2014 TypeC Health and Exercise Challenge

[INTJMom]

I forgot to check in on Sunday.
I did my exercise program again on Sunday,
but I forgot to do my situps on Saturday.
But I am also increasing my situps (ab crunches) from 15 to 20 daily.

 

[kyuuei]

I moved tons of heavy stuff around all day today! My back/legs are hating me right now, but they'll get over it. I finally found my work out gear! So I hope this week I can get that all set up, and we're going to be movin' and groovin' after that. The pool is literally .1 mile away from the house, so I think it'd be cool on the weekends to go swimming some too.

Starting out light, but fast. This upcoming week I have two tests, but despite that, I will also be starting my 3x a week challenges. A p90x abs and yoga day, a p90x arms and run day, and a swim day between it all. Wednesdays will be my break days because I'll be bumming around downtown during those days.

I've got my eating back on track, thankfully, now that we're settled in. I've been eating soups, hard cheeses and slim meats with dijon mustard my best friend sent me from France, and I'm enjoying fruits, vegetables, salads, and I've been drinking 16-32oz of fresh juices each day too. It was watermelon today I've been vaguely counting my calories, and I was SOOO good today when we went out to eat, which as been my biggest temptation and down fall lately. Cheddars has a vegetable plate which is basically a salad or soup and four sides for $6. So I got a cesar salad, a croissant, a small cup of potato soup, a small baked potato, broccoli, cole slaw (I only ate like a third of that), and an apple-yogurt-raisin medley that I used as dessert with a cranberry juice.

What I'm addicted to right now for dessert: Maine Root's Ginger Brew. It's a spicy drink that reminds me a LOT of stoney's. It's literally ginger--like the taste of the root--in a sweetened carbonated form. I let the carbonation go flat before I enjoy it.

Stoney's is still my favorite. Oh Uganda, how I miss thee..

 

[Evo]

Week 21 & Week 22

I have been doing really good with my eating habits. I am not overeating. I'm so happy about this. It's also helped with the moneyz cause I am eating half of what I used to. I can take left overs home, and they are a complete meal.

I know some of my eating habits come from psychological reasons, and I have really been searching deep to understand what my triggers are. It's a really slow process for me though.

Also I have been walking on my lunch break everyday. So that's helped. I am unfortunately only walking enough to burn what I eat each day. I have not lost any weight. I usually have to walk for at least an hour to lose weight.

I have made a goal to start doing more crunches because if I lose a little weight in my stomach I don't want my skin to look weird or anything. I'm always worried about that. So I will start with 40 crunches at least every other day. I started yesterday. And I already need a rest day lol.

 

[Udog]

It appears when I hit a certain body fat percentage, my body panics and all of my instincts end up leading me to actions to "fatten me back up". I suspect that's what's been happening to me the past three weeks, because I can't seem to stop eating high fat / high carb foods.

So this week I will be simplifying. P90X3 is too much for me right now (perhaps because of the two weeks off?), so I'll be starting with the easy workout routine and aiming on eating 6+ servings of healthy protein. This seemed to work to get me back on track a few months back, so hoping it'll work again.

 

[Udog]

Week 22 Participation List
[MENTION=9811]Coriolis[/MENTION]
[MENTION=1125]INTJMom[/MENTION]
[MENTION=2]Ivy[/MENTION]
[MENTION=4324]Kasper[/MENTION]
[MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION]
[MENTION=206]Randomnity[/MENTION]
Udog
Urarienev

Also, please don't forget to check in and let us know how you are doing!

 

[Ivy]

Food- great. Between BMR and TDEE every day this week. 7/7.

Activity- meh. I went swimming twice and walked a few times, but didn't meet my steps goal most days. Since I wasn't totally inactive I don't want to call it 0/7, though. Let's call it 2/7.

Sleep- Good this week. I stayed up too late a couple of nights but even then I got 6-7 hours which used to be a normal night for me. 5/7.


