Fitness goals: What are they and how do I reach them?

I used to have a lot of goals regarding fitness. Now, my only goal is to keep going. I do have a goal of a minimum of three days per week exercising, and a goal to eat nutritiously. All of this in order to maintain my health for as long as possible, or rather to do everything in my power to live a long, healthy life.
Every once in a while, I calculate how all of that is going. I decided to do that for the month of May. Examining my eating habits was rather easy. I asked myself how often I eat healthy versus unhealthy. Most days of may, I had a very nutritious smoothie for breakfast. My smoothie includes the following: plain whole milk yogurt, goat milk, spinach, carrots, blueberries, eggs, banana, turmeric, and now nearly daily--chia seeds. Often I include, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, or some other veggies. That's a very healthy smoothie and I have it for breakfast nearly every day. I would say I skip it once a week and on those days I have something else healthy, like oatmeal with blueberries, yogurt, turmeric, and real maple syrup for sweetening.
I take a few supplements as well, mostly to help with blood pressure control. L-Argenine, CoQ10, some super Resveratrol combination thing, and a multi-vitamin. I drink a cup of green tea at least five days per week.
For in between meals, I have Clif Bars, which are packed with nutrition. Sometimes I break down and get some street tacos or other fun stuff for meals. Sometimes even cheesecake or pie. I don't believe that anyone should forego everything tasty and wonderful.
So I think I'm doing far better than the average person on eating well. I am meeting my goals there.

As far as exercise goes, I do a variety of things to try and maintain a healthy body weight and good fitness levels. I make it to the gym, usually around four times per week. I take a walk on Sundays. I go hiking when I can.

My gym routine includes exercises for cardiovascular fitness, that is, aerobic exercise, and also strength training. My main aerobic exercise right now is stair climbing, but sometimes I am too exhausted and finish up with treadmill walking. Every so often, I start on the stair climbing machine and within 1-2 minutes realize that it's just not my day and head over to the treadmill to complete the allotted time. I generally exercise from 30 to 45 minutes on the stairclimber/treadmill, depending on the day. Each piece of equipment has the capability to estimate how many calories are burned depending upon a person's age and body weight.
When I finish the aerobics I will go and do about 15-20 minutes of strength-training on a particular part of the body--chest and shoulders, legs, arms and back, abdominal/core. I rotate through one of these strength areas each time I go to the gym. Except when I don't. Sometimes it's all I can do to get through the aerobic workout. It is exhausting. I find though, that if I go more than a week without tackling a particular body area, the next time I do it, I am hurting much worse the next day. It never used to be like that in my youth. Sometimes I skip the strength-training part because I have worked late and I need to get home, either to make dinner, or to pick it up along the way.
That being said, I manage to kill it at the gym

Here's what I found out about my exercise results in May.

On the stair climber when I averaged both the days when I go to the gym and my days off, I do 67 floors per day, or 1139 steps. When I add in the calories spent on the stair climbing, the days of walking both on the treadmill and outside, and hiking (the one 6.8 mile hike I went on in May consumed 2750 calories alone) I burned off 13,722 calories during the month, an average of 443 per day, not counting the calories burned in the strength training.

I think I'm doing about as well as I can. And if I can do it, you can too. It takes very little time to eat better. You can improve your fitness by walking a little each day, but if you have access to an apparatus, like a stair climber, you can burn more calories in a shorter period of time. You can even do some great workouts in under five minutes with no equipment. Check this out:  I've tried it and it's killer!

So, no excuses! You'll feel better by doing something about your health. Go for it!

