Time for diet and exercise!

[Aractus]

Thanks mate, I'll post back in a couple of weeks.

[The Valkyrie]

Training for a half marathon.

I didn't realise how unfit I am . . .

[Aractus]

Week 4: 79.6 --> 79.4
Week 5: 79.4 --> 78.8
Week 6: 79.4 --> 78.6
Week 7: 79.4 --> 77.6

Freaking slow the last couple of weeks! The good news is I am following a self-inflicted exercise regime now.

[fr0d0]

I use an app that just measures your weight and plots your progress. It tells you how many calories you have eaten from the weight loss.

It's free and called Libra. It's based upon a freely available online book called the Hackers Diet and the spreadsheet therein.

You enter your starts to begin with, and your target weight. Your progress is then plotted with markers for your goal etc.

I have easily lost 1000 calories plus a day without trying too hard. And the beauty is that you can adopt it permanently to monitor your weight. A core idea of the book is that some people have a broken sense that stops them eating too much.

[Clueless Morgan]

Training for a half marathon.

I didn't realise how unfit I am . . .

Hoo, boy, ain't it the truth? Two weeks ago it snowed so I couldn't run for a whole week and one of my gym classes was canceled, last week it rained all week (heavy rain) so I couldn't run and Monday was Presidents Day so another gym class was canceled, and this week isn't shaping up much better: I over did it on Sunday and now my legs are killing me and my ankle issue is acting up, I didn't run Monday, but I was able to go to the gym where I felt like my legs were going to snap off whenever I did a squat or a lunge.

I need to get it together, my half marathon is only 11 1/2 weeks away. :S

Week 4: 79.6 --> 79.4
Week 5: 79.4 --> 78.8
Week 6: 79.4 --> 78.6
Week 7: 79.4 --> 77.6

You're catching up to me in weight! Maybe that means I'm fat and I need to drop some poundage...

I'm pretty consistently around the 70kg mark - and I only know that because my bathroom scale somehow got switched to metric and I don't know how to change it back.

[No_God]

My weight fluctuates 5 lbs. It gets on me nerves but whatever.

I eat healthy and sometimes I pig out. Fuck it.

[Napoléon]

Myfitnesspal is pretty good if you're looking to count calories. You can even barcode scan everything you eat to keep track.

Losing weight always becomes slower and harder as you get lighter too, the last time I was doing weight loss I let that discourage me. Now I'm pretty much back to square one, not as fat as I was but I need to start again. I joined the gym a couple weeks ago and plan on going regularly now, hopefully my diet will follow suit.

Good work btw Aractus.

[Aractus]

Okay, so I've fully ended the original diet, and I'm starting a new one from Sunday. I've moved away from the full crash diet anyway for about the last 3 weeks. The new diet will reflect the fact that since I'm not working at the moment (yay!) breakfast can now be my biggest meal and dinner can be the smallest.

So the old breakfast: bowl of ceral with skim milk (or sometimes toast with a glass of skim milk) is now gone (or rather will be from Sunday on).

New breakfast:
2x Eggs
Bacon
1 slice of toast with margarine
Mushroom

498 calories (scrambled eggs) or 410 calories (fried eggs)

+ Glass of skim milk (118 calories)

Total: 616/528 calories (variants as above).

Lunch will also be around 500-600 calories.

Dinner will be around 300-400 calories.

I'll also allow for another 200-300 calories of snacks between breakfast and dinner, so the aim now is to get:

1800 calories daily.

For this reason, starting next week I'll have to begin doing more resistance exercises. 60 burpies and 20 pushups 3 times a week isn't going to cut it. I'm thinking 60 burpies, 30 pushups, 1-2 minutes of hyper dumbbell squats 3 times a week (it is really really difficult just to do 1min, I'm not even sure I can do a continuous minute yet since I haven't done them in a while, but I'll work on it). 3 days of bench and other dumbbell upper-body/back/neck/tricep exercises. I don't plan on getting a gym membership, so I'll use workouts that I can do at home with the equipment I have, or with other equipment I can easily buy (maybe I could buy a skipping rope for instance).

[Darth]

hyper dumbbell squats? What's that?

[Aractus]

I don't know exactly what it's called, it's squats using 1 dumbbell (weighing about 5kg or so) instead of two that you pass from hand-to-hand shifting the weight from left to right each squat, and do as many as possible. The first time I did it my legs were sore for 3 days and I only managed 30 seconds!! If you do that an hour or so before going for a walk you'll burn way more calories than just going for the walk. Simple, short and very effective!