Tuesday, January 6, 2009

My Focus Has Been Elsewhere Lately

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm in for some big transition this year, and one of the things I must do to prepare for it is to get in shape. 'Cuz I'm fairly well out of shape. It sucks because I've had a pretty good "fitness" track record. I know how to eat and exercise to get into great shape, and I've "been there". But once I started slipping a couple of years back, the slide was gradual but significant. Yeah we know, you "used to be", blah-blah-blah.

Anyway, I'm back on it. The biggest difficulty for me has been putting everything together into a cohesive plan and TRACKING PROGRESS without it taking up my whole damned day. Writing in printed workout journals, making up spreadsheets to record and generate workouts and track nutrition, it just took up too much freakin' time. Of course, that was before I found out there is a social network that helps you track all that stuff in a fraction of the time.

I found out about it when I was poking around my good friend and cousin's blog and clicked on one of his friends' blogs while going through his blogroll.

I won't go through the technical aspects of it - if you're interested in a good review, go to the link above - but I guess I should try to say something about what I think of it...

The nutrition portion of the site is telling me to eat about 300 - 700 more calories per day than I am normally used to when "on my usual program". I don't think I am going to force them down. I work on a "grazing" scheme - that is, 6 small meals a day - that gives me around 2400 calories a day, and I am comfortable with that. Also, the nutrition recommends a 40/30/30 carb/protein/fat ratio, but I run closer to a 40/40/20. Like 40/30/30, 40/40/20 works well - you end up being a little tighter on fat and more liberal with protein, and I've seen the split recommended more for a muscle-gaining diet. However you chop it up, it makes it easy to see how you're doing. Also, as long as I'm feeding regularly (every 3 hours) my body will be able to sustain a slightly greater rate of fat loss with the greater deficit.

My favorite part of the workout portion is not only that I can actually take a printout of my weight training workout to the gym, but that each printout is in effect a 3-workout record, unlike other journals I've seen where one page is one day. It's good to have several at a glance.

Okay, there. I've managed to NOT go three days without posting, and even said what I thought about something. After two days I'm feeling great. Of course that's the easy part - I'm motivated and I know my first weigh-in will be a lot less than what I weighed Monday because of the excess water and bloat that flushes out when you start regular exercise and up your water intake (I'm probably drinking about a gallon a day).

Seriously, if you're like me - you like to (and CAN) work out effectively, but haven't been able to get motivated in large part by not having the right tracking tool, give this a gander. Look for huzzah70; that'll be me.

5 comments:

MRMacrum said...

I am not one who enjoys keeping track of my fitness/weight loss progress. I try to eat less, exercise more and keep the tracking to a once a week weigh in. Of course, this has not served me very well in recent years. Maybe I need to change my ways. I will look at your links and see.

I do know that if I can ride my bike at least 3 hours a week, I will at least hold steady and not gain weight nor lose my fitness base.

Maggie said...

Good for you!

I think I exaggerate the amount of time in my life when I was fit and at what I consider a healthy weight, as in "I should be...", when I'm actually most of the time NOT that weight. I started sliding when we remodeled the kitchen, I don't even know how long ago that was, and it's been steady and BAD. I managed to slide the weight gain back a little over the holidays (I know, right -- the holidays!), but I need to straighten out and start flying right or it's not going to be pretty.

I have maintained my exercise for at least seven years now, possibly longer. I started, whenever it was I started, just running two miles three days a week. At my peek, I was running thirty miles a week, and now I'm running three five-mile runs. I feel like it's not enough, but it's so hard to balance the exercise, work, and children. When they're older and I feel comfortable leaving them alone in the house for an hour, I can do my run at any time and that will be much better. I just don't enjoy the treadmill and it's really hard for me to run five miles on the TM (did it the other day and it exacerbated my migraine :-().

But the diet -- that's the hardest for me. I've never tracked it, I've just gone between "eating healthy" and "eating like crap."

Good luck to you. It sounds like you're very disciplined about it.

Maggie said...

I think that's "peak." Good grief!

Randal Graves said...

I haven't been able to get motivated simply because I can't find any motivation. I can track til the cows come home.

Good luck, and let us know if it works. If so, maybe more of us will get motivated to be motivated!

goooooood girl said...
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