Well, now that I’ve started to get better (been sick with walking pneumonia for a couple of weeks) I’m going to start working out more again. Did a little 12 minutes of cardio today. Will do more going forward daily. Planning to do a little kettlebell or HIIT (high intensity interval training) after work before bed, and cardio after getting up before work. We’ll see how it goes.
Well, I did pass my EMR exam with NREMT a while back, but have decided to NOT be an EMR, at least for now because I know how much stress is involved with that. It would be nice to have a few extra bucks an hour, but not if all of that extra income and then some will be needed to pay councilors and medical bills…
I need to start focusing on myself and my own health instead of the health of others for a while, so that I can become a better person, more able and capable of taking care of people than I am now… that ol you have to love yourself before you love others bit is true.
I am a stress eater, and someone that doesn’t take too much care of myself healthwise as far as exercise, mindfulness, controlling my diabetes, controlling my many food allergies and intolerances goes, etc. when I’m stressed. I live in a house with my parents, wife, child, sister, and niece at the moment. Sometimes things are good and happy, but a lot of times they are stressful for a variety of reasons. I’m hoping to fix the living situation sometime
I need to start focusing on exercising daily. I need to start watching my sugar levels a lot closer than I have been recently. I need to and have started walking to work from time to time – plan to do more of that going forward. I need to start eating paleo and make that a lifestyle change and not just a diet that I do once in a while. I have a lot of changes to make, and I plan to make them… after this week. This weekend we have a wedding to go to down south, so we’ll be busy eating and celebrating in traditional ways… which will probably include a lot of non-exercising other than dancing, and eating crap that my body doesn’t need… but after this weekend, watch out world. A new me is on the horizon…
I WILL get to my BMI target weight sometime in the next few years, or possibly in less than a year if I work hard enough. It will take a lot of work, but I WILL do it.
Down to 236 lbs today!
I have not really been focused on eating right or exercising lately due to taking care of the baby, etc. (hard to avoid snacks and caffeine when you are up all hours of the night) so that new job I picked up a few months back has really been helping me lose weight more than anything so far lately… I did do a few kettlebell swings the last week or two from time to time, but nothing too serious…
Tomorrow I DO Plan to start working on a new workout schedule daily. I’m focusing on some Tai-Chi and yoga type stuff for now for flexibility since there are some aches and pains the job is giving me, and I’m hoping that type of stretching workouts will help with that type of problem. I’ll eventually go in to some other workouts that are more aerobic down the road, but for now this is what I’m feeling the need to do since I have to listen to my body…
Well, the weigh in today shows that I’ve lost about 17 lbs since last weigh in a little over 40 days ago! I can finally officially say I weigh less than 250 lbs. I have not been exercising a lot, but have taken on a job that has me on my feet all day doing a lot of bending, lifting, and other types of moving. I had noticed that my old pants waist line was looking way to huge so figured it’s time to do a weigh in.
It’s an evening job, and the pay’s not all that great, but at least it is full-time and apparently it literally is causing me to “work my ass off” so it’s not all that bad… kinda nice to get paid to workout so to speak instead of paying some gym.
The last couple of days I’ve been doing a little bit of a workout before work too, mainly aerobic stuff with a wii like Just Dance, or some simple little aerobic exercise tape, etc. If I can keep that up consistently and keep the job at least a few months, perhaps I can get below the ‘red line’ that was my original goal target before I slacked off a while back and had to create that second ‘goal line’… It’d be nice to actually be able to get to my bmi weight, especially now that the young one is on the way in a little over a month. Got to get in shape to keep up with the young ones.
Finally below 260 lbs! 🙂
Lost about 8 lbs this week alone. Amazing what happens when you work out every single day. I’ve started doing Leslie Sansone’s walking tapes daily every day this week… and then today, on Saturday I did 20 nonstop laps of the breaststroke around the outer edge of the pool this morning.
I’m going to try to use the walking tapes to keep me motivated to actually work out daily. When I was doing the Slim in 6 a while back I was having problems doing the workouts every single day so it wasn’t giving me the amount of calorie burn I crave since my body couldn’t keep up with the workouts as I just wasn’t quite at that ‘level’ yet in endurance/strength. I could do the workouts but I was pretty sore after some of them, etc. I’ll probably do the walking tapes til I’m comfortable doing at least 3 miles every day for 6 days a week before I try integrating in too many other workouts… then I might do Power 90 again or something… or use the walking as the cardio days on power 90 or something like that. Feeling great. It’s awesome that I’m below 260 lbs again. Hope to stay here and keep going with this!!! I’m well on the way to where I want to be.
265.2 lbs in today’s weigh in. I’ve been bad with the exercise regimen the last week or so it’s got to be the diet that’s causing it a little.
Found out a couple of weeks ago I’m allergic to wheat, soy, chicken, and corn, and a lot of various pollen, including maple and pecan, which probably means I’m partly allergic to maple syrup as well as pecans. I don’t think they tested me for almonds but those always tore up the back of my throat so I think it may be that too. Got rid of all of that stuff from the diet over the last few days, so I think that this new eating clean diet is helping a lot. It’s a struggle daily, but it seems to be paying off already after only a few day! It’s amazing how many hidden ingredients there are with corn and soy in just about everything everywhere you look.
The What’s in this stuff app has been an enormous help with shopping. Highly recommend it. It has a keyword search thing so like if you type in soy it brings up a bunch of various keywords tied to that that you’ll find on labels. It’s not a comprehensive list though since I’ve found even more words and keep emailing the developer asking them to add more and more, so hopefully over time it’ll be the most comprehensive word database on this type of stuff around…
For instance, under one of my many lists on that site, I have
Acesulfame Potassium, Acetylated Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono and Diglycerides, Ammonium Chloride, Artificial Color, Artificial Flavor, Aspartame, Azodicarbonamide, Benzoate, Benzoate of Soda, Benzoyl Peroxide, BHA, BHT, Bleached Flour, Blue 1, Blue 2, Brominated Vegetable Oil, Calcium and Sodium Propionate, Calcium Disodium EDTA, Calcium Peroxide, Calcium Propionate, Calcium Saccharin, Calcium Sorbate, Calcium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate, Carmine, DATEM, Dimethyl Silicone, Dimethylpolysiloxane, Dioctyl Sodium Sulfosuccinate, Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate, EDTA, Ethoxyquin, Ethyl Vanillin, Ethylene Oxide, Green 3, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, L-Cysteine, Methyl Silicon, Methylparaben, Monosodium Glutamate, Partially Hydrogenated, Partially Hydrogenated Canola, Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Corn Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed and Soybean Oils, Partially Hydrogenated Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Palm Kernel, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oils, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Polydextrose, Potassium Benzoate, Potassium Bisulfite, Potassium Bromate, Potassium Metabisulfite, Potassium Sorbate, Propionate, Propyl Gallate, Propylparaben, Red 3, Red 40, Saccharin, Sodium Aluminum Sulfate, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Bisulfite, Sodium Cyclamate, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Glutamate, Sodium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrite, Sodium Propionate, Sodium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate, Sodium Sulfite, Sorbic Acid, Sucralose, Sulfur Dioxide, TBHQ, Vanillin, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 & 6, Yellow 6
It’s crazy to think that some of that ties in to soy allergies, but based on a lot of reading I’ve done on numerous blogs and websites the last few weeks it all ties in in various ways… the whole food industry hides stuff from you behind weird chemical names.