Thoughts on healthy lifestyles

As a self-described health nut, I'm always looking at ways to live healthier and happier--even into advanced age. Fitness has always been a big issue with me, and in fact I find myself frustrated about it way too often when the demands of my job and life as a caregiver affect my fitness plans, which they do frequently. Often also, in those fast-paced demanding days,  I find myself reaching for the easy thing to eat, instead of carefully planned and cooked meals. My lunches often end up as General Tso's Chicken along with some kind of pasta (though spinach pasta is part of the mix--or at least green pasta) with bits of broccoli in it.
That being said, I do put an immense amount of thought into doing what I can do easily to eat more healthy, and I investigate thoroughly the evidence for longevity and lifelong health that is evident in certain societies.
Which brings up something I just ran across today. I have done cursory investigation of the Paleo dieting regimen in the past and fairly recently discussed it with a fellow health enthusiast and was reminded that the Paleo diet ousts dairy products. The reason given for that is that humans eating dairy products is a relatively recent event in their eating lives. Recent meaning, only in the last 10,000 or so years have domesticated animals existed and prior to that, folks would have had to milk wild wildebeests and musk oxen--not a very pleasant sounding task.
My prior research into longevity though suggests that in one area of the world, goat's milk is a key contributor to that society's tendency toward long life. Dan Buettner's classic treatise on the subject, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest identifies goat's milk as one of the factors. This according to longevity studies of the Ikarians of Greece. Goat's milk apparently promotes healthy intestinal flora and is high in tryptophan, which is a stress-relieving hormone. See the book review here: Clickety-click
I concur with much of the Paleo dietary guidelines though. I'd add that the late exercise and diet guru Jack LaLanne believed in eating things that were as close to their natural state as possible. I firmly believe that eating that way plus having a killer exercise regimen let LaLanne live until he was over 96 and much of that very healthy--at the age of 70 he pulled seventy boats, some with people aboard, for a one mile swim.
Though I haven't yet reached LaLanne's proficiency at either fitness or dieting, I'm working hard at perfecting both. For breakfast most days of the week I make a smoothie filled with all kinds of good stuff. The mainstays include spinach, blueberries, carrots, raw eggs, bananas, and turmeric, though I occasionally throw in other greens like kale and am planning on trying beets soon. When I don't feel like making the smoothie, I have some oatmeal with blueberries, real maple syrup, and plain whole milk yogurt. When I really go off the road of my diet I will eat whole wheat toast with Crazy Richard's peanut butter (made with only peanuts) and a glass of whole milk. Whenever I miss my smoothie, I try to make it up later in the day. That doesn't mean I don't go AWOL every once in a while on my good eating habits. I do. But then I try to get back to what's good and healthy within a day or two of messing up.
That being said the second component of maximum health is a good exercise plan. I am convinced that exercise is just as key as a good diet is at helping someone maximize their potential for a long and healthy life. Right now I'm doing a variety of strength training exercises along with stair climbing for cardio. Often on my days off, I am hiking, skiing, or just getting outside and working for those stress relieving, emotional healing, life invigorating excursions that renew both body, mind, and soul. I won't be towing any boats across the bay any time soon, but I hope to lead a vigorous life well into my nineties, if not beyond.
Lastly, the keys to good healthy lifestyles include having good interpersonal relationships with family and friends, laughing a lot, and lots of hugs. That kind of thing I can get behind any day of the week.

Forty minutes of pain

My newest workout at the gym is what I call "Forty minutes of pain". It's really refreshing. What that involves is forty minutes on the stair climber. I have recently bumped this up to forty. It used to be thirty-eight, and I will still do shorter time periods when I don't feel up to the forty, or when my time doesn't allow me to complete forty minutes. But today, I did the forty and it was forty minutes of pain. I began the routine doing 71 steps per minute, then increased by 1 step every four minutes, until I got to 28 minutes, after which I increased by one step every three minutes. My goal was to burn off 700 calories. I didn't quite make the 700 by the end of the forty minutes, but after about 44 minutes (the last four part of the cool down) the calorie counter registered 700 calories burned. I also burned a few after the stairclimbers as I did my abdominal workout today. Here are the vital statistics:

Minutes: a little over 44
Floors: 191 (at about 17 steps per floor)
Steps: 3247
Calories burned: 700 (maybe 75 more doing the ab workout)

There's one more statistic that's worth noting:

Pieces of pie burned off: two

So there you have it, I have burned off several pieces of pie since Thanksgiving, but still haven't burned off all of the pie and other things I've eaten. Thus go the holidays. I also have a much harder time making it to the gym to do said workout from about mid-November through the end of the year, simply because my job as a mailman gets pretty crazy during that time period.

