125.7 KMs and Counting..

I am late, terribly late by 10 days of my due post - It's better late than never! I continue to run with my posts too :).

Feb has been lean for me as I was away from workout schedule for good 15 days [ out of 28 !] . Great temple visits and awesome family gathering and some conferences took away my 15 days - but I had absolute fun!

Let us take a quick look at last 38 days.. and some observations from those fun loaded days!

Pros

• I kicked the inertia and started to run again, it was tough to start back , but I did start again
• I signed up for assisted personal training - on 1st March , I realized I am ready to go to the next rung and signed up for some expert help. Now I get 4 days a week of going the extra-mile - man, it does pain to push the limits!
• Due to High Intensity training from Jan, my knees complained a bit [ especially when I chose to run at 18 to 20 KM/H for non-stap 1 KM laps. The vacation and break in Feb was a blessing in disguise and the 15 days provided complete relief to my knees,quads and calves. Also gave me sometime to reflect on my schedules and some changes.
• I lost 1 inch of fat around my waist [ as a dear one says, it is not my waist but the trousers [all of them] chose to expand by an inch ! :)]
• I got a big team of - health junkies signed up at the gym ![ no reference bonus :( , but hey it is always good to motivate others towards the right things , ah [ I can say I am one of those factors [ their health checks and weight might have been #2 & 3 respectively]

Improvements Needed:

• I don't yet follow a strict diet - don't get me wrong - I don't do Alcohol,Smoking and the usual junk, but I don't eat on time and don't follow a prescribed schedule and tend to load my last meal of the day.
• I am being lazy to track my food details in the Fitness Pal, starting now, I will enter every detail[ a promise to the self], because what cannot be measured cannot be changed !
• Weekends, the calorie load is increasing, need to trim them a bit
• Need to load up food with more fruits and greens.
• My biceps tend to be weak and I need to pump more and that's where my expert's help will come in handy.

As of today I lag behind by 62 KMs of my actual target of running and staying fit [ Planned target was 188 KMs and my actual is 125.7 kms as of today].That's Okay, balancing my work/life and other priorities I am doing the best I can and I don't curse for not making up 188 KMS yet, I know I can beat the 1000 KMs target to pulp, so here I come, my target.

Keep running and inch towards your progress ! Start Now !
 

Bhaagh Milka Bhaag

The title of this post is not directly related to this post. But yes I did derive some doses of inspiration from the Flying Sikh movie.

I have been going to gym for almost 8 years now. In spite of my gym regime, I gradually added weight, from lean to over-weight. The one major reason was lack of discipline – in eating [I never really pinched on the sugars and fats and never did I stick to the discipline of eating on time], following a process [no specific schedule for gym, no proper diet]. Last year as I stepped on to weighting machine it turned to 97 kgs giving me a major alarm, also my body fat was hovering around a good 29%. I wanted to do something about it and was pretty irritated and of course felt restless. Coming from an operations world, I live with data every day and understand the importance of tracking data and therefore the informed decisions, but that was something I was not taking into account with respect to myself. That was the time I started taking pictures of my cardio-activities everyday- the picture would capture the distance and the calories burnt

This continued for almost 6 months then the biggest problem was extracting the data [distance and appx. calories]. I was searching for a nice app that can track my fitness activities and ran into as usual a myriad of options. I tried couple of them before really getting hooked on to Runtastic Pro. That was the beginning of tracking the data- may be a quantify me moment! I realized that running has been a big weakness for me - right from my school days I was least interested in running competitions and was never inclined towards running. I stayed away from running for a long time [old habits die hard!

  

    I started tracking my data using Runtastic on the 24th of March 2013. That’s when I started running consciously, earlier I did but always gave in on the first sign of exhaustion and sweat. Days rolled by and the data kept pouring into the system. On 31st Dec my runtastic clocked 324 KMs of running and cycling for the year of 2013. There were some additional workouts that I did not enter in runtastic but were captured the old way of pictures that had no real shelf value. My 2014 target is 1000 KMs of running+cycling and/or any other cardio activities. That is almost 3 Kms everyday [ 2.73 to be specific]. But I go to gym 5 days a week so try to balance the required distance in 5 days almost 5 kms a day of running in 30 minutes. It is been one month since my start and I did 82.5 Kms in January.

At the end of month I weigh 94 Kgs and my fat has gone down to 24% and I feel pretty good and fit. I need to inculcate the habit of eating healthy and sticking to time, now given the crazy schedules we all live in, I often found my reasons of not eating healthy and/or on time on something external rather than the intrinsic discipline and the strong motivation. I often have strong cravings especially those days that I don't get a full night sleep [I sleep about 6 hours on a normal day]. If my sleep is reduced then my cravings go up, I have observed one more hard to break pattern - I need to have belly full food before the dinner ! I am trying to break away from some of these observed patterns that are not good for health. I also started to track my food habits a week ago and I use FitnessPal app for tracking my food intake [My Runstaic Pro is integrated with MyFitnessPal]. Calorie count is important but not THE measure that keeps me going. I will come back to you on 1st of March with my progress but do note, if I can run so can you - start small and make sure you eat into your laziness and start doing those little things that will give you a feel good factor. I feel awesome every time I step out of the gym - just one another day - my motivation wins over the inertia and laziness.