For example, did you know that Bromine is one of the main ingredients in the vegetable oil that’s in Mt. Dew and Diet Mt. Dew… and that that stuff is actually a dangerous toxin that has put several people in the hospital over the last several years because they drank too much mt. dew and similar types of drinks with that stuff in it? Kinda scary to think about since I used to drink tons of Mt. Dew, and then diet dew after getting diagnosed with diabetes. I still might have an occasional drink, but for the most part have cut it out of my diet along with a lot of other stuff.
Luckily, I don’t think I’m allergic to rice, so rice cakes and rice based cereals seem to be somewhat safe, at least at the moment.
I’ve started tracking things a bit with some open office documents. I’m going to try to re-start my exercise program in the very, very near future.
I probably won’t count 1000 days like I was back a while ago since that just got to be too darn tedious, but I am planning on updating the above file to reflect current weight loss. Blue Line is weigh ins that I have recorded in this blog and in more recent things in the file at home that I may not have blogged about yet. Red line is following a goal from starting out one lb above where I started this tracking to where I think a great BMI weight would be in 5 years from now.
I like setting up a chart like this to track things since it’ll help me maintain a goal that is visible… I’m a highly visually oriented person so nice charts like this help me stay on focus and realize gains and losses far more powerfully than just putting it all in some other format.
The reason for the red line in the chart is because of some reading I was doing the last few days on some blogs related to the NO-S diet and some tips and tricks some other folks were using or have used in the past to lose weight. One blog entry talked about a book from the 1970s or so that talked about charting your goal weight loss on pen and paper and if you go above the line you eat less or exercise more and if above you go below, give yourself a little leeway, etc.
I’m planning to workout about 10-15 minutes daily in the morning… using various workouts on video and/or off of online sources like youtube. Somedays I might tweet about the morning videos from time to time… at https://twitter.com/JeffThomann in case you want to follow the videos I’m using, etc. It’s mostly going to be hasfit, bodyrock, and various other random stuff off of youtube, etc. However, finding those links can be tricky someday, so following tweets might make the search for great 10 minute workouts for you easier since it’s been a little, ok a lot, of a chore for me to gather them together…
Then at night I’ll do a longer 20-30 minute or longer workout, probably using some other youtube type sources as well as various workout dvds we’ve purchased over the years (some of which only were opened a few weeks ago even though we owned them for about 3+ years already!).
I like putting videos on tweets like that because it feeds in to facebook a lot cleaner than doing it via this blog.. also it’s a lot easier to just click the little bird icon for twitter on youtube, etc. than it is to post on the blog here… I like blogging, but for every day stuff like that tweets are better…
I’m hoping I can get to BMI goal weight by 5 years from now… I am giving myself that much time, but am hoping I’ll actually reach it much quicker than that… If I do I do, if not, not… I’m just trying to mainly get in shape, and getting to target BMI is THE WAY that traditionally has been recommended by doctors and the exercise science folks as the way to do it…
Portion control on eating is hard for me…. so it’s back to the NO S diet if I can help it. I like that diet since it’s habit based and long term based – which is something I definitely need since short term fad diets just don’t cut it for the type of long term health I’m aiming for here…
so I’m going back to my old trick I mentioned on NO S forums a while back of not carrying money with me… only putting in wallet license and other little stuff to identify me, etc. like insurance cards, etc… and then using debit/credit cards/gift cards, etc. only if I really, really, really need it – sort of hiding it from myself so I don’t use the money in gluttonous ways as I have in the past. I figure if I don’t have the money on me, it won’t go to the cafeteria at work, the snack machine, the atm machine so that I can use it to feed a vending machine, etc. Our budget is a bit tight at the moment since Tekla’s still going to school too – so that helps me not spend in excess as I might have let myself in the past…
More exercise based blog posts might be coming in the future. 🙂 😉
Things are gonna look a lot different in a month! 🙂
Hoping to workout about half an hour to an hour a day in the evenings and 10 minutes or so in mornings every day most of the time going forward.
Today’s weigh in: 277.3 lbs.
I am back to working out every day again as much as possible. Plan to keep it up this time! (I did want to keep it up the last few times too, but got off track with that nasty knife stab wound, hernia surgery and calf injury…) going to take it nice and steady at a slow pace this time… No big hurry. No big rush. Trying to do 10 or 12 minute workout in mornings before work and a longer session after work. I’m starting with some low impact stuff, and might get in to higher impact stuff later on. I eventually will likely lean towards Bodyrock in the morning, but for now am going with Hasfit, and a few other odd workout videos I found on youtube, etc. when I’m not just going on my own swinging a kettle bell or medicine ball…
Probably won’t blog about it as much this go round, but am keeping logs on my home pc since doing so helps me keep motivated and on track.
Edit 5/27/2013
Got off of the workouts a few days the last few days and didn’t watch carb intake either. Going to try to get back in to it going forwards… Anyways, since it’s Memorial Day, here’s a video from this memorial day and one from last. If I remember, I’ll try to take one every year to show progress because I DO PLAN TO GET TO MY BMI GOAL WEIGHT BY AGE 45!!!
Memorial Day 2013:
Memorial Day 2012:
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Today is my birthday and I’ve decided that it’s time to restart the daily workouts after this weekend. I’ve had enough time to rest and recover after the surgery a couple of months ago. So.. here’s a new ‘before’ video…
Weigh in 2/8/2013: 277.5 lbs.
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Here’s a couple of Birthday Self Portraits. Many other artists do annual self portraits on birthdays, and I started this little tradition last year, so figure going forward I might try it more often. 
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The self portraits got me thinking about things so I started some photo self portraits shortly after that…
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More photos:
http://halfwaytoseventyfour.shutterfly.com/pictures/187
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Today’s video:
2/8/2013
277.5 lbs
………..
The hernia issue happened October 29th, 2012. I overdid it on doing a Power 90 workout. Up til that point in time I was using 10 lb weights on each arm for most of the exercises. On that day I upped it to 20 lbs on each arm for the exercises, with was just too damn much… so I got hit with a hernia and had to have it repaired with a surgery. The doctor said that it was an odd type of hernia unlike one he’d seen before because it wasn’t a tear all the way through. Instead a very long piece of fatty tissue had essentially come out from the back area up through where it should not be and the overdoing it caused that to just strain all of it much worse than it should have been which caused the surgery to be needed. The surgery was in the early part of December and I was out of work a couple of weeks to recover from that. Then I went to work about a week and half and was on a scheduled Christmas vacation that was planned before the surgery thing came up… I kind of have not gotten in to the working out too much since then. I tried a time or two to do some of the workout videos, but the strain on the area where the surgery was for some of the kicks, crunches, etc. was just too much at the time. I am hoping that I’m now ready to re-start fresh now that I’ve had another few weeks of down time that I have not been doing much exercise.
