Push-ups

I started Week 5 of my pushup program on Monday. I failed miserably. At the end of the 4th week, I did my exhaustion test and completed 43 push-ups. This is a big improvement from the 20 I did in my initial test or the 34 that I did at the end of week 2. However, to be 2/3s through the program and be less than half my way to 100… it hurts. Worse yet, I when I went to week 5, I found that by just more than 40, I was put into a column that made me start with 40… and then do another 32 after a minute of rest… and another 95 over the 3-4 minutes. Let’s not even get to day 2 and 3 when you have to three more levels added (and less time) – at least the repetitions go down. I’m at the point of being all push-upped out and the only thing that is the least been interesting to me is that I can more than twice as many as when I started.

Body Stats

When I measured myself today, I had the following stats:

• Weight: 170.5 pounds
• Body Fat: 19.8%

I think is pretty much in line with where I’ve been in the past. I’m pretty disappointed by this number as well, since I’ve been swimming and eating right for the most part.

Nutrition

I think I’ve been well in this area. It’s not perfect, and is far off from some my best weeks. However, after following the nearly 700 comments on my MonaVie article, I’ve realized that I should adds some pomegranite-blueberry-acai juice and other similar things. Since there are still a lot of liquid calories, I have 4 ounces in the morning and 4 ounces in the evening – mostly as a way to just boost my antioxidant levels. I also have a small piece of dark chocolate with it. I’ve been mixing in some good old fashioned fruit and a glass of red wine as well. The rest of my food I try to get from lean protein like chicken. I have slip-ups and they are usually in the form of one side dish a day.

Exercise

With the pushups really getting me down, I haven’t been doing them as much. I did get 60 laps of swimming in a couple of days this week. I usually do more, but one day the pool wasn’t heated. Another day it was just extremely cloudy and I wasn’t sure it was safe for swimming.

Push-ups

I finally completed Week 4 of my pushup program today. Truth be told, I’m getting pretty sick of push-ups at this point. Going to the dentist might be more fun. So when it comes down to it, I find myself postponing the push-ups as long as I possibly can. On Monday, I’ll try to motivate myself to do the exhaustion test, but as you can tell, the initial excitement has worn off and it’s starting to grind on me.

Body Stats

I had an unprecedented weirdness in measuring this today. The Tanita scale that I have says that I weight 171.5 pounds and 21% body fat. The Omron scale originally said that I was 6.7% fat. After I congratulated my wife for marrying Hercules, I decided to retest. The next three tests came in between 14-15%. Taking the higher range, it looks like I fall in line at 171.5 and 18% body fat. That’s in line with where I’ve been in the past, so I don’t feel that’s a stretch.

Nutrition

I ate really well for about 4 of the 7 days this week. Those 4 days where actually pretty close to my ideal eating goals. The other three days weren’t bad, but they were more on pace with the average – one splurge meal in each of them that included an item or two that wasn’t particularly healthy.

Exercise

It was a very middle of the road week for me here as well. It wasn’t like a couple of weeks ago where I hit the pool every day and got all the push-ups in. I did get some significant exercising in, but it needs to get back to that previous level.

Body Stats

I’m going to have to fill out an incomplete on this one. While I’m on the road, I don’t have my scales with me. I’m not sure I want to weight myself anyway.

Nutrition

I didn’t eat as well as I hoped this week. I brought a lot of healthy snacks with me on the trip, but since I’m out of the hotel and into the time-share I have access to a better kitchen. You’d think this would be a good thing. In some ways it was, but in others it allowed me access to convenience foods like Easy Mac.

Exercise

I had been swimming everyday. However, this time-share’s pool is packed with kids at all hours of the day. There’s a fitness center, but I hadn’t been wanting to go since it’s getting tougher to do my 100 pushups program. I missed Day 2 of Week 4 on Wednesday and did it on Thursday. I’ll try to do day 3 tomorrow and hopefully do the next exhaustion test on Monday of next week.

With the progress I had been making this was a disappointing week. It is still better than the average week I had six months ago – at least that’s a good thing.

Body Stats

I usually report my weight and body fat. Unfortunately since I’m on the road this week, I don’t have a means to measure either.

Exercise

I successfully completed week 3 of the 100 pushup program. It was not fun and I barely completed it. I’m trying to go into week 4 pumped up that I’ll be complete it, but logically each week has gotten tougher. Unless, something suddenly clicks, I’m going to be repeating a few weeks before I can get to 100 pushups.

