adjusted from my plans going into the week, and due to issues with my work-sleep interaction and the water at our apartment I had to skip two of my planned runs, but 5 of the last 7 days have seen me out for a run and that's an improvement I'm proud of. Hopefully I can improve on that in the coming weeks.
So what does the scale have to say this week? 208, down a pound from last week. It seems to be nearly equal measure fat and lean if my bodyfat readings are correct, which I'm never really all that sure of. One of these days I'm going to upgrade to the Withings scale and then I'll have a little more confidence in them. Anyway, until next week, be the you you want to be. No matter what you have you can make it happen.
Big changes in my fitness plans this week that I'm really liking already.
Firstly, this weekend Lara needed some new jeans so like a good bored husband I went along to help. While out I realized I have only one pair of jeans so I might as well try some on. Turns out, I now wear a size 34. I cannot actually remember when I last wore a 34, the other pair I have is old, from a couple pants buying generations ago, and was a 38. I've dropped 8-10 inches from my waist size in these past 88 weeks, and I feel pretty good about that.
So what else have I been changing this week? Well, last week I mentioned that I'd probably be picking up a pull-up bar, and Sunday afternoon I did. So this week I actually worked out every evening after work with some squats, pushups and pullups. My arms are not liking the pullups, probably because I tried to go straight into full pullups without much lead-in, so I'm going to be pulling back from that and working on progressing toward pullups a little more gradually. I've also been working on increasing the range of motion on my squats and improving my technique on my pushups. I'll likely be adding a couple more exercises into my newly rekindled bodyweight workout fixation in the coming weeks. Handstands and eventually handstand pushups come to mind, leg raises as well (enabled at some stage by the pullup bar). I've found some interesting reading material on progressive bodyweight training recently that I've been going through and hopefully I can start putting it in practice in my workouts and see what kind of results it will get me. I will say that my upper body seems to have gotten a lot of increased definition for a weeks worth of time, so I'm hopeful.
The other big change in my workouts this week was that I started getting up early pretty much every day and going for a run. Some of them had to be adjusted from my plans going into the week, and due to issues with my work-sleep interaction and the water at our apartment I had to skip two of my planned runs, but 5 of the last 7 days have seen me out for a run and that's an improvement I'm proud of. Hopefully I can improve on that in the coming weeks.
So what does the scale have to say this week? 208, down a pound from last week. It seems to be nearly equal measure fat and lean if my bodyfat readings are correct, which I'm never really all that sure of. One of these days I'm going to upgrade to the Withings scale and then I'll have a little more confidence in them. Anyway, until next week, be the you you want to be. No matter what you have you can make it happen.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Weekly Weigh-In (Week 87)
Sunday once again and time for my weekly update post.
Tough week this week. On my hill workout Tuesday I did something to my knee, and as a result when I tried to go out Wednesday for my next run I had to bail on it pretty quickly due to some pain. Been taking it easy on the running this week as a result, gonna get back into it starting tomorrow and work my way back up to a higher volume than I was at before to help accelerate my progress toward my half-marathon. Related to this I'm planning on trying to push myself toward more strength work to help prevent injuries like this in the future.
After having gotten a bit stir crazy Friday because I had to skip my run I decided I needed to do something active and so I hopped up off the couch and did some sets to failure of squats, pushups, and situps. Planning on turning that into a regular occurrence on my days off from work, though probably replacing the situps with pullups because I hate situps and want to get better at pullups. So good odds I may be picking up a pullup bar in the near future to add to our apartment.
Been experimenting with my new dehydrator, currently sitting on some apples I dehydrated and then pasteurized, some I didn't, and some I dipped in ascorbic acid, will have to see soon how the various treatments have impacted the apple rings.
That's about it for now, will report back soon with progress on how my changes are going. For now though, what's the scale have to say today? 209, down a pound from last week. Staying right around where I want to be for now. So until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Tough week this week. On my hill workout Tuesday I did something to my knee, and as a result when I tried to go out Wednesday for my next run I had to bail on it pretty quickly due to some pain. Been taking it easy on the running this week as a result, gonna get back into it starting tomorrow and work my way back up to a higher volume than I was at before to help accelerate my progress toward my half-marathon. Related to this I'm planning on trying to push myself toward more strength work to help prevent injuries like this in the future.
After having gotten a bit stir crazy Friday because I had to skip my run I decided I needed to do something active and so I hopped up off the couch and did some sets to failure of squats, pushups, and situps. Planning on turning that into a regular occurrence on my days off from work, though probably replacing the situps with pullups because I hate situps and want to get better at pullups. So good odds I may be picking up a pullup bar in the near future to add to our apartment.
Been experimenting with my new dehydrator, currently sitting on some apples I dehydrated and then pasteurized, some I didn't, and some I dipped in ascorbic acid, will have to see soon how the various treatments have impacted the apple rings.
That's about it for now, will report back soon with progress on how my changes are going. For now though, what's the scale have to say today? 209, down a pound from last week. Staying right around where I want to be for now. So until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 86)
It's that time again, time for another update.
Short one this week, not much going on. Got a dehydrator and put it to some apples so now I have delicious homemade apple rings. Have to see if they go bad or get eaten first, I'm betting on get eaten. Probably try and get up a post this week with pictures of the dehydrator and the process of making the rings, and possibly fruit leather if I end up making any of that this week as well.
Well, that's about all I've got for this week, so what about the numbers? 210, up a pound from last week. Body fat is down, and I'm feeling good. Need to get back on the wagon with my workouts though, both the runs and the weights. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Short one this week, not much going on. Got a dehydrator and put it to some apples so now I have delicious homemade apple rings. Have to see if they go bad or get eaten first, I'm betting on get eaten. Probably try and get up a post this week with pictures of the dehydrator and the process of making the rings, and possibly fruit leather if I end up making any of that this week as well.
Well, that's about all I've got for this week, so what about the numbers? 210, up a pound from last week. Body fat is down, and I'm feeling good. Need to get back on the wagon with my workouts though, both the runs and the weights. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Weekly Weigh-In (Week 85)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Not much to tell this week. Kept eating about as normal, the benefits I've attributed to the flaxseed oil have kept up, as has my supplementation with it.
My weight has been trending slightly higher this week, but my body fat has been trending lower so I'm not concerned. Haven't done quite at much running as could be hoped, but what I did was good quality runs. Picked up a dehydrator online that should show up later this week which will help with the 50+ pounds of apples I got yesterday. Dried apple rings and apple leather are in my future, and plenty of other wonderful dried fruit options as well. Not to mention the jerky related potential.
Well, that's honestly most of the update I have this week, I won't bore you by rambling further. So what does the scale tell me this week? 209, which is where I've been shooting for the past month or so. Body fat down as well, meaning most of that weight I gained was muscle just as I've been shooting for. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Not much to tell this week. Kept eating about as normal, the benefits I've attributed to the flaxseed oil have kept up, as has my supplementation with it.
My weight has been trending slightly higher this week, but my body fat has been trending lower so I'm not concerned. Haven't done quite at much running as could be hoped, but what I did was good quality runs. Picked up a dehydrator online that should show up later this week which will help with the 50+ pounds of apples I got yesterday. Dried apple rings and apple leather are in my future, and plenty of other wonderful dried fruit options as well. Not to mention the jerky related potential.
Well, that's honestly most of the update I have this week, I won't bore you by rambling further. So what does the scale tell me this week? 209, which is where I've been shooting for the past month or so. Body fat down as well, meaning most of that weight I gained was muscle just as I've been shooting for. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 84)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Simple week this week, work continued along it's chosen path, my diet choices were slightly less good than they might have been but still good overall. So what are the lessons this week showed me?
Firstly, my flaxseed test has been going better than expected. By Wednesday my lower back pain, which has bothered me for large portions of the past year plus, has disappeared almost completely. Previously it had improved with changes in my work/non-work split, which is as much as I can tell related to how much time I spend in regular shoes vs barefoot/vibrams, and when I had switched mattresses to one both bigger and made of memory foam. This is the first time I can recall that my back pain cleared up so completely. I attribute it to the flaxseed oil, because the flaxseed is high in Omega-3s which help reduce systemic inflammation, which is likely one of the root causes of my backpain. Since the only major change I made to my diet in the past week was the introduction of the flaxseed I think it's safe to say that is highly likely to be a major contribution. In addition to that my gums have improved in color and tenderness, and my toe is both less swollen and in less pain. It's enough that I'm going to continue with the flaxseed for the foreseeable future.
The other thing that I've decided this week is that I need to focus more on my speedwork if I'm going to get to my goals for my race in January. As a result my training for my long runs is going to shift, instead of being strictly based on mileage I'm going to be working on increasing my speed and distance in tandem each week until I hit my target pace, and then focus on making sure I get where I need to be in terms of distance. Which is not to say that I am in doubt about my ability to complete the distance, the doubt is that I can finish it in a time that I'm not ashamed of. That and the continuation of my weight training are the goals for my fitness for the near term. Long term I'm hoping strongly to be able to get back to doing some martial arts in the future, we'll have to see what I can find for that though.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 208, same as last week. Staying nice and steady, and I'm ok with that. I'm feeling better now than I have in a very long time, and that's the most important thing. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Simple week this week, work continued along it's chosen path, my diet choices were slightly less good than they might have been but still good overall. So what are the lessons this week showed me?
Firstly, my flaxseed test has been going better than expected. By Wednesday my lower back pain, which has bothered me for large portions of the past year plus, has disappeared almost completely. Previously it had improved with changes in my work/non-work split, which is as much as I can tell related to how much time I spend in regular shoes vs barefoot/vibrams, and when I had switched mattresses to one both bigger and made of memory foam. This is the first time I can recall that my back pain cleared up so completely. I attribute it to the flaxseed oil, because the flaxseed is high in Omega-3s which help reduce systemic inflammation, which is likely one of the root causes of my backpain. Since the only major change I made to my diet in the past week was the introduction of the flaxseed I think it's safe to say that is highly likely to be a major contribution. In addition to that my gums have improved in color and tenderness, and my toe is both less swollen and in less pain. It's enough that I'm going to continue with the flaxseed for the foreseeable future.
The other thing that I've decided this week is that I need to focus more on my speedwork if I'm going to get to my goals for my race in January. As a result my training for my long runs is going to shift, instead of being strictly based on mileage I'm going to be working on increasing my speed and distance in tandem each week until I hit my target pace, and then focus on making sure I get where I need to be in terms of distance. Which is not to say that I am in doubt about my ability to complete the distance, the doubt is that I can finish it in a time that I'm not ashamed of. That and the continuation of my weight training are the goals for my fitness for the near term. Long term I'm hoping strongly to be able to get back to doing some martial arts in the future, we'll have to see what I can find for that though.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 208, same as last week. Staying nice and steady, and I'm ok with that. I'm feeling better now than I have in a very long time, and that's the most important thing. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 83)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
This week has been a nice one for me diet wise. Did some shopping last weekend and as a result didn't eat out at all over the course of the week except for ordering pizza friday night. That was even mostly because it was getting late and I just didn't feel like going to the trouble of cooking at the time. So with all the homemade food I've been feeling better, cleaned up my diet of the processed sugars and carbs. With the exception of some slight hunger between meals, which I am confident I can clear up with some changes in meal volume and macronutrient ratio, I've been more energetic and satiated throughout the day.
Been sleeping pretty well, though a couple days this week I didn't get much sleep due to scheduling. My workouts are the thing that really slipped this week. I started off the week well with a couple runs, and some good resistance workouts. Thursday onward I basically fell off the wagon with my workouts due in part to said scheduling and a diminished recovery from my resistance workout on Wednesday as a result.
Today I decided to start using flaxseed oil to supplement my dietary Omega-3 intake, and to see which of the reported other benefits actually played out. The first tablespoon went down alright with a slight aftertaste, but the second didn't behave so nicely. I'm going to try mixing it into my morning smoothie this week and see how it works out that way.
So, what do the numbers have to say this week. 208, same as last week, but my body fat is down nearly a percent, so things are moving in the right direction. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
This week has been a nice one for me diet wise. Did some shopping last weekend and as a result didn't eat out at all over the course of the week except for ordering pizza friday night. That was even mostly because it was getting late and I just didn't feel like going to the trouble of cooking at the time. So with all the homemade food I've been feeling better, cleaned up my diet of the processed sugars and carbs. With the exception of some slight hunger between meals, which I am confident I can clear up with some changes in meal volume and macronutrient ratio, I've been more energetic and satiated throughout the day.
