Diabetes!

Still cruising under 210. I'm there. ALmost there at least. My goal of 200 is within reach or at least feels like it.  Last few weeks included traveling and nights of debauchery which always sets me back a bit. Now I have a few weeks before my next trip. I've been working out consistently but started eating way too many sweets. Today we had boxed lunches- turkey sandwich, chips, brownie, water. The brownie and chips were unnecessary and the sandwich had a thick loaf of soggy bread. I would have been so much better off skipping altogether but I ate it anyway.
The deal is when my activity level rises especially when I am lifting more- my diet goes down the drain. Then something comes up and I stop lifting but my eating habit continue and I lose whatever ground I made in the past couple months. What saved me this past winter was the absolute lack of bread in my diet. Not on purpose but I just stopped buying it and rarely ate sandwiches when I went out. The only bread was the occasionally burger bun I would enjoy every week or two. A nutritionist well in tune with alternative medicine has a fantastic reaction to my mention of foods with gluten or fatty treats such as muffins. Her eyes open and she looks mortified and says ..."diabetes." Scary. After all this exercise and trying to be healthy, for me to become diabetic. I need to remember that look on her face more often. I'm enjoying a cappuccino now but skipped the brownie and need to make the cappuccino my treat, not the sweet that I would have with it.
I also am making a great effort to play more tennis. Cancelled my cable subscription and the money I save from that will go to joining leagues and tournaments to play more. Once I get a good consistent groundstroke I can spend the rest of the year playing and working out in between to be in stellar shape for...I don't know but who cares. I'll be jacked without the need for some ridiculous workout program and protein shakes. Consistency will get me to where I want to be. 200 lbs, lean, good tone, and NO diabetes!

~FlexE

I'm getting in shape.

Summer is JUST around the corner.

Activities

Went back to playing soccer today. Felt good to be out there smelling the grass and enjoying the competition that comes with it. Not sure why I kept putting it off, blame it on the back. I tweaked it MONTHS ago and have been hesitant to compete for fear of hurting myself Tired of that fear now, need to live.
I had done really well with losing weight before KC, down to under 205 but gained it back especially during a cold dark winter filled with excess drinks and depression. Now I am motivated to lose it but need to cut out one of two things sweets or alcohol. I think I'm going with sweets. Not because alcohol is a big part of my diet but rather sweets abound. I've been powering through the chocolate bars from Germany- clearly moderation is not my strong suit in this regard.
It's Sunday night now and I have a few koolooches in the fridge. I will try to stick to only those this week. At least until Friday. Oh and chocolate croissants count as sweets. I have 5 bananas that should make for 5 days of banana/milk/honey shakes for breakfast to replace the muffins and croissants that I enjoy. And no more carrot cake for lunch. I won't commit just yet to making my lunch to take to work. But at least I can cut out sweets. One step at a time.
My buddy had gained a ridiculous amount of wait and I told him months ago that he will never weight less than me (he had usually been 20 pounds lighter and now was 15 pounds heavier). We made some silly bet but I would hate to lose to that chubbster. The bet is to see if he will weigh less than me the next time we see each other after Sept. 30, 2011. I am not sure when I will see him next but I want to guarantee a win whenever that is. Wish me luck and I'll check in at the end of the week hopefully to see how this no sweets thing is working out for me.
~FlexE

Fickle

So call me Fickle but I've taken a break from the swimming. I had a decent routine going but 2 things got my mind off of it. One is...I'm fickle. I didn't see incredible results within a month so I got bored and tried some other exercise routine. Since I didn't feel that I was sweating while in the water, I felt that it was useless. So I started doing more treadmill/exercise bike/stepper routines for cardio. Trying to put in about 45 min each workout. An even stronger that I put the swimming aspirations on hold is the great warm sunny weather outside. I have my great basketball shoes a ball and a court that I enjoy playing on. So why not take advantage of all this until the gloomy wintertime comes around and I have to stay indoors for exercise. At that point an indoor heated lap pool will be perfect. I will still jump in the pool every now and then but not the 4x/week I was doing.

