My New "Radical" Exercise Plan

Ok, maybe radical is too strong of a word choice.  For me it’s radical because of how I’m wired, but to most, it’s really just a little different.  In my last weigh-in I made some remarks about needing to focus on exercise more.  I left it with a comment that I wasn’t going to worry about it just yet, but that I would need to do something about it soon.  I made that comment because I wanted to take some time to visit some of my perceptions about exercise and see if there were some things I need to re-think. 

Self-reflection is an amazing thing.  I know some of you will read my current perceptions and think that I can’t possibly believe some of these things or that maybe I’m just plain nuts.  I am a highly intelligent engineer that believes in research and data; how could I possibly hold these perceptions as truth?  In reality I know all of these views are flawed, but that’s the problem with perception; quite often it becomes reality without you even knowing it.  You know that you are not supposed to speed on the highway, but you have a perception that it is really OK as long as you are keeping up with traffic.

Like it or not, this is how my brain works and I don’t think I’ll be getting a new one anytime soon.  However you would not believe how beneficial it feels just for me to put these thoughts out there.  Whenever I sit down to create an exercise routin (I have dozens of them), those perceptions are there affecting the way I create my plan.  Now that they are in front of me I can challenge each one and create a new plan that might be more successful for me.  Granted it’s easy to say what you are going to do and difficult to do what you say, I need to try something different as establishing a successful exercise habit has always eluded me.

What follows are some of the questions I pondered since my last weigh-in.  You’ll see what my current perception is along with how I would like to change it.  After I went through this exercise I started to create my new exercise plan.

What is Exercise? 

Current Perception:

In my world, exercise is defined as “Something I do solely for the purpose of improving my health”.  In other words, coaching my daughter’s soccer team and running around on the field with the team is NOT exercise.  Playing basketball with my other daughter is NOT exercise.  Going bowling or doing “Just Dance” on the Wii is NOT exercise.  It’s only exercise if I did it for my health, not some other reason (I told you that you would think I was nuts).

How I would Like to Change my View:

 

Anything I do that gets me moving around should be considered exercise.  This should include all the activities listed above and anything else that gets me moving around.  Why does exercise have to be something done specifically for the health benefits?  Not only that, but I probably shouldn’t even be focusing on exercise, but rather I should be focusing on being more active all the time.

Why Should I Exercise?

Current Perception:

You cannot lose weight if you don’t exercise regularly.  More accurately if I want to maximize my weight loss, then I need to get on a hardcore program and stick to it all the time.

How I would Like to Change my View:

If it’s really impossible to lose weight without a hardcore exercise program, then how did the early settlers get by without an elliptical and a P90X DVD?  Maybe you don’t need a hardcore program and you should just try to get exercise in when you can.

How Should I Exercise?

Current Perception:

In my book exercise is something that is scheduled and part of a routine.  I am an extremely organized person so workouts should all be scheduled in advance and should all be of the same duration of time.  Further, I should have pre-defined strength training workouts that are the same each week so I can measure my progress.  Also everything has to fit the week correctly; If I’m doing both strength training and cardio, then I need to do alternating Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for Strength and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for cardio.  Sunday doesn’t fit the pattern so it becomes a “rest” day.

How I would Like to Change my View:

I should exercise any way and anywhere I can!  Forget about schedules and charts and progress, If all I can get is 10 minutes, then that’s 10 minutes.  If I feel like playing basketball instead of hitting the elliptical, then do it.  Look for fun ways to keep moving.  Also, why measure progress in each exercise? Why not find a way to measure overall progress.

When Should I Exercise?

Current Perception:

The most efficient time for me to exercise would be in the morning as I have too many other commitments in the evening.  I wouldn’t be able to maintain a regular schedule (see how should I exercise?) in the evenings and I don’t want to have to squeeze it in during lunch.  Even though I am clearly not a morning person I need to get up 30 minutes earlier and get this done.  It’s like a chore, better to just get it over with first thing in the morning.

