Random fitness stuff

[mousme]

After being off the bandwagon for a year, I'm getting back up on the horse, in order to properly mix my metaphors. ;)

First off, I'm going back to healthy eating, roughly following the guidelines of the Paleo diet. I will let fearsclave extoll its virtues to you at length. For me, suffice it to say that the idea of eating mostly fruit, vegetables and sources of protein seems like a pretty healthy choice.

Also, at fearsclave's prompting, I signed up for Fitocracy, which so far is quite a lot of fun. The basic idea is that it treats your fitness activities and workouts like a video game: you get a certain amount of points for your activities, and at a certain number of points you level up. There are also quests and achievements, which is a nifty feature. I'm levelling up slowly, and right now have to be careful not to push myself too far lest I do myself some sort of injury that would sideline me for weeks. Still, it's fun to come back after a long walk and find that you've gone up a level because of it.

I've been going for walks/runs with Sergent, who is thrilled with the added exercise. He's of the opinion that we're not going fast enough, and I'm doing my best to increase my speed little by little. I'm hoping that by the time spring rolls around I'll be able to run for 30 minutes straight with him, and increase that to an hour by the end of the summer. We shall see. Right now we're doing a sort of prelude to the Couch to 5K program, because my ankles are not yet up to running even the few short intervals required for the first day in the program. I figure I can probably start running in earnest next week.

In related news, I bought myself a small bench press with some sand-filled weights from a guy on Craigslist. I loved weight lifting when I was going to the gym regularly: it was by far my favourite part of my workout. Therefore this weekend's project is --while I'm not passing out from working a nightshift-- to clean out the basement enough to set up a small area to use as a home gym. I bought myself some coloured foam mats for the floor, and with time I'd like to set up a bunch of equipment down there. I have a few free weights as well and a small TV, so I figure I can make it a pretty appealing little area. I need to find some mirrors to hang so I can keep an eye on my form, too, but that will come later.

In short, I am getting a kick out of getting back into shape. I promise I won't bore you with all of that here, except for sporadic and non-specific updates. If you're interested, I'm writing more in-depth about it at rocking_thing, but it's mostly numbers and tracking and whatever. Not all that interesting. ;)

Or, hey, if you're interested in Fitocracy, I am happy to figure out how to send out an invitation. Just drop me a line. :)

Comments

[primrose-1.livejournal.com]

That is awesome! Good for you! I'm doing poorly on my diet at the moment, but I'm hoping to get that turned around...just as soon as the Cadbury Mini Eggs are gone..... :)

[diggerlicious.livejournal.com]

That Fearsclave, he's such a bad influence. I could ditto your post, with Fitocracy, quasi-paleo, dog-walking and weights. Mine are just 5 pound bar bells on the snorfa but it's better than vegging out in front of the t.v. doing frack all.

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

have you read "the new rules of lifting" - speaking as a couch potato i am finding it very interesting

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

can i just say the paelo diet has one major flaw

we don't actually have a huge amount of information about what pre-agrarian people ate.
it would seem likely that what we farmed is what we scavenged prior to this.
Btw quick note - we're a scavenger species, which is why we are intelligent, we're not hunter/gatherers. We probably became much better hunters when we started mingling with dog packs, But that is still supersition.
Yes modern crops are very different from crops even a hundred years ago, but so are our animal husbandry practices and are the breeds of animals

can i suggest that you explore the scientific basis of what we know about nutrition and make your choices from there. Gary taubes book "good calories, bad calories" is a good place to start. It's long and involved book which can be tough to read at times despite the fact that he is an accomplished journalist. Its a good examination of the history of the science and medicine of the last hundred years and the internecine battles that have been fought around nutrition. I read it and it lead me to choose quite a radical choice around my diet but you may choose a different path.

best wishes

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

have you read the new rules of lifting / the new rules of lifting for women?
Speaking as a couch potato, it helped me understand why machine weights didn't help in the past and also why my physio was trying to get me to swap to the free weights (which I admit scared me at the time)