Travel and a Mid Stop

Tags

cardio, daily grind, Eating Well, travel, weight loss

I have been travelling for so long that coming home is such a relief. I just want to crash and not think about food or exercise or anything else. Just let the feeling of home wash over me. It is the place where I am the safest.

The place where I have fought so many battles and won so many wars. But, I cannot stop fighting for my new year’s resolutions. This is my home turf and I intend to use it for my benefit so it all starts tomorrow. After the jet lag and no sleep. I hit the gym tomorrow morning. Start consciously thinking about food again. for next ten days, I am in my safe space and I am going to use it for my benefit. I will get ready to fight and win. This year, I really need a win.

Cardio Challenge and Travelling Salesman

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, exercise, fit, fitness, travel, weight loss

So, the Cardio Challenge is all done. This was probably the hardest challenge for me to complete. In many ways, it was a challenge I did not really fully complete because on so many days I was travelling so I did 5,000 steps and on others I was on a plane for the entire day and didn’t even do 2,000 steps.

However, each day that I was not hindered by circumstances beyond my control I stuck to the challenge and completed the required steps except for the days when I knew that if I did steps I would completely mess up my exercise routine.

The thing I wanted to achieve with this challenge was for my body to get use to walking at least 12,000 steps a day. I started with 10,000 steps and I have built up to 12,000 steps. This is the goal I had set out to do. I want to get to the point now that on my cardio days I do 12,000 steps. This is my cardio goal for the next few months until I do another step challenge.

My life feels like that of a travelling salesman. I am always flying or travelling. I have previously written on numerous occasions about how difficult it is to remain healthy or work out on this trip. My mission over the next few months is to capture the challenge of my travelling salesman lifestyle and not let it destroy everything I achieve during the days I am not travelling. If I can overcome this challenge, I think I will be a happy person.

Challenges: Sense Over Target

Tags

cardio, daily grind, exercise, fab, fit, fitbit, fitness, gadget, health, inspiration, life, squat challenge, training, weight loss

Wednesday was a long and hard day for me at work. I came home around 11:30 pm, and I was short on my step challenge by a lot. Yikes!

In the morning I had done a strenuous one hour arm’s workout. I also managed to finish my squat challenge (which was 160 squats for the day) and arm’s challenge (which was at some obnoxious level). At night, my fitbit step count for the day was around 8000 steps. My target for this week is 11,750 fitbit steps.

I knew that if I was to make that step count, I would need to go for a walk for at least 45-60 mins. If I ate, walked, showered and then went to bed then I wouldn’t be in bed until 1:00 am. In which case, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to get me out of bed at 5:00 am and I will mis gym.

I decided, target or no-target, I am going to bed. It was probably the most sensible decision I made. I woke up rested, went to the gym. I did cardio for one hour (yesterday was rest day for both squat and arm challenges). I got stuck really late at work (came home at 11:00 am). But, I only had 1200 steps left because I had done cardio in the morning. I walked around my living room, met the step challenge for the day and bam, it was all done. One night sleep saved the next day for exercise.

I know, I have said it before but listen to your body. Look at long terms goals (as in ability to exercise the next day) and adapt as you go along. It is important to remember that this is not about one day or five days. It is about life time.

Challenges Get Hard with Time

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, Eating Well, exercise, fit, fitbit, fitness, health, squat challenge, training, weight loss

The last two days of doing gym and the challenges means that each muscle in my body is aching. It has been difficult to go back to full time gym and increasing intensity of each challenge.

Yesterday morning I kept hitting snooze button for 45 minutes until I finally dragged myself to the gym. I did cardio 25 minutes of treadmill and 20 minutes of elliptical. It has been ages (or a week) since I have done that much cardio and boy did it hurt. I mean what the hell happened to muscle memory? Also, the step count went up this week to 11,500 so suddenly from 5000 (which is what my target was when I was travelling) now I had to do 11,500 steps. I did 30 minutes of walk in the evening hoping that will make the step count. However, it didn’t. I had to rounds in my living room to make the step count. The only saving grace for yesterday was that it was rest day for squat and arm challenge so I had time to recover.

I am actually proud of myself for making it through today. I did 5 minutes of elliptical. 60 minutes of leg strength training. 15 mins of abdominal workout. 1 hour of walk. 11,520 fitbit steps (and counting). squat challenge (250 squats), arm challenge (28 push ups, 75 bicep curls, 50 dips, 1 min punches, 32 lateral flies, 32 front flies, 32 swimmers, 32 straight flies).

I am exhausted. I am going to have dinner in 10 minutes and then go to sleep.

We start tomorrow, again.

Back from the Trip and Challenge Updates

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, fitness, health, nutrition, squat challenge, travel

I am back from my week long trip. Needless, to say that eating was a bit of a mess as I was at the mercy of hotel food. However, now i am back and will need to get back to healthy eating.

I did keep up with my challenges.

In the Cardio challenge, I did 5000 or more steps every day (except yesterday when I was in a plane for 18 hours). I am doing the squat challenge and the arm’s challenge. I think they would have shown more progress if I had kept up with gym some more but you can only do what one can do. 

Back on the wagon starting tomorrow. 