How I would Like to Change my View:

Again, why do I need a firm schedule?  There are plenty of busier people in the world, how do they do it?  I need to exercise whenever I can.  I also need to forget about trying to workout in the mornings, it’s probably never going to happen (I am truly not a morning person).  Instead of feeling like a failure every morning that I don’t workout, I need to focus on doing what I can when I can.  If I have to work late, then exercise after dinner.  Again forget all about schedules, they don’t have to dictate everything I do.

What Types of Exercise Should I Do?

Current Perception:

Stick to the tried-but-true plan; 3 days of strength training with 3 days of cardio in between to get the weight loss benefits both have to offer.  Strength training should be standard 3 sets of 12 reps of each exercise at the highest weight I can do and cardio should be interval training on the elliptical with 60 seconds hard and 60 seconds moderate.  Also, since I am extremely overweight, there are certain exercises that I cannot do such as pushups, squat thrusts (burpees), or any yoga pose whatsoever.

How I would Like to Change my View:

I need some new routines.  The old ones are OK once in a while, but I get bored after just a couple weeks.  Try some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) or do circuit strength training instead of standard strength training.  I can also incorporate cardio in with strength training, why does it have to be separate.  Take it outside, vary intensity, and most importantly, go after those exercises I can’t do real well because those are the areas where I am the weakest.

How does one become addicted to exercise?

Current Perception:

It’s not possible!  Only people that are truly crazy and obsessive compulsive about their weight are addicted to exercise.  Like household chores, there are only a rare few that truly enjoy doing it, everyone else just does what they need to in order to get by.

How I would Like to Change my View:

Stop focusing so much on “exercise” and start focusing on being “more active” and you might just like it.  The purpose of exercise should not just be for the result (weight loss), but rather for the enjoyment of moving around.  The alternative (sitting on the couch and doing nothing) isn’t all that appealing.

As I said earlier, it’s great that I want to change my views; but it’s another thing to actually pull it off.  Hopefully my new exercise plan will help drive the change:

OK so here’s my new “radical” plan:

• Instead of measuring progress on each individual exercise, I’m going to take a different approach.  I’m going to develop a fitness test that I will perform when I start this program.  Every 30 days I will take the test again to see how my overall fitness is improving.
• I’m going to put together a list of all the different activities that I could be doing each day.  I already have multiple weight workouts designed plus multiple workout DVDs and my kids love to play outdoors.  Each day I will try to pick something from the list or create something new to add to it.
• The only rule about activities – No heavy weight lifting on consecutive days (muscles need rest time after a heavy weight workout).  
• I’m going to bucket all “exercise” into 1 of 3 buckets: Low Intensity, Medium Intensity, and High Intensity
• Low Intensity – Any exercise that I do that doesn’t significantly elevate my heart rate.  Examples include walking, casual bike riding with kids, push mowing the lawn, etc.
• Medium Intensity – Any exercise that gets my heart rate up occasionally, but is followed by longer periods of low intensity.  Examples would include playing basketball with the kids, Playing Wii games, Regular Weight Lifting
• High Intensity – any exercise that keeps my heart rate up regularly.  Examples would include running, Elliptical, and Circuit strength training.
• Everyday I’m going to record and score my exercise
• Low Intensity = Number of Minutes
• Medium Intensity = Number of Minutes x 2
• High Intensity = Number of Minutes x 3
• I will establish point goals to ensure I’m getting enough high intensity exercise and that I’m getting enough total exercise.

That’s it!  It doesn’t get much simpler than that.  Here are the goals (at least for now, I will adjust as needed)

1. At least 120 Points (60 minutes) of high intensity every week
2. At least 400 Points per weigh-in Period (10 days)

I didn’t mention anything about where I will try to get my exercise.  Fortunately for me I have an elliptical machine and a full set of dumbbells so I’ll be doing most of my exercise at home.  I also have a mountain bike, a dog that loves hiking, three very energetic little girls, and I live right next to a high school that has a running track and football training gear (hmmm, maybe I’ll go flip some big tires or hit those tackling dummies!).

I want to start this when I hit day 30 and that’s not too far off.  Hopefully I’ll be able to post my fitness test before then.  I’m sure this style isn’t for everyone, in fact, I’m not even sure if it will work for me.  What’s the worst that can happen?  It won’t work and I’ll try something else.  In the meantime at least I’ll get a little more exercise than what I’m currently doing (almost nothing).