The bottom line is that forty minutes of pain is worth it to me so that I can do the things I love, which includes eating.

What a week!

Many of you know of the struggles Ann was going through this week. I spent the night with her Wednesday night at the Emergency Room at the University of Utah Hospital after she went in to have the pain in her legs checked out and the doctor found out her oxygen level was very low. I ended up getting two hours of sleep that night.
Ann only had to spend one night in the hospital and got some plans for fixing her oxygen troubles, but nothing for the original leg pain. I spoke to the doctor as I was waiting in front of the hospital for the transport people to bring her out. He initially didn't want to prescribe any kind of pain killers, because most of them relax the lungs and make it harder to get the oxygen you need. He finally said that he could prescribe Prednisone, and that if her regular pain remedies of Ibuprofen and Tylenol didn't help, to call him back in a couple of days. This was after hours on Thursday evening.
Later, after we were home, I told Ann about the conversation and she said that I should have told him that she needed it now, not a couple of days from now.
She called the doctor's office on Friday morning, talking to the assistant, and got mixed up and the prescription wasn't called in. Now, of course, it's the weekend and it's not going to happen until they get back into the office tomorrow--that is provided that they aren't taking off MLK Day.
She has still been in a lot of pain, but actually this morning, after I encouraged her to walk more (she has been scooting around on her desk chair), she walked down the hall from the bathroom to her chair in the living room. I was glad to see it. One thing I've noticed with injuries in the past is that if you baby them too much, your muscles begin to atrophy and it's that much more painful to get back to good health.
I'm hoping that this is the beginning of her being healed. Certainly I and others have said enough prayers. I plead with God last night that he would heal her and get her back to normal. Today became a day of praise after she decided to walk instead of scoot the chair. Finally, I think we are seeing some improvement.

Today's keys for better health

I've recently been seeing a naturopath to try and figure out ways to lower my blood pressure without resorting to blood pressure meds. So far, so good. My last three measurements have been 110/62, 100/58, and 128/78. Those aren't bad readings. There is really no clear cut answer for what levels blood pressure measurements would be considered "low" other than how a person feels. If you have reading, like say, my middle one of 100/58, well that would typically be low, but not necessarily. It's more based upon whether or not you feel good. With low pressure you may feel dizzy or light headed. I felt none of those symptoms when I hit my lowest figure.

So what's helping me? I've been eating better. I have a smoothie for breakfast, try and eat less grains (the doc says it's not because they are bad for me, but because eating grains keeps us from eating veggies and fruit). I'm also avoiding foods with added salt, such as canned cream of mushroom, tomato, or cream of chicken. Though I still eat the occasional bad meal (yesterday I had chili cheese fries for lunch), I'm mixing in more lunches from home and progressing in a more positive direction--away from the fried foods in general, bringing tuna sandwiches to work, eating apples on my breaks etc.

I've also been doing things to control stress. Relaxing, deep breathing, controlling my own reactions to things.

My exercise levels have gone way down during the past couple of months due to being on the overtime list at work. I can only believe that once I'm back exercising like I should be, at the beginning of April at the latest, my health will improve even more. I will be able to go for a walk this morning while I'm waiting for Ann at her doc's appointment, and I will be skiing this afternoon, so it's not like I'm totally ignoring the exercise part.

So, here are the keys: avoid fast foods and extra salt intake, eat wholesome veggies and fruits, practice stress relief, exercise, drink plenty of water. A guy in my study group last night said that giving gratitude to God for the water as you're drinking it actually makes the water respond is a positive way and that studies have shown that. Though a cursory look found no studies to confirm this, it doesn't hurt to have an attitude of gratitude in all we do. A positive outlook, keyed by gratitude goes a long way to creating an atmosphere in which good health can flourish.

