Mr. A. Making a habit of it

One of the things I hear a lot is that it’s though to go out and do sports after you get home from a long day of work / study and that getting off the couch is half the battle of working-out.

I too had a hard time leaving home to do a workout in the beginning and after a while it gets “easier” and it’s not really the exercise getting easier because the intensity just goes up as you get into better shape, but more so that it is just something you do. I firmly believe it’s all about making your workout a habit, like taking a shower I the morning, brushing your teeth, once you begin to look at it like a habit it’s a lot easier to try to turn it into a habit.

Here are a few tips

1. Planning: If you want to make something a habit, plan it out, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6pm to 7pm I am going to…
2. Join a Team / Club or do it with a friend, If you don’t want to haggle with planning it yourself joining a team with scheduled training is great, if doing it with a friend it will raise the comitment level
3. For both 1-2 apply that it’s something you can put in a calendar and maintained as something you need to do and not plan other overlapping stuff
4. Keep on track, The beginning is always the hardest part the claim is usually that it takes 21-30 days to create a new habit so these are the days that are going to be though, and the mind will try to “distract” you with other tempting offers, here the schedule and your commitment to that schedule will help you through.

Once made into a habit, tying those running shoes, going to the gym, whatever training you fancy will be a lot easier!

But remember Breaking the habit is an easy as creating it, so after you established it you got to maintain a 3 week vacation without workout is enough to put you back to where you started “habit wise”

Mr. A. a short update

Here is a short update fro the past week.

Pretty much everything is going decently, good food, loads of training and slow but steady progression, all in all a very good week.

Workout for this week looked like this:

Monday: I participated in the DHL Staffeten, which is a 5x5k run for companies with more than 20'000 participants each day summing to 120'000 in one week, I ran my 5k in around 22:30 which I was very happy with

Tuesday: I had Boxing

Wedensday: i Swam 2km and biked 45km

Thursday: Boxing

Friday: Biked 20km

Saturday: Biked 57Km with a lot of headwind and a 7,3kg bagpack

Sunday: My day off

I only had 1 less than ideal day, and that was Sunday, were I had a day of restitution, but it also included a buffet in the evening (I did manage to hold myself back somewhat, but still it wasn't ideal and i did eat a bit too much and when I got home I had some “desert cakes thingies as well”, It could have been a lot worth though and there will always be bumps in the road to progression and it’s important to cut yourself some slack, I’m looking forward to next Sundays weigh in! 

Hopefully I will manage to win again this week!

Mr. A. - A weekend of activities.

My weekend started off with an off-day, only biking a bit as transportation.

Saturday: I had a small transportation bike ride of 7 km in the morning, and in the early afternoon I started my long bike ride in total the long ride ended up at 83 Km, which I am quite happy with.

There were a ton of hills and a ton of wind which made it quite hard, especially the last 25 km where though both physically and mentally but I managed to pull through.

Sunday: We had our bi-weekly weigh in.

This week ended in a slow but steady progress and I am now down to 76,3 Kg so still 6,3kg’s to go, not as fast progress as I would have liked, but progress none the less!

The activity this Sunday was (unfortunately for me :P) biking: we ended biking around ~60 km, must confess my ass was a bit sore from the day before, but fortunately for me the speed 7 intensity was a bit lower and there wasn’t as many hills or wind as the day prior so that made it quite a bit easier, after the biking we did a bit of circuit training, and a basketball drill.

I ended up the weekend with some homemade burgers, and ice cream as desert, I feel it’s ok to “celebrate” your achievements and reward yourself :-).

Today it's back to the regular schedule!

Mr. A. Just do it!

Everyone have days where you are, tired, lethargic, unmotivated, lazy, and basically you don’t feel like doing a workout, and find a million excuses not to workout.

The solution is pretty straight forward, just do it! Show up to the workout and just attend, once you are there, once you get the running shoes on and get out the door, the workout will work itself and you will get through it, and get all the benefits it provides!

Even if it is not going to be your top most intense workout, it will still be a workout and a step moving forward.

So just do it!