Past videos and weigh ins on the weight loss journey up til this point in time:
10/2/2012:
273.6 lbs:
9/3/2012
292.6 lbs
I went up above 290 since the ‘rest’ I had to take to let the stab wound heal was days I gorged and ate extremely badly. That was a HUGE setback!… Hopefully junk like that won’t cause me to have setbacks again in the future.
…
Video of ‘The stab wound’ the monring after it happened. Sorry for the crappy video quality. I was using a low resolution webcam since it was the only video recording device I had available on that day. I accidentally stabbed myself with a steak knife while doing dishes. It was in the rack drying with the point up, but our sink is very small so I just moved wrong while washing a dish and accidentally the knife went right in. I bled a ton when it happened. Very scary situation since Tekla was not home when it happened. Very hard to hold the phone and call 911 when one of your arms has to hold a towel to stop blood and the other is bleeding like crazy.
…
8/21/2012
284.6 lbs
8/16/2012
285.3 lbs:
8/9/2012
281.8 lbs
8/1/2012
284.8 lbs
7/24/2012
286.2 lbs
7/17/2012
289.2 lbs:
7/14/2012
288.6 lbs
Before then
6/29/2012
292.1 lbs
6/24/2012
296.5 lbs
Memorial Day
May 28, 2012
4/30/2012
4/10/2012
Weight Chart prior to the videos:
Just as a reference for this old chart…
135 kg = 297.624 Lbs
130 kg = 286.601 Lbs
125 kg = 275.578 Lbs
The chart sort of outlines my ups and downs… The time when I was at the heaviest was a very dark time. It seemed like death was everywhere I looked.
(https://jeffthomann.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/2189/ – list of most of the recent funerals in the family)
I think I was in a pretty deep depression at the time due to many family deaths those few years and various economic problems, as well as a lot of stressful political bullshit at work… One of my coworkers quit/got fired in a big huge spat that happened after several months of building up to it. They fought her getting unemployment checks, and that all ended us all in a courthouse type of setting in Jefferson City… one of the most nervous days I’ve ever had… It was a big fiasco. I’m not sure if she ever got her unemployment or not, or if she sued in a real lawsuit or not like she was planning to do… but anyways, in some of it I had to get sworn testimony in there about how the Associate CFO, who was sort of the head of our area had pounded fists on a table in a meeting a few years prior to this in some heated contractual negotiations, etc. (she was trying to argue something about a hostile work environment, etc.)… A few months after that whole fiasco, I was told that there just wasn’t room in the budget for me any more, and I was ‘reassigned’ to another department.
There was quite a bit of hostility in myself after that retaliation for speaking up… which is exactly what I still think that was all about… add in that type of getting pushed around to depression, etc. and with my personality being to overeat when feeling down or nervous, and it was just a horrible situation all around… I was a walking time bomb and heart attack ready to hit. Luckily, my rationale side, and amazing better half kept me sane during these insane times – so I didn’t buy up big bulks of fertilizer to use as a weapon of mass destruction, and stuck with causing havock in video games like Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, San Andreas, various old NES games, etc. Entropia Universe, the video game, was a part of the depression, etc. as you can read about in my other blog as the developers in that game love to make promises they can’t and just won’t keep… and the love to break expensive items and estates in game that you pay for with real cash after you pay for it, sometimes for months, or years (taming still isn’t back since version update 10, etc)… However, even despite all the bull shit with that game, it was something I had some control over in my life… sort of this little escape from reality that was always there since I started playing it in 2007. There was some documentary on Eminem I watched on youtube the other day that talks about how his alter ego existed vs his real name use because it was this sort of alter ego he went in to deal with reality sort of and have control over… the documentary said that lots of folks that grew up in some conditions similar to his had the same type of issues sometimes. I think my avatar in Entropia has sort of turned in to that type of alter identity for me. I guess, like Neverdie, I am my avatar.
(note – blog link in above paragraph is now on a private blog, so it won’t work… new blog for entropia can be found at https://entropiascams.wordpress.com/ – I had to start the new blog and make old one private (although backup does exist in xml file that you can find a link to over on the new blog if you use a password in one of the posts over there… hint: password is a simple name that most folks that have played entropia a long time should know… it starts with an M and ends in an O… 🙂 ))
(August 2015 update on the job issue… currently working as a Dual Rate First Responder/Security Officer at the Isle of Capri Casino in Boonville, Missouri. I’ve held this job less than a month so far. Before that I was only a Security Officer a few months, and prior to that worked as a Steward at the Casino. I have a few updates to resume still needed.)
I have grown to love my new job… so sometimes the God(s) do have a plan. I actually kick ass at work now since I’m 3000% hyper focused. Also, I don’t have the constant man hating bullshit that I had to experience daily in my previous department. At one time back then my Supervisor back then actually hung up the phone and outloud gabbed about how the problems they were having was all his fault because he was a man. It was highly funny/ironic/sad at the time because the only other guy in the area we worked in and I had to go to a human resource training session the day before that talked a lot about how sexual discrimination was so bad to have in the work place, etc. In that department, at least at one time there was a massive amount of sexual discrimination of men in the department was happening by the female supervisor and boss… All the while chitty chatty brown nosing gossipy bitch who sat in the cubicle next to mine got a raise. They never really did this discrimination stuff openly. What they’d do is this stupid crap of creating a new position that did the exact same job of who they wanted out… then after they purposefully got the job duties overlapped enough they’d assign the old worker they wanted out the bullshit jobs like manually closing out 50,000 or so accounts in a huge database where a pulldown menu had to be selected to close it, and this backlog of unclosed visits existed because the brown nosers never did their job but did a good enough job of hiding that fact until months later that they were never reprimanded… and then after assigning the crappy job they’d say that due to the overlapping of duties, there just is no need for the person that was there longest, etc. It’s all political bullshit…
However, luckily the new position I’m in now has much less of that type of stuff going on. For the first time in my life I work for a Department Manager that actually gives a damn about what her employees think! Just the other day I had an hour long meeting with supervisor and department manager just to discuss a handful of emails I’d sent where I explained some concerns I had about processes in the office that I didn’t agree with. At no other job I’ve ever had in the past has anyone ever taken the time to care that much… That’s an awesome feeling. It’s nice to have control over your own real life world a little, and have coworkers that actually care about what you have to say and think. Also, even though I do have to listen to some coworkers and their phone conversations nowadays, it’s nothing like the hateful bullcrap I used to have in my old department where the brown nosing bitches like to slam phones down after the call, call names to the other party after that, and then repeat back the entire conversation they just had voicing out loud with as much hatred as possible why the other party was wrong, on every paragraph in the conversation, EVERY time they take a call or make a call, either on the office phone or on their own private cell phone… That type of venomous poison is easily spread as it’s yelled out daily. Kinda sad to say it but it’s almost too bad that rattlesnake they found in the hallway outside of my old department didn’t find it’s way in the mail slots. Might have adjusted some attitudes in that area, but I doubt it would have done any good. Hopefully some of the self-loathing venom being spewed from that old office can recede from that area in the future as it really just causes endless cycles of negativity to draw itself in more and more daily…
Hopefully, as I continue down a healthy past in the near future, this control over my own life can only get better and better over time. We are now in the age of Aquarius. Enlightenment that was just beyond grasp is now within reach! 🙂 😉
New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Exercise Regularly, and avoid setbacks like the stab wound, hernia surgery, Bursitis, etc. from this year. If a set back does come my way, get back on course and stay on it with a quick recovery. (no more weeks off at a time). I’ll probably start light with once a day workouts. I don’t know if I’ll go back to the twice a day like I was doing before the hernia (which wasn’t technically a hernia, but was close enough that they had to do a surgery). I probably won’t keep up the 1000 day tracker thing any more since that is ultimately still the goal, but tracking it puts too much stress on myself (might be part of the reason these set backs came about? The UNIVERSE/Subconscious/Collective Subconscious/Gut Feeling is telling me that’s not the right way to do it. I still will track things, just not exactly that way)…
I DO PLAN to still eventually get to my goal BMI weight over the course of roughly 1000 days or a little over 3 years, regardless of if I’m tracking it or not. I HOPE that it won’t take that long… but if I do things slowly and only workout 20 or 30 minutes a day, I suspect that it might take that long or longer… the two a day workouts exist basically to increase the calorie burn per day to get to goal faster. Time-wise though, I’m not sure 2 a day workouts are really feasible… I might try walking on breaks at work again to help with that, but am not sure about that or not. ‘breaks’ exist to take a break and center/calm… adding more stress in the form of physical activity at those time might not be the best thing to do?…
2. Get back in to creating art regularly. This includes drawing and painting at the moment, both digitally, and on paper/board/canvas, etc. It might eventually include creating 3d models too, and probably will include photography, but only time will tell if those will be main focuses or not. I will likely have to fire up the ol laptop to get the scanner running again since it doesn’t work with this computer… However, instead of scanning stuff, I might try shooting it with a camera instead?… I’ve never done a very good job of shooting my works with a camera, in part due to lack of practice. Might have to change that?