Been sleeping pretty well, though a couple days this week I didn't get much sleep due to scheduling. My workouts are the thing that really slipped this week. I started off the week well with a couple runs, and some good resistance workouts. Thursday onward I basically fell off the wagon with my workouts due in part to said scheduling and a diminished recovery from my resistance workout on Wednesday as a result.
Today I decided to start using flaxseed oil to supplement my dietary Omega-3 intake, and to see which of the reported other benefits actually played out. The first tablespoon went down alright with a slight aftertaste, but the second didn't behave so nicely. I'm going to try mixing it into my morning smoothie this week and see how it works out that way.
So, what do the numbers have to say this week. 208, same as last week, but my body fat is down nearly a percent, so things are moving in the right direction. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 82)
Sunday once again, and time for an update.
Not all that much to update with this week, though a couple observations will of course be shared.
My Zeo sleep training program the past week or so has been working on relaxation to try and get to sleep faster, strangely enough it's made my time to sleep higher on every time I've tried using the audio tracks they suggest. This result seems a bit surprising on it's face, but really I don't have too much trouble getting to sleep generally.
Started supplementing Omega-3s again, and my overall health seems to be improving as a result. Once my chewables run out I'm probably going to switch to Flaxseed Oil, as it's a good source of Omega-3, and a reasonable amount of data from the self-experimenting community suggests that Flaxseed oil specifically improves balance, inflammation (which Omega-3 generally is great for), and possibly even reaction time. I'm not sure how much improvement I'm likely to see in most of those categories, but that's the point of testing theories on yourself right? Always testing new things means an ever expanding knowledge base on the way to the ultimate expression of myself.
In that vein I started tracking water consumption and mood this week using a couple of iPhone apps I found. The mood app is nice because it will randomly ping me for input 4 times a day, so that I don't only have readings from times when I feel extremely one thing or another. It's also nice because it will attach a location and tags to my updates so I can track surroundings influence on my mood. The fluid tracker is nice because not only can I track water consumed, but also soda, alcohol, and caffeine. The combination of those makes for a nice tracking app to make sure I'm not dehydrated, or drunk as the case may be. More data for a more complete picture of me.
So what about the weight? 208 this week, up a pound from last week. Bodyfat stayed the same, so that suggests things are moving in the right direction. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Not all that much to update with this week, though a couple observations will of course be shared.
My Zeo sleep training program the past week or so has been working on relaxation to try and get to sleep faster, strangely enough it's made my time to sleep higher on every time I've tried using the audio tracks they suggest. This result seems a bit surprising on it's face, but really I don't have too much trouble getting to sleep generally.
Started supplementing Omega-3s again, and my overall health seems to be improving as a result. Once my chewables run out I'm probably going to switch to Flaxseed Oil, as it's a good source of Omega-3, and a reasonable amount of data from the self-experimenting community suggests that Flaxseed oil specifically improves balance, inflammation (which Omega-3 generally is great for), and possibly even reaction time. I'm not sure how much improvement I'm likely to see in most of those categories, but that's the point of testing theories on yourself right? Always testing new things means an ever expanding knowledge base on the way to the ultimate expression of myself.
In that vein I started tracking water consumption and mood this week using a couple of iPhone apps I found. The mood app is nice because it will randomly ping me for input 4 times a day, so that I don't only have readings from times when I feel extremely one thing or another. It's also nice because it will attach a location and tags to my updates so I can track surroundings influence on my mood. The fluid tracker is nice because not only can I track water consumed, but also soda, alcohol, and caffeine. The combination of those makes for a nice tracking app to make sure I'm not dehydrated, or drunk as the case may be. More data for a more complete picture of me.
So what about the weight? 208 this week, up a pound from last week. Bodyfat stayed the same, so that suggests things are moving in the right direction. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 81)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Smooth week this week, nothing really to report overall.
There was one thing that struck me today while I was at work that I felt deserves mention here. I realized today that I've managed to succeed in retraining myself in terms of my food cravings. I can't recall the last time I had a craving for soda or chips or various other junk food, instead I have cravings for a steak, or fish, or last night when we went out to pick up food so I could get a salad. Sure Lara gave me some crap for going out on a lateish at night food run so I could get salad, but you know what? I'm happy with that choice, though I do wish we actually had what I needed at home to have made it and not gone out at all, but baby steps I suppose.
It's a big sign of progress to me that I have cravings for healthy, primal even, foods rather than junk food or processed stuff, similarly it's nice that when I think of things to do to fill time at work practicing pistol squats comes to mind. I've come a long way on my journey so far, and I've got plenty of places to go yet before I've uncovered the ultimate expression of myself, but I'm excited to see where my exploration takes me.
So what does the scale say this week? 207, same as last week, though my bodyfat is apparently down a half a percent. Progress is progress, no matter what form it takes. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Smooth week this week, nothing really to report overall.
There was one thing that struck me today while I was at work that I felt deserves mention here. I realized today that I've managed to succeed in retraining myself in terms of my food cravings. I can't recall the last time I had a craving for soda or chips or various other junk food, instead I have cravings for a steak, or fish, or last night when we went out to pick up food so I could get a salad. Sure Lara gave me some crap for going out on a lateish at night food run so I could get salad, but you know what? I'm happy with that choice, though I do wish we actually had what I needed at home to have made it and not gone out at all, but baby steps I suppose.
It's a big sign of progress to me that I have cravings for healthy, primal even, foods rather than junk food or processed stuff, similarly it's nice that when I think of things to do to fill time at work practicing pistol squats comes to mind. I've come a long way on my journey so far, and I've got plenty of places to go yet before I've uncovered the ultimate expression of myself, but I'm excited to see where my exploration takes me.
So what does the scale say this week? 207, same as last week, though my bodyfat is apparently down a half a percent. Progress is progress, no matter what form it takes. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 80)
Sunday once again and time for an update.
Pretty smooth sailing this week. Hit the gym for some weights a few times throughout the week, which I hadn't done the previous two weeks, so feeling the wonderful soreness that happens as a result of that. Not been quite at my calorie goals sadly, but I'm managing to make at least some progress on cleaning up what I'm eating.
Light on the content this week as well I'm afraid. I've really not had all that much new stuff to talk about for a while so they may stay short for the foreseeable future. What I do have to say is that my mileage seems to have stalled a bit. My long runs haven't been getting much longer the past few weeks because I've been having to cut them short due to concerns of injury. Working on slowly but surely pushing the distance up to where I want it, thankfully I've got plenty of time before my race date to get into shape.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not good in the short term, but in the long term I'm holding pretty steady really so I'm ok with that. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Pretty smooth sailing this week. Hit the gym for some weights a few times throughout the week, which I hadn't done the previous two weeks, so feeling the wonderful soreness that happens as a result of that. Not been quite at my calorie goals sadly, but I'm managing to make at least some progress on cleaning up what I'm eating.
Light on the content this week as well I'm afraid. I've really not had all that much new stuff to talk about for a while so they may stay short for the foreseeable future. What I do have to say is that my mileage seems to have stalled a bit. My long runs haven't been getting much longer the past few weeks because I've been having to cut them short due to concerns of injury. Working on slowly but surely pushing the distance up to where I want it, thankfully I've got plenty of time before my race date to get into shape.
So, what does the scale have to say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not good in the short term, but in the long term I'm holding pretty steady really so I'm ok with that. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 79)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Not much to say this week really, all been going pretty smoothly.
Got a new piece of tracking tech this weekend, the Zeo Sleep Coach I'd been after for a while. Tried it out last night and it seemed to work pretty well, though it'll be a few days at least before I have any sort of truly useful data on habits. I've also been looking at the data from my daily measurements of my resting heart rate and noticing a few patterns I'm going to try to monitor more closely. Namely, when I go more than a couple days without exercising my resting heart rate goes up, a beat or two the first couple days and then a larger jump on about the third or fourth day. When I go for another run, it drops back down by most of the difference again. I was expecting to see a downward trend in the measurement over time as a training effect, but I wasn't expecting the variation to be that noticeable on a scale of days rather than weeks. Always good to see things working better than I'd expected. I'll keep posting updates on some of my non-weight measurements as I find interesting things to post.
So, speaking of my weight, this week the scale tells me 208, the same as last week, body fat has stayed the same as well. Steady as she goes I suppose. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Not much to say this week really, all been going pretty smoothly.
Got a new piece of tracking tech this weekend, the Zeo Sleep Coach I'd been after for a while. Tried it out last night and it seemed to work pretty well, though it'll be a few days at least before I have any sort of truly useful data on habits. I've also been looking at the data from my daily measurements of my resting heart rate and noticing a few patterns I'm going to try to monitor more closely. Namely, when I go more than a couple days without exercising my resting heart rate goes up, a beat or two the first couple days and then a larger jump on about the third or fourth day. When I go for another run, it drops back down by most of the difference again. I was expecting to see a downward trend in the measurement over time as a training effect, but I wasn't expecting the variation to be that noticeable on a scale of days rather than weeks. Always good to see things working better than I'd expected. I'll keep posting updates on some of my non-weight measurements as I find interesting things to post.
So, speaking of my weight, this week the scale tells me 208, the same as last week, body fat has stayed the same as well. Steady as she goes I suppose. Until next week, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 78)
Sunday yet again and time for a brief update.
This week was pretty packed due to Harry Potter week so not much to talk about.
What brilliant revelations do I have this week? Eating popcorn in large amounts for as one of your primary meals of the day is not good for your nutrition, 4 hours of sleep a night is not really enough, a week of no training leaves you not fully equipped for your long run to be longer at the end than it was at the beginning.
Not all that revelatory, but whatever, I needed something to fill the space with.
So what do the numbers tell me this week? 208, up a pound from last week. So despite my terrible food this week I didn't do too bad, and my body fat stayed about the same as well so I'm really not too much worse off for wear. This week I'll do better. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
This week was pretty packed due to Harry Potter week so not much to talk about.
What brilliant revelations do I have this week? Eating popcorn in large amounts for as one of your primary meals of the day is not good for your nutrition, 4 hours of sleep a night is not really enough, a week of no training leaves you not fully equipped for your long run to be longer at the end than it was at the beginning.
Not all that revelatory, but whatever, I needed something to fill the space with.
So what do the numbers tell me this week? 208, up a pound from last week. So despite my terrible food this week I didn't do too bad, and my body fat stayed about the same as well so I'm really not too much worse off for wear. This week I'll do better. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 77)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Not much to talk about this week so it should stay pretty brief.
Was pretty bad about doing any cooking this week sadly, and next week won't be much better since every night I'm going to be at the movies instead of home. Picked up some protein powder at the store today so that should at least improve the fractionation of my diet a bit.
Decided to do my long run on the treadmill this week. This had a few consequences. I lost more to sweat this week in absolute terms than I have before, despite being inside, which was to be expected really. The treadmill offers me a few nice benefits over running outside. For one, my run ends at the right place every time, no guess work to make sure that I finish my desired distance when I'm back at the apartment instead of half a mile off. As a result of that I also have more freedom to decide while I'm on the run that I feel good and can do another mile or some such, as happened today. It also allows me to focus more on my heartrate than on my pace. Once I find a pace that I can hold for the duration at about the right heart rate I'm set and I can just do my run and hit the zone. Runkeeper does not yet have truly robust support for heart rate sadly, I'd love to see them add better audio cues for heart rate, and the ability to key coaching off of it. The treadmill also let's me take the time to calculate my turnover, which is a number I like tracking to help keep my form in good shape among other things but which is hard to get on an outdoor run without a cadence sensor I don't have.
Treadmill runs do have a couple limitations though. Firstly, The treadmill can only go for so long it would seem. Today my run lasted so long the treadmill stopped being able to track the time and thus shut itself off. Luckily there is a second treadmill I was able to make the migration to and finish my run. The other benefit that outdoor runs have over treadmill running is moving air. As you run outside you get a lot of air moving past you that helps with your cooling and keeps your clothing that little bit drier. That little bit can be important sometimes, and long runs are one of them. (The squeamish should consider to skip this segment) About 7 miles into this run I ran into some problems with jogger's nipple, leading to a small amount of blood loss. Nothing serious of course, just annoying and unexpected. Picked up some roll-on anti-chafing product from RoadRunner down the street and hopefully that should prevent any further issues.