Mr. A. Rescheduling training

I’ll just start off with: "I had a great swim today in total 3 km"

 

• 400m freestyle warm-up
• 200m (12.5m crawl non breathing 12.5m normal)
• 3x (400m crawl arms(pull buoy) +200m breaststroke)
• 100m freestyle
• 4x (25m crawl sprint 25m free)
• 300m freestyle warm-down

 

And now for the actual subject:

  

Due to the Outer snapping hip I have been forced to reschedule my training a bit to lessen the stress on the cords and hopefully reduce the inflammation

 

So the new training plan will be largely based on swimming and then attempt to keep some of the other activities up as well

  

So for now it will look like this:

• Mon: Swimming
• Tue: Boxing
• Wed: Swimming
• Thu: Boxing
• Friday: Free or Swimming or Random activity
• Sat: Biking or Swimming or Random activity
• Sun: Biking / bi-weekly activity

 

I’m not quite set on the weekends yet.

 

This is the initial plan and I will likely have to adjust it depending on how my hip ends up behaving

 

 

 

 

Mr. A. – Old injuries reemerging

So this tends to happen every time I attempt to get back into doing sports, and it has always been what ended up putting a stop to my training, and now it is reemerging.

Outer snapping hip, when fully emerged it appears as a snap every time I take a step and ends up being quite painful, and removes any kind of possibility for running and even walking ends up being painful.

Luckily it has not set in fully but I can begin to feel the snapping sensation, and I know from past experiences that I’m not far off from it getting to be a big issue.

I found some exercises that should, in time, help strengthening the area, and I think going to physiotherapy might be something I should look into

Mr. A. Having Easy ”go to” meals #1

Some days are easier than others, especially when you are trying to lose weight, and having to go shop on one of those days, usually won’t end up with a good result.

To avoiding this scenario I sugest you have 3 “go to” meals you are always able to make.
These should be:

1. Be healthy
2. Be easy and fast to prepare (shouldn’t take more than 20 mins)
3. Should always be in stock at home

This is my own go to meal #1 I will post #2 and #3 at another time

1. Stir fry x egg’s in a wok, with a little oil (I always have eggs
2. Add - Meat Salmon, Tuna, Chicken etc. (I always keep frozen chicken at home just in case
3. Add random veggies you have example. Spinach, Broccoli, tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, anything goes (try to keep a large portion of the total volume of the dish veggies for the health benefit.
4. Keep stir frying, Add, some: salt, pepper, soya, fish sauce, lime, lemon whatever you like, I usually go for soya / fish sauce and if the meet is fish I add lime.
5. Serve with: Rice, noodle or pasta, you can go for wholegrain here if you’d like to make it even healthier.

Once You get used to making this dish it can easily be done within 20 min’s and you should always have left over veggies you can use.

I love this, because it’s such a flexible recipe, its healthy it’s easy to make, and it tastes great

Mr. A. - Doing several things at the same time

So i'm the kind of guy that usually likes to go "all in" with this kind of stuff and the one thing i find the most difficult is to increase the amount i'm training while at the same time attempting to limit my intake

Were I to advice other people i would definitely say start with one thing, and slowly build on the other, ie. i would likely advice them to start increasing the amount of training they do, and slowly start improving their diet.

Doing both at once leads to a lot of balance issues, you exercise more so your body needs more energy, but how much more, and you might not want to give it more since you are trying to limit it to lose weight.

I personally find it difficult to figure out how much i need to eat with the increased training, but i keep my focus on the fact that the food needs to be healthy first and foremost, if the weight doesn't decrease than i will have to make further reductions in my eating habits.


I would recommending only working on improving 1 thing at a time at the very beginning, and after you  have gotten into the habit of doing it i would improve on the other aspect.

Mr. A. 8 Tips to eating less

So one of the 9 simple rules from one of my blogposts from last week was “don’t eat too much”.

Eating too much is somewhat hard to decipher, how much is too much, how much is too little, and when you at the same time are increasing the amount you train, it becomes even more difficult to find a good ballance.

Here are some tips to eating less

1. Drink a large glass of water 30-15 minutes before a meal
2. Drink a large glass of water while eating sipping in between bites not just waiting until you have eaten and then drinking.
3. Chew your food extra thoroughly (something I personally need to improve. I tend to just swallow my food
4. Use a smaller plate, a smaller plate will look full faster than a larger plate you will tend to fill the plate up regardless of its size.
5. Take salads/vegies first, they fill a lot of the plate making room for less of the “heavier food”
6. Avoid bringing your pots and pans into the living room, take a serving, and then pack the food away or let it cool off, eat in another room, and don’t go back for seconds, and if your really feel like you need some more to fill your stomach, go for veggies.
7. Pack left overs in potion sizes, instead of keeping the left overs as a big pile pack them into potions and just take one when you need lunch or dinner.
8. take 15-20% less food than you would normally, this should come naturally with the smaller plates

Following these tips might be easier said than done, but i will attempt to follow them as best i can in the following weeks

Mr. A. Sunday rumble - Day report

So as we have officially started i thought i might as well kick off hard this sunday, so i decided to go for 2 training passes today.