3. Learn to play music. I’ve had this midi keyboard for years, but have never really learned to master it yet. I’m not just going to do midi though. This includes some other stuff too probably. I found this learn to play music app/youtube thing the other day – and so far it’s taught me that I have been playing wrong up til now since all the beginner books teach you the wrong placement of fingers… 12312345 is better than 12345. I’ve read/heard some interesting info about studies on how music can help those with Alzheimer’s. It helps them increase verbal skills/patterns, etc. I don’t think I have Alzheimer’s, but I do think that the more I get in to visual art, the more tendency that I’ll have to get some symptoms that are similar somewhat. It has to do right/left brain usage. The more I dig in to the visual pattern thinking mode, the more I start loosing memory due to loosing connections verbal pattern thinking mode.
If I study music and visual art simultaneously I’m hoping to overcome that hurdle because even though I think having memory loss, etc. is not a ‘bad’ thing, it is an annoying thing. It’s never good when getting so deep in to creating a painting/drawing that you forget where your keys are, forget pieces of conversations you just had 2 hours or less ago, forget where you placed some tool you just had in your hands less than 10 minutes ago, etc. In the past I’ve overcome that sort of thing by mentally just telling myself it’s ok… When it first started happening many years ago, it would freak me out big time, and I’d go on crazy panic attack induced searches around the area for those lost keys, tools, etc. til they were found. I learned that it’s not as important to do that the more that I studied/learned the connection between that sort of thing and right/left brain connections. However, I’m hoping that learning music can help that sort of thing just get bypassed… also am hoping that maybe it can help me stop the eventual possibility that I’ll actually develop true Alzheimer’s down the road as it does run in my family a little.
Learning to play music will probably include learning to do some remixing type of stuff, and possibly writing some music, etc. I’d love to be able to integrate visual and musical arts sometime down the road… but only time will tell how that will happen. I don’t necessarily like animation since it takes so many hours of work to get just a few seconds of results. However, I’m not going to limit myself and say I won’t do animation/3d type stuff. I likely won’t upgrade Lightwave though since it’s expensive. I might possibly try to learn blender, but that seems like a difficult task. Only time will tell what I’m going to actually do. However, I do know that I want to try to set aside some time to learn to create music before I try to teach myself to manipulate it as background noise for visual arts since that’s a skill I’ve needed to learn for a long time but never took the time to really master yet.
4. Eat Right. I’m probably going to try to do more of the ‘No S’ Diet… “No snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except sometimes – on S day(s).’ I’ll probably try to check sugar more regularly too maybe. I’m say maybe because the Doctor says that if I keep on track I probably won’t have to check it but about once a week or so… the trick is staying on track… it’s so easy to fall off track…
5. Write things down. I’m going to try to do ‘morning pages’ from The Artist’s Way again. I’ll probably also blog some since that is sort of similar to doing that. I will likely burn through a lot of paper, and it won’t all be on acid free stuff that will still be around after I’m long gone for many years as it will age and turn yellow, but that’s ok. I might also try keeping multiple notebooks to notate various things like I’ve tried in past years some…. I might get in to using sketchbooks more too, but we’ll see. I’m not sure I can afford to buy a ton of sketchbooks regularly, at least until after Tekla graduates from Massage Therapy school in about 8 months.
Since this whole hernia surgery thing is throwing my 1000 day tracking thing way out of whack… and since it’s been sort of weird trying to figure out a way to do a calendar I’ve been thinking about how to do things a different way… So here’s the new idea… which is sort of an old version of something I’ve been doing anyways but a little different and evolved…
Here’s the idea… Take a 8 and a half x 11 sheet of paper and use a ruler to break it down in to multiple columns… college rule is preferred.. Non-lined paper could work too, but you should have rows and columns… Now in each box you can do dashes in each of them… now work your way through each day of however many days you’ve put down doing one slash in each. Next go back after you complete and have a slash in every box and go through a second round, and continue through it every time like that… If you organize the first four times through as a star, then do have circles around it and edges of a square on the last go through like the following image, you can fit 10 iterations through the one page calendar. If you use a typical ruler, which is about an inch wide or so to break out the columns, there’s over 200 squares in one sheet of paper… 200 times 10 = 2000… in other words, you can fit 2000 days of tracking habits on one sheet of paper! Do this a different sheet for every good habit you want to form and you now have a bunch of years of habit tracking right on one page in front of you. Seeing the marks will tell you where you are doing well, not so well, etc. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue the 1000 day thing since this hernia surgery is probably going to have me on some down time for exercise, but I do plan on restarting something and sticking with it this next go through.. so probably will at very minimum have one tracker for 20 minutes of painting a day and another for a minimum of one workout a day. I might go back to two a day, but really, honestly that might be pushing too hard to do that every blasted day like I was doing before this hernia thing happened…
Damn it. It was a hernia. Surgery is going to be later this month… sadly, no workouts able to be done til it’s taken care of… 😦
Probably won’t be updating this blog for the next few days.
Resting this morning… strain from last nights heavy duty workout + sinus issues + somewhat dehydration early in the morning has come to kick my ass today.