So anyway, what about the numbers? 207, down a pound from last week. Bodyfat about constant so no worries there, no worries just facts of life. Hopefully in a week or two when I can actually get back to my weight training that'll improve more, sadly due to an injury my training partner wasn't able to make it so I stayed content with my running this week to help her recuperate from her burn. Until next week keep being the you you want to be.
Not much to talk about this week so it should stay pretty brief.
Was pretty bad about doing any cooking this week sadly, and next week won't be much better since every night I'm going to be at the movies instead of home. Picked up some protein powder at the store today so that should at least improve the fractionation of my diet a bit.
Decided to do my long run on the treadmill this week. This had a few consequences. I lost more to sweat this week in absolute terms than I have before, despite being inside, which was to be expected really. The treadmill offers me a few nice benefits over running outside. For one, my run ends at the right place every time, no guess work to make sure that I finish my desired distance when I'm back at the apartment instead of half a mile off. As a result of that I also have more freedom to decide while I'm on the run that I feel good and can do another mile or some such, as happened today. It also allows me to focus more on my heartrate than on my pace. Once I find a pace that I can hold for the duration at about the right heart rate I'm set and I can just do my run and hit the zone. Runkeeper does not yet have truly robust support for heart rate sadly, I'd love to see them add better audio cues for heart rate, and the ability to key coaching off of it. The treadmill also let's me take the time to calculate my turnover, which is a number I like tracking to help keep my form in good shape among other things but which is hard to get on an outdoor run without a cadence sensor I don't have.
Treadmill runs do have a couple limitations though. Firstly, The treadmill can only go for so long it would seem. Today my run lasted so long the treadmill stopped being able to track the time and thus shut itself off. Luckily there is a second treadmill I was able to make the migration to and finish my run. The other benefit that outdoor runs have over treadmill running is moving air. As you run outside you get a lot of air moving past you that helps with your cooling and keeps your clothing that little bit drier. That little bit can be important sometimes, and long runs are one of them. (The squeamish should consider to skip this segment) About 7 miles into this run I ran into some problems with jogger's nipple, leading to a small amount of blood loss. Nothing serious of course, just annoying and unexpected. Picked up some roll-on anti-chafing product from RoadRunner down the street and hopefully that should prevent any further issues.
So anyway, what about the numbers? 207, down a pound from last week. Bodyfat about constant so no worries there, no worries just facts of life. Hopefully in a week or two when I can actually get back to my weight training that'll improve more, sadly due to an injury my training partner wasn't able to make it so I stayed content with my running this week to help her recuperate from her burn. Until next week keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 76)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week has seen me testing out some fun things, and making a few changes to the routine to accommodate scheduling. Scrapped the Wednesday run since I had to be at work early, and had been out late for a midnight movie with friends, switched my Tuesday treadmill run out for a VO2max test, and my Friday Tempo run out for a Maximum Heart Rate test. Both of those went well. Today I had to scrap my 9-miler due to weather conditions not cooperating with my plans, and I'm working on backup plans for future runs to ensure that I can still get my training miles in even if the weather doesn't want to play nice.
The running is only one aspect of my workouts though, and this week I promised a more detailed explanation of the new resistance training plan I'm working on so here it goes, broken down by the day.
Sunday is abs and full-body circuits. My ab routine goes 1x10 myotatic crunches, 1x10 TVA contractions, 75 two-handed kettlebell swings with a 20 pound kettlebell, and 30-seconds of plank in the pushup position, and on each side. After that my full-body routine is 2 circuits of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 20 lunges (10 each side, alternating), 20 dumbell rows (10 each side), and 30 jumping jacks. Once I get through one round of that I go through a second round, in both cases with as little rest as possible between exercises. Fridays I do the same thing as Sundays to finish off my week.
Monday is Arms/Shoulders, 3x5 of each of modified dips (don't have anything the right height to support me so for now it's basically pushups but facing up instead of down), lateral dumbbell raises (aka Shoulder Flys) superset with bicep curls, and finished off with a machine shoulder press. Wednesday is Legs day, as it's the furthest away from my long runs and I don't have a run on Thursday in my regular rotation. 2x10 of each of squats, lunges, stiff-leg deadlifts, and machine leg curls. The squats and deadlifts here are being done with dumbbells instead of barbells because the equipment I have access to is dumbbells and a weight machine. Thursday is my Chest/Back day, 3x5 each of pushups with my feet on an exercise ball (adding an extra stability element compared to regular pushups and putting more emphasis on my chest than on my legs), pectoral/chest fly, machine chest press, and supinated lat-pulldowns.
Weeks one and two are being used for working out the kinks in the routine and for figuring out appropriate starting weights. After that I'm either going to increase every week provided I hit my rep count, or making the last set of each exercise "to failure" and increase the weight if I can get at least 2 more than the previous sets of the exercise. I'm not sure which option I'll be taking yet but either way the point is clear, keep the weight increasing. When I reach the limits of my equipment I'll have to figure out where to go from there, but when possible it's likely to be toward making the exercises more difficult through leverage disadvantage. Trick will be making sure I keep whatever I do safe.
For now I think that's all I have to say. If you have feedback I'd welcome it, either way it's time for the numbers for today. 208, up a pound from last week and back to where we were sitting for the weeks preceding. Bodyfat is still stabilizing after my measurement recalibration and I'm feeling pretty darned good these days. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
This week has seen me testing out some fun things, and making a few changes to the routine to accommodate scheduling. Scrapped the Wednesday run since I had to be at work early, and had been out late for a midnight movie with friends, switched my Tuesday treadmill run out for a VO2max test, and my Friday Tempo run out for a Maximum Heart Rate test. Both of those went well. Today I had to scrap my 9-miler due to weather conditions not cooperating with my plans, and I'm working on backup plans for future runs to ensure that I can still get my training miles in even if the weather doesn't want to play nice.
The running is only one aspect of my workouts though, and this week I promised a more detailed explanation of the new resistance training plan I'm working on so here it goes, broken down by the day.
Sunday is abs and full-body circuits. My ab routine goes 1x10 myotatic crunches, 1x10 TVA contractions, 75 two-handed kettlebell swings with a 20 pound kettlebell, and 30-seconds of plank in the pushup position, and on each side. After that my full-body routine is 2 circuits of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 20 lunges (10 each side, alternating), 20 dumbell rows (10 each side), and 30 jumping jacks. Once I get through one round of that I go through a second round, in both cases with as little rest as possible between exercises. Fridays I do the same thing as Sundays to finish off my week.
Monday is Arms/Shoulders, 3x5 of each of modified dips (don't have anything the right height to support me so for now it's basically pushups but facing up instead of down), lateral dumbbell raises (aka Shoulder Flys) superset with bicep curls, and finished off with a machine shoulder press. Wednesday is Legs day, as it's the furthest away from my long runs and I don't have a run on Thursday in my regular rotation. 2x10 of each of squats, lunges, stiff-leg deadlifts, and machine leg curls. The squats and deadlifts here are being done with dumbbells instead of barbells because the equipment I have access to is dumbbells and a weight machine. Thursday is my Chest/Back day, 3x5 each of pushups with my feet on an exercise ball (adding an extra stability element compared to regular pushups and putting more emphasis on my chest than on my legs), pectoral/chest fly, machine chest press, and supinated lat-pulldowns.
Weeks one and two are being used for working out the kinks in the routine and for figuring out appropriate starting weights. After that I'm either going to increase every week provided I hit my rep count, or making the last set of each exercise "to failure" and increase the weight if I can get at least 2 more than the previous sets of the exercise. I'm not sure which option I'll be taking yet but either way the point is clear, keep the weight increasing. When I reach the limits of my equipment I'll have to figure out where to go from there, but when possible it's likely to be toward making the exercises more difficult through leverage disadvantage. Trick will be making sure I keep whatever I do safe.
For now I think that's all I have to say. If you have feedback I'd welcome it, either way it's time for the numbers for today. 208, up a pound from last week and back to where we were sitting for the weeks preceding. Bodyfat is still stabilizing after my measurement recalibration and I'm feeling pretty darned good these days. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 75)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Running seems to be progressing smoothly, weight seems to be holding fairly steady, even been sleeping fairly well this past week so all told most of my measurables seem like they are doing pretty well from cursory examination, though the real numbers will hold out for later in the post.
You may recall from a few weeks ago I talked about doing some work on a plan for trying to trying to put on some muscle, one that I was basing on research into workout plans used by various actors to get into shape for movies roles as seriously buff dudes. Looking over the information I could find about what they all did there were a lot of similarities, so piecing those together should in theory give me results as close to theirs as possible with a smaller amount of effort.
Firstly, diet comes into play. Food is at least as important in these kinds of endeavors as the exercise so it pays to start here. Of course, high amounts of protein are a goal, minimal sugars, minimal processed food, and one somewhat strange common factor was restricting carbs to only the earlier portions of the day (and even then usually rice, oatmeal, or tubers). That one seems strange at first but makes some sense when taken into the context of time of day and it's relation to insulin sensitivity and the insulin response of most carbs. The other common factors were that they tended to eat a large number of meals, often eating every 2 hours throughout the day, and usually supplemented with protein powder and/or creatine. These things combined should help me provide a good base for the resistance workouts that form the other pillar of the research, and luckily they don't stray too far from what I'd been striving for already. The more frequent meals help increase the total amount of calories per day without making any single meal too large, which is a trick that may come in handy as things go on.
For the actual lifting the common themes seemed to be using compound exercises for the lifts, to increase the muscle groups activated in the shortest amount of time, 3-5 sets of a moderate number of reps each. The workouts tended toward splits between various body segments, which for now I'm going to try but may end up shifting things around later on, and minimal rest periods to keep heart rate up so that you burn some fat along with the building of muscle. I'm somewhat limited in my workout options due to the resources at my disposal with the fitness center at the apartment here, but hopefully the plan I've put in place should get me at least tolerable results. Once I get bored of this, get to a proportion I like, or stop seeing results from this I already know what I'm going to move to, but that's for later. For now it'll be 2 days a week of circuits and abs (much like I was doing before) on Sunday and Friday, work on the Chest/Back on Monday, Legs on Wednesday, and Arms/Shoulders on Thursday. Next week I'll report back on how the first week played out, and what exercises each day is composed of, but for now I'm going to sign off after the numerical round up.
So what's the scale say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not the best, but we'll see what this new plan does for things I suppose. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Running seems to be progressing smoothly, weight seems to be holding fairly steady, even been sleeping fairly well this past week so all told most of my measurables seem like they are doing pretty well from cursory examination, though the real numbers will hold out for later in the post.
You may recall from a few weeks ago I talked about doing some work on a plan for trying to trying to put on some muscle, one that I was basing on research into workout plans used by various actors to get into shape for movies roles as seriously buff dudes. Looking over the information I could find about what they all did there were a lot of similarities, so piecing those together should in theory give me results as close to theirs as possible with a smaller amount of effort.
Firstly, diet comes into play. Food is at least as important in these kinds of endeavors as the exercise so it pays to start here. Of course, high amounts of protein are a goal, minimal sugars, minimal processed food, and one somewhat strange common factor was restricting carbs to only the earlier portions of the day (and even then usually rice, oatmeal, or tubers). That one seems strange at first but makes some sense when taken into the context of time of day and it's relation to insulin sensitivity and the insulin response of most carbs. The other common factors were that they tended to eat a large number of meals, often eating every 2 hours throughout the day, and usually supplemented with protein powder and/or creatine. These things combined should help me provide a good base for the resistance workouts that form the other pillar of the research, and luckily they don't stray too far from what I'd been striving for already. The more frequent meals help increase the total amount of calories per day without making any single meal too large, which is a trick that may come in handy as things go on.
For the actual lifting the common themes seemed to be using compound exercises for the lifts, to increase the muscle groups activated in the shortest amount of time, 3-5 sets of a moderate number of reps each. The workouts tended toward splits between various body segments, which for now I'm going to try but may end up shifting things around later on, and minimal rest periods to keep heart rate up so that you burn some fat along with the building of muscle. I'm somewhat limited in my workout options due to the resources at my disposal with the fitness center at the apartment here, but hopefully the plan I've put in place should get me at least tolerable results. Once I get bored of this, get to a proportion I like, or stop seeing results from this I already know what I'm going to move to, but that's for later. For now it'll be 2 days a week of circuits and abs (much like I was doing before) on Sunday and Friday, work on the Chest/Back on Monday, Legs on Wednesday, and Arms/Shoulders on Thursday. Next week I'll report back on how the first week played out, and what exercises each day is composed of, but for now I'm going to sign off after the numerical round up.
