Don’t weight to exercise, geeks

Hey geeks, don’t think fitness is incongruent with your primal desires for quackulations, numbers and computerized algorithms. Turns out there’s a lot of math involved in this health and fitness biznass. I’m finding that doing all this mathematical homework is kind of interesting and exciting and helps motivate me to get results.

My last update was the morning of Thursday, April 30, which is what I consider to be my official benchmark although I started earlier. I weighed 183 pounds even at that time. Now, about 11 days later, I weigh 181.5 pounds. I want to lose a pound or more each week and I’m on track so far to be at 181 even by Thursday (the 2-week mark). My body mass index (BMI) has gone down from 33.5 to 33.1, meaning my body is theoretically composed of less fat. My goal is to get that number down to 30 and out of the “obese” category, which means I’ve got to drop back down to 160 pounds. I’ve weighed as little as 130 pounds in my adult life, and I was a little chunky even then, so I’ve probably got to drop down to 115-120 to begin to look slim. That’s a far-off goal, so bottom line, first things first, is to get my weight down into the 170s. Then I’ll work on the 160s and eventually on hitting my target BMI, and then I’ll work from there.

Food is another issue. I’m finding that depriving myself of food or trying to eat a miniscule diet is counterproductive. So I just eat when I need to, and try to make the food selections smart and tasty and healthy. Allowing yourself to get too hungry is a sure way to slow down the metabolism and I don’t want my body thinking that I’m in a famine situation. I need those fat pounds to come off nice and easy. This is also why I have to lift some weights at each workout, just so that the ol’ bod doesn’t decide that I don’t need those arm muscles anymore. And because the muscles use more energy at rest if you use them when you work out.

Physically, I can tell a little difference. I can last longer at cardio (I pushed it  up to 30 minutes today in the gym — and yes I’m going to the gym, if you can believe it) and I’m graduating from spending the whole time on the exercise bike to occupying myself on the elliptical machine. The first time I tried the elliptical machine, I could only last 2 minutes. Now I can use the machine in two five-minute shifts with a 10-minute bicycle ride in between (and a 10-minute ride either before or after). My goal is to spend 10 straight minutes on the elliptical and then graduate to the stairmaster. I also want to be able to jog. Currently, I can only jog about 10 feet without before becoming exhausted. Part of this is due to my foot problems (my surgery did a number on me) and part of it is me being out of shape. Ideally I’d like to be able to jog a half a block. Losing weight and improving my cardio strength will help.

Oh, and my pants are a little looser. That’s nice, too. I’ll update as more details surface. Over and out.

Advertisement

Meetin’ & Greetin’

Kato and I, originally uploaded by N-Sai.

Having a blast in LA with the JMMF… you never know what and who you might see!

Getting me sport on

This weekend, I did go to the Braves game vs. the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday. I made the first of many bloopers this weekend when I bought tickets for the Friday and we had to buy again for Saturday. Ooops. The next blunder was when I lost my MARTA card but we won’t get into that… anyway, I think I’ve come up with solutions to these issues.

So the Braves creamed the Reds and that was great. I thought it was unusual that people are actually allowed to do Tomahawk chops and all that. In Arizona I bet someone would complain, but in Georgia there isn’t such a large Native American population. So Braves it is. There were some pretty fired up attendees, and I shot a video of the fans up top as well as the joyous crowd out beyond us. There were actually two groups of guys that were chanting at each other in a strange sort of manly solidarity. It was pretty awesome. And another guy was geeked out in American flag pants. Hey, to each their own.

But wait, there’s more from this oh-so-sporty weekend:

• BULLET OMG: It was a big week for the Hawks, as they managed to not suck as bad as everyone thought they would. They tied the series vs. the top-seeded Celtics and gave sportswriters and angry forum commenters plenty of fodder for a couple days. I saw a good chunk of Game 6 and the Celtics were really sucking it up. Imagine if the Hawks had won Game 7… imagine all the people. It’s funny though, former Suns player Danny Ainge is a big shot over at the Celtics now (the Celtics was his former team besides the Suns). I guess in a way I don’t mind too much that they’re succeeding. I always liked Mr. Ainge and his Hat Store in the malls in Phoenix.
• Of course, as you know, the Suns got kicked by the Spurs early in the week. For a while, it looked like the Hawks were doing *better* than the Suns. I would like the Suns to get a championship someday. They’re long overdue, but alas, not this year. Not with the current setup.
• ANOTHER BULLET, HOLY HECK: My Suns fandom goes way back to even before the 1992-3 dream season, when the Suns managed to Not Suck enough to get to the NBA Finals. Back when we had Sir Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle and Danny Ainge and I could go on and on. Even back when they were playing in Veterans Memorial Coliseum instead of America West Arena, er, U.S. Airways Center. They even had one of the most thrilling games of all time as they stuck it out with the Bulls into a third overtime. But, alas, the Suns have never had a championship. I read an interesting article that said it pretty well as the writer mused on the demise of the Suns’ “Seven Seconds or Less” era: the Suns are that team you love to love, but you have to wonder what’s happening and if the success will continue. That said, I’m no sports expert and I’ll always be a fan.

So there you go. This is the most un-female series of postings/musings that I’ve had in a while. But computers and sports are for everyone, not just the boyz.

Sports things

We had a little mini-JMMF-powwow in north Atlanta the other day and it was really nice. This of course was the day before the Augusta Nationals [EDIT: My slang term for the Masters tourney held at the Augusta National Golf Club], and we had some wonderful conversation…. the food was good, too. The whole evening really made me think. I got involved in all this because back in college, sports was a big issue and I worked for the college paper. Nowadays I’m more distanced from it; however, the recent torch relay protests demonstrated to me that sports is still at the forefront of current discussion.