jump to navigation

Steve Pavlina On Exercise March 31, 2006

Steve Pavlina has just written a brief article about Varying Your Exercise Routine to keep it interesting. It sounds like he’s got a fantastic gym near where he lives - but then I guess you’d expect a town like Las Vegas to have at least one “Wow!” option.

If you’ve been thinking of starting up an exercise plan, or changing your current one, you might find the motivation you need in Steve’s 30 Day Trial approach. That’s the technique I used to get started, and it worked great for me. The basic idea is to just commit to the new routine for 30 days. At the end of that time you’re free to keep it, change it or dump it, depending on how it’s working out for you. Anybody can handle the discomfort for just one month.

Also check out the article on Progressive Training, a longer article that applies to training yourself for improved performance both in the physical sense and in other areas of your life.

PhysicsDiet.com Weight Tracking Graphs March 30, 2006

You might have noticed from my weekly weigh-in graphs that I’ve been using PhysicsDiet.com to track my weight. It’s free, it’s very easy to enter your daily data, and it produces pretty graphs that you can copy into your own web site. Sign up now!

Oh, and if you’re worried about entering all your data into a web site that might disappear one day, don’t. You can download all your data as a .csv file and load it into a spreadsheet program like Excel. Nice.

While you’re there, have a browse through the PhysicsDiet.com Forums. It’s a little bit quiet there at the moment, but I posted an introduction to me and am hoping to stir some more people out of the woodwork. It’d be great to share tips and resources with other people who are also trying to lose weight, and maybe provide a bit of moral support for each other as well.

Weekly Weigh-In 2006-03-26 March 26, 2006

Weight loss chart for 2006-03-26This week was a terrible one for exercise! I was laid up for most of the week with a sore throat and flu, so I didn’t go out running in the mornings Monday through Friday. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy to still make 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs) weight loss for the week.

I ran again on Saturday and Sunday, but I still wasn’t 100%. Both days I had to stop after running about 2 km, walk for a minute to get my breath back, and then run the rest of the distance to the 3 km mark. I’m hoping to continue building my fitness this week, so that I’m running the full 3 km every time.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Weekly Weigh-In 2006-03-19 March 19, 2006

Weekly weight loss chart for 19 March 2006My weekly weight loss figure has slowed right down this week. Partly it’s because of things we’ve had on (parties, dinners with friends/family, functions at work, etc), partly it’s that I’ve been doing less exercise, and partly I’ve just slacked off and lost discipline a bit. At least it’s still heading in the right direction, I guess.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and the beginnings of a flu. The kids seem to enjoy collecting new communicable diseases at day care/school and bringing them home to share with the rest of the family. That’ll probably kill my exercise for the next few mornings, but I’m hoping to get the diet back under control to make up for it.

The good news is that I’m now 10 kg (22 lbs) lighter than when I decided to lose weight in December. That’s an achievement I’m proud of, and I don’t want to let my weight slip back into triple-digit figures now! I’m way fitter than I used to be, too - I ran 3 km yesterday without walking or stopping.

While I haven’t achieved my goals yet, I’m significantly healthier than I was 3 months ago and I’m motivated to see how much better it’s going to get.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

I Ran 3 Kilometers! March 18, 2006

I’ve been thinking about Thursday’s run, and realised that what really stopped me at the 1.7 km mark was the hill looming in front of me. It wasn’t that the hill itself stopped me, it was just the thought of running up that hill.

So this morning, I determined to run the same route again, and this time to make it to the top of that hill. If nothing else, I’d add another .1 or .2 km to my personal best distance.

It was hard, but I made it to the top of the hill this morning! I kept going down the gentle slope on the other side, and found that I regained a bit of energy running downhill. So I kept going. And going. And going!

I ended up running all the way to my 3 km (1.9 mile) marker!

This is the first time in more than 7 years that I’ve run 3 km without walking or stopping. This is huge for me.

My time was 16:10, which isn’t great by competitive standards but it’s something to work with. At least now I’m running the whole distance, I can work on improving my pace. Previously, I was just trying to run for longer and walk for less.

