Health and wellness

I finally drug my ass back out of bed in time to go to the gym this morning. It was a back, bicep, and leg day according to the calendar in my head. Actually, at this point, I went so infrequently last week, it really didn't matter what I did as long as I was there. I really want to get in 3 workouts per week- back, bicep, and leg as one workout, chest, triceps, and shoulder as another workout, and then depending on the week a full body or a repeat of one of the first two as my third workout. Add in an evening yoga class one night a week and a minimum of 3-4 times on the bike and it's a pretty decent training schedule I think.

I've been working on logging my exercise, activities, and food intake the last week on Fitday. So far I'm seeing a decent trend. For the most part as long as I'm exercising that day, I'm burning 400 or so more calories than I take in. Last week was a pretty laid back week and I still managed to shed about half a pound over the course of a week even though I fluctuated over a 3 pound spread throughout the course of the week. In reviewing my food log it really showed me that I need to lower my fat intake, my carbs are about right, and I'm doing pretty good on getting protein in my diet. I think a few more fruits and veggies mixed in will probably help the fat intake as long as I use them to replace a few fatty snacks. One really surprising thing for me was one of the worst foods I ate last week. Squirrel made up a roast last week that I'd provided for a dinner. That thing was packed with a huge amount of calories and fat per serving. According to their pre-entered information a 10 oz portion has 756 calories and 49 grams of fat! Holy shit! For reference a Wendy's classic double cheese burger has 747 calories and 44 grams of fat. Damn, I could've eaten a cheeseburger and been better off. I guess that's what the food log is for: learning what foods are good or bad.

On the other side of the coin, we had black bean and zucchini quesadillas last night. Damn they were good with just a little sour cream, salsa, and shredded cheese added in. A full on serving that left me full had a whopping 400 calories and about 10 grams of fat. Definitely the way to go, not just for me personally, but as a family and probably nation. I saw a news report last night that for the first time the percentage of people labelled "obese" is higher than that of people labelled "overweight". It's hardly any wonder that our health costs are skyrocketing. We're eating ourselves to death literally. The total number of people either overweight or obese was now at 66% of the population. That's just sad.

I consider myself pretty lucky that I decided enough a couple years ago and have dropped almost 30 pounds from where I was. I have no doubt that if I hadn't jumped whole hearted into biking, I'd probably be pushing over 190 by now if not closer to 200. Even at 183 I think I was getting pretty chunky so I can't imagine what another 10-20 pounds would have looked like. It's an amazing thing what a little exercise will do. I dropped 25 pounds just through exercise. I really haven't even been watching what I eat until recently. Fast food was an almost daily occurrence and (bad) snacks were plentiful. Really, my goal now is just to drop a few more pounds and turn the remaining fat into some lean muscle. That's where the new way of eating (not a diet) and adding in some more focused exercise should come in handy. Hopefully a few of you will be keeping pace with me.