Tag Archives: fitness

DAY LXX

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Got myself out for a jog-walk. Ten kilometers. 8:07 per kilometer, or about 13:15 per mile. Walking pace, basically. I walked a kilometer then jogged a kilometer. It was not pretty, it was not pleasant.

Painted some trim boards for the deck. I have come to realize that the stupid deck project will never be done.

Tried to go without Coca Cola today. Felt like a zombie, out of touch, irritable, depressed, sad. Finally broke down and poured myself a glass to have before dinner. I don’t know if this is gonna work. It’ll be tough when I go back to work on Monday.

Read all the posts on a new fitness blog, Steve Roy’s Single Dad, Fit Dad site. He’s got some good stuff on there already. It’s good to get in on a blog like this from the ground floor, so to speak, and to watch it develop. Steve seems to be more grounded in reality than a lot of lifestyle / fitness bloggers. In the fitness realm it’s hard to beat Steve Kamb’s Nerd Fitness site, but Steve Roy is targeting “midlife men” who are out of shape and looking to improve. It’s a niche audience that Nerd Fitness doesn’t fully address, catering as it does toward a younger, and increasingly female, audience, many of whom already are at a creditable level of fitness. Single Dad, Fit Dad isn’t for the already-fit crowd, but more about mid-life guys who might be self-conscious about being out of shape. Guys like, y’know, me, f’r instance!

Steve Roy has been running another site, Ending The Grind, but he’s currently scaling it back to focus more specifically on the fitness blog.

I tell you, though, the difficulty I have in cutting back on the processed sugar and the Coca Cola may totally preclude me from ever dropping the forty pounds I’ve gained in the last thirteen months, or the almost sixty pounds I’d like to lose altogether.

DAY LXVIII

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Thursday. One week into the New Year of 2015.

Weight: a crushing 14 stone 10 pounds.

Stomach circumference (relaxed): 41 inches.

I was going to write more about this, but… I’m tired.

14 Stone 10 Pounds A new personal high!
14 Stone 10 Pounds
A new personal high!

Oh, we went down town to look at new cars today. We looked at the Subaru Forester, the Ford Escape, and the Mitsubishi Outlander. Despite the insanely cool TV commercial for the Outlander, it is the first vehicle to be crossed off the list of contenders. So far, the Forester is the best bet by a long shot.

DAY XXXII

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Jogged 5k (3 miles) after work again yesterday. That’s two days in a row. Let’s see if I can keep it going.

Morning weight was 204.4 pounds.

No new Buy-It-Now sales on the 30 eBay listings. Seven items have opening bids.

clutter plastic tubs
Over sixty storage tubs filled with… what?

I really need to intensively scrutinize and ruthlessly purge the contents of all these stupid storage tubs.

DAY XXXI

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Yesterday afternoon after work I took two boxes to the post office to mail. Two items sold on eBay. One was a box filled with nearly a hundred miniature Matchbox toy cars that I’d had since I was a little kid. I had a little bit of anxiety about selling that. I kept a dozen or so. I’m sure at some point there are a few in the lot that I’ll regret having parted with. But hey, I’m gonna have a real Rolls Royce here one of these soon days, right?

The second box was outdated computer software and some accompanying books. Happy to see that go.

That’s two sales so far out of the 32 items I listed over the weekend. I have low opening bids on five or six additional items. I’m not exactly raking in the big bucks, but it’s a start.

And that’s two large flat-rate boxes, or about the equivalent of one apple box, of stuff that is now GONE! The combined weight of the boxes was 33 pounds, so that’s 33 pounds of stuff I don’t have to shuffle around in the Room of Doom anymore.

I also jogged 5 km (3 miles) after work. I’m hoping to have enough ambition to do that again today. I weighed 205 pounds yesterday, down from a ridiculous 207 pounds the previous day. That’s just stupid. It’s well past time to drop that weight! So, clutter and fat, I gotta keep whittling away at both of ’em.

Day I: Starting Over

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I failed to accomplish most of my goals or to make significant changes or improvements in my life during my first One Hundred Days.

I am going to try again.

Originally posted on Day Twenty-Six and annotated yesterday on the 100th day, here is a revised version of my list of things to accomplish in the next 100 days: Continue reading Day I: Starting Over →

DAY EIGHTY-FOUR: Stop Being Fat

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Another Thursday, another full pound. I’m at 202.4 pounds today. Last night the scale actually read 205 pounds!

Conveniently, the most recent post over at the EndingTheGrind.com web site is titled: 7 Ways to Look Better, Feel Better, and Get More Stuff Done. Point #3 is, well, it’s to the point: STOP BEING FAT! Simple, straightforward, and true. So are the other six suggestions in this great post – every one of them is worthwhile, simple, straightforward, and immediately actionable. None of them require additional research or information, special gear or equipment, or an outlay of cash. It’s one of the best, clearest, simplest no-excuse primers for “leveling up” your life (to use Nerd Fitness’ Steve Kamb’s terminology) that I’ve run across. And I run across a lot of ’em, seeing as how running across self-improvement plans on the internet is pretty much the only running I’m doing these days. So go check it out. Here’s the link again:

EndingTheGrind.com: 7 Ways to Look Better, Feel Better, and Get More Stuff Done

DAY SEVENTY-SIX: No News… is Typical

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Last night the sky actually cleared, allowing the lunar eclipse to be visible. I set an alarm to wake up about 11:00 p.m. The shadow crossing the face of the moon became visible around 11:15 p.m. I set up reclining lawn chairs, and my spouse and I sat out in the yard until nearly 1:30 a.m. watching the progression of the eclipse. We also saw a number of shooting stars and lightning flashes along the distant northern horizon.

Today I walked another 13 miles. My Nike+ Sportwatch battery quit at the 19km (about 11.5 miles) mark. I had not recharged it since my previous long excursion.

Hauled the last of the relatives’ leftovers to the Salvation Army thrift store this afternoon.

While walking I had ideas for longer, or at least more worthwhile, posts to add to this site, but by the time early evening rolls around I’m too tired to think, too discouraged to care, and I can’t remember what I was gonna write about anyway.

I’ve been listening to audio podcasts on an iPod while walking. I used to try to listen to music or podcasts while running, but I gave up after too many iPods succumbed to moisture and vibration. Since I’m merely walking, and thus not sweating quite as much, I’m using the iPod again while walking. After listening to an episode of The Rocking Self-Publishing Podcast featuring independent author and indie-writing blogger David Gaughran, I came home and ordered the Kindle version of Gaughran’s recently updated book on independent publishing, Let’s Get Digital. I gotta get rolling again on the self-publishing stuff. That’s one of the purposes of this blog, to provide “writing practice.” So far that “practice” isn’t paying off, is it? I’ll start reading Digital as soon as I finish the short fiction eBook novel I’m currently reading, Joseph Lovece’s The Steam Man of the West: The Transatlantic Race.

I need to find the title to my car.