Skipping the catch-up post, let's talk fitness instead

OK, elephant in the post: I haven't written in 2 years. Why am I back? Is it because Steem is on the rise again? I don't know. But I do know that I miss writing, and I also know that I have a lot to write about. But let's start laser-focused on a single topic, shall we? Let's talk fitness.

When COVID hit and the lockdowns started, I went from a strict "no alcohol in the house" policy to a "I can't ever leave the house so let's start making exceptions" policy. That didn't last too long, thankfully, but for most of the rest of lockdown 2020 I dabbled with all the myriad ways of consuming saturated fats and sugar. Visit the gourmet donut shop that has a freaking drive thru? Sign me up.

Combine raw ingredients and turn them in to food like some kind of wizard? Yes please; abra cadabra, cake:

Deep fry cheese in oil? Smother a burger with both yellow and white fat? Order a pizza and eat it all in one sitting? Yes, yes, and yes.

Anyway, I didn't get fat, per se, but I suppose I was what you would call skinny-fat. That is, an acceptable overall weight for my height, but a little bit too much body fat.

So, for some reason, maybe it was the lockdowns ending, maybe it was other things going on in my life, but about a month ago I started to really get serious about getting back into shape. But where to begin? There is simply so much out there about nutrition, fitness, working out, cardio, etc. that at first I was overwhelmed. Thankfully, I was finally able to consolidate most of the advice into a few overarching principles, and even just a month in, I already have some results to show for it!

Obligatory before and after photo:

Not bad, right? I mean, I'm not winning any body-building competitions, but I am definitely ditching the "dad bod". So how did I do it? [Disclaimer: everything that follows is completely my opinion and is based on a combination of YouTube videos of dubious trustworthiness, a minuscule amount of research, a disconcertingly low level of due diligence, and a large helping of my own gut feeling.] It honestly boils down to one thing:

Calorie deficit.

As in, eat less than you burn each day. I'm convinced that all of these diets, be it Keto, Atkins, OMAD, intermittent fasting, Paleo, and even vegetarian or pescatarian all boil down to one thing: they make it easier to stay in a calorie deficit. You will lose weight even you eat nothing but donuts all day every day, as long as you are eating fewer total calories than what you are burning. THAT BEING SAID: you will feel like crap and have no energy if you do that. So I took a different approach, which boils down to three things:

• Avoid processed sugar like the plague.
• Avoid processed carbohydrates like a plague that you were vaccinated against
• Vegetables

So I try to never eat anything that is mostly sugar. This includes most of my beloved breakfast cereals, all candy, most treats, etc. I've had something in this category maybe two or three times since I started this. Next, I try to make sure that if I am eating something with a lot of carbs in it, that they're as unrefined as possible. So I have been leaning heavily on things like brown rice, potatoes, or sweet potatoes, and also eating whole grain bread occasionally. Lastly, vegetables are the secret ingredient. I know, they are a pain in the rear to eat and they don't really taste so good either. But I hacked them. Want to know how? Throw them on a baking sheet and toss that in the oven for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Boom, delicious and easy to eat. The water evaporates, they get softer yet crunchier somehow, and they legit taste about seven times better. If you dribble a little olive oil and salt and pepper over them before they go in the oven, they taste even better.

So that's the food side of the equation. But because I also want to get stronger and more muscular, I've been adding in cardio and some resistance training (fancy gym speak for working your muscles in a way that makes them all wobbly if you do it too long). I got some new toys for running in the form of a fitness watch and a heart rate sensor, and these were honestly so worth it to me because they corrected a huge problem I had faced in the past when it came to running. I was running too fast. I never would have thought this was the case, because I have always run embarrassingly slowly. But even at my wheezing grandpa pace, I was overdoing it. There is a big school of thought among professional trainers that 80% of your runs should be at a "slow" pace. My problem was that I thought slow was defined as a pace. It's not. Slow is defined by your heart rate. This was a game-changer for me.

The first time I strapped on my heart rate monitor and took it for a run, I was shocked to find that at what I thought was a "normal" pace, I was actually way up in the orange and red zone for my heart rate. I slowed down a bit. Still in the orange. Slowed down a bit more. No good. Finally I slowed down so ridiculously much that I felt that surely this was now a worthless exercise session. But the heart rate monitor liked the new pace, because my heart rate was right where it wanted me to be. At this point I was no longer a wheezing grandpa - I was just a grandpa shuffling down the sidewalk. I will admit, it took a lot to swallow my pride and just shuffle on by at a pace that was quite literally slower than the speed at which I walk. But I finished the "run" and logged it. And you know what, I have slowly started to get faster at that heart rate. Now my painfully slow shuffle has increased to only a somewhat embarrassingly slow jog. But I don't mind, because I feel great while I'm out there, and I feel great when I get home. And so far, no injuries whatsoever. So that's the key to cardio that I unlocked.

Last is the resistance training. Now I don't have any weight lifting gear or a gym membership, so I wanted to find a way to do it all at home with minimal equipment. Luckily, there are plenty of bodyweight exercises you can do in your house. My main goal is to build up my chest right now. I've never had a chest I was proud of or happy with, so that's where I'm starting. To do that, I'm really only using two things: the push-up, and another hack I learned called the row.

Now I am no stranger to push-ups, or so I thought. They were part of the Army's fitness test, and they were always my best event. I would max out my score. But I never had a big chest. So what gives? Turns out, you can do push ups in very different ways. I had always done them with my arms straight out, making a T with my body. This is a great workout for your triceps (and I have always been proud of mine), but it really doesn't work the chest. If you angle your arms backwards at a 45 degree angle, and try to point your elbows behind you as you do the push-up, it transfers a lot of the effort to your chest. So I've been doing that and focusing on quality of the form over quantity. Combined with the rows, I've been getting a great chest workout about 3 times a week, right here in the comfort of my own equipment-less home.

Anyway, just wanted to share/record these thoughts. I know it's a sloppy first post after a long break. I hope to write more and more over the next few months and get back in to all my other topics. Be well!