So what's the scale say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not the best, but we'll see what this new plan does for things I suppose. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 74)
Still Sunday for just a little bit longer.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 73)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 72)
Sunday yet again, time for the weekly update.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 71)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Weight has been trending a little low this week so we’ll have to see what comes of that later on in the post.
The ups and downs with my weight, especially when my daily calorie intake is taken into question along with other factors, has lead me to the conclusion it is probably time to look into changing up my nutritional composition again. I’m thinking something similar to the Primal Experiment from January.
This time around, due in part to my increasing running mileage, I’m going to be keeping some more carbs in my diet, but I think I’m going to limit them to rice, and tubers. Other than that to flesh out some calories and load up for my long runs I’m going to be trying to keep to lean meat, veggies, nuts, seeds, and some fruit like before. It’s tasty, it’s not bad for me, and if my research pans out to be true may actually improve my times in addition to helping me lean out and put on some muscle.
The other thing that’s been tumbling around in my mind of late is trying to see what I can do about putting on some more muscle and seeing what I can do about some abs. So far it looks like my 6-minute abs is having at least some impact on my gut, and the circuits that I’ve been using to accompany it are doing pretty well all around as well. So, with some inspiration from going to watch Thor, I found the best information I could about a number of celebrity transformations for movie roles, Hemsworth for Thor, Bale for Batman, Craig for Bond, Butler for Leonidas, etc. I’ve been comparing what I could find about what they did to prepare for the roles, and there are a lot of similarities in their methods. Exactly what similarities I noted I’ll save for next week, but suffice to say I think that with a little work and some dedication I think I can probably replicate at least some measure of the results, albeit reduced because I don’t have 6 hours a day to work out and a staff of dietitians, trainers, and chefs to keep everything about me humming along smoothly. With what I do have though I think I can probably get good results, though it’ll take me longer than it did for the celebs.
Well, further details on that to come later, for now though let’s take a look at the numbers shall we? 209, down a pound from last week. So as I suspected, I dropped a bit over the week, but with some increased caloric intake I think I can remedy the losses with some more muscle. Body fat is down, if only slightly, so at least the spread is moving in the right direction even when the needle itself isn't. Until next week, keep working toward being the you you want to be.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 70)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.
Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.
This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.
Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.
So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.
This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.
Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.
This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.
Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.
So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 69)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Interesting week this week. Kept up with what I'd been doing before and started some new things for good measure.
Firstly, if you've not blocked the app from your Facebook feed you've probably noticed I'm logging runs through Runkeeper a bit more often than before, I think 4 days in the last week. I decided at some point this week that I wanted to start training for a half marathon. No specific reasons other than to push myself past my current limits, and because having a specific goal in mind makes that easier for me. So I put together a training plan for my running with scheduled runs at various durations and distances so that I have something I can refer to to keep on track. So far I've done one of the timed runs and one of the distance runs on my new plan and it's going well so far.
Also this week I decided to start working on the exercises from the Pre-Hab chapter from 4HB, because they are easy enough to fit into my schedule on otherwise "off" days, and they won't hurt anything at the least, and at the best might help prevent injuries down the road. That combined with my 6-minute abs workouts and associated bodyweight circuits should keep me busy most days. I've also started with a weekly treadmill run, to coincide with Lara's biking, to push my aerobic threshold up, and once I get my heartrate monitor, alternated with a run to increase my bodies ability to handle lactic acid buildup. All that should workout to me being in much better shape overall, and staying that way.
In the wonderful world of me being a ridiculous data monger I've decided to start keeping a sleep log and tracking statistics related to my sweat rate. First, the less disgusting of the two. In an effort to improve all aspects of my life through better data collection I've decided to start tracking my perceptions related to my sleep, quality, time it takes to fall asleep, how much I wake up during the night, and if I wake up too early. So far it's been feeling fairly productive, though since it's all based on perception rather than numbers there is only so much it can do. The Sweat Rate data is an effort by me to make sure that as I increase my mileage further I avoid dehydration. When I run, like most people who do so, I sweat. How much I sweat is a variable number based on pace, temperature, humidity, and dew point, or at least that's the theory. By weighing myself before and after a run, and knowing how much water if any I ingested while on the run, I can determine how much water weight I lost over the course of my activity. That number combined with the duration of the activity can allow me to calculate a loss per hour which I can track against the conditions listed above to hopefully determine a predictive method for my sweat rate that will let me ensure I stay properly hydrated as my mileage increases.
Anyway, that was a fairly long post today and so I shall sum it up fairly briefly with numbers. Scale tells me I'm at 210 this week, same as last week, which is what I'm after right now. Until next week, always push yourself to be a better you than you were when you woke up.
Interesting week this week. Kept up with what I'd been doing before and started some new things for good measure.
Firstly, if you've not blocked the app from your Facebook feed you've probably noticed I'm logging runs through Runkeeper a bit more often than before, I think 4 days in the last week. I decided at some point this week that I wanted to start training for a half marathon. No specific reasons other than to push myself past my current limits, and because having a specific goal in mind makes that easier for me. So I put together a training plan for my running with scheduled runs at various durations and distances so that I have something I can refer to to keep on track. So far I've done one of the timed runs and one of the distance runs on my new plan and it's going well so far.
Also this week I decided to start working on the exercises from the Pre-Hab chapter from 4HB, because they are easy enough to fit into my schedule on otherwise "off" days, and they won't hurt anything at the least, and at the best might help prevent injuries down the road. That combined with my 6-minute abs workouts and associated bodyweight circuits should keep me busy most days. I've also started with a weekly treadmill run, to coincide with Lara's biking, to push my aerobic threshold up, and once I get my heartrate monitor, alternated with a run to increase my bodies ability to handle lactic acid buildup. All that should workout to me being in much better shape overall, and staying that way.
In the wonderful world of me being a ridiculous data monger I've decided to start keeping a sleep log and tracking statistics related to my sweat rate. First, the less disgusting of the two. In an effort to improve all aspects of my life through better data collection I've decided to start tracking my perceptions related to my sleep, quality, time it takes to fall asleep, how much I wake up during the night, and if I wake up too early. So far it's been feeling fairly productive, though since it's all based on perception rather than numbers there is only so much it can do. The Sweat Rate data is an effort by me to make sure that as I increase my mileage further I avoid dehydration. When I run, like most people who do so, I sweat. How much I sweat is a variable number based on pace, temperature, humidity, and dew point, or at least that's the theory. By weighing myself before and after a run, and knowing how much water if any I ingested while on the run, I can determine how much water weight I lost over the course of my activity. That number combined with the duration of the activity can allow me to calculate a loss per hour which I can track against the conditions listed above to hopefully determine a predictive method for my sweat rate that will let me ensure I stay properly hydrated as my mileage increases.
Anyway, that was a fairly long post today and so I shall sum it up fairly briefly with numbers. Scale tells me I'm at 210 this week, same as last week, which is what I'm after right now. Until next week, always push yourself to be a better you than you were when you woke up.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 68)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.
So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.
This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.
So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.
This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.
So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.
This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.
So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 67)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly update.
This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.
This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:
This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.
This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:
- Close-grip lat pulldown: 75 -> 105 (40% increase)
- Shoulder Press: 45 -> 85 (90% increase)
- Chest Press: 85 -> 115 (35% increase)
- Leg Curl: 45 -> 75 (66% increase)
Some good numbers, consistent increases across the board. The numbers would possibly have increased more if I had been better about my caloric intake, about 80% of the time I made my overall calorie goal, but I only made my protein goal perhaps 30% of the time, and that's being somewhat generous. Even despite that I made good strength gains and seem to have made some reasonable mass gains to go with it.
So where do I go from here? Probably going to do some testing with Slow-Carb mixed with testing out the 6-minute abs stuff from 4HB. I'm really not needing to add more mass now so much as redistribute what I've already got so that it looks better.
So what does the scale have to say about all this progress? Today the numbers came up at 209, up 2 pounds from last week, and 7.1% body fat, down half a percentage since last week. Since the start of this experiment I've gained 12 pounds of muscle and dropped 5.2 pounds of body fat. For the amount of time I put in I'd say those are some pretty fine results. Only time will tell what the future holds. Until next time, be the you you want to be.
Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.
Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 66)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Been a fairly smooth week this week. Managed to keep my calorie intake close to what I was shooting for most of the week, even kept my protein fairly high, and tried out a few new restaurants that I hadn't been to yet. Tried out a great pizza place a couple miles down the road, and found a pub that has beer floats made with lambic. An interest culinary week all told.
Kept up with my workouts this week as well, made steady progress with increasing weights and so far haven't had to increase my rest days due to stalling, though I suspect that will happen fairly soon. Need to make sure I get in 2 runs this week in preparation for my race next weekend though.
I'm not really overflowing with information to fill this space today for some reason, so this will be a fairly short post today. Next week there will be some final results from my muscle building experiment, and hopefully some information related to what my next experiment will end up being.
So, what do the numbers say this week? 207, up 3 pounds from last week. Body fat is down meaning that gain is all muscle. Not dropping fat that much any more but I'm putting on muscle at a pretty good clip. So far since I started this trial I'm up 8.6 of muscle and down 4.1 of fat, which is a pretty good rate of return for the amount of time I'm putting in.
Been a fairly smooth week this week. Managed to keep my calorie intake close to what I was shooting for most of the week, even kept my protein fairly high, and tried out a few new restaurants that I hadn't been to yet. Tried out a great pizza place a couple miles down the road, and found a pub that has beer floats made with lambic. An interest culinary week all told.
Kept up with my workouts this week as well, made steady progress with increasing weights and so far haven't had to increase my rest days due to stalling, though I suspect that will happen fairly soon. Need to make sure I get in 2 runs this week in preparation for my race next weekend though.
I'm not really overflowing with information to fill this space today for some reason, so this will be a fairly short post today. Next week there will be some final results from my muscle building experiment, and hopefully some information related to what my next experiment will end up being.
So, what do the numbers say this week? 207, up 3 pounds from last week. Body fat is down meaning that gain is all muscle. Not dropping fat that much any more but I'm putting on muscle at a pretty good clip. So far since I started this trial I'm up 8.6 of muscle and down 4.1 of fat, which is a pretty good rate of return for the amount of time I'm putting in.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 65)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
The bulking experiment continues as planned, with this week including 2 workouts and the introduction of some nutritional supplementation to help me achieve my goals. Firstly, I added protein powder to my daily intake to help boost my protein content toward where I'd like it to be. One scoop straight into my morning smoothie, which also includes the second thing I added, a scoop of creatine to said morning smoothie. Some of you may have a negative knee jerk reaction to that, but trust me when I say I've done the research into it, and I have determined that I have no reason to worry and that the benefits are well worth it, especially as I have not experienced any of the side-effects thanks in part to my not using a loading phase.
So, what all have I been doing? Well, one workout each this week of my lifting routine, and one run through the nearby neighborhood, which allowed me to get some better distance and pacing going on than the run down the major street I had tried the last time. So far? It looks like I've been putting on some muscle and either dropping or not adding any new non-visceral fat. I feel great, and am starting to look more like what I wish I did, so all in all doing pretty well. Trending on my weight and body fat look good.
While I'm talking about trends and tracking, I'd like to mention a few things. Firstly, a website called CureTogether. It has listings for bunches of medical conditions that you can track symptoms with severity, treatments you've tried, and things you suspect cause it. I've been using it for a little while now to track the severity of things like various persistent aches and pains, headaches, and some various other things. They also provide graphs to help visualize what treatments people have found most effective so that you can figure out things that might be worth trying yourself. Which leads me to my next little update. Since the move Lara and I have got a new bed, a queen sized compared to the previous full, and I must say I love it. The memory foam is entirely worth it. Due in large part to the changes to my sleep quality and patterns related to the move and the mattress my back pain has nearly disappeared, my neck is less stiff, and I'm feeling better all around. That plus some other trends I've noticed have been leading me to believe that a number of my minor complaints of aches and pains in life may all be connected to one or two root causes that I just need to track down. Thank goodness I track "everything", should make it easier to find out what's causing the little stuff.
So, now that the semi-digression is over, what do the numbers have to say today? 204, up two pounds since last week. My body fat is down 1% since last week, which combined means I put on about 3 pounds of muscle and dropped a pound of fat in the last week. One of these days perhaps I'll actually manage to combine things in such a way as to have visible abs. For now, I'm going to follow my own advice, do something every day to make myself the me I want to be.
