Exercise and Fitness: sticking to resolutions

[3CityApache]

There will be almost 20 thousand runners in Sunday's marathon and 10k race in Warsaw, and it is slightly less than year ago.

[Iskaral Pust]

Sorry 3CA about your injury.  Terrible timing. 

No further exercise for me since Monday.  Work is just crushingly busy these past couple of months, and will be until I have a successor confirmed for my old role. 

Hopefully back to the gym over the weekend. 

[baxus]

22 hours ago, 3CityApache said:

There will be almost 20 thousand runners in Sunday's marathon and 10k race in Warsaw, and it is slightly less than year ago.

That sounds like a great race. Hopefully, Belgrade marathon gets there soon.

I ran my half-marathon this morning. The weather was fine, though a bit windy at times. Race course was changed a bit to add the bridge that was built some 4-5 years ago which resulted in more uphill/downhill parts of the race and a few of my friends complained about it but I even enjoyed the change. I started the race with my friends but was quickly separated from them because they ran at a much slower pace (they ended up 16-17 minutes slower). The bottom line is - 1h48min47s! That's according to my phone app, I'm still waiting for official results to be released.

[3CityApache]

@baxus Congratulations man, that's a great result, especially considering that you haven't been running much lately. I wish I could get there someday. But my trainer insists I will, so I believe him.  

I've just colected my starting package for tomorrow's race. Spent half an hour in a line, and that was a line only for people with numbers from 10000 to 11000. It's quite cold today and very windy, and the race starts at 9 am, but thanks to that I should quite comfortably catch my plane at 5 pm tomorrow (going for a business trip again).

[baxus]

@3CityApache

Thanks! It is a great result (preliminary results are in and I'm at 1:48.44), especially if I take my training for it into account.  

Don't worry about getting there, I have no doubt you will, and probably sooner than you think.  

On the other side, I'm considering quitting distance running. It made sense to run half-marathons when I was running at least 40-50k a month as part of my rowing training. Nowadays, when my longest runs are about one mile long it's not as easy to prepare for a race which leads to me being drained for a day or two after the race. 5k runs should be ok and maybe 10k, but I probably won't be running anything longer than that for a while.

[3CityApache]

It was a great race after all. Perfect weather, thousands of runners and supporters, and I did manage to break my PB. Only by 8 seconds, but I'm glad anyway. My official time was 48:46.

And my incredible wife has beaten her PB in marathon by 5 minutes, to 3:38:14!

[baxus]

Congrats to both of you! 

[zelticgar]

Just banged out a half marathon in 1:35. Had not really trained past 7 miles so my legs are not feeling great post run. Time to start upping the miles. 

 

[zelticgar]

best part is moving to the 45 to 49 year old age group. Group placement is a little easier the older I get! 

[baxus]

11 hours ago, zelticgar said:

Just banged out a half marathon in 1:35. Had not really trained past 7 miles so my legs are not feeling great post run. Time to start upping the miles. 

Great job, man! 

[Iskaral Pust]

Back to the gym on Saturday after almost two weeks out again -- still too much work.  I had done push-ups a few times during that break to maintain some activity.  The gym session went surprisingly well but the real challenge is to renew a regular workout pattern again. 

[KingintheNorth4]

I've recommited myself to my long-term plan of losing the weight I've gained from when I used to take Sertraline (zoloft). I'm once again doing bodyweight exercises with resistance bands before I do my 30 minutes of cardio and afterwards doing pushups and crunches. It does take more calories to maintain muscle than fat afterall. I've cut out snacking and eating sweets (except for my birthday and holidays). I might start eating foods that are high carb and low fat.

[Iskaral Pust]

2 hours ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

I've recommited myself to my long-term plan of losing the weight I've gained from when I used to take Sertraline (zoloft). I'm once again doing bodyweight exercises with resistance bands before I do my 30 minutes of cardio and afterwards doing pushups and crunches. It does take more calories to maintain muscle than fat afterall. I've cut out snacking and eating sweets (except for my birthday and holidays). I might start eating foods that are high carb and low fat.

??

Do some more research.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be the right choice for your body, goals or fitness program but if I were trying to lose weight by doing a mix of resistance and cardio, I wouldn't be loading up on carbs.  High protein, moderate fat, low complex carbs and very, very low carbs with high glycemic impact.

Best of luck.

[baxus]

3 hours ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

I've recommited myself to my long-term plan of losing the weight I've gained from when I used to take Sertraline (zoloft). I'm once again doing bodyweight exercises with resistance bands before I do my 30 minutes of cardio and afterwards doing pushups and crunches. It does take more calories to maintain muscle than fat afterall. I've cut out snacking and eating sweets (except for my birthday and holidays). I might start eating foods that are high carb and low fat.

I'll echo what @Iskaral Pust said - high carbs would be better than high protein for endurance training such as preparation for marathon or something like that. If your goal is gaining and/or maintaining muscle, high protein would suit the purpose better.

25 minutes ago, Leap said:

Good run tonight, and quick weights session immediately afterwards. I only did 4k, but my time was 4:47/km. Feels good to have a run in that range again.