Let me know what you think!  Leave me a comment and let me know if you think this is crazy or do you think I might be on to something?  Stay Strong!

A Bitter Pill To Swallow

I meant to write this post yesterday but I got called in to work and ended up spending my whole day (and most of the night) there. Although I don’t particularly enjoy working on my day off, it does provide me with some weight loss benefits. When I have to go in to work, it’s because a piece of equipment is broken and needs to be fixed immediately. The work is usually intense with lots of moving around and little time to stop and eat. From noon yesterday until 3AM, my diet consisted of 1 Whopper with small fries (my only option at 10PM) and a Fiber Bar. I also drank about 80oz of water, so I did pretty well yesterday. What I liked the most about it is that I was so busy I didn't even think about eating.

Anyway, I wanted to spend a little time writing about what happened to me last week. As I said in my weigh-in post, I felt liked I got kicked in the teeth. Earlier in the week I had written a post about making sure you win those little battles. I was feeling pretty good because I had quite of few of those little wins and I was feeling like things were all starting to come together. But with those feelings came another foe that sometimes strikes without warning… complacency. When things are going bad, you spend a lot of time thinking about how to make things better, but when you are doing well, there’s this tendency to stop pushing yourself because you are already doing well… more on this in a moment.

When I hit the scale I was extremely disappointed. I felt like I squandered what was a good thing and it made me sick just thinking about it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a loss over a gain anytime; usually when I comment on other people’s blogs, I encourage people to see any loss as a good thing. For me though, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t lose a lot of weight, it was more about missing the opportunity that was right in front of me.

After starting the week off well, I started to get that feeling of being on the right track. With that, my focus waned and complacency rolled in. Being an engineer, I’ve since spent a good deal of time analyzing what went well and what went wrong for me last week:

What went well

• Early in the week I had a lot of small victories. I managed to go all week long with chocolate cake in my house and had the will power to refrain from eating it.
• I also got all my exercise in and I actually increased my elliptical workouts from about 1.6 miles to 3. 
• Finally, I kept to my goal to stay off the TV and PC until 8PM each night. Unfortunately my overall activity level didn’t really go up much because I didn’t work out in the morning so I filled that empty evening time with making up missed morning workouts.

 

What went wrong

• By late in the week my portion control was off. Instead of 4oz of protein, I was eating 6oz. Every meal had just a little more than normal and over the week it definitely added up.
• I didn’t drink water like I usually do. TLEstrogen Has been posting some good stuff about the importance of water and she's absolutely right. I didn’t drink bad stuff, I just didn’t drink anything.
• Lastly, my weight workouts weren’t as intense as they should’ve been. I’ve been having problems sleeping lately and as a result, I haven’t been getting up to work out. All week long I had to do my workouts in the evening and I know that I never work out as hard when it’s in the evening.

The results on the scale showed why I can't get complacent.  I accept responsibility for my actions, and in hindsight, the results were not surprising; they were just difficult to see.  It was indeed a bitter pill to swallow.

So this last Saturday was a bad day for me, but I decided to try something new to deal with it and I found it seems to have worked really well. After the morning weigh-in I was feeling pretty bad. I knew it would be hard to gain any motivation and I also knew that further negative behavior would just make me feel even worse. Instead of trying to fight it, I decided to give myself a day off. For all of Saturday, I didn’t worry about diet and exercise. Instead I spent the day playing with the kids and just hanging out at the house. It might sound funny, but by allowing myself a down day, it lifted my spirits and by Sunday I was back at it. I didn’t eat badly on Saturday, but I also didn’t worry about what I did eat. Those people that actually know me would say I’m a bit of a perfectionist; I think I put too much pressure on myself to do the right things all the time. To be honest it really felt good to just forget about it for a day.

Now I feel refreshed and ready to get back at it and the timing is perfect because I have some things to look forward to on the horizon. First, this is week 6 of my current workout. After 6 weeks I said I would take a week off from lifting (it’s good to let your muscles have an extended recovery periodically). After my week off I will start a new workout plan so I’m excited to do something a little different.

