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Hi There. Remember me?

pB / August 17, 2011 / 3 DO, Fitness, Life, Lifestyle / Permalink

It’s been a little while since I posted an update, however I haven’t been slacking (much) with everything else going on. There was a fairly nasty winter virus going around that I was lucky enough to catch. It laid me up to the point where I just stayed in bed for four days and was not good for very much at all for about 10 days either side of that. I’m really good now though, thanks.

Dad had a bit of bad news around a month ago (for his birthday) which meant that he needed to have surgery fairly quickly. He’s at home recuperating now, and everything seems to have gone well. He’s just waiting on some more results to make sure it’s fixed properly.

I’ve managed to get in a few more LHT workouts, and the diet (it doesn’t feel like a diet) is working well. Since July 9 I have lost 3.4 kg (7.5 lbs). This is 0.4 kg (just under a pound) more than I had lost in the entire 12 week challenge at work, when there was money at stake and I was trying my darndest!

One thing that Mark Sisson has been advocating is the stand up workstation. Then yesterday I saw that Steve Kamb had also posted about it in a very clear and compelling manner, only a day after I was telling my wife that I needed to develop better hip mobility for a few of reasons:

I want to do better kicks at karate.
I know it will improve my aikido.
My dad has had arthritis in his hip for some time and I’d rather prevent it.

So I decided to tetris up my work station:

So there it is. A little rough around the edges, and still with some stuff to put away. If I decide I can’t deal with it and want to go back to my chair I always can. So far so good, and the dog likes it do much that he just had to get in the picture about it. It makes him smile, see.

Here is a closer shot of the actual work station, pay no attention to the scuffed up X-wing, that is not the droid you’re looking for.

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Still on the planet

pB / July 19, 2011 / 24hr brk, Fitness, Heavy Things, Life / Permalink

24 Hour break

Well it’s been a wee while since the last update, but I am sticking at it, with the odd slip here and there. This past weekend was something of an aberration, but that’s ok. Used to be, a weekend like that was considered tame, and weekdays were much the same, so not all bad news.

Anyway here’s the goss:

Friday was spent cleaning the house since my parents were coming to stay for the weekend. We got a lot of good work done. I also ran the fat caliper over to check progress.

Then Friday night it was off to the club for dinner and then Harry Potter 7b.

Come to the dark side Harry, we have cookies.

I Had a few beers at the club and dinner was a T-bone steak, egg, salad & fries. I left most of the fries on the plate. O.M.G! Then it was off to the movies where I had a large bag of potato chips. Doh! I enjoyed the movie, even though it felt like it was just a series of battles to tie up loose ends, and the only bit of story telling was Snape’s bit.

Saturday morning we were up in the frost to go to karate and aikido classes. 2 hours of martial arts isn’t too bad for rest/play/move slowly I reckon, even if we do take things relatively slowly. Mum & dad turned up for their visit, a quiche for lunch and naturally I had a number of beers with dad while we just hung out, including a quick trip down to the club.

Dinner was corned beef and mixed vegies. Yum! More beers till bedtime then breakfast of bacon and eggs in the morning. Mum & Dad were on their way and I was off to bed before going back to work for my first night shift. A couple of frustrating nights at work and a nap this morning from 0830 –1300. Quiche for lunch and onto a session of LHT.

Exercise	Level	Set 1	Set 2	Target
Pushup	1.2	35	30	50
Pullup	2.2	15	15	15
Squat	3.3	50	50	50
Overhead Press	4.4	12	12	12
Plank Front	5.2	90	90	90
Plank Side	5.2	45	45	45

As i planned in my last LHT post, I increased the level for the squats and the planks, and managed to meet the targets first off. I’m pretty happy with that, but at a bit of a loss as to what is going on with my pushups. Maybe it’s true that I’m improving my form and going deeper. I’m not sure. Then it was a leisurely stroll around the park with the dog (I’m sure he is missing the chronic cardio though). Tonight is an hour of Aikido, prawns for dinner and an early night with a day shift tomorrow. I’m probably also going to have to face the music and address some crew issues tomorrow too. :/

All in all I’m pleased with the progress I’m making. Could I do better? Sure, and I’m staying on track mostly, I’m not beating myself up too much when I get derailed, I plan to continue to enjoy a few beers at the club of a Friday evening, and Mum & Dad don’t visit overnight all that often, so I figure I’m staying mostly on track.

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Fatness to Fitness

pB / June 29, 2011 / Fitness, Life / Permalink

Ok, so the crew at work has finished our 12 week weight loss challenge on Monday. I lost 3kg (6.6 lbs), the biggest loser lost 11.1 kg (24.5 lbs). He is buying us all donuts next week! Smile (We all paid in $25 and the winner takes (or took) all. What I’m happy about is that I lost pretty much nothing (maybe 1/4 lb) for the first 6 weeks or so, but as I completed the C25k and started to make a serious commitment to eating and drinking properly, the weight has just started to slip away. I wonder what could have been, if I had hit upon this working combination earlier. I had been trying things, but kept getting derailed.

I’m happy for the guy that won the challenge, he lost more than I had set as my goal, and even if I had lost my targetted weight, he would have still won. My goal now is to keep at it, maybe even ramp it up a little, and flaunt a beach bod when the southern hemisphere summer finally gets here.

So what did I do differently? Firstly I found a youtube video from a guy named Scooby, that sent me to his website that is aimed primarily at beginner bodybuilders which has a lot of nutritional advice that I found really helpful.

Since finding Scooby’s site, which recommends cardio daily I began to run every day, but I hit two obstacles:

The forestry contractor closed access to the forest that I like running in.
I started to aggravate an old knee injury.

Through another page I have started reading recently, I discovered Steve Kamb’s Nerd Fitness – Level up your life one day at a time. This had a lot of motivational type posts on it, and a few that expounded theories on nutrition that were pretty similar to Scooby’s. By this time there was only about a week left in the weight loss challenge so I haven’t been following along for very long at all.

Then I saw a couple of days ago that Steve had posted a blog about a friend of his that lost a crap ton of weight. Steve mentioned the Paleo diet and a site called Mark’s Daily Apple. I’ve spent the last couple of days looking around the site, and while some of the imagery might be a little over the top for some, it seems to make a lot of sense and his ‘primal blueprint for fitness’ seemed to ring a few bells for me particularly since I started to get injured when I upped my running schedule.

The principle of gradually increasing the workouts from starting somewhere that sounds far too easy also seems to sit well with me, since when I first started the C25k, I thought the earlier stages were too easy, and I should have jumped in a bit later down the track. As it was I started in week 2. Looking back on it now I think that if I had started further into the program I would have likely got burned out early, and given up. The staged progression was actually pretty good.

I am still enjoying running, and intend to keep it up. I am not going to run every day, and may not even do the every other day thing like I was doing during the C25k. With the forest closed off (temporarily I hope) I am running on concrete around a small lake. While the park is pretty, I still much prefer the forest, and the dirt road in there is much easier on my body.

Another thing is that Mark Sisson abbreviates his Primal Blueprint to PB. A great fit for pB Winking smile . So I have decided to start. I will need to shift a few of the days around to accommodate my shift patterns, but it should be doable. Today was a a day of play with an hour of Karate (see fits my lifestyle already!) Tomorrow will be a day of Lifting Heavy Things”