Unqualified Offerings was wondering whether I would be posting regular fitness updates. He gets half his wish: I’ll post updates, but irregularly.
As I posted in my first fitness post, I am trying to increase endurance and muscle strength but I am not overweight. I had orginally settled on three different exercises:
- Running/walking on a treadmill
- Weight training
- Swimming
Swimming has not worked out well. It’s the activity I enjoy most but due to time constraints I scheduled it over the weekend. The problem, as every regular reader knows, is that every other weekend I go home to visit Amber (or she comes to visit me). That obviously means that I haven’t done much swimming at all recently despite our nice Olympics pool.
For cardio, I started out with a slow-run/walk with a high grade on a treadmill. I ran into a few measurement problems: How do I measure my progress? In miles, calories, speed, grade, or a combination? I was talking to a friend about it and being the nerds that we are, he suggested a weighted combination of everything. I was doing that already and was not satisfied. So I have scratched that plan and am now following the 5K/10K program at ExRx.
For weight training, I do 2 sets of 10 repetitions each of the kind of exercises recommended here. The first set is done with 50% of the weight of the second set. For the second set, I try to use the maximum weights that I can do. I increase the weights every week or two.
I did not select these exercises because I thought they are the best. I am doing them because they seem reasonable and they give me a program to follow where I know what progress I am making.
In other health related stuff, I got smacked upside the head in the comments to this post at Alas, a Blog for suggesting that obesity is a health problem. Now, I think I did phrase it incorrectly, but I still think obesity is part of a problem. It might not be the cause, but it is definitely a sympton of health issues in a majority of cases. While there are people who are overweight (but most likely not obese) due to an excess of muscle or who are physically fit but are big, this is not the case for the majority of obese persons in the US. There is probably a high degree of correlation between obesity and sedentary lifestyle plus bad eating habits.
Getting back into shape!
Approximately six months ago, I was boasting to coworkers that I will be by the end of the year, the strongest man in North Plaza (The building I work in). Figured I would post a status update here….
Very nice and informative article, let me share my fitness experience with dear readers. I used to be very fit and athlete, but with the passage of time I became lazy and developed a habit of eating and sleeping along with no exercise. Which deposited around 25 – 30 Kilo of fat into my stomach, face, legs and all over my body? Everyday when I looked in the mirror I had thought today I will start exercising, which was clearly a false promising to myself, again with the passage of time I realized now enough is enough I have to do something to get rid of this fat. So I stepped on to the thread mill and started running 40 Minutes everyday at 9 Miles per hour. Right after finishing a marathon every day I then take the free weight and start building my shoulders and biceps, chest and etc. 3 Days continues exercise and 2 days rest which continued over the period of 3 months and I have now lost 22 Kilo of fat and I have started to look young and energetic once again. I recommend everyone who is facing the same symptoms of fatness try to get fit, it is really easy and not difficult at all. Thank you