Starting with a 4,5 Km Run 50 Km Bike ride and another 4,5 Km Run.

Late afternoon I went to the gym, did around 35 mins of cardio, Some Core muscle strengthening, and a bit of muscle workout as well, low reps(1-6) with high weight.

I want neural adaptations rather then to actually build muscle which would be counter productive in regards to losing weight, but ended up having a few sets go over 6 reps

All in all a pretty damn good day

Introduction: Mr. M.

Hi there I’m Mr M.

Age: 32 | Height: 163 cm /5’4 Feet | Weight 68 kg’s / 150 lbs.

A bit of background:

I've lived most of my life in Copenhagen, and as far as I remember, always been a chubby guy. I didn't do much physical activity, and I remember running at school was the last thing I wanted to do. I've had some initial health issues with high blood pressure. Then, around a year ago, I started working out with Mr. A., and I think it has helped me a lot getting more healthy. Weight wise I went down from around 70-72 kg down to my current weight today.

Goals:

Starting Date: 01/08/2013 || Goal Date: 01/11/2013
Weight goals -- Get below, and maintain sub 63 Kg / 139 lbs and a body fat percentage sub 20%, with a long term goal of around 16%.
Training goals -- Maintain a good training schedule, focusing on increasing core muscle and reducing fat (mainly around waist).

Sports: I would like to play some more squash :).

Inherent problems:

So we all have our own problems we need to work on and here are a few of my “issues”.

Maintaining workout: I am very dependent on others to push me, as my self-commitment is rather non-existent.
Prior injuries: Only have some issues with my left shoulder, when I do too much push ups. Perhaps the arm needs more strengthening. Otherwise, isn't an injury per say.

I have control over sugar intake and can control what I eat to a certain extent. There can be times where I am lazy though, where I tend to buy take away a lot.

Mr. A. Weigh in’s + events:

We finally decided the bi weekly weigh ins and they are going to be every 2’nd Sunday starting the 11’th of august and ending the 3’rd of November, were the 3 month period will have ended.

Every weigh in will be accompanied by an event were we go train / experience something new together.

The event is put together by one of the participants, and it is pretty much open to any kind of activity, being a more hardcore workout, or a fun sport that none of us have tried before.

For the 11’th I am going to be in charge, and Mr. M. And Mr. G will have something to look forward to.

If you have ideas for activities you are more than welcome to post a comment

Mr. G. - Warm Up, Slow Start but Nice Food.

It's already August the 2nd. where I had planned to write more about what happened the day before. However, the 1st. was what I would call a very slow start. It all started and ended with myself doing 2x30 pushups for the day and that was about it :-P. The day before, on the 31st, I biked around 10km, which is pretty much nothing - 2 rounds of around 5km :).

The Lunch Dinner Stuff
On the 31st of July, I consumed stone baked oven pizza with pepperoni and another with some piglet pork. So there went any "exercise" for that day :).

On the 1st of August, for dinner I ate meatballs and vegetables with Thai curry and rice. With it being very good, I definitely could have eaten more of it, had I cooked even more :). Thus after this, I decided to gobble on some leftover homemade coleslaw salad, which consisted of cabbage, carrots and a little mayonnaise. I unfortunately forgot to take pictures, so look for images for the near future.

And All The Others
For the morning I had oatmeal and cranberries with milk. Throughout the day, I basically snacked on almonds with cranberries mixed with it. Let's just say I'm quickly running out :). I ended up also eating a box of cookies :).

All in all, a slow (possibly bad) start but expect things to pick up soon. :-)

Mr. A. - Lunch in the canteen

One of the problems I face is at work, it’s normal in Denmark to have a canteen at the workplace for lunch, and our canteen gets food from an external company.

