Fitness / Life Update...

It's been the best part of a week since I posted about fitness, so here's how it's been going.

Jogging has been going well. We go every weekday, not at weekend (my friends didn't want to). But the main part is I've stuck to it so far, and feel better for it. On Friday we managed to complete an entire jogged lap of the park, and now I am keeping track with my Garmin I can see that our pace is improving steadily. Sadly the snow melting has made things a bit boggy, but it's still good.

I've kept with the daily mini-workouts, and while I haven't had another larger one since (I've literally been working constantly in my free time) I feel like I'm improving, all ready to up to 20pushup 40sittups in the morning. Hopefully having another larger workout if I get some free-time in my schedule.

I've been eating healthier recently, taking more time to make a larger healthier meal and then go for quick re-heats of it for subsiquent meals. the time management is roughly the same over time, but the content is better. I'm also able to afford smoothie again which is a big bonus.

As far as consumption of fluids is going, I know I meant to drink 2litres/day, but I've only been managing 1.5/day. I don't personally see this as a failure, the intake has upped significantly, and while my bladder doesn't really approve, I feel good for it.

Nothing on the whiteboard front. But I stopped looking when ebay didn't insta-yield perfect results lol.

I have held fire on the sleeping pills, and also the sleeping pattern. In the past 4 days I've only had a few hours a night. Been working myself hard and burning the candles, I'm thinking another reset at the weekend coming, be it stay-up and reset or pill/alcohol induced coma reset I'm not sure yet, we'll see. But while I like being up late, it's not great considering it's now approaching 3am and I have lectures in the morning... we'll see.

So that's the update. More to come soon I'm sure.

PS

I've also decided that the QOTD/LOTD are most likely going to be a twitter exclusive thing, so follow me @quotesandrants or hit the like button and check the facebook page for both feeds combined.

False Security - QOTD...

So it seems it's only the times when you think your doing really well when pain creeps up on you.

I thought I was doing just fine, and then I look through some old photo's (foolishly). Just seeing her be auto-untagged was like a knife through the heart.

To finish with today "Quote of the Day" taken from a song, and slightly adapted.

"The loved-ones that leave us will always hold a place."

Peace.

So Today I Want To Talk Fitness...

I've spent a lot of time today trying to work out a decent regime for myself. For me it's an important part of "the new me", so I've come up with a plan to get fit, get healthy, and most importantly, I've tried to make it do-able.

I could go back over this blog and find countless failed plans of self improvement, and for fear of sounding like a broken record, hopefully this one will be different. I guess technically I can't call the last one an entire failure, it was unduly interrupted and I did carry it back on. This is a step-up, and evolution if you will, of that.

So I guess the main changes in this compared to any other plan I've tried is the incentives an motivations that apply on a personal level. This is really important, when I've failed before it's been out of laziness, lack of drive, and being poorly motivated. This time I've picked a few aspects that interest me:

My friends. It's easy to let yourself down, but I hate letting down other people, especially my friends. I'm now going to be jogging daily with two of my course-mates. It's not my activity of choice, but it's sociable, and good for cardio and legs, two area's I need to get fitter in for cycling. Even if all else goes to pot, this should stay going based on the lack of wanting to let others down. We've done the first two runs in the snow now, so should be easy to keep going with improving weather.

I'm a geek, if I can drive this with technology you can bet your bottom dollar I will. For cycling I already have the Garmin Edge 705. I can use the heart-rate monitor in every little workout I do and it will also track duration. I will now be using it for pace, heart-rate, distance, and laps when Jogging. I've been using the SportTracks on my computer to analyse the data from this for a while, but haven't done so for ages. I'm now using the software with a complete athlete profile measuring my personal stats and assigning my workouts to it. For me the incentive of making my stats improve or increasing the graph is HUGE, and seeing progress on a graph is rewarding. I'm also going to be inputting the profile data daily, making me more likely to workout more on days when I haven't done much.

Today for the first time in a while I had a proper workout in the evening. It was simple, and basic, but good effort, and I felt better for it. I'm going to try to continue with these when I can fit them in, ideally daily just before tea. Will have to see, no promises.

One thing that has always held me back health-wise is water. I hate drinking it. I've stocked up on the tesco-value and am now going to Aim to drink 2litres/day of squash. I should feel alot better for this again, as I tried it once before near the end of last year (academic) and so will just try and stick to it better this time.

I want to get a white board, or if not big reminder posters. So it's a big reminder of what I have left to do today for my daily routine to succeed.

I shall have Kinect for Christmas. So this will help with morning workouts in the new year. Hopefully I will have the sleeping pattern cracked by then.

I'm going to hold-fire on the sleeping pills for a little while. After having a little fail with them recently I got them to work by combining them with 3pints of cider... not my best idea granted, but there we go. I have noticed they make me feel more drowsy in the early part of the morning, and as part of this was me just wanting to get up earlier that kind of defeats the object :S

Well that's all I can remember for now. I'm late for bed again, but I wanted to bash this out before sleep.

Until next time, big love xxx

You Know You Need Help When...

So it's night's like these when you realise you're not okay... and there's no quick fix, no one person that will make things okay... no one thing that those who mean the most can say.

But that's fine... you're only human.

Just don't do anything drastic... anything stupid... talk to someone... don't hold it all inside and expect to be the master of your own emotions... because you're not... and there's nothing wrong with that... The only weakness is pretending everything's fine when it clearly isn't.

Just remember, like me, everyone has someone, you may think you're a burden to them, but you're not, there's no point crying out in an empty room... let them in... let them help... be smarter than I am.

1 week into the new me...

It's been a while since my last post so I thought a quick update was due. Generally things a re going pretty well. With the exception of 'the morning after the night before' I've been getting up at 7, having a small work out and then getting up properly. The only trouble is that that's been 3 out of the 7 days this week. That said that's a definate improvement on the happiness side of life, and I have felt healthier within myself.

With the snowfall I've been riding my propper bike again. I really want to get back into this again and take it seriously. The trouble is the cold leaves me ill-equipped and the longer I leave it the worse I'll ride initially when I do start up again. But that's for the other blog.

So one thing I have done is start taking sleeping pills. All natural over the counter ones, but it's medication none-the-less. They say take the n hour before bed and settle, and this is helping with a nice routine. However as you may guess by this late post, atleast to some extent they aren't working. Tonight insomnia defeated the pills. But hopefully I won't be too disheartened by this and will just have to try again tomorrow night.

Tonight in an effort to tire myself out, I made the first incriment in my workout routine. It went well. Hopefully this is news I will be able to continue to tell you.

Until next time, good night xxx