Squats coming on nicely, don't feel as if I've really hit my rhythm with anything else though. Although I did manage 4 pull ups after only doing 1 last week, so my work last summer hasn't all gone.

Stepped briefly on the scales the other day. Not too bad at 77, especially since it was right after a large meal. Expect to cut back to a 72/74-ish range with my current approach. Sedentary jobs suck, though. No matter how interesting the work, sitting still for 8 hours a day is kinda torturous. Not to mention the havoc that being mentally blitzed but physically awake is playing on my sleeping pattern. 

Sedentary jobs do suck. I've recently changed companies and my new company has a table for table tennis which is a rather fun break from sitting down.

One suggestion, if I may - don't focus on weight range, try going for a body fat percentage range. No matter how tall you are, 72/74kg (I'm assuming we're talking kilos here  ) would look quite different with 12-13% and 17-18% body fat. It would feel even more different.  

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Leap said:

Sedentary jobs suck, though. No matter how interesting the work, sitting still for 8 hours a day is kinda torturous. Not to mention the havoc that being mentally blitzed but physically awake is playing on my sleeping pattern. 

Tell me about it.  I use an adjustable desk now so at least I don't have to sit all day when I am in the office.  Airplanes, taxis and conference rooms -- when I'm traveling for meetings -- are still, unfortunately, seated. 

Exercise is a great way to mitigate the mental residue of stressful work but when work gets too busy you get the double whammy of additional stress but no exercise to alleviate.  That's where I've been for the past nine weeks and counting.  At least you're still getting your exercise.

[KingintheNorth4]

6 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

??

Do some more research.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be the right choice for your body, goals or fitness program but if I were trying to lose weight by doing a mix of resistance and cardio, I wouldn't be loading up on carbs.  High protein, moderate fat, low complex carbs and very, very low carbs with high glycemic impact.

Best of luck.

I should've used different wording, but to be more specific, what I meant by high carb foods, I meant low-fat, high fiber carbs to create more serotonin and lessen calorie intake. I only wished I changed my diet earlier before I was prescribed medication.

[Iskaral Pust]

I got to the gym last night.  I got home from work around 7:30 and just went straight down.  I won't be able to tonight but I'll try to building on this. 

[KingintheNorth4]

Did 100 crunches today. I'm pretty proud of myself.

[Isis]

On 16/04/2017 at 8:49 PM, Starkess said:

Ways to make your workout harder: go at 8 AM after a night of insomnia! I got maybe 2 hours of (restless) sleep. Every rep was a drag!! Oof. But I did it and then demolished some brunch, so I guess it worked out.

I find tiredness makes exercise so hard in the mornings. Far worse than being dehydrated from drinking the night before. That's surprising to me since my main exercise is Bikram yoga and you'd think the dehydration + heat would be the worst thing. Lack of sleep seems to totally ruin my ability to balance.

Ok, so my yoga studio has gone totally nuts and is encouraging* clients to do this 30 day challenge in May which is mostly diet based with a 10 minute daily workout you can do if you are not going in to do a 60/90 minute yoga practice that day. Initially they said to cut out sugar and I thought, yes that's fine. Sugar is worse for you than fat. Ok, I might go along with this one. The they started going on about gluten and how all grains are toxic to the human race and I thought, actually no, I don't want anything to do with this stuff.

Even a five minute google search on one of the supposed toxins they mentioned told me that it is not actually an issue for most people**. I really have a problem with bad science. I've actually reached a zero tolerance point where I am not prepared to take any dietary or nutritional advice from anyone who doesn't have either a chemistry or a biology degree. If you don't know the basic organic chemistry/biochemistry then you don't understand what you're talking about and you can be causing damage to others by giving them misinformation.

TL, DR: I have given up added sugar (would probably still eat a dessert on a special occasion just not planning to eat sugary snacks routinely) but I have big concerns about the people running my yoga studio and their shitty science.

 

*NB they are NOT being pushy about it on an individual basis, I just mean that they are heavily promoting it on social media and at the studio.

**I'm not a nutritionist but I have two biomedical science degrees, I work as a registered health professional and I am capable of judging whether scientific sources are reliable or not.

[Iskaral Pust]

@Isis  You raise a great point that a lot of exercise/fitness providers have moved into holistic health and fitness, sometimes as a way to push their profitable juice bar, sometimes as a way to attach themselves to lifestyle movements, and the yoga/goop/paleo/clean cabal is a prime example.  I understand they need a new fad to seem fresh, innovative and relevant, but most new fads are generally wrong or over-emphasize and generalize minor benefits to a select population.

 

For me, I was at the gym on Saturday for upper body weights, which went well although time restrictions meant I had to it cut short and drop some minor exercises.  On Sunday I decided against squats & dead lifts and did some rowing instead: 3x1km, all sub 4:00.  It's depressing to think that less than two years ago I was rowing 5km without interruption at 21:00-23:00, but that's what happens when you give up all cardio for so long.