My plan now is to keep running 3 km for a couple of weeks, and see if I can get the times down. I’d also like to build my endurance up, so I’m not quite so out of breath at the end :-).

Once I’m happy with my time and endurance over 3 km, I’ll build up to 3.5 km, then 4 km, then 4.5 km, and finally 5 km. My goal is to be running 5 km (3 miles) at least 3 mornings per week. By the time I’m fit enough to go that distance I should be getting times of under 24 minutes, which fits nicely into a half hour timeslot with 3 minutes each of warm up and warm down.

The only question now is how many weeks will it take me to get there?

I Ran A Mile! March 16, 2006

Actually, I ran slightly more than a mile this morning - 1.7 km, or 1.06 miles.

When I first started running, I just ran for as far as I could, then walked until I could run again, then ran as far as I could, then walked, etc. That’s a pretty undisciplined way to exercise, and I tended to be lazy and walk for longer than I should have, so I don’t think I was getting as much out of the exercise time as possible. I was covering 3 km in about 20 minutes or so.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been running for 2 minutes, walking for 1 minute, running for 2 minutes, etc. I do this for 3 km (I drove the route in the car to make sure it was accurate). I found I was less sore when doing this, but I was covering the 3 km in a faster time than the ad-hoc way (around 18 minutes).

I usually have some steam left when I get to the 2 minute mark when jogging, so I don’t think I’m pushing myself into the zone where I might strain something or injure myself. And because I have to start jogging again after a minute, I’m not being lazy and walking for longer than I need to.

This week I increased the 2nd and 4th jogging intervals to 3 minutes, which obviously gave me faster times (around 17.5 minutes). I didn’t feel like I was pushing myself too far, so I’m getting fitter.

Today I decided to experiment and see how far I could run in one stretch. I went a lot, lot further than I thought I could, and really surprised myself. I ran for about 9 minutes straight, and when I measured it out later it was 1.7 km (1.06 miles). Wow!

I’ve felt great all day today!

How To Beat Food Cravings March 14, 2006

Here’s a tip I read somewhere to help control the urge to nibble on snacks:

If you find yourself craving food, or eating just for the sake of it, or going to the cupboard whenever you get bored, try brushing your teeth instead. Not much tastes very good straight after brushing, so it will discourage you from eating when you don’t really need to.

Don’t go overboard, though. It’s not good for your teeth to be brushing them too much. If necessary, just brush your tongue and give your teeth a quick, light swipe with the brush. It’ll still give you that minty aftertaste, but won’t be as harsh on your mouth.

Weekly Weigh-In 2006-03-12 March 12, 2006

This week’s weight loss was a lot slower than last week.

My weight seems to have been hovering around the 100 kg mark for quite a while now. I’m finding this a bit of a barrier to break through, and it hasn’t been helped this week by a few extra meals out and parties.

I’m going to really crack down on the diet this week (which means throwing out a lot of left-over goodies from this weekend’s party!) and work hard on the exercise. My goal is to break through the 100 kg mark, which means 10 kg lost since I began in December.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Body Fat Analyser March 10, 2006

I just bought myself a cheapo body fat analyser on eBay. It cost a whopping AUD$10 - it’s probably not terribly accurate, but I was curious to see how they work and whether the information they give has practical use for weight loss.

All you do is set up the device with your age, sex, height and weight, then press your thumbs on the two sensor pads while it does some funky electrical signal analysis. In about 5 seconds, it tells you your body fat percentage.

Just now, it told me I’m at 34.5%. That’s a lot of fat - ugh!

According to the instruction booklet that came with it, normal body fat for a male is about 21-26%.

I’ll start entering my body fat percentage into my PhysicsDiet.com account, and we’ll see what comes out.

Weekly Weigh-In 2006-03-05 March 5, 2006

Another really great week! 1.1 kg lost!

I kept the diet under control all week (including the weekend), and managed to get out and exercise 6 out of 7 days.

Technorati Tags: , , ,