I don’t mind if it takes me some time to reach 100 pushups. I’ve already gotten one of the best compliments in a long time. I was typing on the computer on the bed and my wife tried to surprise me. She came running into the room and did a face first dive on the bed. Unfortunately she rammed her nose straight into my arm. She thought she broke he nose (she didn’t), but managed to get out, “I forgot that you were doing those pushups.”

In addition to the pushups on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I added swimming every day. On Tuesday I even did a little of an elliptical trainer (just 15 minutes or so).

Nutrition

I had a pretty unusual week of nutrition. Since I am staying in a hotel, I’ve been looking for hotel friendly food. Breakfast and lunch most days consisted of edamame, South Beach bars, peanuts, apples, bananas, and beef jerky. I grazed on them and it was fabulous.

Dinner was a different story. My wife wanted experience some of the fun places in Los Angeles that’s she’s never got to try. We went to Gordon Ramsey’s for our anniversary (horrible), Mastro’s to make up for a bad night at Gordon Ramsey’s (awesome), and one night at Fogo de Chao (all you can eat meat – always good). Gordon Ramsey’s was the only one approaching healthy since they seem to be against giving you food with your dinner.

Having two great meals makes me feel that I came out ahead… especially with all the exercise I got in. All in all, I’m happy with the week’s gains. Of course there’s always room for improvement next week.

Here’s my overall body update:
Overall Body Stats
I have measured my body in the morning two weeks in a row now. When do I consider it an actual streak?

• Weight: 170.0 pounds
• Body Fat: 18.95%

I gained a half pound this week… well within a little water weight error margin. I dropped my body fat from 20.05% to 18.95%. That’s a very healthy gain, but I’m trying to temper my excitement. It too, is within the fluctuation a body experiences every day, so I need to focus on things in the long run.

Exercise
I had a good week of exercise. Even though I had a set-back with my 100 pushups program, I did more than any previous weeks. I also swam four days this week pushing myself to do 60 pool lengths twice.

Today, I’m thinking about skipping the 100 pushups program on purpose. I’ve already failed for the week, so my thinking is, let’s switch things up. What about going to the gym and doing bench presses, butterflies, and lat pull-downs? My body can’t be expecting that. With two days of rest before I start the pushups again, I should be stronger and ready to battle.

Eating and Nutrition
This week I discover that I really like dry, roasted edamame, perhaps the most perfect I’ve seen in some time. It’s almost pure protein and fiber. In fact, I got a little addicted to it and found myself occasionally missing meals in favor of it. My biggest concern is that there is some hormone risks with soy in men.

Outside the edamame, I’ve been very good at reducing net carbs, while increasing protein and fiber in my meals. A couple of times I upped my red meat in hope that it would combat the risks of soy. Okay, that might be what I’d telling myself as I really like red meat.

That’s all I have for this week, it seems I’m on the right track, but next week gets more difficult when I search for hotel friendly food.

Overall Body Stats
I woke up this morning and measured my body fat. As I always do, I used two scales – one that uses Bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) from my feet, Tanita Body Fat Scale – and one that uses it from hands – Omron Handheld Fat Loss Monitor. I find that they give me fairly different numbers, so I average them together to get the best overall pictures. In the future, I hope to add my Wii Fit age in, but I find that it varies wildly depending on the exercises it gives me.

When I measured myself today, I had the following stats:

• Weight: 169.5 pounds
• Body Fat: 20.05%

Exercise
I had one of my best weeks of exercise in a long time. If I didn’t, I’m not sure that I’d be posting this. With my apartment fixing the pool, I got to experience the great exercise that swimming is. I swam Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday doing 20, 30, and then 40 laps each day.

I continued with my 100 pushup plan (official website). I already wrote about Monday’s effort. Wednesday, Day 5, of the plan, went better than I could have imagined. After the first four sets, I thought I was done. I didn’t see how I was going to get 15 or more in the last set. I decided to take a new approach. I picked 23 as my goal. Though I was almost done at 12, I found a way to reach back and get the adrenaline to hit 23.

As my “mentoress” would say: I just realized something… something that really never occurred to me before… I’m gonna win. I am going to be able to do 100 pushups.