The second event I have coming up is a 30 day challenge with a good friend of mine. I’m going to do a separate post on the specifics, but for now I’ll say it’s going to be extremely tough to do and there’s potential for a decent amount of money to end up changing hands. This kind of challenge is right up my motivational alley! I’ll have more about it in the days to come including the rules and a side by side comparison of the challengers so you can see how we match up.

Lastly, I wanted to give a little recognition to someone who’s been fighting the weight loss battle for years and lately has been doing really well. Weezel lost another 3.5 pounds this last week bringing her total since January to 13.5! This is a great accomplishment especially when her profession has her working around food all day long. Although she doesn’t have a blog about weight loss, she does have a real interesting fiction blog called What Scares You?, and a recipe blog called What’s Cooking?. Weezel, I’m proud of the fact that my blog has inspired you, but you deserve all the credit for all the hard work you are doing. Keep it up, I have no doubt you’ll get there!

Journal Update - 1/22/10

Another week is coming to a close and I'll face the scale yet again tomorrow.  No worries though, I think I did pretty well this week.  I managed to do all my strength training workouts and I only missed my Thursday elliptical workout (with good reason).  I'll be making up the elliptical workout on Saturday per my exercise plan.

As far as eating goes, I'm still doing good (not great, just good).  Last Saturday I went to a friend's house to watch some football.  I had a few beers and some chips, but definitely did not eat like a pig like I usually do.  One of my friends and I started a conversation about running a marathon.  In the end we decided it would be cool to run a 5K together.  He said he was going to look into it for me and find a run we can do, I'll see if he actually follows up on it.  This would be another great motivator for me to have to train to run a race.  I'm so out of shape, I'm not even sure if I could walk 3.2miles let alone run. 

On Sunday I took the family out to eat and I enjoyed my 1 weekly cheat meal (part of my plan).  What's nice is that I've stopped looking at the menu in restaurants trying to figure out what item will provide me with the largest quantity and instead looked for something with some really good flavor.  I ended up with a burger that was loaded with caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, and some Cajun sauce that made the whole thing out of this world!  I really enjoyed that burger, all the flavors just really came together.  It's nice to have a cheat meal and really enjoy it.

The week started a little rough for me.  I ate right Monday during the day, but the wife and I became enablers to each other on Monday night and we talked ourselves into getting a chocolate cake.  I had a slice on Monday night and then again on Tuesday night.  It certainly didn't help my cause, but I guess it could have been worse.

Other than the cake, the rest of my week has been good.  I've been eating normal portions and drinking lots of water.  Typically I eat around 2500 calories and get about 80-100 ounces in each day.  I ate a lot of fruits and vegetables; I'm really starting to enjoy them a lot! 

I'm definitely feeling a lot better these days.  Last week I was hungry all the time and I think it was just my body getting used to the new exercise routine.  This week the hunger was not as bad and I hope it shows on the scale.  I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, but my mind just feels a little sharper as well.  I was more productive at work this week and I think it has to do with the exercise.  I work out in the morning and it gives me a boost to starting my day.  I've been in this situation before and I like it a lot.  I look back and wonder why I ever stopped working out in my past failed attempts to lose weight.

Lastly, I've also started seeking out other bloggers to follow and some have started following my blog as well.  I have to admit with 3 very young kids and an extremely busy job, I have a hard time even finding time to write, let alone follow others.  However, I am amazed at all the support out there.  Every blog I've been to is full of supportive comments; it's really cool to see everyone helping each other out that way.  I've always had the knowledge on how to physically lose weight, but it's been the mental side of it that has always kept me down.  I'm hoping that by being part of this community it will help to give me that mental edge to see this journey through to the end.  I also feel this sense of accountability when I have to post my weight each week, it's definitely helping me to stay motivated.  Thanks to Esther, Phil, Chubby Chick, and Weezel who have all recently started following my blog, I look forward to contributing to this community as we all battle this demon.

Tomorrow I'll post the results of my weigh-in; I'm expecting another loss, but you never really know until you step on.  Wish me luck!