I am starting a program today called "The First 100 Days." https://gokaleo.com/store/the-first-100-days-beginner-program/ I absolutely LOVE GoKaleo- she's been one of my best sources of info/encouragement on this journey and her "Eat the Food" advice has been instrumental in my mindset changes that have led to a more balanced diet and less food-related guilt. So since activity consistently seems to be my weak link, I thought I would go with her advice again. This program is for absolute beginners and I'm not exactly that, but I've really only been walking for a while now. I'm starting to want to branch out a little from walking and T25 wasn't doing it for me. I'll do it alongside also trying to meet steps goals. She also has a more advanced program for weightlifting that I might start later.

 

[kyuuei]

Today I ate approximately 1,500 calories. I won't get to work out like I want because of an exam tomorrow. :c

 

[Randomnity]

Last week (week 22?) I did well, all things considered. In other words, I missed the first 2 nights since I was travelling for both, but got in my final workout on Thurs night, so I'm counting that as a solid success. Also did my Sunday workout this week as usual, so I feel like I'm back in the swing of things.

 

[INTJMom]

I did great last week!
I did my exercise program on Sunday and 20 ab crunches every morning!
I'm trying to improve my eating now.
I am trying to cut non-dairy creamer out of my coffee because I think somehow it's "fattening" even though there's not that many calories.

 

[kyuuei]

Today I signed up for my fitness pal. It is incredibly easy and pretty awesome to use food wise--but exercise wise I find it lacking. I mean.. They don't really have a database of work out routines.. so its difficult to say "Hey, I do cross fit--so I'm going to click on this, this, and this and input it all for my workout." While I know this isn't always practical, having a user based thing to input like all the times/exercises from DVDs and stuff would be great so you only have to click once.

Anyways, I'll track it all anyways. I will be able to work out today fortunately! The food makes me realize how much sugar I'm really taking in--it's a lot. XD

 

[Ivy]

That's been my experience with myfitnesspal too. I think it would be awesome if they had as detailed a database for exercises (especially the really popular DVD sets- I never really felt like "low impact aerobics" really captured the essence of a Sean T workout) but I usually just import from runkeeper anyway.

 

[Randomnity]

I'm getting kinda bored with my cobbled together bodyweight routine, even though I picked everything myself and keep changing it up. I'm gonna try switching to this bodyweight routine and see how I like that. I like that there's a video for everything, and the progressions will hopefully make it easier to see progress than with my current routine modifications. It looks kinda long so if it's over half an hour or so I'll cut things until it's under that, because I really don't like doing much longer than that. It'll be way longer the first time or two as I learn all the exercises, of course. I'm already doing a few of them but most are new.

I'm gonna try really hard to get the form right this time and hopefully avoid starting/aggravating injuries. I really don't know why that's so difficult for me. It's like I have no clue what my body is doing and I think I'm doing it the right way but I'm totally off.

And yeah, I'm starting the new routine now, halfway through my week (Sun/Tues/Thurs). So sue me.

 

[Kasper]

The weeks are rolling by pretty easy, I've stopped driving which means I'm getting a bunch of exercise each day without having to stop and put aside the time, still working hard to eat 3 means a day, not getting it 100% but a damn sight better than I had been, I've lost about 7kgs which wasn't even an aim but I'm feeling good for it. Not lifting often enough though cause getting buggered before I get home so working on that over the next 2 weeks.

 

[kyuuei]

That my fitness pal thing is still cool to me! I went 62 calories over the goal today, but I also ate a lot more protein than I did the past two days.. and I'm green in the carbs and sugars, which I haven't been the past two days.

No working out for me tonight, I'm exhausted still from the exam.. but I will work out tomorrow after my sim labs. Last night I did a 30 minute p90x3 pilates session.. and then I was so pumped from that I did an accelerator session too! I just keep picking things that sound like what I'm doing in the videos (I said jumping and running for 15 minutes each and various crunches and stretching for 15 minutes each) because I'm too lazy to make a concrete layout for the work outs.

 

[Ivy]

I love myfitnesspal. But the only ones I pay attention to are calories and protein- I let the fat and carbs fall where they may, as long as I redline the protein. Even so, I tend not to go over what it assigns in carbs but often go over in fat. I also set mine up manually since the calories it gives you when you do the automagic thing are often not enough. I used a more precise TDEE calculator and shaved a modest deficit from there, one that wouldn't cause reactive binging for me.

