Archive for the 'Fitness' Category

Wow

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Meta
on July 11, 2007
in Fitness and Personal
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To say yesterday was difficult would be an understatement. It was definitely worse than Monday. The cravings were more intense and more frequent, even though honestly, I’m dealing with the simple “desire” to smoke pretty well. But yesterday, after trying with limited success to work while only being able to focus on the task for a few minutes at a time, I completely broke down. My head was too foggy when I needed it to be clear. I have deadlines to meet. It all became emotionally overwhelming.

But… a good friend called and she talked with me until the feelings passed. After that, I was able to work for a few more hours and I felt pretty good the rest of the night. By 11:30p I felt exhausted and like I was headed for a good night’s sleep. I fell asleep right away.

Then, at around 3am… it hit. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I stayed in bed for another hour and a half trying, but at 5:30 finally gave up and got up. I’m wide awake now with pretty strong cravings. Again, I’m sure it’s not helping matters that I’m sitting in the computer room with a cup of coffee.

I expect/hope that today is better than yesterday. I read an article that says day 2 is more intense than day 1, and day 3 falls back to day 1 intensity. So… we will see.

The Quit Date (Update)

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Meta
on July 10, 2007
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Earlier this week I analyzed my habits and did a lot more research on quitting. In my last post on this subject, I was finding that cutting down and spreading cigarettes out with longer intervals in between was non-productive and simply additional torture. What I did instead seems to have helped.

Basically, I used the last few days of last week to ‘practice’ quitting. I carved out a section of the day for not-smoking just to figure out what it would feel like and come up with ways to cope. It was then that I decided to move my quit date up. I was ready.

I smoked a lot over the weekend on purpose. But Sunday, July 8, around midnight, I had my last one. I’ve now been 100% smoke free almost 31 hours.

Continue reading ‘The Quit Date (Update)’

Not so bad

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Meta
on July 3, 2007
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I’m sitting here looking at my smoking log and notes from today trying to analyze things and see if there’s a better way to attack this. As of 8pm (my last) I’ve had 7 cigarettes today. I had my first one this morning out of habit. I think I could have done without it. The ‘not smoking in the car’ rule was a bit painful, but I survived. At 11a, I decided I needed a fix. But while outside, another guy came out and we started talking. So, though I didn’t even really want it, I had 2.

Rather than smoke my lunch, I left around 12:30p to hit Subway. I smoked at 1:45p, just before a 2p meeting. Around 3:15p, after the meeting, I was mentally exhausted, so I had another. This time, though, a different guy came out and we talked work the whole time. I kept wanting to just put out my cig and go back inside. I guess I don’t enjoy the smoking when I have to talk work at the same time.

I got home and put things away, changed clothes and had a smoke at 6p. Then I worked out for an hour, took an hour-long walk and had another around 8:15p.

What I notice is that I’m still spreading my cigs pretty evenly throughout the day, keeping a steady flow of nicotine in my system. That doesn’t seem very productive. I think instead I need to now focus on not smoking during certain parts of the day and practice dealing with the lack of nicotine. So, tomorrow I think I’m going to try not smoking until noon, then still keep it light the rest of the day.

Update: Ugh. It just hit me that tomorrow is July 4th, which means I will be home all day by myself. I can already tell I’m going to have to keep myself busy to keep to the goals.

And it’s only going to get harder

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Meta
on July 2, 2007
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Today, since I was much more conscious of my smoking, I couldn’t help but cut back a little. As of 7:30p I’ve had 16 cigarettes. I expect to have 2 more before going to bed tonight.

I’m not going to upload the spreadsheet I made, but my smoking is spread pretty evenly throughout the day, as one might expect. Also, I found that I most feel the urge to smoke when I’m bored or after a few hours of working on something and I lose my ability to concentrate and focus.

So, the new rule tomorrow is no smoking in the car/truck. That’s going to eliminate 4-5 cigs a day right there. In addition, I’ve made a ’smoking schedule’. Now I have ‘appointments’ to smoke and how many. By Thursday, I’ll be down to just 6, and I’ll maintain that same schedule through Saturday.

I don’t think the cutting back is going to make the addiction and cravings any better, but the idea is to form new habits while in the car or after I lose my focus, without completely going into the ‘nic-fit’.

The Quit Date

Published
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Meta
on July 1, 2007
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My quit date is Saturday, July 14.

After being on this workout kick for a few months, I’m really feeling it. I mean, I feel a helluva lot better than I have in a long time. I’m actually hungry more than once a day and am eating better, my brain doesn’t ‘fade out’ due to the blood-sugar variance I used to experience and besides that, I’m liking the way I look.

For the last five days, I’ve been mostly traveling and haven’t been home much. I think I over-extended myself before because I had some soreness and really did need a little break. But when I got home this afternoon, I felt guilty and actually missed the feeling of the workout. So, after unpacking, that was the first thing I did. And I’m psyched again.

This weekend was unique in that, for my own reasons, I didn’t want to smoke. From about 7p Friday until around 12:30p today (Sunday) I had two cigarettes. Both of those were one-after-the-other Saturday night because I was seriously wigging out and needed the fix. I was in a situation where I had to choose between two evils: was it worse to wig out or to go ahead and smoke and then be calm and human the rest of the evening. I opted for the latter.

On the drive home, I thought a lot about it. This was the first time in a long time that I had tried to go so long without smoking. I didn’t realize just how much of a strangle-hold this habit has over me and how much ‘going without’ affects me. People keep telling me about all the health issues, etc, and why THEY think I should quit. Well, today, I made a short list of my own. (That list follows at the end of this entry.)

