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Random harbours healthy habits

Udog

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I like the idea of spending this week perfecting form. Form is key.

As for reps vs weight, it depends on your goal. Reps are more cardiovascular, whereas few reps at a higher weight is better for strength. Of course, mixing it up and alternating is also a good strategy. The most important thing, especially when starting out, is to work for those 30 minutes!
 

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I'm already struggling to keep it up, but so far I've managed to keep to the plan for at least a few minutes every day. I only did one circuit on Tues - had to work later than I thought and had to squeeze it in before vball. Rushed through a circuit in 10 min, plus a 2 min warmup. Did everything a lot faster than usual, which could be good or bad I guess - it's definitely more of a muscle workout to do e.g. the squats slower. Similarly rushed through yoga/stretching yesterday, and I'm going to be pretty short on time tonight too.

I'm also kinda worried about my ankle - I don't think the daily stretching/mobility/balance exercises are doing much, since I notice it hurting sometimes when I put too much pressure on it (like doing jumping jacks or similar). Despite this, I said I'd sub for soccer tonight, so I'll see how it feels during the game (with a brace) and see if it hurts after. I played a game in Dec and it was totally fine so I'm cautiously optimistic, but it worries me that it hurts with something as low-impact as jumping jacks. Maybe it's because I don't wear shoes for this stuff.

Anyway if it's still hurting after a few more weeks of stretching I should probably get it looked at again, by someone different. Last time I went (Sept-Oct?) the doc was useless, "it's sprained, rest it and do some stretching exercises" despite no evidence of a sprain like noticing it being injured/twisted, any bruising/swelling whatsoever, or pain when rotating it. It only hurts with a lot of pressure like running or jumping, and hasn't improved much in the last 6 months of no soccer (although not hurting when I played in Dec is pretty huge, but that might've been just the adrenaline). Unlike past sprains, the pain isn't in a specific area, it moves around: sometimes the achilles, sometimes the top of the foot, sometimes to either the inside or outside of the ankle, rarely more than one location at a time. It also doesn't happen consistently with the same movements - sometimes jumping or pointing the toe hurts, other times not at all. I've only started doing the daily stretches in early Jan, though, so I should probably wait a bit longer and see if it improves in the next few weeks.
 

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My ankle's in rough shape today. I think it's from volleyball yesterday, not sure. I subbed for another team so I played two games, unfortunately with an hour in between so I cooled down in between and felt a bit off for the second game. Didn't notice an injury, though. I'll stay away from soccer until it stops hurting at least, and try to get it checked out in a few weeks if it's not improving.

I'm still doing OK with the exercise goals. The yoga is pretty boring though, I've been lazy and just doing the same routine but I should start switching it up, I think, and adding some more hardcore ankle stretching/etc too.

I have a late game of volleyball tonight so I'll fit in the bodyweight stuff before that. I'm working semi-late though so I'll probably only have time for one circuit again, after I've eaten and so on. Oh well.

Still thinking about what would be a good dietary goal. I've been thinking about tracking all the sugar/refined carbs/possibly all grains I'm eating, just to have an idea. I tried tracking everything once and that was a huge pain - I'm a ridiculous snacker. But I don't eat a ton of carbs (I think) so that might be easier, and they're about the only thing that everyone agrees is bad for you, at least in large amounts. I eat a lot of healthy food but also a lot of not-so-healthy food. I'd like to figure out what the easiest/most efficient change would be, so maybe tracking the worst of it is a good start.

I suspect my fat intake is actually more problematic than my carbs, although that obviously depends who you ask. I think paleo makes sense in some ways, but I disagree with their vilification of legumes and to some extent dairy, and I think they go somewhat overboard with the saturated fat. My own idea of "the healthiest" diet would be paleo-style but with some of the meat replaced by moderate amounts of whole grains, legumes and dairy. Michael Pollan-style, I guess. I don't have any intention of going that strict, but it seems like a good thing to use as a calibration for "healthy".
 

Udog

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There is no single rule to what diet is best. (Well, beyond avoiding trans-fat. That's like the only rule the health world seems to agree on.) Your modified paleo diet sounds pretty good to me.