I don’t think I’ll try the 20 lbs on the Power 90 again, at least for a very long while. Need to build up to that. I don’t need to give myself a hernia… (I hope I haven’t done that already)
56th day of the 1000 day challenge. This morning I didn’t work out 😦
However, I made up for it tonight a little. I did the Power 90 Level III-IV Circuit/Sculpt tape tonight just a few minutes ago, and I used 20 pound weights on half of the exercises!
This is the first time I’ve tried to use 20 lb weights. Up til now I was only using 10 lb weights as max on this workout. I probably will feel this in the morning, but maybe not. When I switched to the 10 lb weights on some of the more tough exercises it was like lifting paper, lol. I will probably stick with this strategy going forward.
I also upped the weights on the kettlebell to 30 lbs tonight. I have not tried any swinging with it but probably will in the near future.
The reason I was able to up the weights tonight is that a few days backmom and dad found some more of the old weights in the garage or basement from many years ago… so I had them in my trunk the last few days til today… It’s still not the best set in the world… Had to use some duct tape on a few of them where age was starting to break down the plastic around the edges, but it’s all good. I wish I had 4 of the ten lb weights to do the curls and stuff, but I made do with a couple of 5 lbs on one side and a 10 lb on the other to balance it out. It looks a little odd, but it works. I do have a couple of 8.5 lb weights I could use for curls, but no matching set for them so I could have one in each arm… would be sort of weird and unbalanced doing 17 lbs in one arm and 20 in the other… so I’ll stick with the two 10 lbs on one arm and a 10 lb + 2 of the 5lbs on the other arm.
Day 55 – Just a little workout this morning… so far 20 kettlebell swings + 20 passarounds on both arms with the kettlebell. Dropped it on accident near the end. Drinking coffee today and having a little more of the candy that we got the other day to hand out if it lasts that long, so heart rate is a little high. I probably will do more kettlebells every now and then today.
So far, Tekla has not started the Power 90. I was going to restart it with her to walk her through it, but so far she’s not been feeling too well the last couple of days. I think my weight loss through exercise will stop being so fast when we are doing that til she’s up to the iii-iv level… but that’s ok because we’ll be doing this journey together, so the chances of success will increase a lot for both of us.
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this evening did another little round with kettle bell. Tekla’s decided to wait to start the Power 90 later this week…
Ate pretty bad today… more darn candy… urgh. Why did I buy that the other day when I went to the store to get Tekla some sprite?
Today is a rest day… Last night was kind of too. Tekla is still not feeling too well so we didn’t start the Power 90 with her and I doing it together yet. It’s probably a good thing though since the landlord shut off the water to the building yesterday afternoon without telling us about it before hand since there was some sort of maintenance issue they are going to work on later today… I really wish they’d tell us ahead of time when they do this kind of crap. We could have ended up working out and having no ability to take a shower afterwards, which would have been a very bad situation…
I missed work0uts yesterday. We originally were planning on having Tekla start the Power 90 Tape I-II yesterday, but that didn’t happen since she was not feeling too well… I should have worked out but did not yesterday…
Tonight, the plan is to start on that, and I’ll go with her through that process, so my intensity on the nightly workouts is going to go backwards as I’m going back to I-II level instead of sticking with III-IV… but that’s ok since I can still workout in the morning after she’s left for school or work. Also, It probably is a good idea for me to do that so as to get the moves right since some like the lunge run was not quite right so was causing too much pain. Those shouldn’t cause so much leg pain that it keeps me from doing the bunny hops and / or jumping jacks…
This morning’s workout:
I did eight minutes and 31 seconds of Zuzana’s Zwow #9. I did pause a little longer than she did for the water break between round one and two. I feel bad that I didn’t make it all the way through but this is tough High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) type stuff, something my body is definitely not used to yet. Over time I will get more used to it though. I’ll probably experiment and try various online workouts like this in the mornings for variety. I originally was planning on doing a more restrictive set of workouts that are more close to an hour long in the mornings, but I just don’t have time for that… We’ll save that sort of stuff for the evenings. Since Tekla and I will workout together now, we’ll need variety on occasion so that sort of stuff can work for the nights. Short bursts of powerful HIIT training like bodyrock and some other online tapes can work for mornings for now.
This morning I did 17 minutes of an hour long workout tape. I talked it over with Tekla a little and am thinking about possibly stopping these sort of workouts in the mornings since I just don’t seem to have enough time to do them in the morning before work, and even if I do, I think I might start be getting some level of burnout which is why there’s been a missed workout or two this week and last week.
I do like the extra calorie burn from working out twice a day, but if I’m not getting enough recovery time, it’s not going to work since the workouts will just break me down instead of building me up.
I will keep with the longer workouts in the evening… However, I might go backwards a step or three with the evening workouts since Tekla might be joining me, and she’s not ready for the III-IV tapes yet on Power 90 if we decide to workout together with that… so it’d be back to I-II or something similar.
We might use some other form of exercise other than videos… may be long walks… maybe some other workout videos, etc. Not sure yet. There’s a bunch of opportunities to try a lot of different things.
If I stick with doing the morning workouts, I’ll probably go down to shorter more energetic ones like the 12 minute bodyrock videos. Those are really high intensity so they are still great workouts. However, I didn’t think I was at the level to do them, but just like with the Power 90 if I just do it a few times, I’ll get more used to it so it will get easier over time…
Hell, I may even stop blogging about this stuff, but on the other hand, the blogging is helping me stay focused, so I probably will keep with it for now.
It’s day 50… I did half of an hour long cardio tape this morning. I’m really finding it difficult to stick to it since sinus/allergy issues are hitting me along with barometric changes in the weather, etc. I think it’s partly a seasonal thing, partly a hay fever thing, and is partly a caffeine addiction thing coming to rear its ugly head with all of its side effects since I’ve been drinking diet sodas and coffee again regularly… got to stop doing that. All that stuff just makes me feel lousy, and causes inflammation and breaks me down artificially due to chemical changes, etc.
I CAN do this. I must do this, and I WILL DO THIS… no damn excuses…
decide… commit… succeed…
That commit part is where I am… got to keep up the fight!
feeling damn lazy today, so not working out tonight. Got home and Tekla had made an amazing meal for us… It was so nice. Put me in to a very good mood after a halfway bad day. Don’t want to break the mood with sore muscles and sweat… Tomorrow will be a better workout day. I MUST get back on schedule soon! Can’t allow this to continue. That’s what happened when that stab wound thing happened a while back… not gonna let that happen again. The rest of this week’s workouts will probably be fairly intense to make up for today’s laziness…
This morning I am zapped… I’m tired. I’m sleepy. I feel like crap. The reason is that last night I sweated a ton as I slept and there was at least twice during the night that I got up during the night after tossing and turning and didn’t manage to get the bipap mask back on… so a bad night got worse.
Yesterday, my parents were kind and took us out to eat at subway, where I foolishly had a foot long spicy italian on italian herbs and cheese… and that was followed by a very high carb trip to Orange Leaf next door to the subway.
