Archive for the ‘Exercise’ Category

Day 10: first fasting was a success!

Friday, March 27th, 2009

(note: I’ve changed the format from “tenth day” to “day 10”. It makes the titles more readable.)

I’m pleased to report full success after my first 24 hours of fasting (from one breakfast to another). I slept a good night’s sleep, and wasn’t even hungry at all when I woke up; in fact, much like during the rest of my breakfast trial, I ate because I had decided to, not because I felt like it or wanted any of it. I believe I could have easily fasted for another 24 hours, if I wanted to.

Breakfast was a scrambled egg with cheese. As always, it tasted good, but it was as if my body was asking me: “why are you eating so early? I’m not hungry!”.

Exercise was, again, the usual, light stuff: Wii Fit jogging and hula hoops.

Weight: 80.1 kg, which means I lost 1.1 kg since yesterday. Not bad, not bad at all. :) This gives me a BMI of exactly 25.0, which is the threshold for being “overweight”; 24.9 already means “normal”. Of course (as I see some angry girls coming at me with knives), weight loss is not my goal, it’s just an easy measure of part of it; I’m still far from “athletic”. I need to find a way to exercise more, too.

I’ll be eating normally today and during the weekend, but I plan to fast again next Tuesday and Thursday. As I said last post, after hearing so many horror stories, I was surprised by how easy it was. Maybe the fact that I’ve skipped breakfast and afternoon tea for years has made my body not “panic” by the slightest sensation of hunger, like many of the “6 meals a day” people seem to do. Plus, having the equivalent of 27-hour days twice a week is nice. :)

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Ninth day: first fasting attempt

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Today I woke up with the alarm clock, which is always a sign that my body needed more sleep. Why, oh, why are those Savage Sword of Conan comics so hard to put down? :)

Breakfast was cream cheese (again), and exercise was brief: a bit of Wii Sports boxing, and some sit-ups. Weight: 81.2 kg (0.2 kg lower than 2 days ago).

Since I’m an impatient fellow, I decided to anticipate playing with fasting (not eating for about 24 hors) today. The term “fasting” suggests not eating for a whole day, which of course I’ve already done today, but my challenge is now to eat nothing and drink only non-caloric liquids until tomorrow’s breakfast. I believe I can do it, but it won’t be easy, since our bodies are used to having regular meals and never being really hungry. Supposedly, however, our species spent millennia as hunter-gatherers, who would eat just when they had a successful hunt or found berries or other fruit – much like, in fact, wild animals still do. Regular meals are a social construct, not a biological need. At least, that’s the theory. I’m not believing or disbelieving in it; I’m simply going to try it out. The real trial begins next week, though; today is just a preliminary test, simply because I feel like it. :)

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Seventh day

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

No, I’m not resting today. :)

Weight: 81.4 kg. I hadn’t weighed myself for three days (since last Friday), and I slacked a bit during the weekend, even drinking wine at meals (not going against my goals, as I was not doing it alone), so having my weight rise by 0.5 kg doesn’t come as a surprise; in fact, I expected worse. I’ll have to try harder this week; I’d love to reach 80 kg before the weekend, but it won’t be easy.

Breakfast today (and yesterday): cream cheese. Just a small one. Followed by the usual coffee and soy milk, of course. I’ll keep having those for breakfast until I go through them all; I have 6 more in the fridge.

Exercise: the usual sit-ups, and a little Wii Fit jogging. I also tried the boxing event from Wii Sports, but my wiimote began to complain about batteries, so I had to stop in the middle, and put the batteries in the charger. More of it tomorrow, hopefully.

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Daily progress: March 21st and 22nd, 2009

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

Two in one, this time. Today was the end of the first week (new goals for the next to be posted tomorrow), and the first trial (having a solid food breakfast every morning; results and comments coming tomorrow, as well). Today’s was a couple of scrambled eggs – between that and “normal” breakfast food in Portugal (bread or cereal), there’s no contest, and eggs are quick to cook.

So far, I’ve reached all my goals and upheld all my decisions, except one: last dinner (just about an hour ago), I “got distracted” and ate too much – what would have been “normal” for me before I started all this. My habits, when I don’t think about it consciously, still lead me to fill the plate too much, and to eat everything on it, even if I’m already satisfied before I finish. I’ll have to pay more attention to that.

Tomorrow is housekeeper day, so I won’t have time to exercise in the morning; I’ll have to do it when I get home. I could get up earlier, but exercise makes noise, and I’d be waking up the neighbors, which is not nice (it’s for exactly that reason that I only open the windows in the room(s) where the birds are, as they have “morning calls” at first light, so I have to ensure that “first light” doesn’t come too early for them).

Even though I’m not noticing a big physical difference (I’ve lost some weight, but, as Mário said, it’s normal for that to happen in the beginning), I feel great, simply because I’ve made a decision – to improve my life –, and I’m sticking with it. This has been affecting other areas of my life as well, such as shyness and self-confidence; if I can do this, I can do anything. Starting this blog, so far, has been one of the best ideas I’ve had in my life, and I feel dumb for not doing it decades sooner (even before there was such a thing as a “blog”, in fact). But better late than never…

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Fourth day

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

Weight: 80.9 kg. I don’t think I’ve weighed so little in years. If everything goes well, I’ll move from “overweight” to “normal”, in terms of BMI, in less than a week. Of course, that doesn’t mean the work is done… it is never done. But it’s a start. Will my Mii in Wii Fit change his appearance? :)

Exercise: the usual; that is, sit-ups, Wii Fit jogging, and I also tried one yoga exercise there. I really think I should do more of them when I have the time, as I don’t have the agility and “stretchability” I should have.