The bulking experiment continues as planned, with this week including 2 workouts and the introduction of some nutritional supplementation to help me achieve my goals. Firstly, I added protein powder to my daily intake to help boost my protein content toward where I'd like it to be. One scoop straight into my morning smoothie, which also includes the second thing I added, a scoop of creatine to said morning smoothie. Some of you may have a negative knee jerk reaction to that, but trust me when I say I've done the research into it, and I have determined that I have no reason to worry and that the benefits are well worth it, especially as I have not experienced any of the side-effects thanks in part to my not using a loading phase.
So, what all have I been doing? Well, one workout each this week of my lifting routine, and one run through the nearby neighborhood, which allowed me to get some better distance and pacing going on than the run down the major street I had tried the last time. So far? It looks like I've been putting on some muscle and either dropping or not adding any new non-visceral fat. I feel great, and am starting to look more like what I wish I did, so all in all doing pretty well. Trending on my weight and body fat look good.
While I'm talking about trends and tracking, I'd like to mention a few things. Firstly, a website called CureTogether. It has listings for bunches of medical conditions that you can track symptoms with severity, treatments you've tried, and things you suspect cause it. I've been using it for a little while now to track the severity of things like various persistent aches and pains, headaches, and some various other things. They also provide graphs to help visualize what treatments people have found most effective so that you can figure out things that might be worth trying yourself. Which leads me to my next little update. Since the move Lara and I have got a new bed, a queen sized compared to the previous full, and I must say I love it. The memory foam is entirely worth it. Due in large part to the changes to my sleep quality and patterns related to the move and the mattress my back pain has nearly disappeared, my neck is less stiff, and I'm feeling better all around. That plus some other trends I've noticed have been leading me to believe that a number of my minor complaints of aches and pains in life may all be connected to one or two root causes that I just need to track down. Thank goodness I track "everything", should make it easier to find out what's causing the little stuff.
So, now that the semi-digression is over, what do the numbers have to say today? 204, up two pounds since last week. My body fat is down 1% since last week, which combined means I put on about 3 pounds of muscle and dropped a pound of fat in the last week. One of these days perhaps I'll actually manage to combine things in such a way as to have visible abs. For now, I'm going to follow my own advice, do something every day to make myself the me I want to be.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 64)
Sunday yet again, so here we are for the weigh-in.
This week has been an interesting one. Started work at a different location, lots of things different but many the same, or at least eerily familiar. In addition we've gotten mostly unpacked at the apartment, only the office remains and that because we don't yet have a desk. This week I had some time off, and now access to the fitness center with a weight machine, so I started in on my workout program.
So, for those who don't know yet, which is probably most of you, I came upon a book a while back called The Four Hour Body, written by a one Tim Ferriss. Not entirely unlike myself he is a self-experimenter, but he's been doing quantified experiments using himself as a subject for nearly ten years now, which has resulted in this book. So I'm taking some of the things he discusses and testing them out on myself. My Primal experiment is sufficiently similar to his Slow-Carb diet that I can say with reasonable certainty that it seems to work about as predicted, though since I didn't try that when I had the dramatic amounts of weight to lose that most of the people who have tried it out had I can't quote such impressive numbers. The 4HB is also where I got the idea to try my icing experiment, which also worked out pretty well for me.
So now, with my weight under control, and my body fat sufficiently low, it was time to try something new, adding muscle. Being the kind of guy who finds extreme claims worth testing, I latched onto the idea behind the chapter in the book called Occam's Protocol. The premise is that by doing a single set to failure of a weight lifting exercise you will stimulate more growth in less time than by doing endless reps broken into multiple sets and with almost certainly lower weight. This honestly makes sense to me, even more reason to try it out. Further, under the idea that the larger your muscles get the more time it takes your body to recover from major strain to them this protocol uses a startlingly low frequency, starting with 2 days off between the A and B workouts, and then building up to 4 or more days between as time goes on. This part leaves me a bit dubious, but I can't say I don't find the idea attractive. Thus, I felt the need to test this out, as the worst case is that I make no progress on putting on muscle, and the best case is upwards of 20 pounds of muscle in a month. I don't expect I'll get results anywhere near that good, but I won't know unless I try, and the "typical" 10 pounds of muscle a month isn't bad either.
So how does it work? Well this is gonna get a little jargony so if you don't know or care about some of it go ahead and skip this knowing that it's essentially 2 types of exercises plus a little extra work each workout. Workout A is composed of supinated close-grip lat pulldowns, followed by shoulder presses, that's the minimum for the workout, I'm throwing in the optional ab exercises which means adding myotatic crunches and something referred to in the book as "the cat vomit exercise", which can be summed up as a gravity assisted resistance exercise for the TVA or corset muscle. The first workout, which I did this week, took me around 40 minutes or so, due majorly to the fact it included the establishment of the baseline values to work up from. The B workout consists of an inclined bench press, followed by leg curls (it was supposed to be a leg press in the machine version of this workout plan but I don't have the equipment to make that workable. Having to choose between Curls or Extensions on this machine I picked curls as the information I got from the book suggests the leg work is mostly to increase overall muscle involvement in terms of volume, and the curls worked the glutes which are some of the largest muscles in the human body.) and the optional exercise here that I added was the two-handed kettlebell swing to work the lower body even further. The B workout finishes up with 3 minutes at 85 rpm on the stationary bike "to minimize leg soreness". The B workout took me also about 40 minutes due to establishing minimums and the fact there were other people in the gym when I went this time around, and only one machine.
For now, I'm going to try this protocol out, keep track of my data the way I have been before, and get weekly photos to track my progress. Between all that I should have a decent ability to figure out what results I get from this plan. I think the hardest part for me is going to be eating enough, a problem I never thought I'd have, as getting nearly 4000 calories per day is not something I'm used to anymore, and getting enough protein in my diet is not proving easy either. As a result this week I'm going to be picking up some protein powder to add into the mix as that should help with both those problems.
So, what does the scale have to tell me this week? 202, same as the last couple weeks. What's not the same as the last month however is my bodyfat percentage, it had been holding steady at 9.5 for most of March, but this week, the day after the A workout in fact, it dropped to 7.3, and the following day to 5.5. It has since leveled out again at 7.3, suggesting to me the 5.5 was a fluke, but that's a fairly sudden change that seems promising at least at first glance. Luckily, I've got lots of data left to collect that will show whether it turns out to be significant or not. Until next week, do whatever it takes to be the you you want to be.
This week has been an interesting one. Started work at a different location, lots of things different but many the same, or at least eerily familiar. In addition we've gotten mostly unpacked at the apartment, only the office remains and that because we don't yet have a desk. This week I had some time off, and now access to the fitness center with a weight machine, so I started in on my workout program.
So, for those who don't know yet, which is probably most of you, I came upon a book a while back called The Four Hour Body, written by a one Tim Ferriss. Not entirely unlike myself he is a self-experimenter, but he's been doing quantified experiments using himself as a subject for nearly ten years now, which has resulted in this book. So I'm taking some of the things he discusses and testing them out on myself. My Primal experiment is sufficiently similar to his Slow-Carb diet that I can say with reasonable certainty that it seems to work about as predicted, though since I didn't try that when I had the dramatic amounts of weight to lose that most of the people who have tried it out had I can't quote such impressive numbers. The 4HB is also where I got the idea to try my icing experiment, which also worked out pretty well for me.
So now, with my weight under control, and my body fat sufficiently low, it was time to try something new, adding muscle. Being the kind of guy who finds extreme claims worth testing, I latched onto the idea behind the chapter in the book called Occam's Protocol. The premise is that by doing a single set to failure of a weight lifting exercise you will stimulate more growth in less time than by doing endless reps broken into multiple sets and with almost certainly lower weight. This honestly makes sense to me, even more reason to try it out. Further, under the idea that the larger your muscles get the more time it takes your body to recover from major strain to them this protocol uses a startlingly low frequency, starting with 2 days off between the A and B workouts, and then building up to 4 or more days between as time goes on. This part leaves me a bit dubious, but I can't say I don't find the idea attractive. Thus, I felt the need to test this out, as the worst case is that I make no progress on putting on muscle, and the best case is upwards of 20 pounds of muscle in a month. I don't expect I'll get results anywhere near that good, but I won't know unless I try, and the "typical" 10 pounds of muscle a month isn't bad either.
So how does it work? Well this is gonna get a little jargony so if you don't know or care about some of it go ahead and skip this knowing that it's essentially 2 types of exercises plus a little extra work each workout. Workout A is composed of supinated close-grip lat pulldowns, followed by shoulder presses, that's the minimum for the workout, I'm throwing in the optional ab exercises which means adding myotatic crunches and something referred to in the book as "the cat vomit exercise", which can be summed up as a gravity assisted resistance exercise for the TVA or corset muscle. The first workout, which I did this week, took me around 40 minutes or so, due majorly to the fact it included the establishment of the baseline values to work up from. The B workout consists of an inclined bench press, followed by leg curls (it was supposed to be a leg press in the machine version of this workout plan but I don't have the equipment to make that workable. Having to choose between Curls or Extensions on this machine I picked curls as the information I got from the book suggests the leg work is mostly to increase overall muscle involvement in terms of volume, and the curls worked the glutes which are some of the largest muscles in the human body.) and the optional exercise here that I added was the two-handed kettlebell swing to work the lower body even further. The B workout finishes up with 3 minutes at 85 rpm on the stationary bike "to minimize leg soreness". The B workout took me also about 40 minutes due to establishing minimums and the fact there were other people in the gym when I went this time around, and only one machine.
For now, I'm going to try this protocol out, keep track of my data the way I have been before, and get weekly photos to track my progress. Between all that I should have a decent ability to figure out what results I get from this plan. I think the hardest part for me is going to be eating enough, a problem I never thought I'd have, as getting nearly 4000 calories per day is not something I'm used to anymore, and getting enough protein in my diet is not proving easy either. As a result this week I'm going to be picking up some protein powder to add into the mix as that should help with both those problems.
So, what does the scale have to tell me this week? 202, same as the last couple weeks. What's not the same as the last month however is my bodyfat percentage, it had been holding steady at 9.5 for most of March, but this week, the day after the A workout in fact, it dropped to 7.3, and the following day to 5.5. It has since leveled out again at 7.3, suggesting to me the 5.5 was a fluke, but that's a fairly sudden change that seems promising at least at first glance. Luckily, I've got lots of data left to collect that will show whether it turns out to be significant or not. Until next week, do whatever it takes to be the you you want to be.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 63)
Sunday again and time for the weigh-in.
Well, this weeks post is gonna be short, as the weekend has been consumed by moving.
Kept working on my pushups by greasing the groove this week, and I feel like I've made serious progress on that front. Went for a nice run early in the week as well. Starting next week I'm going to be working on Occam's Protocol in the fitness center here at the apartment, equipment permitting of course. Past that it's all gonna be about how much I can manage to eat and of what. I'll probably increase the frequency of updates a bit in some form, posting a quick blurb with how the workout went when I do a Protocol workout, weights, reps, and a summary of the caloric intake of the days since the last workout. Each week I'll likely through in a section at the bottom of this post with the update calorie goals for the following week, and possibly some tape measurements of various muscle areas. We'll have to see how this evolves as time goes on.
For now, let's just get you the numbers for this week shall we? 202, same as last week. Stalled a bit it seems, but at least it's not dropping. Body fat is still hovering around 9.5% which I'm fine with. As for caloric goals the Protocol reccomends 20 calories per pound of lean mass for 10 pounds more than your current weight, so that's 3845, and further it suggests 1.25 grams of protein for each pound of lean mass, so 182g per day. We'll see how well I can manage that going forward. Until next week, be the you you always wanted to be.
Well, this weeks post is gonna be short, as the weekend has been consumed by moving.
Kept working on my pushups by greasing the groove this week, and I feel like I've made serious progress on that front. Went for a nice run early in the week as well. Starting next week I'm going to be working on Occam's Protocol in the fitness center here at the apartment, equipment permitting of course. Past that it's all gonna be about how much I can manage to eat and of what. I'll probably increase the frequency of updates a bit in some form, posting a quick blurb with how the workout went when I do a Protocol workout, weights, reps, and a summary of the caloric intake of the days since the last workout. Each week I'll likely through in a section at the bottom of this post with the update calorie goals for the following week, and possibly some tape measurements of various muscle areas. We'll have to see how this evolves as time goes on.