Staying fit when you're busy

This month is December, and being the typical mailman, I'm getting a lot of overtime. We have over the past months been doing 30 percent of Amazon's volume, but recently that has climbed to 70 percent. The overtime is great on the wallet, but with time, it gets to the point where it wears one out. Then add to that my personal circumstances of working out after work are now trashed, due to family responsibilities at home, and you can see that my regimen has been trashed.
I've given a lot of thought as to what I might do to counteract this annual trashing of the routine. My first thought is, to not worry about it. The body needs some time to recover from hard workouts and maybe I just need to decide that December is that time. I can begin again with renewed vigor in January.
Then again the gym rat in me says "no". There's got to be another way. I thought about basketball players in the NBA. In the off-season, the dedicated ones do a lot of strength training to build themselves up for the season. Then, during the season, they can't work out as much as they'd like, but they are doing other things to keep in shape. In their case it's playing basketball. So, I ask, how can I emulate that while delivering mail, mostly from a truck?
One way is to decide that the trips up to people's houses with packages is my workout for the day. I can run, to increase the intensity of my workout, or I can walk, to keep from tripping or for an easier workout. With hundreds of packages each day, this kind of working out can add up. I may not get the intense focus on various areas of the body to strengthen, but my general fitness can remain high. And I can tone it down in a limited way by walking instead of running.
So, think of your own personal circumstances and do the best with what you have.
Another to consider is diet. This time of year it's easy to grab treats that your loving friends and neighbors have dropped by. It's much easier to grab a cookie than to make a sandwich, for example. But this is the time to keep on top of your eating habits and limit yourself. I like to choose certain days to overindulge--my family's Christmas party is one of them--and then limit myself the rest of the time. Don't keep totally away from Aunt Mildred's fudge, but limit yourself to one small piece. That way, you keep a certain amount of control. Eating habits are even more important than exercise in the way we feel and in maintaining a healthy weight.
And then, when you set your goals for the New Year, you will have already created within yourself the discipline you need to advance those goals past the first month and throughout the rest of the year.

Starting to get too cold to be shirtless. Final fitness update.

I began my fitness journey months ago. If you've been following, you know I've had some major setbacks including Ann's hospital stay, my own bouts with diverticulitis, etc. My original goal had been to make it down to 185. I had promised a shirtless photo if I made it. Frankly, I've been hovering between 186 and 189 for the past month. I'm in great shape for a 56 year old. I'm not bragging, but I'm telling you what's possible. I exercise between 3-5 times per week and usually for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes max. I'd say I average four hours of exercise per week. It's generally 30-45 minutes of cardio, followed by 15-20 minutes of strength training. My own goal with this isn't to actually lose weight, but to keep fit enough to do the things I love to do, like hiking, fishing, and going on picnics (ha ha!). My eating regimen is a balanced diet, never eating too much junk, but not avoiding it entirely--just trying to be sensible. I post this picture to show those who think exercise requires large amounts of time to produce results, that it really doesn't. All it really takes is consistency, frequency, and trying to use common sense with the foods you eat. I will post this pic and then you'll never have to look at me shirtless again.

Even an old guy like me can stay in reasonable shape.

Fitness challenge update

Sometime in the spring, I started out with the goal of getting down to 185 pounds. It has been an interesting road, including my wife's bout with pneumonia, and my own struggles with diverticulitis (twice). I've had to stop exercising or cut way back on exercising for several periods of time averaging a week or more. I've gone on vacations and bludgeoned my diet. Somewhere in there, my blood pressure has risen and won't come down by ordinary means. Still, I've managed to make it to where my weight is fluctuating between 186 -187. I'm getting close to my goal of 185. That shirtless pose is just around the corner.Yesterday, I ran a treadmill 5k in 27:42, which is faster than I've run that distance, on the road or treadmill, in at least three years. I'm in good shape. I'm feeling good. And, I think I may have pinpointed the blood pressure culprit.
Since I exercise a lot, I sweat a lot. I also work out of a blazing hot mail truck in the summer, again, sweating a lot. When we sweat, we lose electrolytes, namely, potassium. After evaluating my symptoms, I think I have a potassium deficiency.
My plan is to radically change my diet and include many foods that will build up my potassium stores. It remains to be seen what affect this will have on my bp, but I'm hopeful.