Breakfast: one scrambled egg with cheese. Tasted great, and I’m not feeling too “bloated” anymore.

Incidentally, 2 days ago, in the evening, I thought about an interesting post I wanted to write here (to prevent the blog from being just “I did this; I ate that”), about relationships, I believe, but I completely forgot what it was going to be about, specifically… even though I spent a lot of time yesterday, in the afternoon, trying to remember. Oh, well, I expect it’ll come back to me eventually.

One other thing: unlike, say, the rest of the week, today I expect to socialize, which may mean a setback in my diet (I may even drink alcohol, since I won’t be doing it alone), but, of course, it’s worth it (in fact, it’s one of the other problems I wanted to solve with this blog). That may also mean no “daily progress” post this evening. We’ll see.

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Daily progress: March 20th, 2009

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Not much new to add today (I must find a way of making these more interesting). Dinner was a salad and two scrambled eggs, and I’m feeling a bit hungry right now (dinner was about 3 hours ago), so maybe I’ll eat some fruit or something before going to bed. I felt fine and awake today, and my abs only hurt when I consciously contract them. :) Tomorrow, since it’s Saturday, I plan to do a little more exercise than today, though all of it still at home.

So far, after 3 days, the main difference that I notice is that I feel wide awake during the entire day, which comes mostly from 1) sleeping well, and 2) not going to bed with a lot of alcohol in my system every evening (which also affects number 1). However, there’s also the psychological part, which is even more important: I feel that I have a purpose, and goals. That hasn’t been true for most of my life.

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Third day

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Woke up before the alarm clock, which is always a good thing: it means I don’t spend the whole day like a zombie.

Breakfast: instant chicken-flavored noodles. Go on, call me crazy. :) Still feeling a bit full, but much less than yesterday, even though the actual quantity of matter eaten was mostly the same.

Exercise: after the usual sit-ups (ouch!), I did the “long running” exercise on Wii Fit, and tried out the recently unlocked boxing exercise. It’s actually much more like step aerobics than actual boxing, since the hard part is the patterns you have to do with your feet; the “boxing” part is simple, easy and not tiring. For exercise purposes, I’d guess the boxing event in Wii Sports is much better than Wii Fit’s.

Weight (according to Wii Fit): 81.4 kg, which is 0.3 kg more than yesterday. This is quite normal (and even Wii Fit says so), as weight fluctuates up and down even if you’re losing it in the long run; this is, in fact, why they say you shouldn’t weigh yourself every day. But since I know the reasons and am not emotionally affected by it, it’s OK. :) Besides, being a computer geek, I like looking at graphs. :)

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One more day

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

No, I’m not talking about the (possibly) worst Spider-Man comic of all time. :)

Well, the second day has begun. I’ve already exercised, and while my abs were hurting a bit and forced me to go easy on the sit-ups, on the other hand I didn’t lose my breath when doing a bit of Wii Fit jogging, unlike yesterday. I also unlocked a new aerobic boxing exercise, but that one’s for tomorrow. :) Oh, and Wii Fit said I lost about 0.5 kg since yesterday. I must be doing something right. :) However, while my target now is a BMI of 25 (the threshold between “normal” and “overweight”), what I have programmed in Wii Fit as a goal is 22, which is in fact what Wii Fit suggests as a target for every new player (male, at least).

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m experimenting with that weird concept of “breakfast” until next Sunday, to see if it makes me feel better, worse, or the same. I had a scrambled egg and some leftover salad from yesterday’s dinner, and, while everything tasted good, I still felt like I wasn’t “supposed” to be eating so early; I wasn’t hungry at all when I started eating, and right now I feel a bit “bloated” (even though it wasn’t a lot of food). We’ll see if I feel “more energetic” during the morning, or whether I’m less (or more) hungry at lunchtime.

Today is Father’s Day here in Portugal, so I’ll try to have dinner at my family’s place and spend some time with my father and the rest of the family.

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Daily progress: March 18th, 2009

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

The first day went well, I think. I felt I had more “energy” than usual, and that I am needing less sleep since I have stopped drinking for the last couple of days, but today I noticed it much more; the novelty here was the 10 minutes or so of exercise in the morning, so that must have been it. Let’s see how sore my body is tomorrow (yes, I’m that much out of shape).

Both lunch and dinner were green salads with bits of ham and cheese, so carbohydrates are low. No breakfast (unless you count a glass of soy milk and coffee) or mid-afternoon meal, but that’s the norm for me, though, as the last post suggests, I will be experimenting with the odd concept of “breakfast” for the next few days. We’ll see how it goes.

No dishes to wash right now, which is always a good thing. :)

No expenses, either, as I’ve been having lunch at home, and as I work near it, the spending of gas is very low. Unfortunately, I have an itch to buy a bunch of Richard Dawkins DVDs… but I’ll have to wait. And, no, downloading them is not fine. Oh, well, this should all be solved in a few months.

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First day of exercise… whew!

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

As I type this, I’m still at home, having just done a few sit-ups (not too tiring, but I know my abs will be hurting tomorrow), and a couple of aerobic exercises in Wii Fit (jogging and hula hoops). In less than 10 minutes (in fact, after just the first 2-3 minutes, but I pushed on) I was already out of breath and sweating hard. It appears I have a long way to go. Not that it comes as a surprise…

On the positive side, Wii Fit said I just weigh 82 kg, instead of the 85 I thought I did. Now, I haven’t eaten anything today yet, so that probably helps; still, that’s when you should weigh yourself, right? Also, Wii Fit said I was 2 kg below the last time I used it (about 2 months ago), so things may indeed be looking up.

Now for a shower, and then off to work.

P.S. – note that this is not the first daily progress post. That one will come — naturally — at the end of the day.

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