Day 9/7/3: Somedays are better when they are over

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, chocolates, daily grind, Eating Well, exercise, fit, fitbit, fitness, food, food plan, gadget, health, nutrition, squat challenge, training, travel, weekend, weight loss

It has been a long week with late nights at work, somewhat erratic eating and hit and miss exercise schedule. I am happy to see the end of this week and today as it is the weekend, and now I can finally relax (before I get back on the roll coaster on Saturday evening). I am travelling to S.E.Asia this Saturday, which means my sleeping pattern, eating and exercise will be completely shot. However, I am not going to worry about that at this stage. Right now, I am going to celebrate end of this week and day.

All things considered, today was an ok day. I am not sure why I am eating so much chocolate these days. It is somewhat stress and more importantly, I think, it is the lack of water. I usually drink about 10-15 glasses of water but these I am only consuming 5/6 glasses of water and that is also at the end of the day when I completely parched. I have to up water intake before I get on the plane, otherwise, it would a mini disaster.

So, today’s challenges are all done.

Fitbit Steps: 11,196 (yay!), cardio: 56 mins (divided between morning and evening).
Squats: 85
Pushups: 15, Dips: 15, Biceps curls: 20, Punches: 20 secs (and a bit more).

Challenges – Day 8/6/2

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, chocolates, daily grind, Eating Well, exercise, fit, fitbit, fitness, food, health, squat challenge, weight loss

I did not do the post last night because all I could think of was bed.

I have had some seriously crazy last few days and it has been impossible to do any real exercise. I have kept up with the squat and arm challenge and met the cardio target threshold, but have not done my regular exercise regiment. I have actually no idea how I managed to do anything yesterday as I was exhausted, but I did ok on all three challenges.

I did mess up eating as I ate an overload of chocolate. I have been very good with my chocolate consumption but yesterday afternoon, I went a bit crazy and had loads of chocolate. It was mainly because I did not want the snacks I had packed and I was starving. This is why you should always have healthy/alternate snacks available.

So, here is the update on the challenge:

CARDIO CHALLENGE

Fitbit Steps: 5078
Cardio: During the Day

SQUAT CHALLENGE

Squats: 70 (ouch)

POLE DANCING ARM CHALLENGE

Pushups: 8
Dips: 8
Bicep Curls:15
Punches:15 secs

Days 6/4 and 7/5/1

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, exercise, fit, fitbit, fitness, health, squat challenge, weight loss

So, I have struggled with cardio challenge last few days because I have had worked commitment and to meet the (unrealistic) targets I have set has been difficult. So, I have decided that late nights do not allow for 11,000 steps and a more realistic target for those days is needed. Also, I can’t do cardio both in the morning and night on such dates. If I am going to bed at 1:00 am, I am not going to be functional at 4:45 am.

The fact is if you are tired and exercise you risk injuring yourself. So, it is important part of training to listen to your body and not do something crazy. My realistic cardio target for such night is the same target I have for the days that I am travelling – 5000 steps and cardio at one time.

So, here is the breakdown:

DAY 6/4

Cardio Challenge

Steps: 9,580
Cardio: morning

Squat Challenge

Rest Day

DAY 6/5/1

Cardio Challenge

Steps: 5,972
Cardio: during the day

Squat Challenge

Squats: 65

Arm’s Challenge

5 push ups
5 dips
5 bicep curls
10 sec punching

Day 5/3 – Challenges – Updated

Tags

cardio, cardio challenge, exercise, fit, fitbit, fitness, health, squat challenge, training

Yesterday, I didn’t get to bed until 1:00 am and went to sleep around 2:00 am. So, when the alarm rang this morning, I just grumbled some nonsensical thing about getting up in 5 mins, turned it off and went back to sleep.

The next thing I knew was my blackberry was ringing. I woke up with a panic attack thinking I was late for my work but it was just my dad and it was 7:30 am (he got the time difference wrong and I am so happy he did). I didn’t have time to make it to the gym, which I knew was going to be a problem since I had to go to a dentist in the evening. (The dentist trip was painful. I was there for 1.5 hours. I have three root canals and some fibre something in two on my teeth. It is killing me).

Cardio Challenge

This is all prelude to the confession that I did miserably with the cardio challenge today.

However, I have a fix for it. I am going to do extra 1,036 for next 7 days. I am also increasing 10 mins of minimum cardio for next seven days to 40 minutes.

Given tomorrow is Day 6 and the step count goes up to 11,000. I am looking at 12,306 steps for Days 6-10, and 12,286 steps for Days 11 and 12.

Update: Except my fix did not take in to account the fact that I will be working late consecutive days and getting to bed late so I have to change the cardio challenge itself to take that into account.

Squat Challenge

I did hit the mark of squat challenge with the squat challenge and did my 60 squats for the day. Yay!

Additional Pages

Over the next few days, I will be adding more pages to the blog. The idea is to get pages for each individual challenge. This is mainly to help me remember what I am doing in each challenges. I will also try to link all the posts for that challenge on that page and then do an end of challenge update to the page.

Challenges Categories

I am also going to categories for the challenges so that the posts relating to the challenges are easier to find.

The Squat Challenge

Tags

cardio, challenge, exercise, fit, fitness, health, training, weight loss

The Squat Challenge is a challenge that my personal trainer is making some of her clients do. The idea is to get to 250 squats in 30 days.

You start from 50 squats and build up to 250 squats. There are rest days in the middle.

But, the squats in the challenge are additional and the squats that I do during work out don’t count.