The mysterious ways of weight loss

This past week I fluctuated between 187 and 186.5. It's the first time in years that I've been below 187 at all, so I was pumped. The funny thing is, now I'm very conscious of the things I'm putting in my body. I'm wanting to reach my goal of 185, but it seems that I may be able to do even better. That being said, we who have weight-loss goals would do well to keep a couple of things in mind. The first is that there are nearly always daily fluctuations in weight. Most of those are due to water intake (or lack thereof). I have found myself in this process doing the two step forward, one step back kind of thing. It's to be expected. What needs to be considered is the overall trend, not the day to day weight.
The second thing to consider is that we should be focusing more on fat loss instead of weight loss. I think this is where one of my pet peeves comes into play, and that's the height to weight ratio tables that are used to compute your overall health. Body Mass Index measurements are really a false way of figuring out overall health. The reason being that someone who is heavily muscled will have a higher weight to height ratio than someone who does no strength training. I personally do a bit of strength training and have larger muscle mass than say, a skinny guy who never does body weight exercises, but who may be way out of shape because of no exercise to speak of. A far better way to indicate health is through body fat percentage, coupled with resting heart rate, blood pressure, and a few other indicators.
That being said, the most important thing is that we are out there doing something to improve our health. Whether it's giving up soft drinks, or stopping by the gym, we can all do something. Make it a goal and start today.

My personal fitness challenge

I'm still on my way to get down to 185. Originally I had the goal of doing so by July 4th, but my wife's hospitalization, my own bouts with diverticulitis, and a few other roadblocks delayed my attempt. However, the past two days that I've weighed myself, I've been at 187.5, and 188. That would be on Thursday and today--Saturday. It's the first time that's happened in this attempt. Of course, that could possibly have something to do with getting my haircut. Even though I just got it trimmed a bit, I've been known to lose a pound or two after a haircut in the past. Maybe that's why I gained a pound between Thursday and Saturday. Or, it could have been the buffet we went to last night.

"56"

I just turned 56 yesterday. There's one thing I can't stand about that, and that's having to plug my age in as 56 on the treadmill that I run on instead of 55. Each year I dislike that--having to increase my age by one year. I'm kind of funny that way. There was one advantage and that is that I was at the youngest I could possibly be in my age category in the recently run 5k. I was probably the oldest 55 year old, but at least I was at the bottom end of the range, which was 55-59. The only way I could have been personally one of real youngest is to have been born on July 3rd, and having just turned 55 the day before the race. As it was, I turned 55 361 days before the race. I wish my parents would have planned better for my birth...
Another thing I don't like about turning 56 is the life expectancy analysis at Blue Zones. Blue Zones is based off of a book in which unusually high populations of centenarians are examined by teams of scientists and medical professionals to find out why they live so long. They have a "How Long Will You Live?" calculator and among the other results it give is a category called "Your healthy life expectancy". Guess what my healthy life expectancy turns out to be according to their calculations? Yep. You guessed it. 56. Now, I know that's a crock, but I keep wondering why they came to that conclusion. They don't even know about my diverticulitis. They didn't even ask about my genetic history. I wonder what they base that on. Of course, my plan is to prove that wrong.
All that being said, I did something fun yesterday. I went fishing at Rockport. I didn't catch a thing, but in my book, you don't have to catch anything in order to have a good time.

The fishing was poor, but it was nice up there anyway.