As for ideas on where to start, here are a few ideas:

1. Take a multivitamin each day.
2. Journal your dietary intake every other day for 2 weeks. Or one week if if you gotta. You can even post it here, and perhaps we can offer some ideas.
3. Focus on making ONE meal great. May I suggest breakfast? A healthy and filling breakfast helps control appetite for the rest of the day.
4. Eat a lean protein with every meal.
5. Eat most of your carbs for the day after you exercise; eat fewer carbs for the other meals.
6. Drink water (if you struggle with this).
7. Replace sugar with fruits, brown rice, quinoa, potatoes, and other natural sources for carbs.
8. Make and carry your own (healthy) snack with you.

Just a few ideas - by no means is this the end all be all. If you do like the list, only pick one to start off with.
 

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Minor update:

-ankle still sketchy, skipping soccer this week

-stretching day today, and I should have time tonight for once, so I'll add more to the yoga routine I've been doing, get it up to 20 min at least. Will also add some new ankle mobility/stretching exercises.

-I'm noticing that focusing on improving form during the bodyweight exercises is making me more aware of my posture during the day, which is sorely needed! I'm trying to hunch less and keep my head up.

-Also feeling a bit more....sturdy? in daily life, which might just be placebo/being more aware of movements, since I'm not really pushing to increase the intensity that much yet so I doubt I'm actually much stronger. I can do 2 more pushups now than I could the first day, though!

-My weight seems to be dropping a bit, nothing too crazy, might just be a fluke. I don't really pay much attention to it but I've been pretty consistently ~145 over the past few months, and ~142 in the past few days. I'm more interested in dropping a bit of fat and gaining muscle (nothing too crazy) than losing weight, though. I've always been in the upper range of the "normal/healthy" BMI, and it'd be nice to edge closer to the lower range of that, but I have a pretty sturdy build so that might not really happen for me. I'd be happy with being a bit stronger/more trim.

2. Journal your dietary intake every other day for 2 weeks. Or one week if if you gotta. You can even post it here, and perhaps we can offer some ideas.
3. Focus on making ONE meal great. May I suggest breakfast? A healthy and filling breakfast helps control appetite for the rest of the day.
4. Eat a lean protein with every meal.

I like these ideas. It'll probably be either some kind of tracking system, or more of a focus on making healthy lunches (since that's the easiest meal for me to keep consistent). My lunches aren't awful right now but they're pretty high on calories/fat/sugars and low on protein/nutrients - I tend to go grazing-style with nuts/cheese/jerky/dried fruit/seaweed/etc. Mostly because I have a lot of that stuff around the house and I'm often too lazy to make a real lunch so I just grab a bunch of snacks in the morning....
 

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I had a really hard time motivating myself to do the bodyweight routine tonight. It's been harder and harder to get going as the month progresses.

But I did it, and after the first circuit I had barely broken a sweat and felt like doing another one, for the first time since early last week! I also upped the dumbbell weight to 15 lb today, and could just barely do 10 reps. Nice way to close out the week, after struggling to keep going all week. So needless to say I'm happy I stuck to it. I might add some weight to the lunges next week, since I have those nailed down pretty well.

I'm still struggling to avoid hurting my lower back with the squats, though. I think the "butt tucking" problem might be a hip mobility thing, so I'll try adding some more stretches to my yoga routine for next week. My ankle mobility seems to be good enough for squats, despite the injury issues. I also keep forgetting to engage my core, oops. Other than that I think my form is OK.
 

Udog

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I had a really hard time motivating myself to do the bodyweight routine tonight. It's been harder and harder to get going as the month progresses.

Not that this is uncommon, but any idea why? Is this something you can push through, or do you think switching it up might help?
 

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Not that this is uncommon, but any idea why? Is this something you can push through, or do you think switching it up might help?