That many carbs is always a mistake… and it makes me feel bad later… I’m paying for it now. High carb meals like that for dinners make me sweat a LOT when I sleep… the pillow and sheets are so wet with sweat that they are soaked. What’s bad about it is that since I became diabetic, bad sweats at night like that always reek somewhat later since there’s something in the chemistry behind whatever is causing it that makes it very acidic and almost smell like vinegar. All that icky sweat in the pillow and sheets make it very difficult to go back to bed after I awaken at various times during the night.
so.. needless to say, I’m feeling like crap today… so I’m not working out this morning… but I do plan on trying to work out tonight if I can… and hopefully this won’t happen again, and I can muster the courage and willpower to avoid overeating in the future in situations like last night… it is just so hard to fight the temptations when you are surrounded by people that are overeating at family get together type of things like we had yesterday (we had a big brunch at my Uncle and Aunt’s house earlier in the day, and mom and dad just stuck around in town afterwards. The brunch was not so bad… it’s the dinner that was.).
What’s really sad about it all… feeling this lousy in the morning, I’ll probably feel the need to eat wrong today and have a bunch of caffeine, and/or sugary type of foods, all of which just amplifies the problems and makes the vicious cycle get worse…
This morning’s weigh in: 272.3 lbs.
That is a weight loss of 20.3 lbs since 9/3/2012. It’s a weight loss of 24.2 lbs since 6/24/2012, and it means I’ve got somewhere between 95.3 – 132.3 lbs more to loose to get to target BMI weight.
This is the lowest weight I’ve been in many, many, many years, and it feels awesome. I’m honestly surprised it’s this low since I had big spaghetti meals at least twice this week and yesterday morning had two donuts for breakfast…
Today will probably be a rest day since I’m in a good place. I am not nearly as sore today as I was thinking I would be after that intense workout yesterday, so could workout today, but don’t really want to push it since I need rest from time to time to be able to continue this thing strong in the coming days.
The journey will continue again tomorrow.
I just did 11:15 mintues of the 40 minute Inpower Fitness Kettlebell workout. I was using the 22.5 lb weights on the kettlebell and had to quit now because of arm soreness and fatigue. Also, I hit my knee on one of the passarounds so it is hurting a little, but not nearly as much as my arms do right now. This is a GOOD workout, but it will take me a while to build up to doing it all the way through.
I will probably do some more working out later and edit this post when I do that. Not sure if I’ll pick up with the rest of the kettlebell routine or try something else.
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then I had 5 minutes rest… then… using 10 lb weight on one end of a three foot barbell…
10 Shovel Glove Levered Curls on each arm
and 10 Shovel Glove overhead Tricep Extensions on each arm
followed by
20 Shovel Glove Moulinets on each arm, counting one swing to both sides as one
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then 1 minute rest…
followed by 50 straight out ab wheel roll outs
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then 5 minutes rest…followed by 3 minutes of nonstop kettlebell swings.
I’m feeling exhausted extremely now… so I think I’ll call it quits for today’s workout but might sit here a few more minutes and ponder if I should do more here or not. My back is telling me to stop, so I’ll probably listen to it and take a shower here in a few minutes.
Even though I was planning on working out tomorrow to make up for that rest day a couple of days ago, I might just use tomorrow as a rest day if I’m still sore after today.
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ok… one last edit… about 20 minutes or so later.. I just completed 50 kettlebell swings. Now it’s really time to shower.
It’s the 46th evening of the 1000 day challenge.. and I’m feeling the burn tonight…
I did a full one hour intense cardio workout and then afterwards did approximately 3.5 minutes of nonstop kettlebell swinging as quickly as possible without breaking good form.
Sweating a ton and muscles are screaming with some level of pain head to toe… but not extreme pain… good type of pain.. the kind that will get me strong as my body repairs itself. 🙂 😉
It’s the 46th day of the 1000 day challenge. This morning I did a 20 minute cardio workout followed by 30 kettlebell swings with 22.5 lb weights on the kettlebell. The swings are starting to get comfortable enough that I should probably up it to 30 lbs, but I’m not ready for that yet since I don’t want to overdo things yet… That and I’m thinking I might try that 50 minute kettlbell tape again someday soon… So far I’ve only been able to do half of that tape and that was at the 15 lb weight level… have never tried it at this weight level yet.
Last night I didn’t workout. At a meeting at work they had cake, so since I messed up the morning I figured I’d just count yesterday as ‘rest day’ for this week – so I made spaghetti and garlic toast out of some bread last night and we had that for supper. I’ll probably try to do at least one workout each day this weekend to make up for the rest day yesterday. I’m trying to get away from rest days in midweek since they work better on Sundays when I do laundry and other household chores, run errands, go shopping, etc. but sometimes the situations just call for rest in the middle of the week… and as long as I do try to get back on schedule I’m not going to beat myself up for those times… I am human and part of this process is learning to listen to my body’s needs – including the need for rest from time to time.
Resting this morning because I’m a little sore in my neck, and upper back due to fighting with the pillows all night as I tossed and turned and also because I’m extremely tired this morning… Some idiot was using the laundry room near our apartment at 1:00 in the morning! I think it was the guy upstairs from us since I think I heard the alarm go off right before I heard him fumbling around in the laundry room making a ton of noise. There’s a big sign on the door that says that the laundry room is only to be used between the hours of 8 AM – 10 PM but idiots around here still sometimes use it after those hours. I called the landlord’s office and left a suggestion on the voice mail that they install a lock on the door to the laundry room, but don’t think it’ll do any good because the landlord doesn’t give a damn sometimes….
The stupid washers over there in the laundry room aren’t hooked up right anyways and any time someone does a washing machine load the pipes start throwing water all over the floor creating a huge amount of mold to build up on the walls over time… Tried to call the landlord on it last year and nothing happened. Went a step or three further and reported it to the city… all that resulted in was landlord painting the molded wall, not fixing the root problem, so the wall that was painted a few months back is now just full of mold again… we need to move to a new place one of these days…
It’s the 44th evening of the 1000 day challenge. Tonight I did the Power 90 Cardio Abs III-IV Workout and then after that, when I was exhausted and “sweating like a dog” as Tony calls it, I did 20 kettlebell swings followed by 20 Kettlebell Passarounds. I’m not sure if passaround is the official name for it, but that’s what I call it… where you hand off the kettlebell from left hand to right hand while swinging it all the way around your waistline. I did 10 of those to the left and then 10 to the right.
This morning’s cardio routine is now complete. After the cardio I did 20 Kettlebell swings. Burning tons of calories and sweating a ton… feeling great.
Tonight’s workout is now complete. I did the III IV Power 90 Circuit, and then when I was feeling completely wiped out at the end, grinned and gritted my teeth, then did 20 kettlebell swings with the 22.5 lb weights. Feeling exhausted but great now.
We had dinner before the workout tonight since my sugar was 96 after work. Any time it’s below 100 I feel like I need to eat since I start feeling light headed, weak and wobbly in my extremities sort of, and get a weird headache in my forehead.