Here is an example of one of the not so good days:

• Slices of pork fillet served with potatoes tossed in butter and herbs this cheese cream with flavors of orange and thyme
• Finely sliced ​​cabbage tossed with white wine vinegar, cinnamon, raisins, baked hazelnuts and lemon topped with lemon balm.
• Selection of cheeses with honey glazed nuts.
• Bread with love
• APPLICATION: Asian inspired chicken salad, Hunter Sausage with chornichons and parsley Roasted beef with remo and roasted onions 
• ADDITIONAL: Italian salami with cherry tomato and rucola Boiled Beef with Horseradish Cream Chest

Even though they make it sound good most of this have added something to make it a no go.

• Pork is fine, unfortunately it is especially really fatty pork - No go
• Potatoes are fine, unfortunately they soak them in butter and cream cheese – No go
• Cabbage salad would have been great, if only they had the white wine vinegar on the side instead of premixed. – Depending on how much vinegar - Go/No go
• Selections of cheeses. - No go
• Bread with Love, The rye bread is fine – Go, the white bread - No go.
• All the applications are pretty much a - No go (the Asian inspired salad had loads of dressing in it).
• The only thing there that was acceptable is the roasted beef but only if you opted to take it without the remo and the fried onions. - Go

So what is a starving employee to do if he wants to live healthy, well either you

A: Pick and choose, luckily we do have separated raw veggies and usually there are some stuff that is not on the menu and with the added rye bread and a piece of fruit you can get a decent, but very uninspired meal.
Or
B: The second option is to bring food from home

For now I am sticking with A, but with the food so often being unhealthy I have thought about changing it to make food myself, the problem is it would end up costing more, and might end up being just as limited / uninspiring as what the canteen offers, also the time it takes to prepare in the morning etc. is time I rather be sleeping :-)

If anyone have any experiences with making food from home bringing it to work I would love to hear your thoughts.

Project Officially Started!

The project has now officially begun, after having passed the midnight mark into the 1st of August. Though some decided to start earlier to get "warmed" up, the whole point was to start tracking from today.

The dates for weigh ins and all the lovely metrics are yet to be determined. But once this has been decided, we expect to perform bi-weekly weigh ins and a weekly weigh in to gather a little bit more data. As we progress, we hope to create some graphs to reveal an image of our progress.

Stay tuned for more reports on weigh ins, exercises, drills and most importantly food and diet :).

Mr. A. - A healthy diet

Usually when you hear ppl talking about losing weight they are going to talk about a diet, and then followed up by some more or less crazy diet they read or heard about, and even while some of them might, work in regards to losing weight I wouldn't exactly call them well balanced or healthy.

So rather than following a cut in stone crazy diet I am going to follow, and am going to recommend following these 9 simple rules:

• Eat lots of different kinds of vegetables every day
• Eat some fruit every day
• Eat whole grains and fiber-rich
• Select healthy sources of fats
• Get protein from lean sources such as chicken, tuna, etc.
• Drink loads of water (Should always be primary liquid source)
• Reduce intake of sugars and sweets
• Avoid junk food
• Do not eat too much

These are kind of vague and that’s on purpose it allows for wiggle room and is not to constrictive, which is in my experience why most people give up on their diet, if you only have a tiny margin for error and you “fail” it will make a huge dent in your motivation

That’s it for now, I’m out. 

Mr. A

Introduction: Mr. G.

Hi there, I'm Mr. G..

Age: 30 | Height: 170 cm /5’6 Feet | Weight: 78 kg’s / 172 lbs.
A bit of background:
I am born and raised in Copenhagen, where I quickly became captivated with the game of basketball at the age of 7. Playing and training every day during school breaks and after school, I soon began playing with the middle school kids instead because of the challenge. As I continued to play, I took interest in many other sports from football to table tennis to badminton. Sports was just my thing until I took a long break and decided to focus more on my studies instead.

Around 6 years ago, I started  playing basketball again and getting into better condition - tough times. I actually got into a decent condition which would have allowed me to keep getting better without feeling the urge to drop and puke. 2 years later, in the middle of a match, my foot got stuck on the hardwood whilst my body changed directions, and I managed to tear my MCL. Limping around this bulging knee, I never really quite recovered. I was soon playing again after 6 months with a sleeve on but I reinjured it at least another 2 times after, so I decided to finally stop.

Long story short, I didn't play as much from that time but I kept eating as much as I usually did. People for some reason called me the Human Blackhole or Human Dispenser - any left overs, just send it down the table. I soon found myself gaining incrementally to where I one day hit 80 kgs and soon after 84 kgs. I had never ever been this heavy before and I knew it wasn't muscle.