I'm not really sure, to any of those. It's not the exercise itself since I don't find it horribly unpleasant. I guess it's just laziness. I'll come home, make dinner, and chill out on the computer for awhile, and then never want to get up from that. The internet is horribly addicting to me, and while that's a major problem, it's a difficult one to fix. Timers/blacking out sites doesn't really work, I just ignore them or get around them somehow. I could try to do it straight after work, and have intended to a few times, but I'm usually pretty hungry/low energy when I get home and I haven't been able to push myself into exercising then. I've been procrastinating it until the end of the night, which I guess is standard for pretty much anything I don't want to do. I even procrastinate things I want to do, sometimes. The inertia is hard to get past for me.

I have a pretty hard time forming new habits - I tend to do well for the first few weeks when it's "exciting" and "challenging", but then as soon as it starts becoming a routine, I struggle to keep the motivation up. If I can push past that point and keep it up for a month or two, I can sometimes stick with it as a long-term daily habit. As an illustration of the difficulty, literally the only things I've succeeded at making into a daily habit are showers and brushing teeth, and despite the obvious importance, this took me years to actually nail down. Other attempts have gone well at first but tend to end after a few weeks or a month. ADD and a pretty severe lack of self-discipline overall is the main problem, and I'm slowly working on improving that.

So, my goal is to make it past those first few dangerous weeks/months, and venture into actual permanent habit territory.
 

Udog

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Yeah, breaking inertia can be hard, as is pulling yourself away from the laptop. I resorted to exercising in the morning so I don't have to worry about it, but that doesn't work for everyone. Crap, I don't even know if it's going to work for ME yet. (But 2 weeks down, and so far so good.)

Generally, it's a good idea to change up exercises every 4-6 weeks. Otherwise, your body gets trained in certain movements, and they become less effective. Also, sometimes changing them up adds a new challenge and layer of novelty, that can make things easier.

Of course, maybe I need to refer myself to this post once I hit the 250s! This is all easier said than done.
 

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I did my bodyweight thing tonight, very reluctantly. Fuck you, laziness. :)
 

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I'm skipping yoga tonight. I know I know. But I skated 15 km tonight (in ~1.5h). I think that's freaking good enough. And I can't really move now, lol.
 

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I did my bodyweight tonight (thus ending week 4!). Sore legs from skating yesterday and tired from soccer tonight (which was awesome btw), so I'm pretty happy I still did it.

Tentative diet goal for next month (may still be revised): eat "healthy meal"* at least once a day

*using judgement, but loosely defined as containing something green + something high-protein that isn't nuts/cheese/similarly high fat

I'm also going to think about the bodyweight routine and see if I want to modify it a bit. I'd like to add tricep pushups but maybe should improve regular pushups first. I'd like to get to (heh) 10 first. Getting there... Might add some dumbbell exercises as well, maybe drawn from p90x, since I generally liked those. Maybe add some weight to the squats, we'll see.
 

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I had a very productive day today - I made a bunch of little burritoes (20) and single-serve omelet/quiche things (12) to throw in the freezer, to combat the "too lazy to cook, eat easy unhealthy food" habit. I threw a crapload of swiss chard in both (and some other veggies in the burritoes) so they'll work for my "healthy meal" diet goal. The omelets are eggs, scallions, cheese, swiss chard, and chopped bacon. So pretty high fat, but one shouldn't be too bad. The burritoes are beans, swiss chard, diced tomatoes, salsa, plain high-fat yogurt, guacamole, onions, mushrooms, and cheese (I don't like rice in burritoes). Total cost to make 20 (plus the 4 I ate) was about 10-15$, so pretty reasonable for about 6 meals. Also, they are fucking delicious. Hopefully still good when thawed. :happy2:
 
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Randomnity

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ok...I am drunk unexpectedly. but I will still do my bodyweight routine. so help me god.
edit: annnnnd done
 

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Summary of last week:

1) Bodyweight good. Only 1 circuit each night, but still did 3/3 nights.
2) Yoga okay. Skipped 1/2 nights for no good reason (home late, felt crappy, vented on roommates until way too late at night).
3) Ankle exercises good. 6/7 nights.

Added goals:

4) Start exercise by 11 pm - failed every night except one (10:45).
5) Eat 1 healthy meal a day (greens and lean protein) - I've been doing an OK job of it I think but a miserable job tracking/paying attention to it. I think I got 4/5 or 5/5, usually either lunch or dinner.