This mornings cardio routine is now complete. It was very tempting to go back to sleep after getting up this morning since my bipap mask was not on all night, so it was not as restful of a sleep as it should have been… and I also had nightmares about having to kill a rattlesnake and a python that had gotten inside… but I didn’t go back to sleep… and got through the workout and feel great now!…
42nd evening of the 1000 day challenge. Tonight’s Cardio Abs III-IV tape is now complete. I sadly had a handful of candy corn before this workout, so the workout was harder on me than normal since heart rate was crazy high and sweat level was too… sweating like a faucet. I don’t think the tee shirt that I used as a sweat towel has been that wet outside of a laundry machine ever… but I managed to get through the workout… candy corn reason was sugar of 91 after work… I overdid it and hand candy corn, ok… maybe it was 1.5 handfuls instead of one… and then had some sunflower seeds and a slice of ham and cheese with it.. probably should not have eaten all that before the workout… but I did… tomorrow is a new day. At least I got the two workouts in today.
This morning’s cardio workout is now complete! Feeling great. I hate that my schedule was off a little over the weekend due to being sick, but hopefully all of that is past me now and it’s time to start fresh on this beautiful Monday morning.
Day 41 – Rest day.
I think when I finally get to day 1000, I’ll probably at least add in one extra day for every day of rest before I count it as a real 1000 days… that way it will be a true 1000 days.
I plan to keep up the good habits after that 1000 days, but might take a few days off after the 1000 days before starting the next big thing, which might possibly be a second 1000 day challenge.
Day 40… still taking it easy a bit…trying to rest to get better a little… but… I did swing the Kettle bell a little this morning… upped the weight to 22.5 lbs and did about 20 swings and then 10 pass-around-the-waists each way… then a couple of snatches on each arm.
I might try to do that again in a few more hours… If I can get 2-3 sessions of that in it’s a little more than nothing… IT’S A BIG JUMP adding 7.5 lbs to the weight that I was using last time…
…
edit… ok… it’s about 15 minutes later… and I just did another set of 20 swings… will probably continue this on and off throughout the day.
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edit… lower back pain a little after that set… so now lowering weight back down to the 15 lbs.
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about 15 minutes later… another 20 swings… much easier with the 15 lbs… don’t feel like I’m going to kill my back.
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an hour or two later… 20 more swings.
sticking with this weight for now because I probably need to work on form more… even though it seems like I’m doing it right… I have a mirror and watch myself in it… might be time to use webcam to record it to study where the form is wrong.
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This evening I just did another 20 swings… on this go round I upped the weight to the full 30 lbs and focused on form more so than anything else… Back does not hurt too bad this time… form is definitely important. Can I do 17 minutes with this 30 lbs on that 40 minute tape like I did the other day with the 15 lbs?… probably not, but I can work on form and slowly build up to that the right way so that I hopefully don’t learn a bad form and injure myself…
Kettle Bells are not my primary workout for now… more of a weekend and add-on workout during the week… However eventually that might become my main workout… just not quite yet.
Since I did some form of exercise today even though most of the rest of the day was fairly restful, I won’t feel so bad about making tomorrow rest/chore day… I probably need another day of rest anyways since I’m still not feeling 100% better since that sickness hit… people say you can’t get sick from the flu shot, but I still think that’s the cause of it.. that and allergies… there have been other sicknesses going around too… who knows, maybe I caught something from someone who was standing in that long line with me to get that blasted flu shot?
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edit…
ok, back did not hurt during the 20 swings with 30 lbs, but it did a sting a little about half an hour after that… so it’s back to 22.5 lbs… and one more 20 swings tonight… (I think… may work in more but probably not)
I was not feeling well today so ended up taking the day off as a sick day at work. As a result, I’m not working out today, and might not this weekend… at least not on Saturday… We’ll see how I feel on Sunday… probably will take both Saturday and Sunday to rest though… It’s a little after 2 PM now… I got up this morning to call in to work, see Tekla off to school and then went to bed and just recently got up less than an hour ago, and still feel not so hot.
I’m achy, have a headache, and am sore everywhere. My guess as to what is happening is that all of these two a day workouts is sort of acting like a mild form of chronic cardio, which weakened my already weak immune system (I have diabetes, allergies – and it’s currently prime time allergy season), and then I through that flu shot at it, and this is the side effects of that mixture coming back to kick me in the ass… Hopefully things will return back to normal later this weekend or early next week.
To those that say I am not doing enough work to have chronic cardio – you might be right… but on the other hand, are you the weight I am personally and doing the amount of workouts, with the workouts being various routines of either high intensity, circuit or cardio, that I’ve been doing recently (roughly one hour of workouts twice a day, 5 or 6 times a week?)… Didn’t think so. If you are, good for you. Keep it up.
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Flu Shot Q&A:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/flushot.htm
Why do some people not feel well after getting the flu shot?
The most common side effect of the flu vaccine in adults is soreness at the spot where the shot was given, which usually lasts less than two days. The soreness is often caused by a person’s immune system making protective antibodies to the killed viruses in the vaccine. These antibodies are what allow the body to fight against flu. The needle stick may also cause some soreness at the injection site. According to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), rare symptoms include fever, muscle pain, and feelings of discomfort or weakness. If these problems occur, they are very uncommon and usually begin soon after the shot and last 1-2 days.
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Chronic Cardio Links
http://fitnessforfunction.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/chronic-cardio/
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/chronic-cardio-2/#axzz2979kFXvU
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread63751.html
http://paleohacks.com/questions/81844/what-is-chronic-cardio#axzz2976c86fS
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread67113.html
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/chronic-cardio/#axzz2979kFXvU
Taking it easy tonight… I tried to start doing the Cardio Abs tape but was starting to feel woozy and dizzy… When I was doing the stretches where you hang down with arms between legs I really started feeling room spinning and thought that I better quit while I’m ahead before I really hurt myself..
checked the sugar level and it’s 96. Any time my sugar level is below 100 I start getting a headache… I am really surprised its that low since I had a few chips this morning after breakfast..
Yesterday afternoon I got a flu shot since it’s a mandatory requirement where I work now… Every time I have that done I always feel like crap the next day… guess what it’s the next day…
sinuses are also bothering me… It’s allergy season and when the weather does like it has been lately, it just makes things feel miserable…
HOWEVER, I WON’T GIVE UP… In past years I would have after feeling this bad. I can’t let seasonal issues and a little virus that my employer infected with me on purpose keep me down…. tomorrow is a new day and it’s going to be better than today (i hope *gulp*)! 🙂
It’s the 38th morning of this 1000 day challenge… This morning’s cardio workout has now been completed. I was fairly tired this morning since my bipap mask was not on all night, but a little cardio has completely energized me… 🙂
It’s the 37th evening of the 1000 day challenge and tonight’s III-IV Circuit workout is now complete. Feeling Strong. I’m still questioning if I am giving myself enough rest, but I seem to be progressing and not being in ‘pain’ really… at least not no more than I would expect in a workout… after the showers it’s all good usually. Not sure if I’m loosing weight, but I can tell I’m definitely gaining muscle.
It’s day 37 and this morning’s cardio workout is now complete!