For now, let's just get you the numbers for this week shall we? 202, same as last week. Stalled a bit it seems, but at least it's not dropping. Body fat is still hovering around 9.5% which I'm fine with. As for caloric goals the Protocol reccomends 20 calories per pound of lean mass for 10 pounds more than your current weight, so that's 3845, and further it suggests 1.25 grams of protein for each pound of lean mass, so 182g per day. We'll see how well I can manage that going forward. Until next week, be the you you always wanted to be.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 62)
Sunday once again and time for another weigh-in.
Going to be kind of a hodge-podge this week I think. Firstly, I would just like to say, in case any of you didn't know already, that Renaissance Festivals are awesome. Why does this have anything to do with this post? Well, Ren Fest has a lot of walking around and being outside involved, both of which are great for you, but the more relevant thing is that for me anyway they also involve costumes. Previous years I had gone with a nice all consuming cloak that Lara and I made, mostly Lara I will freely admit, a few years back. This year I was, as is often the case, bit by the creativity bug and so we embarked on a new costume quest. The result was a kilt and a Jacobite shirt. Mostly I brought this whole anecdote up to brag about the fact that the shirt, according to the pattern it was based off, is a size medium. Considering I used to wear shirts in a XXL, I'm calling that a hell of an accomplishment.
Secondly, I started using a new iPhone app this week to track my food and my weight. Meal Diary has served me well for a good while now, but with my food choices straying further and further from my original printed list over time, and no sign of going back any time soon, it's categories are becoming less useful. Further complicating it's usage is the fact that with my bulking phase upcoming I find myself needing to track my caloric intake and specifically my protein intake more accurately than I had been previously. For this, and because as an added benefit it allows me to enter my body fat when I make the measurements, I have switched over to using Daily Burn's iPhone app. The design is rather nice, and since I already had an account with them which I had been rarely using it was a simple setup. For any food that I eat which is packaged or from a restaurant I can just search for it, select a number of servings, and be on my way. For homemade food they also have a database of USDA food options that you can use to compose your meals, or in some cases I just find the closest thing that I can manage and call it good. So my method may not be perfect, but it's more detail than I had before. As an added benefit it tracks micronutrients like various vitamins and sends you an email every day letting you know if you are getting way too much or too little of certain nutrients.
That's about all for this week I think. Next week I'll be back with something, most likely details on the specific caloric plan I'm working with for my bulking phase, and what I'm going to need to do to accomplish it.
So what does the scale have to say this week? 202, same as last week, though my body fat trend line is now below 10% for the first time in recorded history. So while progress is slow so far, I'm also not actively into my bulking phase quite yet. So until next time, be the you you want to be.
Going to be kind of a hodge-podge this week I think. Firstly, I would just like to say, in case any of you didn't know already, that Renaissance Festivals are awesome. Why does this have anything to do with this post? Well, Ren Fest has a lot of walking around and being outside involved, both of which are great for you, but the more relevant thing is that for me anyway they also involve costumes. Previous years I had gone with a nice all consuming cloak that Lara and I made, mostly Lara I will freely admit, a few years back. This year I was, as is often the case, bit by the creativity bug and so we embarked on a new costume quest. The result was a kilt and a Jacobite shirt. Mostly I brought this whole anecdote up to brag about the fact that the shirt, according to the pattern it was based off, is a size medium. Considering I used to wear shirts in a XXL, I'm calling that a hell of an accomplishment.
Secondly, I started using a new iPhone app this week to track my food and my weight. Meal Diary has served me well for a good while now, but with my food choices straying further and further from my original printed list over time, and no sign of going back any time soon, it's categories are becoming less useful. Further complicating it's usage is the fact that with my bulking phase upcoming I find myself needing to track my caloric intake and specifically my protein intake more accurately than I had been previously. For this, and because as an added benefit it allows me to enter my body fat when I make the measurements, I have switched over to using Daily Burn's iPhone app. The design is rather nice, and since I already had an account with them which I had been rarely using it was a simple setup. For any food that I eat which is packaged or from a restaurant I can just search for it, select a number of servings, and be on my way. For homemade food they also have a database of USDA food options that you can use to compose your meals, or in some cases I just find the closest thing that I can manage and call it good. So my method may not be perfect, but it's more detail than I had before. As an added benefit it tracks micronutrients like various vitamins and sends you an email every day letting you know if you are getting way too much or too little of certain nutrients.
That's about all for this week I think. Next week I'll be back with something, most likely details on the specific caloric plan I'm working with for my bulking phase, and what I'm going to need to do to accomplish it.
So what does the scale have to say this week? 202, same as last week, though my body fat trend line is now below 10% for the first time in recorded history. So while progress is slow so far, I'm also not actively into my bulking phase quite yet. So until next time, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 61)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
This week has been pretty normal in terms of my food intake. Where it has been different is my output, I went for two runs this week, up from none the previous week, so that's a big improvement, and I've been "greasing the groove" with sets of squats and pushups every time I go to use the computer.
Speaking of changing things up I've been trying to piece together a new and somewhat more comprehensive workout program to start in on, as I've noticed I seem to do better when I have a clear cut plan to follow. In trying to put together such a plan I'm torn between trying to put together something that's nicely ambitious to sate my desire to do something, see results, and challenge myself, and the desire to put together something that will be easily achievable and thus something I can stick to more easily. I think I'm going to try and find the middle ground for now and then hopefully adjust my training volume upwards from there in the future.
First, I'm going to try for getting in runs 3 days a week, 1 run of 3km with a goal of improving my average pace from week to week, 1 run for distance, and 1 run for target heart rate range. The distance run will start off at 4km and increase by 10% per week for as long as I can keep that up and by some other factor after that which I find manageable. The heart rate run will have to wait until I get a heart rate monitor, which is on my list in the near future, and will be a 25 minute run with the goal of keeping my heart rate for the duration of the run within a given heart rate range, probably between 65-75% Max Heart Rate. This run will be mostly to gauge progress over time. The further my distance in that time, and the better my pace, while keeping within the target heart rate zone the better my progress is going overall.
Second, I'm going to throw in some more dedicated resistance training to my workout plan. In addition to picking one exercise at a time to focus on by performing a set of 5-10 reps each time I perform a certain activity, most likely sitting down at my computer or reaching an hour of cumulative computer time, I'm going to experiment with Occam's Protocol from The Four Hour Body and dedicate the remaining days of the week to beast skills. Beast Skills in this case refers to skills of physical prowess involving balance and mastery of bodyweight like handstands, the human flag, and planche pushups. I'll focus on one of these skills at a time until I feel I have sufficiently mastered it such as to move on to the next one.
So with that explanation of my plans for my running and some strength training I've put together a new and somewhat ambitious plan for where I'd like to go in the future. Running further, faster, and more efficiently, and also lifting more, and with better control over my mass. So, to those who read this and have more experience with these things than I do, what do you think? Too ambitious, not ambitious enough, missing something important? I'm open to suggestions for improvement.
So, what about my weight? I've come a long way since I started on this journey, and even since the start of this calendar year. I've lost a bunch of unneeded weight, and I've also cut a lot of fat, as of this week I'm down to 10% body fat, from around 19% at the start of the year. Now, I'm entering a new stage of the journey. I'm going to be trying to put back on some weight, but making a point to ensure that I'm adding muscle and not fat. So what's the scale telling me today? 202 up a pound from last week. Starting this muscle adding on the right track it seems.
So, I've put together a nice little plan there to extract an improved version of me from what lurks inside of the current me, just one step toward becoming the me I want to be. So until next time, become the you you've always wanted.
This week has been pretty normal in terms of my food intake. Where it has been different is my output, I went for two runs this week, up from none the previous week, so that's a big improvement, and I've been "greasing the groove" with sets of squats and pushups every time I go to use the computer.
Speaking of changing things up I've been trying to piece together a new and somewhat more comprehensive workout program to start in on, as I've noticed I seem to do better when I have a clear cut plan to follow. In trying to put together such a plan I'm torn between trying to put together something that's nicely ambitious to sate my desire to do something, see results, and challenge myself, and the desire to put together something that will be easily achievable and thus something I can stick to more easily. I think I'm going to try and find the middle ground for now and then hopefully adjust my training volume upwards from there in the future.
First, I'm going to try for getting in runs 3 days a week, 1 run of 3km with a goal of improving my average pace from week to week, 1 run for distance, and 1 run for target heart rate range. The distance run will start off at 4km and increase by 10% per week for as long as I can keep that up and by some other factor after that which I find manageable. The heart rate run will have to wait until I get a heart rate monitor, which is on my list in the near future, and will be a 25 minute run with the goal of keeping my heart rate for the duration of the run within a given heart rate range, probably between 65-75% Max Heart Rate. This run will be mostly to gauge progress over time. The further my distance in that time, and the better my pace, while keeping within the target heart rate zone the better my progress is going overall.
Second, I'm going to throw in some more dedicated resistance training to my workout plan. In addition to picking one exercise at a time to focus on by performing a set of 5-10 reps each time I perform a certain activity, most likely sitting down at my computer or reaching an hour of cumulative computer time, I'm going to experiment with Occam's Protocol from The Four Hour Body and dedicate the remaining days of the week to beast skills. Beast Skills in this case refers to skills of physical prowess involving balance and mastery of bodyweight like handstands, the human flag, and planche pushups. I'll focus on one of these skills at a time until I feel I have sufficiently mastered it such as to move on to the next one.
So with that explanation of my plans for my running and some strength training I've put together a new and somewhat ambitious plan for where I'd like to go in the future. Running further, faster, and more efficiently, and also lifting more, and with better control over my mass. So, to those who read this and have more experience with these things than I do, what do you think? Too ambitious, not ambitious enough, missing something important? I'm open to suggestions for improvement.
So, what about my weight? I've come a long way since I started on this journey, and even since the start of this calendar year. I've lost a bunch of unneeded weight, and I've also cut a lot of fat, as of this week I'm down to 10% body fat, from around 19% at the start of the year. Now, I'm entering a new stage of the journey. I'm going to be trying to put back on some weight, but making a point to ensure that I'm adding muscle and not fat. So what's the scale telling me today? 202 up a pound from last week. Starting this muscle adding on the right track it seems.
So, I've put together a nice little plan there to extract an improved version of me from what lurks inside of the current me, just one step toward becoming the me I want to be. So until next time, become the you you've always wanted.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 60)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
My diet shift has been going well, and I'm feeling better. I'm looking better, feeling fitter, and this weeks run included the best pace I've managed to achieve since I started tracking runs back in October.
Not much to talk about this week, but let's see what ends up on the page shall we? Firstly, in health as much as in any area of life, small changes are often the most useful ones. Small changes build up and snowball into much bigger changes, and the momentum can take you to amazing places. It's important to put things into perspective when trying to make life changes, small changes are a lot easier to make and stick to. Making small changes, either together or in series, is much easier than making a big change. Each little change will put you closer to where you want to be, and help you to get the momentum to make more changes, and eventually you will get to places you never thought you could reach.
Second thing I want to talk about today is the importance of data. Changes may help you make improvements, but you'll have a hard time pinning down the degree of your improvement and figuring out what is the most effective change you've made if you don't collect and analyze relevant data. For me right now I've been trying to manage my weight, and my body fat. To collect data for that I needed a digital scale, and a caliper. If I was trying to track my blood glucose I'd need a glucometer, for heart statistics I'd need a heart rate monitor. I'm bringing this up for multiple reasons, firstly I'm likely going to expand the data that I'm collecting about myself to see what I can find, secondly it's important to remember that if you want to find what works best you need the data and the initiative to figure out what best means and how to accomplish it.
So, do the numbers say this week? 201 up a pound from last week, but I'm not worried, my body fat is moving in a direction I like and so everything is looking pretty good. So until next week, be the person you want to be, and consider tracking some data to prove it.
My diet shift has been going well, and I'm feeling better. I'm looking better, feeling fitter, and this weeks run included the best pace I've managed to achieve since I started tracking runs back in October.
Not much to talk about this week, but let's see what ends up on the page shall we? Firstly, in health as much as in any area of life, small changes are often the most useful ones. Small changes build up and snowball into much bigger changes, and the momentum can take you to amazing places. It's important to put things into perspective when trying to make life changes, small changes are a lot easier to make and stick to. Making small changes, either together or in series, is much easier than making a big change. Each little change will put you closer to where you want to be, and help you to get the momentum to make more changes, and eventually you will get to places you never thought you could reach.