 

[kyuuei]

I went over my calories by 500 today.. I realized when I'm not in school I snack a ton.. It was worse when I was raw vegan-ing, but it's still pretty bad now. I've got a bit of a battle plan for tomorrow to help out, but it's father's day dinner so I'll be pretty good--I'll stick to the shrimp and crab legs, no butter just lemon and a bit of cocktail sauce, with some mashed potatoes and corn and some sauerkraut. I dislike most steaks (I looove steak.. don't get me wrong.. I'm just so picky about it that I'd rather not most of the time. it's one of those dishes that has to be perfect.)

I did work out for an hour today too. I did the MMX and Yoga DVD.. personal note: Do the yoga/low impact DVDs first because I find them really, really boring after a cool martial arts based high-speed work out. The idea at first was to do the high impact, and cool down a bit and sweat some with the yoga DVD.. and I really struggled to get through it. I know stretching is really good for me, and my hips feel about as good as they've ever felt after working out when I do yoga and stretching for 30 minutes of time straight.. but man I dislike it so much.

Also I discovered my rec center is open to us students for free. Which is really pretty dang cool. So I could take advantage of that in the fall and start swimming more.

That's been my experience with myfitnesspal too. I think it would be awesome if they had as detailed a database for exercises (especially the really popular DVD sets- I never really felt like "low impact aerobics" really captured the essence of a Sean T workout) but I usually just import from runkeeper anyway.

I played with it yesterday and I figured out was I could post in the database approximate caloric burn measurements based on a p90x calculator I found, using the 'mid' difficulty (trouble breathing, but still able to talk) and my weight, I entered in the stats for the various work outs and listed them on the site as cardiovascular, even though many of them are strength training. So I went ahead and did that.

 

[Udog]

This week was an improvement over last couple of weeks. I managed to hit the grocery stores this week and am prepared to eat even better this week.

I didn't get as much exercise in as I wanted to, though. It came down to a decision of exercise vs sleep, and I choose sleep. No regrets (this week).

 

[Ivy]

Another decent week.

Food- went well. Went over one day but no biggie. 6/7.

Exercise- walked most days, did The First 6 Days of The First 100 Days. Two of those days were prescribed rest days though, and I was kind of a slug on those days. Need to try to still get in a walk even on a so-called "rest" day. 5/7.

Sleep- decent. Stayed up too late a couple of nights, as per usual. 5/7.

I finally got the results from my blood testing at my physical back- everything was great. My cholesterol is not just good, it's "ideal," including all the ratios. Thyroid is smack dab in the middle of normal. (It has never been low, but it's been on the low side of normal before- so I think eating normally has been really positive for that.) Blood sugar was great. Everything else was in the normal range even though I didn't understand what it all was. So I feel really good about my health right now.

 

[Ivy]

Another decent week.

Food- went well. Went over one day but no biggie. 6/7.

Exercise- walked most days, did The First 6 Days of The First 100 Days. Two of those days were prescribed rest days though, and I was kind of a slug on those days. Need to try to still get in a walk even on a so-called "rest" day. 5/7.

Sleep- decent. Stayed up too late a couple of nights, as per usual. 5/7.

I finally got the results from my blood testing at my physical back- everything was great. My cholesterol is not just good, it's "ideal," including all the ratios. Thyroid is smack dab in the middle of normal. (It has never been low, but it's been on the low side of normal before- so I think eating normally has been really positive for that.) Blood sugar was great. Everything else was in the normal range even though I didn't understand what it all was. So I feel really good about my health right now.

 

[Ivy]

Here's a good article I read recently about one limitation of using BMI as a wellness tool for individuals (in this case, in older adults). I think we will be finding more evidence for this and other limitations of the concept of BMI as the science progresses. We already know that it does not accurately assess athletes. And that it was actually devised for population studies and not originally meant to be applied individually.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/muscle-mass-beats-bmi-as-longevity-predictor1/