So, I put together a plan so that by Saturday, July 14, I will have stopped completely.

Continue reading ‘The Quit Date’

That’s hot

Published
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Meta
on June 13, 2007
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No, not Paris. My house. I still haven’t gotten my A/C fixed and this afternoon I opted to work from home. Ugh. Once the breeze died down, it was miserable.

Anyway, not much of an update. Yesterday some colleagues and I visited the Indiana Dept of Homeland Security, got a tour of their EOC and learned a little about Ardent Sentry. I had dinner plans later that evening, also downtown, with a friend. The IDHS ‘visit’ ended around 4p and dinner wasn’t until 6p, so I had about 2 hours in between and had to find a way to pass the time.

So… in that time, I drove to the southside of Indy to Play It Again Sports. I had 2 hours, so I REALLY took my time checking out what was available. I walked out with about 200lbs of iron, a new barbell and a couple dumbell bars. (Actually, I walked out about 4 times. Those things are heavy!)

I did a little more fine-tuning to my workout routine and realized that there are some things that the good ol’ BowFlex just can’t do as well as free-weights. On the other hand, since I workout alone (ie, without a spotter) some things will have to stay on the BowFlex for safety reasons. Since I train to failure on my last set, any exercise that requires me to lift something heavy that I’m likely to drop on my head or chest and cause severe injury… well… I’ll stick to the PowerRods.

But now I can do some deadlifts, dumbell rows, shoulder shrugs and a lot of others to work the stabilizing muscles and hopefully get maximum benefit.

Eating is harder than it sounds

Published
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Meta
on June 11, 2007
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I was looking for ideas regarding food, and went back to Ferriss’ article (which I have to stop reading, because the more I read other things it’s annoying me). Anyway, the “meal” he describes (consisting of pasta, no-fat turkey chili and tuna) actually sounded good.

So I mixed up a batch and figured that if I ate all of it, broken into 3 meals, I’d get 1300 cals, and 110gm protein. Add that to my 3 shakes a day and I’m up to a total of 1750 cals and 170gm protein. So somewhere I still needed to stick in one more meal.

At breakfast, I managed about 5 bites before I simply felt ill and bloated. I put it back in the fridge. I took another bowl-full with me to work with the intention of eating it for lunch. I left work around 3pm and brought the uneaten concoction with me. But, honestly, by then I was hungry. I got home and swallowed the whole thing. And ya know… it was good.

So… that’s 1/3 of my expected intake down. It’s now 9pm and the thought of eating anything just makes me want to hurl. My stomach is distended and I feel so friggin’ full! I estimate that I got somewhere near 640 cals plus another 450 from my protein complex drinks. I don’t know where to squeeze in the rest of this food I’m supposed to be taking in!

The new workout

Published
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Meta
on June 9, 2007
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Rather than repeat it here, visit my BodySpace. I’ve re-engineered my workout.

Time of day and energy

Published
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Meta
on June 8, 2007
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I had tried to do my workouts in the early evening, around 5:30-6, when I get home from work. I found that to be a horrible time, because my energy and motivation are probably at their lowest.

However, last night I thought I’d try later. I got home, had dinner and did some housework. Then sat down and watched “Wag the Dog” which had just today arrived from NetFlix. About 8pm I put on a pot of coffee for a bit of a boost, then started the session around 8:45, just as the sun was going down.

Wow. I’m sore today. That was one of my best workout sessions yet!

In other news, I’m trying out BodySpace as a means to track my progress instead of my local page. It has its pros and cons.

UPDATE: I just put on the Temptations’ Greatest Hits, and the first track, “Cloud Nine” makes me want to work out. Weird, I know. During last night’s session I listened to a combo of the Jackson 5 and Stevie Wonder, with up-beat songs like “Rockin’ Robin”, “It’s Your Thing (Do what ya wanna do)”, “Sir Duke”, “Superstition”, etc. So maybe it’s not the time of day, but the ’soundtrack’ for the workout that makes the difference. Hmmm….

The fitness log

Published
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Meta
on June 3, 2007
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Well, now that the ‘experiment’ is over, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to track progress and analyze things going forward.

Sidenote: I’ve always somewhat taken offense to people telling me “You’re so skinny! How do you stay so skinny?” Even last weekend when visiting my parents over Memorial Day, an older cousin asked me if I was on a diet or if it was just natural. While I understand how some people might admire the fact that I don’t outwardly appear overweight, I am fat on the inside. I had to explain to my cousin that I’m actually trying to gain weight (lean mass). The fact that I appear skinny is relative. What they (apparently) don’t see is that I’m not very healthy.

I was a bit shocked today. After hunting for some time, I finally found a link to the U.S. Navy Method (using non-metric measurements) for calculating ‘percent body fat’. I’m 33, 5′10″ and weigh 170 lbs. I never thought the standard BMI calculators applied to me. That calculator says I’m 24.5% body fat, which is nearly “overweight”! How can a little, skinny guy like me possibly be overweight? So I took the appropriate abdomen and neck measurements, plugged them into the Navy’s more accurate formula and the result: 23.8%!

So, back to ‘tracking’, that’s one of the new metrics I’m going to keep an eye on. Even if it isn’t 100% accurate, future progress can be measured against the value using the same formula. For now, I’m not setting a goal. I’m merely going to track it weekly for a month and see how things go and if my ‘routine’ is burning enough fat.