It’s the 36th evening of the 1000 day challenge and I just got done with the Cardio Abs about an hour ago tonight. Unfortunately, I let myself have coffee at work again, so the workout was kinda tough. The jumping jacks and run lunges are still hard on the shins, calves and ankles for me and the caffeine just makes that worse… it tightens up the muscles much more than they should so during the workout it’s more pain… but sometimes, it’s really just hard to avoid that cup of java, especially like at work where it’s free, not far from my cubicle, and there’s sugar free cocoa to mix in with it to make up something similar to a cappuccino now and then… Need to back off of it though…
I am liking the two a day workouts, but I do feel the difference in the intensity I am able to do between these days and the days when I do the one a days… with one a days, I always feel like I’ve got enough energy to pick up the kettle bell and give it some swings after the main one a day workout… on these two a day days, there’s no way that is gonna happen… I can barely make it through the workouts near the end sometime… but usually the workouts do loosen up some muscles by the end.. and then after a nice hot shower, I’m feeling great later in the evening…
36th day of the 1000 day challenge and the morning cardio workout is now complete! 🙂
It’s the 35th evening of the 1000 day challenge. Tonight’s Circuit III-IV tape was kind of tough since my heartrate was already up a little due to drinking coffee at work today. I probably should not have had it since it always does this to me and increased possible muscle pain since it tenses muscle fibers, but I did get through it…
Today’s morning cardio workout is now complete. 🙂
Taking a Rest day today on day 34. I feel kinda sad about this since I took a rest day the other day due to being up too late the night before… but hopefully I can change that sleep pattern going foward to do better in the future. Neck was a little sore/stiff due tot he kettlebell and shovel glove routines yesterday so I’m thinking I need to rest/recover today and then start back at the workouts strong tomorrow.
Today’s workout is now complete… I did 17 minutes of the 40 minute kettle bell workout. I still was exhausted at the get ups stage like I was last time I tried this video…
but… unlike last time, I was using 15 lbs on the weights this time whereas last time it was only 7.5.
So then I took a 5 minute breather/ water break, got out the 10 lb one sided weight bar (shovel glove) and then did several shovel glove moves, doing 10 or so reps on each arm for each exercise. Exercises I got through were aim the spear, giant wrench, levered curl, tricep extension, levered overhead press and finally moulinet.
I really liked todays mix because the kettle bell works legs/lower core/back and the shovel glove works the upper body/arms/upper core… so it’s a combination that pretty much tackles the whole body with a pretty good workout… and since there is variety you are not working one muscle group to exhaustion…
The shovel glove bar has a couple of bolt holes in the center of it. I really like the whistling sound it makes when doing the moulinet…. sort of a low pitched whirring sound… I got myself a silver lightsaber thor hammer, lol.
I think this combination of kettlebell/shovel glove is probably going to be my one a day workout on the weekends… probably done once on Saturdays since Sunday is chore/laundry/rest/s day… I still might grab kettlebell or shovel glove to do a few swings after some other workouts during the weekdays, but not a full workout like today…
Eventually, someday I will conquer that kettlebell tape and do the full 40 minutes, even if it’s the last thing I do – it will get done someday, lol.
Here’s an interesting article I found yesterday about someone else doing mix of sledge and kettlebells:
http://www.mikemahler.com/online-library/articles/fat-loss/maxwell-sledgehammer-workout.html
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note – about an hour after posting this I did another little session with the shovel glove… and about an hour after that did another little session with about 20 kettlebell swings, and 20 pass around the waists both ways.
After some experimentation, I got the clips off of one of the dumb bells, put them on the longer pole that used to be used as leg lift on my old hand me down weight set from many years ago… (the same pole that I took the foam pad off and cut to allow it to act as handles for the dumbbells…)
and I put a 10 lb weight on the end. This will work as my tool to do shovel glove moves in our apartment. I love this since it’s an adjustable weight system, which means it’s really more adaptable, and more importantly, economically smart than just buying a real sledge hammer. It also negates the need for the ‘glove’ part of shovel glove… with that they were putting towels, sweaters or other cloth materials on the sledge hammers so as to not damage anything… a rounded weight on a bar shouldn’t hurt much unless I really hit it hard straight on or something on purpose.
If I need the weight to go down, I just will swap the 10 lb weight down to 5 lb, etc. If I want to go for the gold, I can add tons of weight to it eventually… probably won’t ever go past 20 lbs but you never know… Not sure what the weight capacity for this bar is? It wasn’t really intended for this sort of quick movement in these type of angles, but for now it will do well…
The bar is about 3 feet long or so, so it’s around the same size as a sledge. Only thing I’m not too sure about is if clips might slip with a lot of movement… but I have some heavier clips that I can use if I really need to. This is a bar off of an old school weight set, so it’s made of fairly thick metal – much more solid I think than the light weight metal used in the dumbbell set I recently bought… Between the kettle bell for lower core/leg strengthening and this thing for upper core and arm strengthening there’s lots of potential here…
Cash saved from this – used to buy Just Dance 3 at a used cd store today… 🙂
That game is going to have a high calorie burn I think… http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/447589-just-dance-3-wii-game
If you don’t have an old school weight bench available that has a leg left/curl thing on it at the bottom… you can probably cut a full sized benchpress bar in half or something to get a bar that’s about the same length.
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edit – added some duct tape to the end of the bar at the very end just before the clip to help so clip won’t slip off… I don’t think it would have anyway, but little extra precautions like this can help keep big accidents from happening.
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Also, reading around on some forums… thinking the next time I have some free cash to spend on exercise stuff, I might get this thing
http://www.gymboss.com/… looks like it would be useful if/when I get in to doing a lot of my own routines instead of using videos to time things.
It’s Friday, but I’m going to probably use today as a rest day because I was up a lot later than we should have been last night. We went out last night to celebrate Tekla’s passing the final in her technique class with final test score that was actually over 100% due to a couple of bonus questions!… We ended up having to go all over town to find a place to eat since the first try or two the places were super crowded…. that’s what you get during football season in a college town in the SEC I guess, lol.
We finally settled on the Pasta Factory, and that was nice, but diet soda and pasta that late at night was a lot of carbs and caffeine too late in the night… so I got to bed a lot later than I should have… so got up later than normal this morning with a slightly sore neck/upper back.
I’m not sure if I’ll use one of the weekend days tomorrow or Sunday as a rest day too or not, but right now I think I’ll probably try to aim to workout once a day on both of those days since today will be a rest day… and then next week is a new week, so I can try to aim to get back to normal rest day on the weekends then.
Tonight’s workout is now complete. I did the Cardio Abs III-IV tape. It was tough. My sugar was 101 after I got home tonight… my sugar levels seem to be getting more stable since I’m working out more. I worry that the two a day workouts like this might not be giving me enough rest and recovery time for my body, but so far the workouts have not been too painful. I suspect that as long as I focus on only cardio in the morning and do circuits or cardio type workouts at nights it shouldn’t be that bad. It’s going to be interesting seeing what future weigh ins look like since I’m doing these two a days now.
Oh, and at work, it’s three days in a row of writing at lunch… but it is still tough to work it in… I might get about a half page or page of free-thought writing done… It’s not the three pages a day the Artist’s way calls for, but it’s a start. I might try to work in some in evenings too eventually… for now I just want to stay with this level and this level of workouts for this month’s focus… one thing good habbit to develop at time… got to stay focused and keeping it simple since doing more will just jumble things up and screw up the progress.
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