One thing I did last week is buy a food scale, and I've been having way too much fun tracking what I'm eating. I didn't like tracking food last time I tried, but the weighing is kinda fun (heh...for now). I've only tracked a few days' worth and not particularly consistently, but I'm having fun seeing how many calories and protein (the only two things I'm paying attention to for now) are in my regular meals/snacks. I'm not going to make it a goal because then I'll stop doing it, but I'll keep tracking things as I feel like it, with the nebulous future goal of trimming down some of the higher calorie snacks that aren't "worth it" in terms of taste/nutrients/price/etc.

There's too much noise for the counts to really be accurate (I eat constantly, and irregularly, and sometimes eat very large amounts of some high-cal foods), but so far my daily average is 1850 calories and 62g protein. That seems low on calories based on what I tracked last time (somewhere in the 2000-3000 range, over a week) so I was either overestimating last time without the scale, or I've been eating less than usual lately (I'm guessing both). I might be forgetting to track the occasional snack, too. Lunch (including snacks throughout day) and dinner (including snacks throughout evening) are about even at ~600-800 cal each, with breakfast ~350 cal. So the calories seem at an OK level. Not sure about the protein - I can find a million sources for how much is a good amount, but the reliability is a bit lacking. Apparently "The Institute of Medicine recommends we get at least 10% and no more than 35% of calories from protein" and I'm at 13%, so I could go higher, I guess.

Oh and also um, I made a very very lovely spreadsheet, both for tracking meals and for comparing protein:calorie ratios and cost:protein ratios. :nerd:

It colour codes itself automatically based on arbitrarily-chosen low/medium/high ratios, and it is lovely. It's really interesting to see the breakdown, and I've been surprised by a few of them. The best protein:calorie ratios by far are meat - surprisingly meat was also cheaper per g protein than beans. Dried beans would probably still win out, but I'm being realistic about my laziness here (although I'll do dried for big batches of food). Protein powder stuff at full price is about the same cost as meat, but cheaper if it's on sale. Bread/cereal/etc is about the same cost as meat per g protein, surprisingly, but many extra calories tagging along. Veggies are verrrry expensive by comparison. Fish/cheese/nuts are intermediate.
 
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My spreadsheet continues to expand. I made a freaking delicious curry tonight and ate about 1/4 of it, and weighed everything to work out the calories and protein (=136 cal and 18g protein per 100g...not bad at all!).

Ingredients (g):

parsnips 186
carrots 256
pork tenderloin 850
onion 65
kale 38
mushrooms 50
diced tomatoes (canned) 30
1% yogurt 179
bacon fat 8
kashmiri korma curry paste 75

It was fairly cheap, too - roughly 12$, for about 4 meals (It made 1300g and I had 300g tonight...unless I go back for more). :happy2:
 

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Bodyweight done. back on track! :)
 

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I'm pretty sore from the Tues bodyweight - apparently skipping Sunday made a big difference, since I haven't been very sore since the first few weeks otherwise. It also felt a lot harder to finish everything than it usually did. Apparently the strength starts to fade quickly! I'll try to remember that next time I feel like skipping, heh.

On the plus side, it tells me what muscles my bodyweight is targeting, and it seems to be the correct ones:

quads/hamstrings/glutes
ribcage/abs
biceps/triceps
mid to lower back (probably not a good thing. Might be from volleyball, since it was sore after that, before I did the bodyweight)
upper back

...so yeah, pretty much all of them. lol. Not too sore though, just enough to notice as I move around.
 

Udog

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That the Goldilocks of soreness!
 

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This doesn't really belong here but I guess it can count as added motivation: I just worked out plans to go sea kayaking around some islands in BC with seal sanctuaries and shit and I'm soooooooooooooooo excited. lol.

They do claim to be fine for beginners, but I'd still like to work hard on improving my upper body strength before I go (in May) since I still feel awfully weak. On that note, time to stop procrastinating my bodyweight for tonight. :)
 
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