 The water was really low, and where I was, there were remnants of old bottles, building foundations etc., that had once been underwater. I looked around for a few minutes, hoping to find an antique bottle still intact, but no such luck. I did find the bottom of a rectangular bottle that had to have been pretty old, and another object that was like some kind of a bottle cap marked with a  "T". I'll be posting some pics of those objects in my next blog entry to see if anyone knows what they are.

My personal fitness challenge

Remember a few weeks ago when I started my personal fitness challenge of being down to 185 pounds by July 1st? You probably also remember all the setbacks I've had during that time. Still, I think I started at 192 and I'm now down to 188. That's a loss of four pounds in two months...not great, but considering all the illnesses for both Ann and I, it's definitely progress. Now, I'll be shooting for mid-August to lose the rest. Wish me luck!

Fitness? I'm still trying

I just ran a trial 5k on a treadmill and my time was 27:42. That's my fastest time in over a year. I've been sick with diverticulitis and the antibiotics that I'm taking to fight it, so that's saying a lot about my overall fitness level. My actual race is on the Fourth of July and I will have been off the drugs for five days--my last ones are tomorrow.
As I neared the end of my run today I remembered something about one of the drug's side effects. Cipro is one of the drugs and I remembered that one of the side effects is to more easily pull a muscle. I could feel one going in my right calf, but wanted to complete the trial run, so I pushed on. It's a bit sore, but it will mend, and since I'm going to be tapering off in preparation for the race, I don't anticipate any problems by race day.
I guess the bottom line is that if you're trying to stay fit, push on through temporary pain with lighter workouts and you can pretty much maintain a base line level of fitness. Then, when the opportunities arise--like today for me--see what you can do. You may surprise yourself.

Back to the weight loss goal

A few weeks ago, I embarked on a plan to lower my body weight to 185. I began at around 192. Then, Ann got pneumonia and I spent a week with her at the hospital eating crap food from the cafeteria, or junk food from nearby restaurants. The week she got home was more of the same. This past week was the first week I've been able to do my full workout regimen all week in over a month. I weighed myself two days ago and I was at 192. The original goal was to lose the weight by July 1st. That doesn't look realistic any more, but now that I'm back at it, I'm still trying for it. Two days ago, I also ran a 28:17 5k on the treadmill, which is back at the shape I was in at the beginning of this weight-loss plan. Now if I have no other mishaps, my goal should happen by the end of July. I will still try for the first, but it doesn't appear likely.

All that being said, here's my before shot:

Look, I don't have any kind of shirt off shot to share with you, but if I reach my goal, I promise it (the after shot) will happen. It will be the first, last, and only time I will appear shirtless online. My only reason--to show you what can be done with an hour of exercise at least four times a week, and reasonable eating habits. Stay tuned.

Life is still awesome!

With sputters and starts, this week has gone amazingly better. First of all, it has been great that Ann is home. That is the most important thing.
I also was able to get back to exercising, though with a hitch on the first day back. About 15 minutes into my run, I pulled a muscle in my calf. That was on Tuesday. That night, I started filling the remaining two of my raised beds. I worked for an hour, then a friend showed up and we got all except 1/2 of them full before he had to go home. I needed to quit anyway, as I was beat. I took Wednesday off from exercising to finish filling my raised beds with soil and had that done at about 9 p.m.
Thursday was my day off and it was supposed to begin raining in the afternoon. My goal was to go and buy my plants and get them in before the rain began. I got that done.
I ran again on Friday, with just a twinge of pain in my leg. Saturday, I tried it again and sort of re-injured my leg. I'm thinking I'd better stick to every other day for a while, until I'm sure it's healed.
Either that, or hobble for the next few weeks. At any rate, the last couple of weeks have been an understandable setback from my July 1st deadline of getting down to 185 or lower. I'm still going to try and do it though. Last night I weighed in at just shy of 191, so I've got about six weeks or so to lose six pounds. I think that's possible.
And, it has been a better week. The Lord has blessed us with the rain (we have not had to water our lawn yet this year), and especially with Ann being able to get well enough to come home.