Second thing I want to talk about today is the importance of data. Changes may help you make improvements, but you'll have a hard time pinning down the degree of your improvement and figuring out what is the most effective change you've made if you don't collect and analyze relevant data. For me right now I've been trying to manage my weight, and my body fat. To collect data for that I needed a digital scale, and a caliper. If I was trying to track my blood glucose I'd need a glucometer, for heart statistics I'd need a heart rate monitor. I'm bringing this up for multiple reasons, firstly I'm likely going to expand the data that I'm collecting about myself to see what I can find, secondly it's important to remember that if you want to find what works best you need the data and the initiative to figure out what best means and how to accomplish it.
So, do the numbers say this week? 201 up a pound from last week, but I'm not worried, my body fat is moving in a direction I like and so everything is looking pretty good. So until next week, be the person you want to be, and consider tracking some data to prove it.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 59)
Sunday again, so here I am with another post.
This week my weigh-ins have fluctuated up and down, and I'll be interested to see where it goes.
This week, I found myself without a clear idea of what I wanted to use to fill this space until around Friday afternoon, and what I was left with was more a feeling that I should share a couple things here to get them out there.
Firstly, some plans for what I want to do with my diet in the future. January's experiment left me feeling great, with more energy and fewer general complaints than I can recall having had at any point in the past. Since switching back to a more standard diet I find myself with frequent low-grade headaches, especially following meals, less energy, and more instances where I feel a powerful hunger rather than just a modest hunger. Having switched back, I still feel better than I did before, but I think that was mostly due to the body recomposition that I was able to achieve while I was working in that experiment; however I'm experiencing the headaches, I'm more tired, and I get the feeling that I'm missing something. It leaves me with the feeling that I should seriously consider switching back to the primal plan long term. So I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and keep at least 75% primal going forward, and see how that works out for me. If I notice the symptoms to be connected as I suspect I will try and increase that percentage as time goes by and see where I end up. Sure, it may seem restrictive to some, but it's easier than you might think, and the percentages give me the flexibility to "forage" off of menus when I go out to eat, or make adjustments on the fly and not have to feel guilty about it.
On a related note, I think at some point in the near future I want to try 2 weeks of primal eating with some restriction on my protein, I want to see if I can make it two weeks as a pescetarian to see how the other half lives as it were. My hope there would be to come away from the experiment, much as I did from my primal experiment, with a better understanding of the difficulty faced by those who are either forced or have chosen to live a life without certain things, and at the same time to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the foods I eat, in this case primarily the vegetables I eat and the importance of high quality produce to the flavor profile of a meal. After that, I have a somewhat more "fringe" plan for another two week stint at some point, 2 weeks as a strict carnivore. That one I want to try out partly to say I did, partly to better appreciate the simplicity that it provides, and partly because the results interest me from a human-hacking perspective and an anthropological perspective. So that's where my diet experiments are heading as time goes on.
I've also determined that I really need to have clear and delineated goals if I am to achieve anything in my human-hacking activities. To some degree I already knew this, "lose weight" is bad, "lose 5 pounds" is better, work out more is bad, work out 4 days a week is better, etc. But I have been reminded recently that if I am to achieve much of anything I really need to setup clear goals that I can monitor and track progress on if I am going to have any hope of getting anything meaningful done. As such, I'm going to be trying a bit harder to figure out appropriate quantifiable goals that I can use as stepping stones to my overall goals.
Well, that's about all the general stuff I have to share right now, so on to the numbers for this week. 200, up .5 from last week. Change I can live with, even if I am going to be working on keeping it in check a little bit better going forward. So here's to the future, and whatever it holds. No matter what you may be now, always go out of your way to be the you you want to be.
This week my weigh-ins have fluctuated up and down, and I'll be interested to see where it goes.
This week, I found myself without a clear idea of what I wanted to use to fill this space until around Friday afternoon, and what I was left with was more a feeling that I should share a couple things here to get them out there.
Firstly, some plans for what I want to do with my diet in the future. January's experiment left me feeling great, with more energy and fewer general complaints than I can recall having had at any point in the past. Since switching back to a more standard diet I find myself with frequent low-grade headaches, especially following meals, less energy, and more instances where I feel a powerful hunger rather than just a modest hunger. Having switched back, I still feel better than I did before, but I think that was mostly due to the body recomposition that I was able to achieve while I was working in that experiment; however I'm experiencing the headaches, I'm more tired, and I get the feeling that I'm missing something. It leaves me with the feeling that I should seriously consider switching back to the primal plan long term. So I'm going to make a concerted effort to try and keep at least 75% primal going forward, and see how that works out for me. If I notice the symptoms to be connected as I suspect I will try and increase that percentage as time goes by and see where I end up. Sure, it may seem restrictive to some, but it's easier than you might think, and the percentages give me the flexibility to "forage" off of menus when I go out to eat, or make adjustments on the fly and not have to feel guilty about it.
On a related note, I think at some point in the near future I want to try 2 weeks of primal eating with some restriction on my protein, I want to see if I can make it two weeks as a pescetarian to see how the other half lives as it were. My hope there would be to come away from the experiment, much as I did from my primal experiment, with a better understanding of the difficulty faced by those who are either forced or have chosen to live a life without certain things, and at the same time to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the foods I eat, in this case primarily the vegetables I eat and the importance of high quality produce to the flavor profile of a meal. After that, I have a somewhat more "fringe" plan for another two week stint at some point, 2 weeks as a strict carnivore. That one I want to try out partly to say I did, partly to better appreciate the simplicity that it provides, and partly because the results interest me from a human-hacking perspective and an anthropological perspective. So that's where my diet experiments are heading as time goes on.
I've also determined that I really need to have clear and delineated goals if I am to achieve anything in my human-hacking activities. To some degree I already knew this, "lose weight" is bad, "lose 5 pounds" is better, work out more is bad, work out 4 days a week is better, etc. But I have been reminded recently that if I am to achieve much of anything I really need to setup clear goals that I can monitor and track progress on if I am going to have any hope of getting anything meaningful done. As such, I'm going to be trying a bit harder to figure out appropriate quantifiable goals that I can use as stepping stones to my overall goals.
Well, that's about all the general stuff I have to share right now, so on to the numbers for this week. 200, up .5 from last week. Change I can live with, even if I am going to be working on keeping it in check a little bit better going forward. So here's to the future, and whatever it holds. No matter what you may be now, always go out of your way to be the you you want to be.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 58)
Sunday yet again, and time for my weekly weigh-in post.
Well, this week has been one much like many others. The main difference was that some apartment hunting happened. But I also picked up something for my wife, and got directed at a few blog posts from feeds I read, that got me to thinking about a post for this week. So, here goes.
Take a look at your feet. What do they look like? I don't mean generally, they'll be foot shaped and all, but specifically right now. Do they look like feet or do they look like shoes? Those of you who know me at all can probably guess my answer to that question, they look like feet. For as long as I can recall I spend all the time that I'm at home, and usually at anyone else's as well, barefoot and loving it. It's comfortable, natural, and leaves me feeling lighter and more maneuverable than where I to be wearing shoes. These goals have impacted my choice of casual footwear at least as heavily. My feet developed a deep rich tan matching whatever my current sandals were. But recently that tan line has been changing, a trip to Disneyland helped with that.
What has brought about this change you might wonder, and to what. Well, a change in footwear of course. Around 8 months ago now I picked up a new pair of shoes from the REI that had just opened in Tucson. A pair of Black Vibram Fivefingers Classics. At the time I picked them up to use as running shoes, and that was pretty much their exclusive use for me until mid-January or so. They did very well at that and when it warms up enough that I get back out running in the mornings again they will resume being used for that if things continue as they are now. But last month I started wearing them as my wearing around shoes instead of the Birkenstocks I had been wearing. I don't regret this at all and I don't plan to go back.
Now, a lot of you will look at these and wonder how on earth anyone could wear those. They look ugly you might think, they can't possibly be comfortable, you'll hurt yourself if you run in them, they'll destroy your feet, ruin your arches, etc. Well, I can gladly report that I've found that, potential ugliness aside, after the first week or so there was no pain at all, and the other possible issues were also non-existent. The pain was something I fully expected, and it was much reduced as I had worked out most of the kinks in my stride during my running in them. If you look at most tennis shoes and various other types of footwear you'll likely find that there is a lot of padding in the heel of the shoe and that the insole has a very defined arch built in. These things have a couple of effects. The heel cushioning reduces the impact force of your heel hitting the ground first when you walk in an effort to minimize the amount by which you are damaging your leg joints and hip joints. The defined arch keeps your foot in an arched shape at all times rather than letting it flex downward over the course of your stride. Compare those behaviors to how you walk when you are barefoot, you land further toward the front of your foot (personally, I land on the balls of my feet but others seem to land with the ball and the heel at around the same time) and your arch flexes to absorb impact.
There have been a number of studies on human strides that I won't delve into too much here, though you will find links at the end of this post, but suffice to say that the more natural impact, and the lowest force applied to the joints, happens when you don't land on your heels. As to the arch, the human body is a funny thing about that. While you might think that you need arch support to keep your foot functioning properly, structurally speaking supporting an arch is the worst thing you can do for it. Support in the middle of the arch actually weakens it dramatically, which in the case of your foot means weakening the muscles and tendons in the area and limiting how well they can do their job. In this case that's a very important job. Your foot is built so that the arch acts like a spring, absorbing impact force and then letting it back out when you take your next step. Using this absorption in your arch your stride becomes more energy efficient and you can keep walking or running over a much larger distance.
The Vibrams, and other shoes like them, have almost no cushion on them at all, and minimal structure let alone arch support. This forces your stride into a mode that better mimics the barefoot behaviors, but has the benefit of that rubber sole keeping you from cutting yourself on the glass and rocks that are so often strewn about in our modern environment. I love these shoes and can tell you certainly that they are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. They may seem expensive at first, but they are cheaper than the Birkenstocks I was wearing before and comparable to standard running shoes and various other high quality footwear, many of which are far less comfortable.
Speaking of comfort, here's a great example of that. I wore these shoes for 5 solid days of walking around Disneyland with minimal pain, certainly much less than I had the last time I was there for 3 days and had my Birks and a pair of sneakers, which is understandable when putting in that much mileage, even still I felt light on my feet to the point of jumping on and over random obstacles as we traversed the park. I got no fewer than 17 people asking me over the course of those 5 days about my shoes, most of whom had never seen them before, and a few of whom had considered them or just didn't think wearing them to the park was a feasible option. I even ran into one woman who also had the idea to wear hers to the park and we had a fun little chat about them with some other guests waiting near us. Shoes that are comfortable, and a conversation starter. Can't go wrong there. Plus, they are machine washable.
Well, having ditched the weight of my Birks in favor of the much lighter Vibrams has left me feeling lighter on my feet, but has it left me lighter elsewhere? Probably not, but let's see what the scale says about it. 199.5 this week, down .1 from last week. Weight staying fairly steady as is to be expected. Well, that's it for this week, until next week, go out and be the you you've always wanted to be.
P.S. For those of you wondering what it was that I got for my wife it was a pair of the Vibram Jaya's in the Black/Grey color. My only complaint from what I've heard about them so far is that they don't come in sizes big enough I could wear them.
Consolidated research on barefoot walking/running:
Unshod.org Research Page
Harvard's Barefoot Running page - amazingly comprehensive guide to what I'm talking about here
New York Magazine Article on Barefooting
Well, this week has been one much like many others. The main difference was that some apartment hunting happened. But I also picked up something for my wife, and got directed at a few blog posts from feeds I read, that got me to thinking about a post for this week. So, here goes.
Take a look at your feet. What do they look like? I don't mean generally, they'll be foot shaped and all, but specifically right now. Do they look like feet or do they look like shoes? Those of you who know me at all can probably guess my answer to that question, they look like feet. For as long as I can recall I spend all the time that I'm at home, and usually at anyone else's as well, barefoot and loving it. It's comfortable, natural, and leaves me feeling lighter and more maneuverable than where I to be wearing shoes. These goals have impacted my choice of casual footwear at least as heavily. My feet developed a deep rich tan matching whatever my current sandals were. But recently that tan line has been changing, a trip to Disneyland helped with that.
