Drachenjager

Okay, time for a post Challenge After Action Report. Main Goal: Get my weight down to 185 lb. (or more accurately, back down to) I started this challenge at 208. As of this morning I weigh 192.5. So I've lost 15.5 pounds in 4 weeks, with only 7.5 pounds to go to hit my target weight. I'm pretty happy with that. Diet Goal: Follow my Carb Cycling for the next four weeks. I followed my made up Carb Cycling Paleo diet for the last four weeks, and it worked even better than I could have hoped. Fitness Goal 1: Run 3 times a week. Got all my runs in, even managed to get a forth run in this week, which will probably be my new pattern. In the second week I got my heart rate monitor working and started monitoring my heart rate, trying to keep it in the proper zone for aerobic conditioning. This slowed my runs down a bit for a week or two, but the pace has come back up while still letting me stay at the right heart rate this last week. Fitness Goal 2: At least 300 Kettlebell swings a week. I had overdone things with my running and strength training goals, and thought I was only going to be able to do my 100 swings a day on my non run days. But after a week of that, I was feeling good and was able to do my swings even on run days. So after the first week I got in 600 swings a week. I had to lower the weight a couple of times when I wasn't 100%, but I always got my swings in. Life Goal: Read my One Year Study Bible every day. I got my reading in, every morning. Didn't miss one. Overall this challenge went incredibly smoothly. A lot easier than other habit changes/ fitness restarts I've done in the past. Going in I didn't feel like I was picking overly easy goals. Achievable goals, yes, but not easy. But they kinda turned out to be easy, and I'm really still not sure why. I think part of it may have be the more public nature of posting the goals, and updates, on the internet. But I'm still not sure exactly what made this go so smoothly, so I'm going to brainstorm on that a bit before picking my goals for the next challenge.

Victory!

Actually those calculations are averaging your TDEE over the course of the week, so that you would be losing weight in workout days but gain it back on non-work out days. In other words your calorie expenditure and consumption wont match up on any given day of the week, but will line up for the week overall. What that means is that they actually think you are burning (200x7)/3=466.6 calories per workout. There is a bit of residual burn from working out, but its not huge. It probably isn't enough to justify the 466 cal per workout number if you already don't think you are burning 200 per workout. The words these calculators have for workout intensity are inexact and there are relativly few categories of intensity, so some inaccuracy is inevitable. You are probably best off doing what you have already said, experimenting for a few weeks to find the right number of calories a day. @Elastigirl mentioned MyFitnessPal above, which is a great tool for tracking workout calories and applying them only to workout days. Starting your experiments by maintaining your 1400 a day on non-workout days, and then adding whatever calories MyFitnessPal tells you you burned on workout days will probably help you find your TDEE with a minimum of experimentation.

Everything Why Not and IslandGirl_Becks said. I love my NB Minimus, I use them for just about everything. I did finally have to buy a pair of trail running shoes for hiking and trail running. It's just too rocky around here and, as everyone else has said, they don't handle stones and rocks well. But that is about the only thing they don't handle well.

I picked up the book too. I was a bit annoyed by the way it is focused on convincing endurance athletes to move their workouts and diet in a primal direction, rather than what i'm guessing is most of the book's audience, primal inclined folks who want to do some endurance events. Nevertheless, I like it and the aerobic base stuff matched up perfectly with stuff I've read from other sources. This is my third week of aerobic base building. At first it was extremely difficult for me to stay under the heart rate limit. My first run was outdoors and the limit was right at that point where you move from walking to running, so I was forced to spend most of my time walking. Then in a way I kind of got lucky for my next couple runs. It was pouring rain, so I didn't have much choice but to go to the gym and do my runs on a treadmill. I HATE the treadmill, but it was so, SO much easier to set a pace and incline that got me to my target heart rate, and then just run(more accurately, slowly jog). All I had to do after that was an occasional tweak to the speed or incline if necessary to maintain my heart rate. I had 2 or 3 runs like this on the treadmill, and when I got back out into the real world, I was able to jog without my heart rate going too high. Now I can even climb gradual hills slowly, although anything steep I have to walk. I typically run for around an hour give or take, which works out to 4-5 miles. 4kms seems a little short to see results, in my opinion. I know the book talks a lot about cutting back on the miles, but thats aimed at endurance pros that are running over a 100 miles a week. Since it sounds like your run routes contain some off road segments, I heartily recommend using a treadmill for a week or so, at least until your aerobic threshold starts to rise. It is far less frustrating than having to stop and walk at every slight veriation in the terrian.

