Reboot for 41

[ahammond]

I'll be turning 41 this summer. I just broke up with a long-term partner, moved and changed jobs. So... there's a lot of change in my life right now. Career wise, I'm doing well. It's time to get healthy. I'm 5'10" about 205lbs and measured my body-fat at 26% (measured using calipers). That makes me obese by any reasonable measure.

 

Goals

My primary goal is to get my body-fat below 15% by my 41st birthday (July 25th). Other goals include being able to do handstand pushups (because I'm obsessed with acroyoga) and pullups (because I've never been able to do more than a few). That and increasing my endurance for dancing real dancing, not shuffling around like a zombie on the dance-floor. I realize these need quantifying, but I figure the body-fat is probably the most important one to watch.

 

The Plan

I started a daily meditation routine about 3 months ago and have been pretty good about it. I plan to continue that and eventually increase my sitting time to 20min / day.

 

I'm cleaning up the my diet. I cut sugar and bread about 2 weeks ago, and have reduced pasta to small portions on weekends only. I should probably weigh it so that I stay honest here. Lots of veggies. I'm moving towards paleo but I want to actually stick with it so I'm trying to make the change gradually. I have a commercial grade vacuum sealer and just recently got an immersion recirculator, so there's a bunch of sous-vide in my future. If anyone wants to food geek with me, I'm super into it and willing to host (in San Mateo). The only other real challenge here is coffee. I had 3 cups today (my cup isn't huge or anything). I'm trying to cut down to a single cup in the morning, maybe even cut it entirely since it's messing with my sleep.

 

For exercise, I'm doing acroyoga Monday and Wednesday evenings and working on pushing myself there. I love it because it's fun and social. The last few weekends I've managed to find an acroyoga class to go get my sweat on. I also really enjoy dancing (flow style w/ poi spinning, but anything that makes me shake my ass will do) but I don't have a regular routine for that. I find that spinning poi is more of a meditative / stretching thing than a sweating thing, but when I add music, it can get pretty sweaty. We were doing daily walks at work up until this week. I'm going to have to get that going again, even if it means going on my own.

 

Next Steps

The next thing I want to do is add a strength workout in the morning before work. I'm thinking http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/12/09/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/. At least to start with. I've been having trouble getting up, so... I'm posting here to make myself at least a little accountable.

 

I think I'll start tracking the time I get out of bed. Maybe that will help with the sleep thing.

[Rassidan]

     Welcome to the forums. Once again I have learned of a new form of yoga I had no clue existed but looks like a serious workout either way. I can't even imagine the strength necessary to do some of those poses, especially if the classes your taking use a partner.

[DaygloNirvana]

Same here, I'd never heard of acroyoga before, I'm going to look into it - thanks!

[ahammond]

     Welcome to the forums. Once again I have learned of a new form of yoga I had no clue existed but looks like a serious workout either way. I can't even imagine the strength necessary to do some of those poses, especially if the classes your taking use a partner.

 

I don't think there is any solo acroyoga stuff. One of the reasons I like it is because it's social. Some of it is 3 or more players, but most of it is partnered. Most classes and jams encourage people to switch partners regularly. It's like a puppy pile, but made of people. I'm gonna go do some head stands and handstands now.