Jake’s Life

I have been thinking more and more lately about my fitness goals now that I’m almost done with school. I’ve figured out that no matter what I do, trying to balance full time school, full time work, and fitness goals will end in one area failing. When school is done however, there will be more time.

Maybe this is just another procrastination technique. Who knows. In the meantime here are some interesting fitness related articles, sites, and pieces of software.

10 Unconventional diet tips: How to lose 50 pounds in three months

Quote from LifeHack:

The following are 10 unconventional weight loss tips that worked for me. Between January 4, 2006 and March 31, 2006 I lost fifty pounds. These tips work well because almost every tip is focused around completing a small goal. In my opinion, to stay motivated and lose a significant amount of weight, you should complete many goals in a short period of time.

 Link (complete with photos of a weight loss hottie)

Top ten snacks under 200 calories

This list contains some pretty simple, and a few creative alternatives to my personal favorite, the 7-11 beef and cheese sticks.

Link

Online Diet and Fitness Trackers (All Free)

FitDay: “Track your Foods, Exercises, Weight and Goals.”

Gimme20: The fitness version of MySpace, with exercise sharing and groups.

Traineo: A fairly new online fitness web site using a support approach: You sign up, start tracking your diet and exercise, and choose a small group of other members or friends/family who are not members who have access to your logs in order to give feedback and encouragement.

EvenFit: Although not an online system, I’ve mentioned it before. Great piece of free software in an Outlook-type format which allows you to insert photos once a day to visually track your progress.

Well, I have a mild workout (abs, obliques, biceps, triceps) planned for this evening. It’s Saturday night, which means I obviously have homework to do no plans. I figured I’d get some time in before bed. I bought a weight bench, set of extra weight plates, and lat pulldown off Craigslist almost a year ago and I have used it a total of 0.5 times. It’s still pretty much brand effin’ new.

I ordered some items from Mass Nutrition today, along with some unrelated items from Galls. I’m hoping that this time things will really work out for me as it’s obviously been an ongoing struggle. I realized that all of the time I spend wallowing on the fact that I don’t have many (-m) friends, no boyfriend, and don’t do much of anything socially, I cold spend dedicating to helping myself. Of course this turns into other thoughts, such as when I actually (eventually) do improve my appearance others will want to get to know me more, and these thoughts may not be entirely true, but at least I’ll have an outlet for my frustrations that will produce some sort of results.

So this is pretty much the first post I’ve made about my fitness goals. Which, yeah, is slow going. I used to work at a gym, so I know a lot about the logistics and science of fitness, nutrition, and supplementation, but here is one thing I never learned: motivation. It should be simple. Just looking at myself in the mirror should make me want to work towards this change…looking at others should do it too. And believe me, it does, but wanting in one hand and shitting in the other always produces the same results. It’s been a personal battle for me and it’s something I am beginning again, so hopefully getting my feelings out about it will help me reach my goals, and maybe even get some support for it.

The kind of person I am, I keep track of everything. I use OneNote for school, preparing my assignments, keep track of classnotes, correspondence between myself and other students/professors. I use Outlook to plan meetings, outings with friends (that category is bare, lemme tell ya), appointments, and other plans. I store chat logs. So why not apply that to fitness tracking? It may help marginally with motivation in the sense that I can see results.

EvenFit is something I found a few months ago that may help (obviously the install file has been sitting in my downloads folder for a while). It’s organized in a very Outlook-esque way, with a calendar, notes section, fitness tracker, even a “Wellness Journal.” The calendar works in a pretty standard fashion, using it to enter workout plans or actual workouts and view previous and next months. The Workout section allows you to see all of the preset workouts, categories (Weight Training, Cardio, Running, Swimming, and Biking), organized by muscle groups, tools used, etc. You can even add new ones to fit your plan. One feature I really like about this (here comes the motivational part) is that it includes a Wellness Journal section that lets you track the noticeable details. Creating a new entry, you can enter your weight, BFI, caloric intake, hours of sleep, general notes, and set a photo. The great thing is you can choose a photo for side-by-side comparison. This is what will help make it real for me, I think, seeing my progress as I go. One reason I have not continued may be that I haven’t seen hard results, but looking down is different than head on, if that makes sense. Oh yeah, and Even Fit is free.

I’ve also come upon some interesting blogs and web sites lately having to do with fitness (Google: fitness+motivation+tactics):

• ShapeFit: Apparently a pretty comprehensive, albeit commercial site that gives a lot of benefits to even unpaid visitors.
• In Pursuit of Fitness: From the blog: “This blog was originally established by fitness trainer Jeremy Likness. Nowadays it’s the personal fitness journal of Jim Foster.”
• BeebleBlog: From the blog: “Hello I’m Beeble, for those of you who don’t recognise me I am that little voice inside your head that tells you when you should be exercising or when perhaps that extra piece of pie was not such a good idea. Well I don’t feel like, for all my trying that any of you are listening to me. But you are going to have to because I have my own blog now.”
• MuscleBlogs.net: This looks to be the infantile MySpace of body building and weight training. It doesn’t appear to have taken off quite yet though…

I know that gaining the respect of others just for having a nicer body is only a small portion of workout results (sarcasm), but do you think that it’s ridiculous someone has to go to all this trouble to “just work out?”