Thanks. I'm definitely going to do another challenge. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for goals. These have been kind of easy, but honestly there was no way to predict that going in. I alway find changing habits is easy, until it suddenly isn't. And I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew with these kinds of things, so I am going to be giving a lot of thought to the goals I pick for next time. No problem. I barely had a chance to get used to how the site worked before. Now I'm all messed up.

Another week down. Still on track with everything so far. Haven't missed any days.

We do the same thing in my family, eating when things are rough, and to celebrate. I'm working on changing the pattern but it's not easy. The only thing I did to celebrate the return to normalcy was to pick up a couple of old computer games. But I ended up barely playing them, I went indoor rock climbing on Saturday and Sunday I just had a movie marathon, my hands were too sore from rock climbing to play video games.

Between weather and work it's been a crazy week, but I managed to stick with my goals. Which means I think I've made some progress in entrenching these behaviors as habits. Follow Carb Cycling Plan: 46%46% About mid-week things went absolutely crazy at work. I spent the afternoon of Wednesday and the morning of Thursday as stressed as I have even been. Then everything suddenly went back to normal. In the past I would have pigged out on junk food to cope with the stress on Wednesday, and then pigged out on fancier food on Thursday to celebrate. Neither happened though. I fact, I didn't even really consider it. I did consider getting well and thoroughly drunk on both nights, but didn't because being stressed AND hungover on Thursday did not sound very appealing, and because by Thursday night, I wanted sleep more. So I made it through the week with my diet plan intact. 3 Runs a Week: 50%50% It has been pouring here pretty much nonstop since Monday afternoon. So my regular plan of running outside in the mornings was a bust. I ended up having to use the treadmill in the gym at work during my lunch-break for my other two runs this week. I usually hate the treadmill, but this turned out not to be so bad. At least I was able to maintain my target heart rate a lot better on the treadmill. Still, I'm looking forward to better weather next week so I can run outside again. 300 Kettlebell Swings a Week: 50%50% I've done 100 swings every day so far this week. Read the Bible Every Day: 46%46% Still on track.

Thanks, though its funny you should congratulate me on running in the rain at the start of the week, 'cause the rest of this week, I haven't had the motivation. That and its been pouring here. Yeah, I've seen glitches here and there too, but overall I'm happy having the monitor, just to give me a sense of how hard I'm working. I think I was being a little to strict with myself in trying to maintain a constant heart rate. With slight changes in pace and terrain, I think I was being a little unrealistic in trying to stay right on my target heart rate.

Better late than not at all. Good Goals!

Amazingly, my goals are still on track so far for this challenge. Probably because I'm using them as a form of productive procrastination instead of doing things that I really need to be doing. But I DON"T CARE I'm MAKING PROGRESS ON MY GOALs and I'm going to focus on that for the moment. Follow Carb Cycling Plan: This Mash Up diet that I just made up is actually working, so that nice. Surprisingly, I'm really not having any trouble with it either. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a bad day to come along that makes me switch to the Homer Simpson diet, but so far so good. 3 Runs a Week: I was excited for my first run of the week, as I had just found my heart rate monitor and was looking forward to being able to keep my heart rate in the aerobic, fat burning zone (180-age). Then I woke up this morning. It was cold. It was wet, with that wishy washy drizzle that just flirts with the idea of being rain but refuses to commit. I went out and ran anyway. And thats when I discovered that my aerobic pace, the one that keeps my heart rate 146 or below, is just above a power walk. It was right at that point where a walk becomes a jog. I tried to do my whole run at that pace, but it was incredibly frustrating. It was impossible to maintain the pace, I kept seesawing back and forth between to high and too low. But I did my run for the day. Thats what i'm going to focus on. I'm going to give the whole aerobic heart rate pace thing another try on Wednesday, and if it is just as frustrating as today, i'll be leaving my heart rate monitor at home after that. 300 600 Kettlebell Swings a Week: Did my 10 sets of 10 swings in the backyard, got through it faster than last week, so that was good. Read the Bible Every Day: Still going strong on this one, haven't missed a day yet.

Inspiring transformation! And even more impressive is maintaining it. Awesome!

Progress: (I wanted it on this page, but out of my signature, so here it is) Follow Carb Cycling Plan: 24%24% 3 Runs a Week: 25%25% 300 Kettlebell Swings a Week: 25%25% Read the Bible Every Day: 28%28%

Great Start with your goals. Having your race just around the corner really ups the stakes, I've found . Good Luck with that 18 miler today!