I also got annoyed with lifting weights. For the longest time I was rarely using weights for strength training. Instead doing traditional exercises such as pullups and pushups dominated my routine. Why I got sucked into lifting, I do not know. It seems so unnatural and isolating muscles can not be a good thing. Sports, fighting, killing a wild beast with your bear hands; common denominator? None require just one muscle used at a time which is exactly what using weights and machines usually does. So I picked up an exercise band with little handles on it. It has good resistance and is lightweight. It can be used in a multitude of exercises for strength and flexibility training. What I like most about it is the dynamics of a stretch band. The more you pull, the greater the resistance. That couple with the natural instability of rubber forces me to coordinate various muscles at a given time in a dynamic fashion. After only a couple workouts I notice different parts of my body feeling a bit sore, proof that those muscles are being used without being "targeted" durin the exercise.

Changing a workout routine is great as it keeps things interesting for my ADD mentality. It also forces my muscles to constantly "think" and work together for the various exercises. Most important fact is that I am continuing to push my body and burn calories while developing a strong core which will come in handy for any sport I may partake in.

Oh yeah diet: blah, blah, blah. Veggies, fruit, fiber, minimal sweets. Too much alcohol and some questionable late night food a couple times a week.

On one last note, I have decided to give up alcohol altogether for the month of Ramadan. Not a sip, not a glass of white wine with my fish dinner, not a beer while watching football....none. I'm not sure if my purposes are religious but rather to detox my body and my poor fatty liver. I hope that a month of detox is a great lesson and will lead to moderation in the future.

~FlexE

Let's get competitive

Finally bought some new basketball shoes and a ball this weekend. I've been starved for competition and late night drunken ping pong matches don't really cut it for me. It is absolutely ridiculous to workout so much just for the sake of working out. I want to see results not just in the mirror but also on the court, any court. Basketball, tennis, soccer...bring it! What I'm going to TRY to do is be active everyday. All this talk about allowing your muscles to rest every other day is lame. Did Hercules have a strict Monday-Wednesday-Friday lifting schedule? Did Achilles only go jogging on odd numbered days and relax at a spa on the weekends? No, they did not. But FlexE you're not some great heroic mythological figure, you are just human. Um, clearly you are not able to grasp the potential of my athletic prowess. Ok, I'm getting ridiculous here but you get the point.

So I am going to try to go swimming in the morning before work and play ball on those same afternoons and on the other days continue my 3x/week lifting schedule. I might even combine legs and chest or back and legs, etc to make it 2x/week. I prefer to spend the majority of my time outdoors competing. It drives me to be better and makes me feel great. Even if I lose, knowing that I gave it a full shot just motivates me to get back on the court and do better. I want to speak of a past triumph regarding basketball but maybe it's better said on a different post when I have more time to get into it.

Hope this blog is motivating some of you to get out there and be active too. Hopefully I'll put up some "after" pics in a couple months that will motivate me and the readers alike to continue a healthy lifestyle.

~FlexE

Destined for greatness

A close friend always says that I'm TOO tall by one inch. He's 6'1". A short little fellow in my opinion. Now here's proof that in fact I am genetically predisposed to be much greater than him. However, stick me next to a 6'3" guy and clearly he is a freak of nature. Being tall is one thing but anything above my perfect 6'2" stature is just absurd. I'm being bias you say? Silly silly readers.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bigger-bodies-better-in-pool-09-07-29

1st day of the new 0 to 1650 swim workout.

I'll paste the week two workout here:

WEEK two:
200 yards...rest for 12 breaths
100 yards...rest for 10 breaths...repeat 3 times
50 yards...rest for 6 breaths...repeat 3 times
25 yards...rest for 4 breaths...repeat 3 times
total: 900 yards

I assume that I'll do this 3x for the week. Before moving on to week "three". So today was day ONE of my first WEEK. I started off strong but had a little internal battle between wanting to stop since I had just finished a full leg workout and had a long night of work and reminding myself of a previous post about not holding anything back during my workouts. Swam 200 yards (half breaststroke, half crawl) took 12 breaths and did 2-100s but then I started cheating. Not so much on the yardage but actually the breathing. On average I took twice as many breath breaks as was listed in the workouts. Meaning instead of a 10 breath break, I counted up to 15-20. Nevertheless I finished the full workout and hope that by the 3rd time I do this this week, I will have done it with the correct amount of rest breaths.

To swim a mile is a great achievement in my book since swimming has always been my achilles heel. I have gone bike riding for long lengths up and down mountains and gone jogging for an hour with ease. However, swimming is very intimidating. I have convinced myself that it is because my body is not made to float but that is just a ridiculous excuse. Hopefully by the end of the summer I will comfortably jump in the water and enjoy a good mile or two of swimming without feeling like my lungs will give out.

~FlexE