My Exercise Plan

I’ve put it off for long enough, finally I’ve created my exercise plan. I’ll start on Monday; here’s the plan:

Time of Day – Mornings (6:00AM – 6:45AM)

Amount of exercise each week – approximately 160 minutes each week spread over 5 days

Type of exercise – Strength Training (M-W-F), Cardio Training (T-TH)

Strength Training Specifics – I’ve made 3 distinct strength training workouts for each of the days during the week. Each workout is a complete body workout, but each day adds focus to a specific area of the body. Monday has extra focus on the upper body, Wednesday has extra focus on the abs and back, and Friday has extra focus on the legs. Each workout is made up of 8 exercises; at 5 minutes per exercise it should take about 40 minutes to complete a workout. For each exercise, I plan to do 3 sets with a minute rest in between. The number of reps will vary from 10-20 depending on the weight used. As a certain weight gets easier I will increase the reps until I get to 20, then I will add more weight and drop the reps back down.

Cardio Training Specifics – The cardio training is going to be a little less formal. It will be 20 minute elliptical sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When I work out on the elliptical, I tend to favor a type of workout known as interval training. Simply put, interval training is when you go hard for short bursts and then give yourself a small amount of time to recover. I Usually warm-up for about 3 minutes and then I do 15 minutes of intervals where I go hard (60 rpms) for about 60 seconds followed by moderate work (45 rpms) for 60 seconds. The workout is followed by 2 minutes of cool-down.

Duration – I plan to do this exercise program for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks I will take a 1 week rest and then start a new program which may or may not be similar to this plan. I’ve learned that you need to keep things fresh and after 6 weeks I tend to get bored with my routine so I’ll definitely need to change it up somehow.

What if I miss a workout? - I do not plan on missing any workouts over these 6 weeks, but inevitably something will come up that could cause me to miss a workout. My first line of defense if a workout is missed is to make it up later in the day (after work). That is one of the benefits to working out in the morning. If I miss the day entirely, then my new schedule depends on the day missed. If it is a cardio workout day, then I will just skip it, move on to the next day of strength training, and then make up the cardio workout on the weekend. If it is a strength day, then the whole schedule will shift by one day. For example, if I miss Wednesday, then I will do the remaining strength training workouts on Thursday and Saturday and I will do the cardio on Friday. This might seem strange at first, but the reason for making the scheduled make-ups this way is to avoid ever having to lift weights on consecutive days. When you lift weights, you need to give your body time to recover; most experts recommend taking 1 day off in between workouts.

SMART Goal – I’m always harping about setting SMART goals, so I need to set one for this plan. My goal is to complete the entire 6 week plan without missing a workout. Note that for this goal, “missing a workout” means that I do not get my 5 days of working out in during the week. It’s OK to miss a day two for legitimate reasons as long as they get made up over the weekend. The reward for this goal is not completely defined, but it will have something to do with improving my music capabilities in my home gym. Currently I have a beat up old boom box with a coat hanger for an antenna. I’d like to start listening to my MP3s down so my goal will be to buy something to provide the capability.

In addition to my SMART goal, I’m also going to track my progress on all my exercises. I have no specific targets on how much improvement I want to see on each exercise, but at least I’ll be able to look back at the end of 6 weeks and see how far I got.

Diet Modifications – Since I will be lifting weights, I may need to add a little more protein to my diet. Most likely I will add a scoop of vanilla protein powder to my morning oatmeal, and if needed (depending on how tired my muscles feel) I may increase my lunch protein from 4 ounces to 6 ounces.

As you can see, my main focus is more on strength training (120 minutes/week) than it is on cardio (40 minutes/week). This is not simply because I am male and like lifting weights, new research is coming out all the time showing that strength training is far more effective at losing weight than cardio training. I tend to believe this and I have always had more success when I use weights in my exercise plan.

So this is my plan and I’m really excited to get going. I’m following my own advice from my article on starting an exercise plan and I will start this first week at very low weights so I don’t end up sore or injured. If anyone is interested in my specific exercises, please feel free to email me and I can send you the spreadsheet.