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No sooner do I make a couple of posts about my fitness routine and some healthy eating tips than I find myself going to the ER this morning because of chest pains. That, my friends, is the definition of irony.

Turns out I have Costochondritis, which means the cartilage that connects my ribs & sternum is inflamed. I felt a bit silly for going to the ER for heart pains (a 28-year-old shouldn’t be having a heart-attack) but after I read that “Costochondritis symptoms are similar to the chest pain associated with a heart attack,” I felt a bit better.

So now I have to take it easy and pop some pills to ease the pain & inflammation. Good news is that my heart was given a clean bill of health!

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 10:55 am and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I started writing a reply to a comment on my 9-month update, but it got to be too long. So here’s a brief summary of my fitness routine:

Fitness
I’ve been doing plyometrics twice a week and (lately) lifting 3 days / week. When the weather is nicer (not too hot, not too cold, not too dark) I run about 3.5 miles. Ideally, I’d do plyometrics twice a week, run twice a week and lift twice a week. Oh, and I try to bike to the gym, but I don’t like biking in the dark (almost got hit by a car one day).

Having someone to workout with is key. There’s a group of us that keep each other motivated, and harass one another if someone skips a workout. The trainer we work with pushes us hard, and I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for him. I think his military background helps… I need someone calling me a cheese-puff when I want to quit.

The other key ingredient in getting fit is time. Stick with it. It took me 9 months to do what I did. The first day the weather passes 50 degrees, don’t decide to go to the gym to get fit by summer. If you want to be fit for next summer, you should’ve started last summer.

Dieting
As for dieting, I’m horrible at that. There’s a few reasons why… healthy food is more expensive than processed stuff, I have kids in the house, and my wife loves to bake.

That being said, I do have a few diet tips:

1. Drink lots of water
2. Eat every 3 hours
3. Eat with your left hand. It’ll slow you down. Take a bite, but down your fork, swallow, take a sip of water, repeat
4. Use the small plate. You’ll put less food on your plate, and it’ll look fuller
5. Right after dinner, brush, floss and rinse. If you’re like me and hate the flossing routine, you’ll be far less likely to eat at night

Any of those fad diets or pills or whatever all have fine print: “diet and exercise are recommended”. Save your money, skip the other stuff and just go with diet and exercise.

I’ve followed Weight Watchers before and learned a lot from it. In my opinion, it’s not a diet but rather an education on how to pick the right foods to eat. It also gets you in the habit of writing down everything you eat, which is key when you’re dieting. You don’t have to run out & join the program - look for Weight Watchers Starter Kits on eBay. It’s all you need.

My final tips are to stay off the scale! Get a trainer to measure your body fat and weigh you every 3 months or so. If I only used a scale, I would have been very depressed that I work out very hard, and have only a 1-pound difference to show. However, since I was getting my body fat measured, I now know I replaced 16 pounds of fat with muscle. If you need to, use photos. Since you see yourself in the mirror every day, you won’t notice the difference, but looking back 3 months at a time, you’ll be able to see it.

I once told Steve, “Money doesn’t come easy, or else everyone would be rich“. The same goes for fitness:

Getting in shape doesn’t come easy, or else everyone would have the body of their dreams.

Stick with it, and good luck!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

It’s been 9 months since I started really training hard. I don’t know what I’m training for - I guess just a healthier lifestyle. I’m not the best at eating healthy, but I’d rather not be completely miserable, so I eat pretty much what I want. But I’m pretty strict about getting to the gym (not as much as some people, but better than most).

Well Monday was my 9-month check-up, and my body fat has dropped to 12.5%. Having started at 22%, I can’t believe how far I’ve come. I’ve now set a goal of 11% by March 15th, my 1-year anniversary. If I can drop half of my body fat in 1 year, that’d be fantastic.

During the past 9 months, my weight has gone from 170 to 171, which means I’ve added 16 pounds of muscle. I’ll need to replace 2.5 pounds of fat with muscle in 3 months to meet my goal - easily done, I hope.

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 9:06 am and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Oops - with November starting on Thursday this year, Thanksgiving is early. Very early. Only 2 weeks away now. I thought it was 3 weeks away! Well, there goes a week that I was going to use for Turkey Trot training and finishing up the lights!

Last night I picked up the Cub Scout popcorn order and with a few of the other helpful parents, sorted it all out. Now there’s lots & lots of popcorn in my house, waiting to be picked up. I hope a lot of parents come today to get theirs.

Somehow, I convinced Steve to run this morning, so I went to his place at 7AM and we ran down to the lighthouse and back. My GPS reception wasn’t that great, but I’ve posted the run at MotionBased.com. It was kind of cold - I should’ve had a wind-breaker layer on. Overall, I’m happy with this run. Hopefully I can run again Monday morning.

So today, I’ll be putting up more lights, adding the FM transmitter to my new Mr. Christmas (and this time I’ll take photos & post a tutorial) and hopefully be done with the lights, except the trees on the front lawn which I haven’t built yet.

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 9:43 am and is filed under Christmas, Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

In 2 weeks, I’m going to try to complete a 10k run at Letchworth. My goal is to complete it in under 1 hour, so I’ll have to keep a 9:40 pace. Sounds easy enough. Maybe if I get Ray drunk at poker, he’ll agree to join me

The farthest I’ve ran is 5.77 miles at a 8:40 pace, but that was last year. I don’t know if I could do that today.

However, I had my body fat remeasured this week and I’m down to 15-1/2%. 6 months ago I was at 22%, and 3 months ago 20%. Imagine if I watched what I ate what I could be down to

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under Fitness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

This past weekend I ran in the Letchworth 5K, known to me as the longest 5K race. Since I run with my Garmin, I’m able to track how far I actually run, compared to how the race officials measure the course. This time, it was 3.25 miles. Either way… still a hard race.

This was a 5K race, not a 5K run. There’s a big difference. I need to get into more races, if I want to do the Turkey Trot in 40 minutes.

You can see the course and details of my run here. My official time was 0:27:30 which is an 8:51 pace. I finished 76th overall, and 7th in the Male 20-29 group. Andy (now engaged!!!) crossed right behind me. Tom was with me for the first mile, then took off, finishing in 25:05, while his girlfriend kept up a 10:18 pace finishing in an even 32:00.

There’s another race at Delaware Park this weekend… I may do that to get more race experiences.

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 8:54 am and is filed under Fitness, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.