Eating and nutrition
I tried to focus my efforts on low carb, high protein eating this week. I didn’t really focus on this until Wednesday after I got a chance to go shopping. I am aware of the dangers of eating too much protein, but I still believe it’s the best way to go. I had two very large chicken breasts throughout the day. Unfortunately my plan got derailed by headaches, which usually come whenever I try to limit carbs. Perhaps I need to ease into it a little bit.

I also remembered to take a multivitamin every day this week. It’s the first time I’ve done that in a long time.

It’s very much baby steps at this stage, but I’m making progress and being healthier than I have in some time.

What is the 100 Pushup Program?

You can find out more about the 100 Pushup Program at the official website. I’m not 100% sure if it’s scientifically proven to work. However, I checked with my doctor and she says I’m fit enough to give it a shot. (I didn’t have any doubts, but I like to check anyway, you should think about it as well before you start a health-fitness program.) The idea is to start off with a small amount of pushups and over the span of six weeks gradually build up to the time where you can make a good run at 100 consecutive pushups. Where do I start? You start with an initial test to see how many pushups you can do to start the program. On my initial test, I got to 20 before I tired. My muscles weren’t particularly tired, but my breathing was off and I just had to stop and breathe better to continue. I think I probably could have done another 6 more, but I’m okay to start with 20. With that information I was ready for day one. Day one Yesterday was day one. I did 5 sets of push-ups. The sets had 10, 10, 8, 6, and 16 push-ups in them. The first four sets are dictated by the program, while the last one varies from person to person. That last one is supposed to be the most you can do before tiring. I was very happy to be able to hit that 16 number. It gives me confidence that I’ll be able to get through this week – though the end of the week looks difficult with repetitions of 15, 13, 10, 10, and 15+ on the docket. I will try to continue Monday, Wednesday, and Friday workouts. I will supplement that with some juggling for exercise, and follow that up with some Wii Fit.

• Limited Internet – There’s been very limited Internet availability on my trip. I typed this into a text editor and upload it when I get a chance.
• Bad Food Choices – We haven’t been back to Boston since my wife and I got married in last July. This means that we’ve been without Kelly’s Roast Beef, D’Angelo’s Number Nines, Papa Gino’s Papa Platters, Brigham’s Dice Kream, etc. Living out of a hotel doesn’t do you any favors when trying to eat healthy.
• Lack of Exercise – Though we have fantastic gym facilities available to us, we simply haven’t had time to partake of them. We had 15 minutes yesterday to tour the facilities and that might be as far as we get.

In the next few days, I will try to post some guest articles that I have. This weekend, after we get home, I can work to getting back on schedule.

I’ve started to re-evaluate my situation though. My apartment complex has a free, small, but usable gym, not more than a two minute from my front door. I also realized that I spend an hour or more in the morning doing things related to my blogging. Most of this time is not spent actively blogging, but discussing “the business of blogging” with some friends. It sounds easy enough to just write content and hope that people read it, but I’ve found that I need to do a significant amount of marketing – at least at the start-up phase. However, when I looked at my efforts, I realized that I could squeeze a lot of that into a smaller amount of time.

So this morning I woke up and spent about ten minutes checking my incoming mail from last night. After that, I went to the gym (in between commercials of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I put a little time on the treadmill at a modest speed. After awhile, I shifted to a slower walk at an incline. My basic strategy was that of a major league pitcher coming off an injury. Put in a minimum bit of work, build up endurance, and if possible get the win. As for the things in my morning routine, I still had time to do all them and come back and right this post.

I’m sure not all of you have extra time to fit everything you want to in the day. However, I’d bet a large number could optimized a little something to get some gym time in.

1. Body Stats: I just weighed myself and it came up with 171lbs. My Tanita scale reads 21.0% body fat – a gain of 1% more fat. My Omron handheld fat analyzer reads 14.4% – the lowest I’ve ever seen it. I think it’s interesting that this spread has widened. In the past this spread has been around 4-5% and this is way out of that range.
2. Exercise: What exercise? As I said, I’ve had major motivational problems. Part of it is that I’m trying to juggle quite a few things at the same time. With all that going on, I haven’t been able to focus on health as I would have liked. I haven’t been overly bad either. Perhaps as the weather gets better I’ll get more swimming in which will help a lot.
3. Diet: This has stayed pretty much the same as it has since this blog started. I’ll have one or two very good days and then mix in a small treat meal in. It’s been keeping me at a pretty neutral health style.