A good week coming

Ann got out of the hospital on Friday, I'm almost done taking antibiotics for my diverticulitis outbreak, and my garden soil pile should be drying out because the parade of storms has finally died down. It's looking like a great week ahead. Ann will be happier and on the mend, I'll be able to get back to exercising and feeling good, and I'll be able to also get my raised beds finished and hopefully planted by the end of the week.

Yeah, it's gonna be a good week.

This and that

A beautiful sunrise this morning. As I turned around and headed back along the canal on my morning run, I couldn't help but notice the fire in the sky. I look east a lot. Especially in the morning when the sun is rising. I always think of my favorite people to share the sunrise with.

I weighed myself a couple of days ago and weighed in at 190.5 lbs. That's down from my original weight when I started my trimming program of 193. My goal ends on July 1st and I hope to be at my optimal weight for the Sandy 4th of July 5k. I actually weighed 189 wearing nothing but flip flops. Okay, no jokes... I kind of wish they weighed you in the buff at doctor's offices because those Wrangler's, shoes, shirts, etc., added about three pounds to my actual weight. Especially since those tables for height versus weight don't figure in the weight of your clothing (or hair for that matter--I've weighed up to a pound less after a hair cut).

Life is great. Keep happy. Keep smiling.

Exercise results this week

I haven't really lost much weight. Right now I'm at 191, so I think I've lost two pounds in the past three weeks. Of course, I had the kidney stones or something else that felt pretty bad this past week.
That being said, I got in a 13 minute HIIT workout on the treadmill on Friday. On Saturday, I went back to the gym and decided on the spur of the moment to see how fast I could do a 5k (3.1 miles) run. I thought I'd warm up for five minutes or for the first half mile, then run as fast as I could until I had reached 3.6 miles, then subtract the five minutes from my end time.
After the five minute warm up time, I decided that I wouldn't go 3.6 miles and subtract the time, but would include the warm up into the total, so I'd only have to run 3.1 miles--but my time would be tad slower because of warm up is done at a slower pace. I decided this because I was feeling a little tired (probably because of the HIIT workout the day before). So I ran the 5k as fast as I could and got done in 27:38, which is faster than I've run the same distance in the past two years at least. I wonder what I could have done had I not been tired!
Not to brag. I just felt pretty pumped about it.
(Oh yeah, for those who don't know, HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training.)

Weight loss, first update

Although I've been fighting a new schedule and cold weather, my exercise program is going well, and my eating habits, despite Easter, are on a better track than they were two weeks ago. I started working on my goal of 184 or less a little over a week ago, and at that time I weighed in at 193. Today I tipped the scales at 192. Not much, but I'm heading in the right direction. I will be getting a fitness assessment soon, which will measure my recovery heart rate, body fat percentage, flexibility and several other factors. I will post the results of that when it's done. That will give me a good basis from which to compare results.

Running...now we start.

I just started my outside running this year by running a measly 15 minutes in the dark. It was difficult. Number one, it's difficult running in the dark, but my new work schedule makes it impractical to run in the afternoons--especially since within just a couple of months it will be the hottest time of the year. Number two, it's different running on pavement/concrete, than it is running on a treadmill. Instead of pacing yourself by the steady rolling of a belt, you need to pace yourself by feeling your breathing and your heart rate. If you're not used to it, it takes time.
So, it was hard, but not that hard, and if I'd have allowed myself more time after writing to run, I could've gone longer. I'm not sure what pace I was running--likely ten minute miles.
My advice is this: if you are beginning an exercise program, or changing one up, take it slow at first. Work your way into it for a few days. Adjust.
It's important to exercise, but not at the expense of injury due to too much enthusiasm and biting off more than you can chew.
Now tomorrow, I will go longer, and stick to streets where the streetlamps are working, but I will begin slowly and build up speed as my body feels like moving. That's how it's done.