Resting Heart Rate

My measurement this morning was 57 bpm taken before I got out of bed. I'll take it a couple more times tomorrow and Wednesday but I think my baseline is going to be 57, which is much better than I expected. (I wrote yesterday that my measurement was 67, but this was incorrect.)

Checking here, that puts me in the Athlete category. I'm certainly no longer an athlete, but I'll take it. I think my goal is going to be to get it to 50.

I use a heart rate monitor and wear it during my workouts. The object is to stay in a predefined heart rate zone using the Karvonen formula. Here is a link that shows how I calculate a target training zone heart rate.

Mine is 127 to 151, but I usually get up into the low 160s for the last minute or two. I try not to overtrain. If my body doesn't have a chance to recover between workouts, I'll not make progress.

Diet Measurements Week 2

Success!

Encouraging numbers this week. I've lost some weight. Total inches has actually gone up, which I attribute partially from having gained some muscle mass and partially because I suck with a tape measure.

According to my measures, I've lost an inch off my waist and hips and added an inch to my thighs. The drop in body fat percentage leads me to believe this is lean muscle , which was one of my goals, probably from the rowing (I'm up to 18 minutes at a 2:30 pace. At the height of my last fitness bout I was doing that for 1/2 hour so I am trying to work back to that)

I purchased a 35 lb kettlebell and on the days when I'm not rowing or on the stationary bike I plan to start training myself to do kettlebell swings. Just did some deadlifts with the weight yesterday and my legs are sore today. Yeah, I'm out of shape, which if you've been following my posts you already know.

Measurements Week 2

Weight - 177.2

% Bodyfat - 21.7

TI - 144.5

* Going to add one more measurement to this tomorrow if I remember - Resting Heart Rate

Have a good week everyone.

Diet Measurements Week 1

I was hoping to have better news after the first week, but unfortunately not much has changed from last week. I think I'll give it a month before I decide if I need to modify the diet.

The good news is that I am eating better, and I find myself actually enjoying eating first thing in the morning. It gets me up and moving, and I seem to have more energy throughout the day. Craving haven't been bad, though I do miss soda. And, strangely enough, rice.

Also, FYI, one pound of dried lentils makes a LOT of lentils.

Measurements Week 1:

Weight - 181.4

% Fat - 22.3

TI - 144.125

Vegetables for Breakfast? Are you mad?

This is typical of the breakfast I've been eating, vegetables, beans and protein: in this case, broccoli and cauliflower, black beans and an omelet made of a half cup of egg whites and one whole egg. I wash it down with green tea and water. It's important to eat as soon after waking as possible, preferably within a half hour and definitely before an hour has passed. Also, no calorie counting. Eat as much as you need to not be hungry before lunch.

It's odd for me to eat first thing and also to be eating vegetables, but I've been good so far and it seems to be getting easier.

Measurements come on Sunday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Diet Measurements Month Zero

Ok, day before the diet.

First the measurements:

Weight - 182 lbs

% Bodyfat - 22.4%

Total Inches(TI) - 144in (waist, hips, upper arms, upper thigh)

And here are the before photos.

To measure body fat I'm using a bio-electrical impedance (bmi) scale. It looks like your ordinary scale except it has metal plates on it that send a low level current through your body. In order to get an accurate baseline you have to make sure your hydration level is the same each time you use it. This means when I got up this morning I drank 1.5 liters of water, waited 30 minutes, urinated, and stepped in the scale.

Imagine a 2 liter bottle of soda with 1/4 of the soda poured out. That is how much water I had to drink upon waking up.

The things we do for science!

Tomorrow I start the diet.

Operation One Year Younger

Over the Christmas holiday I broke a tooth on a piece of bacon. A piece of bacon! The tooth was repaired, but this incident bothered me. My teeth were literally crumbling in my mouth. It was probably the first real hard look I had at my impending decline into old age.

Over the next month I researched tooth decay and realized that my teeth were crumbling because they were losing minerals. I have since found a program to re-mineralize teeth and am already noticing less sensitivity (hot and cold really bothered me) and they appear to be getting stronger. I will be blogging about this program in the future, but that isn't what this blog is about.

This blog is about losing weight and getting healthy. Let me explain.

My teeth research led me to other self-help books which led me to this book called The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. It is about health, fitness, diet, weight training, sex, sleeping better, living longer and a bunch of other things. After reading the first couple chapters I have decided to give it a try. I will be blogging about my progress or lack of such in an effort to leverage public humiliation and peer pressure into keeping me on track.

The diet starts next Monday. I will be posting weekly about the diet, what I have been eating and how I have been feeling. This Sunday I will be post initial benchmarks, including Total Inches (TI), percentage body fat, weight, and (gasp) before pictures of my pear-shaped physique.

Prepare to be blinded.