Towards a healthier lifestyle

I was back in the gym today.

I gym at Virgin Active… (I am allowed to advertise on my own blog…)

Before today, I was in the gym about two weeks ago. In the bigger scheme of things that isn’t such a long time. I have been with Virgin Active for more than five years (that is about 60 months, or 260 weeks), after all.

All the branches has that machine that measures your weight, blood pressure, body fat and heart rate. Before I started with my exercising today, I took all my measurements…

According to the machine, I weigh 130.6 kg today. My blood pressure is 143/84 mmhg (whatever that means!), my heart rate is 90 bpm, and I have 33.8% body fat.

I don’t have a clue what any of that means. Also, I don’t really know how to get it better.

I just know that I am focussing on cardio exercises at the moment. I don’t really know what that means, exactly. Apparently it will help me to become more fit… And at the moment I need to get more fit.

I see myself as rather unhealthy. This blog entry is the first of (hopefully) a good and faithful series, in which I want to share my road to a healthier lifestyle (with myself, and also with anyone who want to read it).

One of my inspirations is people… People who look unhealthy. Maybe I could have used a few other words, instead of “unhealthy”. “Over-weight” might be one of those words. “Super-fat” is another one (this is my blog, so I can call that a word). I’m not one who can judge other people’s looks. I would have to judge my own looks if I want to start to judge others’ looks. Somewhere in my unconscious the thought has started to come to my mind that “I don’t want to look like that”… and that thought comes especially when I see those “super-fat” people. It seems uncomfortable!

I feel uncomfortable at times… And I’m not even that unhealthy!

One of my other inspirations is a youtube video that I recently saw. The title of the video is: “One mans 120 pound journey”. Take a look at it.

Throughout this series, I will share more of my inspirations.

For now, I will stop at this point. I hope to blog more faithfully than in the past. But I have this other clear aim: To exercise more faithfully than I did in the past two weeks… and toe exercise more faithfully than what I blogged over the past 12 months!

My road to a healthier life(style)

I have been trying to write this piece for about the last three weeks. I have been writing a lot before today (14 January 2013). As I read through it again, I realised again how much of it I have to change.

My original idea with this piece, was to talk about one of my newyears’ resolutions: to lose weight, get healthy, and get fit. The basic ideas stays the same, but the words are changing a lot…

So, without you realising it, here I go AGAIN…

I have been trying for very long to weigh about 100kg.

When a person want to lose weight, there are a few basic things that you have to do, like:

• Exercise!
• Eat right
• Well, that is all I can think about, for now…

I have this “amazingly awesome” gym contract at Virgin Active – for about three years already (I will give an exact period of time in a later blog).

I still remember the first year of my exercising. I exercised at least five (5) times per week – and it was serious exercising! I have to say that I got quite fit (although most likely not Comrades-running fit!).

Some time after those twelve months, something happened, though… I became tired of exercising hard and losing “only” two (2) kilograms per month… I didn’t really think that it is a process to loose weight… I also didn’t really eat “super” healthy, in spite of my exercising programme.

I also think I had wrong expectations… I expected that it would always be awesome to gym… I expected that losing weight would come without a better eating plan… I expected that fitness would just come within a year…

During the next year and a half (about 18 months), I exercised rather fluctuatingly… And I ate much less healthy. At least I always stayed within my ideal weight of just under 130kg (after I weighed about 120kg at one stage!).

I exercised about six (6) times per month, to keep my Discovery-coverage “alive” (more about that in a later blog).

It must have been about the second week of December 2013. One day I was confronted with a 134kg on the scale! There and then I realised that I have to get serious about my exercising, and also start to work on a better eating plan… My life depends on it!

Since then, I have been exercising about 5-6 times per week.

I don’t exercise extremely hard. I realised that if I exercise a little every day, I don’t have to exercise super hard on two (2) days per week…

I were also rather unfit at the start of my recent serious exercising program, so I am working slowly but surely to get fit again as well.

It is a process…

One of my new year resolutions is to blog more.

Here is where two of my new year resolutions cross… My resolution to blog more, and my resolution to get healthier.

This year, I am going to write a series of blogs, with the title, “My road to a healthier life”. So, this is the first entry in this new series that I am starting…

My road to a healthier life: Part 1 – The realisation to eat healthy and to exercise

My health…

I try to get to the gym often, and I try to eat more healthy.

Until about six months ago, this statement was 100% true for my own life. I never had a super-perfect diet. I did watch what I ate, though. It is that well-known though of eating less calories, and so on. I was in the gym almost every day. I had a relative balanced workout- program.

Somewhere in the last six months, I stopped exercising as faithfully as I used to, and started to eat more “richly”. I started to exercise three days instead of six days of the week. Later I only exercised one day in every two weeks. I defended myself, by saying that I was busy with studies and quiet time (which might also get a post at some stage). I comforted myself with the fact that I at least got exercise during two hockey practices each week. That was only true for a short while, though. I exercised with that team for about two weeks. When I stopped exercising with them (because I was unfit and didn’t have much skill anyway), I didn’t start with regular work in the gym again. I exercised about 2-3 times a month!

I didn’t do that much effort with my diet anymore. As I already said: I never had a super-perfect diet. I did eat certain foods and stayed away from others, though. In some way, the “slacking” in my exercising program transferred to a “slacking” in my diet. I always had the tendency to eat when I was under stress. The last few months was somewhat stressfull in my life. That old habit of eating-under-stress came to the fore in a strong way.

About three weeks ago, I got onto the scale before one of my very few gym-sessions. I almost got the freight of my life when I saw what happened! I weighed about 128 kg! When I started to exercise, I weighed a little over 130 kg!. At the beginning of the year, I weighed less than 115 kg! That meant that I loss 3 kg in about two months, but that I gained 15 kg in less than nine months! I couldn’t believe it! Did I “let myself go” that hugely?

A person doesn’t really know how unhealthy you live, until you are confronted with it so directly.

In the last three weeks, I exercised in some way almost every day. One of those weeks I spent at the sea, and there was daily opportunities to walk for long distances. The other weeks I was in the gym almost daily.

This will become one of the aims of this new format of my blog: to use it to keep myself accountable en to do more daily effort” with my exercising and eating programs. I actually hope that there will be someone who will join me on this attempt to become healthy, who will be inspired to start living healthy as well, and who will keep me accountable with regards to my own exercising and eating programs.

This will probably be a journey for me, and hopefully someone will be inspired to join my journey in some way.

Until next time