I fluctuated between 80 and 84 for some time and seemed to stabilize at 82. Here I started doing a bit more working out and am where I am today at 78-80. I still eat a lot but am unable to eat as much as I used to because my belly is pretty much pregnant.

So for the love of eating, I must lose weight :).

Goals:
Starting Date: 01/08/2013 || Goal Date: 01/11/2013
Weight goals -- Get below, and maintain sub 70 Kg / 155 lbs.
Training goals -- Maintain a good training schedule, start basketball again from September - at least 2 times a week, 1-2 gym workouts, plyometrics, and some running/sprinting.
Running goal -- obtain an ~15km / week schedule and work from there.
Nutrition goals -- [insert here] - to be determined
Sleep goals -- Usual 7-8 hour schedule
Misc/stress goals -- Running basketball dribbling drills outdoors more often.

Inherent problems:
Prior injuries: My knee is working okay but I can still feel that it is weaker than the other overall. At times it acts up a little because I believe it was stretched too many times during the recovery period. Unless I get an operation, this is simply how it will continue to stay. The best I can do for now is to strengthen the leg muscles around the knee further and monitor it as I progress.

Shin problem - Running has often been the main enemy of mine because my shins and the anterior tibialis (the muscle that runs along the front/side of the shin bone) get stiffened up until the point where I am unable to feel much of it anymore. It could come down to the shoes, running style, etc. But this is one thing I will need to monitor.

Food: I love eating - so I'll need to control my diet before I get into a better routine to pig out again :).

Snacking: Sugar based, chips/crisps, nuts, raisens, whatever - put a bag on the table and it'll be gone by the end of the day. Yes, I could simply attempt replacing these with healthier snacks in general :-P.

Introduction: Mr. A.

Hi there i’m Mr A.

Age: 29 | Height: 177 cm /5’8 Feet | Weight 78 kg’s / 172 lbs.

A bit of background:

I live in Copenhagen, but was raised in the suburbs, in my youth; I swam a lot, in the later years I have been doing some random sports most noticeably running, but unfortunately turned idle due to injuries 3 years ago. Around 1 year ago, after gaining quite a bit of weight, I started getting some exercise in that year I have roughly lost 10kg / 22 lbs, but there is still a ways to go to reach my goals.

Goals:

Starting Date: 01/08/2013 || Goal Date: 01/11/2013
Weight goals -- Get below, and maintain sub 70 Kg / 155 lbs.
Training goals -- Maintain a good training schedule, including 3x boxing a week, 2x swimming, 1-2x gym workouts, and as weight goes bellow 75kg start running.
Running goal -- get up to a ~30km / week schedule, and improve 1k time to 3:30.
Nutrition goals -- [insert here]
Sleep goals – Get a solid 7-8H sleep, and keep a constant rhythm/sleeping pattern
Misc/stress goals – don’t let small things bother me, go for a 2-30 min walk around lunch at work to get fresh air and distress from work

Inherent problems:

So we all have our own problems we need to work on and here are a few of my “issues”.

Prior injuries: I have some injuries that might surface again as the intensity and amount of training goes up
Nonstop eater: I eat a lot! and I’m almost always hungry, this worked out well when I was younger and did more sports, but as soon as I stop doing a lot of sporting activities I gain weight like crazy, this goes even worth with my next issue.
Sugar addict: pancakes, Ice-Cream, candy, cakes, pies, softdrinks, pretty much anything and everything with loads of sugars in it I just crave it to no end.
Love that booze: well alcohol is usually not the best thing for sports it is however another part of me I will have to hold back on, as with the sweets and eating in general

Introduction: Project

3 guys 1 goal, lose weight and get into a better shape, and what better way to do this than a friendly non-competition.

Every second week, we are going to do a weight in, focusing on weight and fat percentages of course finding 1-2 winners.

To motivate ourselves, and to make it easier to follow our progress we decided to do this blog, here you will be getting updates on the non-competition, write-ups about training, nutrition and motivation and up's and downs.

The 3 participants are:

• Mr A
• Mr G
• Mr M

Each of us with our own unique background, problems and goals, and we will all be blogging on the site, the first posts will be some write-ups on each of us, our current condition and our goals, short term and long term.