What has brought about this change you might wonder, and to what. Well, a change in footwear of course. Around 8 months ago now I picked up a new pair of shoes from the REI that had just opened in Tucson. A pair of Black Vibram Fivefingers Classics. At the time I picked them up to use as running shoes, and that was pretty much their exclusive use for me until mid-January or so. They did very well at that and when it warms up enough that I get back out running in the mornings again they will resume being used for that if things continue as they are now. But last month I started wearing them as my wearing around shoes instead of the Birkenstocks I had been wearing. I don't regret this at all and I don't plan to go back.
Now, a lot of you will look at these and wonder how on earth anyone could wear those. They look ugly you might think, they can't possibly be comfortable, you'll hurt yourself if you run in them, they'll destroy your feet, ruin your arches, etc. Well, I can gladly report that I've found that, potential ugliness aside, after the first week or so there was no pain at all, and the other possible issues were also non-existent. The pain was something I fully expected, and it was much reduced as I had worked out most of the kinks in my stride during my running in them. If you look at most tennis shoes and various other types of footwear you'll likely find that there is a lot of padding in the heel of the shoe and that the insole has a very defined arch built in. These things have a couple of effects. The heel cushioning reduces the impact force of your heel hitting the ground first when you walk in an effort to minimize the amount by which you are damaging your leg joints and hip joints. The defined arch keeps your foot in an arched shape at all times rather than letting it flex downward over the course of your stride. Compare those behaviors to how you walk when you are barefoot, you land further toward the front of your foot (personally, I land on the balls of my feet but others seem to land with the ball and the heel at around the same time) and your arch flexes to absorb impact.
There have been a number of studies on human strides that I won't delve into too much here, though you will find links at the end of this post, but suffice to say that the more natural impact, and the lowest force applied to the joints, happens when you don't land on your heels. As to the arch, the human body is a funny thing about that. While you might think that you need arch support to keep your foot functioning properly, structurally speaking supporting an arch is the worst thing you can do for it. Support in the middle of the arch actually weakens it dramatically, which in the case of your foot means weakening the muscles and tendons in the area and limiting how well they can do their job. In this case that's a very important job. Your foot is built so that the arch acts like a spring, absorbing impact force and then letting it back out when you take your next step. Using this absorption in your arch your stride becomes more energy efficient and you can keep walking or running over a much larger distance.
The Vibrams, and other shoes like them, have almost no cushion on them at all, and minimal structure let alone arch support. This forces your stride into a mode that better mimics the barefoot behaviors, but has the benefit of that rubber sole keeping you from cutting yourself on the glass and rocks that are so often strewn about in our modern environment. I love these shoes and can tell you certainly that they are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. They may seem expensive at first, but they are cheaper than the Birkenstocks I was wearing before and comparable to standard running shoes and various other high quality footwear, many of which are far less comfortable.
Speaking of comfort, here's a great example of that. I wore these shoes for 5 solid days of walking around Disneyland with minimal pain, certainly much less than I had the last time I was there for 3 days and had my Birks and a pair of sneakers, which is understandable when putting in that much mileage, even still I felt light on my feet to the point of jumping on and over random obstacles as we traversed the park. I got no fewer than 17 people asking me over the course of those 5 days about my shoes, most of whom had never seen them before, and a few of whom had considered them or just didn't think wearing them to the park was a feasible option. I even ran into one woman who also had the idea to wear hers to the park and we had a fun little chat about them with some other guests waiting near us. Shoes that are comfortable, and a conversation starter. Can't go wrong there. Plus, they are machine washable.
Well, having ditched the weight of my Birks in favor of the much lighter Vibrams has left me feeling lighter on my feet, but has it left me lighter elsewhere? Probably not, but let's see what the scale says about it. 199.5 this week, down .1 from last week. Weight staying fairly steady as is to be expected. Well, that's it for this week, until next week, go out and be the you you've always wanted to be.
P.S. For those of you wondering what it was that I got for my wife it was a pair of the Vibram Jaya's in the Black/Grey color. My only complaint from what I've heard about them so far is that they don't come in sizes big enough I could wear them.
Consolidated research on barefoot walking/running:
Unshod.org Research Page
Harvard's Barefoot Running page - amazingly comprehensive guide to what I'm talking about here
New York Magazine Article on Barefooting
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 57)
Sunday yet again and time for my weekly weigh-in.
Been an interesting week for me. Spent a lot of it at Disneyland having a great time. Came back to some work, and honestly been one of the better times for that I've had in a while, and now it looks like I might be coming down with a case of something or other. Luckily that should subside soon and leave me to life again.
So, I've been promising some information about my other experiment from January for a while now, so today here it comes.
Based on some information from some of my various research, and an understanding of how thermodynamics works, I decided to experiment with using cold to increase caloric burn. Now a lot of people would have you think that weight is as simple as calories in and calories out. The in is obviously what you eat, the out is the byproducts of that, and all the various expenditures of keeping the body functioning and how much exercise you do etc. Well I've already found that is overly simplistic, what you eat has a big impact how your body fuels itself. Calories are not all created equal. So what else is there to play with? The out of course.
Sure I could exercise a lot and burn more calories that way, but that's a lot of work and a lot of time to burn an appreciable amount of calories. Perhaps there is another way to tinker with the calorie equation. This is where the thermodynamics comes in. The human body has a very small range of core temperature at which it considers itself comfortable. If it's warmer than that you start sweating or doing various other things in an attempt to lower your temp toward that comfortable range, but if it's lower than that your body starts keeping the blood closer in to your core for warmth, and burning more calories to try and generate more heat. This is what we're after. By keeping yourself cooler could you increase your calorie expenditure and burn fat faster than if you were warmer?
This was where I decided to play around a bit. I took it upon myself to try a few methods of keeping my core temp a bit lower to see what kind of results I could garner. At the outset I decided I'd start my morning, after my weigh-in, with a half-liter of ice cold water. This was slightly tricky to execute and as a result I didn't stick with it long, though I feel like if I had the results I saw would have been improved greatly. I stopped even pretending to carry a jacket and just went with the temp as it was. The last thing I did, and the aspect I stuck with that I feel did the most good, was an ice pack applied to the neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes every evening, as my research indicated this would be the best place for impacting my core temp and also the best time of day for calorie burn due to increased glucose sensitivity.
So, the testing protocol, the first ten days of January I did no cold application to help ensure that I had a baseline and because I wanted to make sure my testing period happened while I was better acclimated to my dietary experiment for the month. The second ten days of the month I did my 30 minutes of icing each evening. The last ten days I did no icing but kept up the dietary shift to make sure I had accurate information from later on in the same end of that experiment to control for. So, what do the numbers show? The first ten days I lost a total of 4.6 pounds, 3.08 of which were fat and 1.52 of which were lean. During the icing phase I lost 1.7 pounds total, but a total of 4.107 pounds of fat and gained 2.407 of lean. During the last 30 days I lost a net 1 pound, but 2.75 of fat and gained 1.749 of lean. During the first ten days of February when I was back to my more normal diet I gained .4 pounds, having lost 2.342 of fat and gained 2.742 of lean. That's an awful lot of numbers. What do they have to say? I lost nearly twice as much fat during my iced segment than I did during the normal period in February or the latter part of January when I was still doing the Primal experiment. I also gained the second most lean that I gained at any point during this experimental setup.
So, what's the take away from this? The icing helped, and though I didn't test it specifically, I would wager that the icing with the primal eating would do better than either the primal diet or icing with a normal diet would do. So while icing can help increase what you are already doing in terms of burning fat, it's not going to fix anything on it's own. Get your intake taken care of first, and then work on your output, whether that be in the form of exercise, icing, or ideally both. So that's what I have to say about this for now. If you have suggestions on other things I could experiment with, or ideas on how to improve my testing let me know in the comments.
Well, now that we've seen a bit more of how I went about getting to the weight where I am now, let's see what exactly I am now. 199.6, down .5 from last week. Keeping up in the right neighborhood, and the fat is still slowly but surely coming down. Keeping on with life and thriving in it. Be the you you've always wanted to be, because if you don't you've noone to blame but yourself.
Been an interesting week for me. Spent a lot of it at Disneyland having a great time. Came back to some work, and honestly been one of the better times for that I've had in a while, and now it looks like I might be coming down with a case of something or other. Luckily that should subside soon and leave me to life again.
So, I've been promising some information about my other experiment from January for a while now, so today here it comes.
Based on some information from some of my various research, and an understanding of how thermodynamics works, I decided to experiment with using cold to increase caloric burn. Now a lot of people would have you think that weight is as simple as calories in and calories out. The in is obviously what you eat, the out is the byproducts of that, and all the various expenditures of keeping the body functioning and how much exercise you do etc. Well I've already found that is overly simplistic, what you eat has a big impact how your body fuels itself. Calories are not all created equal. So what else is there to play with? The out of course.
Sure I could exercise a lot and burn more calories that way, but that's a lot of work and a lot of time to burn an appreciable amount of calories. Perhaps there is another way to tinker with the calorie equation. This is where the thermodynamics comes in. The human body has a very small range of core temperature at which it considers itself comfortable. If it's warmer than that you start sweating or doing various other things in an attempt to lower your temp toward that comfortable range, but if it's lower than that your body starts keeping the blood closer in to your core for warmth, and burning more calories to try and generate more heat. This is what we're after. By keeping yourself cooler could you increase your calorie expenditure and burn fat faster than if you were warmer?
This was where I decided to play around a bit. I took it upon myself to try a few methods of keeping my core temp a bit lower to see what kind of results I could garner. At the outset I decided I'd start my morning, after my weigh-in, with a half-liter of ice cold water. This was slightly tricky to execute and as a result I didn't stick with it long, though I feel like if I had the results I saw would have been improved greatly. I stopped even pretending to carry a jacket and just went with the temp as it was. The last thing I did, and the aspect I stuck with that I feel did the most good, was an ice pack applied to the neck and trapezius muscles for 30 minutes every evening, as my research indicated this would be the best place for impacting my core temp and also the best time of day for calorie burn due to increased glucose sensitivity.
So, the testing protocol, the first ten days of January I did no cold application to help ensure that I had a baseline and because I wanted to make sure my testing period happened while I was better acclimated to my dietary experiment for the month. The second ten days of the month I did my 30 minutes of icing each evening. The last ten days I did no icing but kept up the dietary shift to make sure I had accurate information from later on in the same end of that experiment to control for. So, what do the numbers show? The first ten days I lost a total of 4.6 pounds, 3.08 of which were fat and 1.52 of which were lean. During the icing phase I lost 1.7 pounds total, but a total of 4.107 pounds of fat and gained 2.407 of lean. During the last 30 days I lost a net 1 pound, but 2.75 of fat and gained 1.749 of lean. During the first ten days of February when I was back to my more normal diet I gained .4 pounds, having lost 2.342 of fat and gained 2.742 of lean. That's an awful lot of numbers. What do they have to say? I lost nearly twice as much fat during my iced segment than I did during the normal period in February or the latter part of January when I was still doing the Primal experiment. I also gained the second most lean that I gained at any point during this experimental setup.
So, what's the take away from this? The icing helped, and though I didn't test it specifically, I would wager that the icing with the primal eating would do better than either the primal diet or icing with a normal diet would do. So while icing can help increase what you are already doing in terms of burning fat, it's not going to fix anything on it's own. Get your intake taken care of first, and then work on your output, whether that be in the form of exercise, icing, or ideally both. So that's what I have to say about this for now. If you have suggestions on other things I could experiment with, or ideas on how to improve my testing let me know in the comments.
Well, now that we've seen a bit more of how I went about getting to the weight where I am now, let's see what exactly I am now. 199.6, down .5 from last week. Keeping up in the right neighborhood, and the fat is still slowly but surely coming down. Keeping on with life and thriving in it. Be the you you've always wanted to be, because if you don't you've noone to blame but yourself.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 56)
Sunday again and time for the weekly weigh-in.
Alright, short post this week. I know I said there would be data from the experiment I ran on myself in January, other than the dietary shift, but I didn't get the chance I expected to write that up into a post this week, and today I'm gonna be too busy having a great time to do it, so you get a short post with numbers.
Pretty average week in terms of my food intake, though I did try some homemade indian food for the first time, an activity I will likely repeat in the future. So I don't expect much change in the weight. 200.1, up half a pound since last week. While the average has been trending up slightly over time my daily readings are actually staying fairly consistently right around 200. I'm perfectly happy with this as my system seems well adjusted to maintaining this weight with little difficulty, and sometimes that's better than losing those 5 extra pounds. Anyway, have a great week and I'll have more for you next time.
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