Fit and Frugal

Image: 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Color S-Africa' http://www.flickr.com/photos/7682132@N05/520785351

Goal: I will reduce my body fat to 15% through regular exercise by 30 August 2010.

I will do this by:

• Visiting the gym 3 times per week for no less then 30 min per session for at least 4 weeks.
• Eliminating wheat & gluten from my diet forever.
• Reducing the amount of alcohol & sugary drinks I drink and poor quality food I eat.
• Take my resting pulse every morning & check my weight & body fat every week.
• Regularly post inspiration and milestones on this blog.

These are the 5 things I am going to do to achieve my fitness goal.

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Attribution: Image: 'OC Throw Down' http://www.flickr.com/photos/81278814@N00/4261018300

I have been a follower and a fan and a convert of the Crossfit principles for some time. I bought the kit, took out the subscription and “drank the coolaid”. I can see the results, I can understand the concepts. But there is only one problem.

It isn’t for me.

I don’t come from a particularly strong fitness background. I played football at school, and occasionally have played 5-a-side football since then. I have run and completed two 10k road races. I have rode my bike for 40 miles. But these are all one off’s. These are not regular occurances.

I used to regularly get up early and go for a run. Now I need the sleep.

I followed crossfit for 1 month and saw some excellent results. I also wasn’t working and had 10 hours sleep a day.

Right now, I realistically have about 3 to 4 hours a week to exercise. I have 2 real options.

1) Go for the extreme fitness & Fran, Clean & Pull-up til I puke

2) Get a local gym membership and get myself a sustainable habit

Both of the above have their benefits and disadvantages. See below:

As far as I can see, the fact that I have more variety, a place to go away from home/work/stress & a place where I have to publicly display my fitness (or lack of it) are all positive things. These are ways I can use a local gym as a tool to de-stress and get fit. In fact I want to go there right now!!

This also means I can free up some money from equipment I have. Such as selling my Olympic Weightlifting kit & maybe even my road bike to raise some cash.

Overall the reason why I have joined my local gym, is to simplify things. Now I don’t have to organise what equipment I need, to download the workout, to get the results of my workout, to post it on-line. I understand that this works for some people, but it just doesn’t work for me.

I want simple, check in, get kit, get working, check out, get home.

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Attribution: Image: 'slow down' http://www.flickr.com/photos/72093892@N00/4153613907

Well in April I moved house, and joined my local gym. I didn’t train as planned but I realise I lack the personal discipline to make myself train. Especially when I have the option not to!

So I have moved all of my things into the new house. There have been problems, plumbing & electrical but we are getting these sorted bit by bit. These thing are expensive and I have further expenses to come (such as purchasing Freehold of our property, getting married, buying a Porsche – all to be explained at a later date!!!), but we are financially much better off in a house we own with a mortgage, then just renting.

Don’t get me wrong renting is good, we had a really nice house, but that money was going every month but we had nothing to show for it. Hence the need to purchase our own property.

We moved in during the Easter break, and used a local removals company to do all of the lifting & pulling. This was so useful. Yes it cost money, but we think that this was a wise move as 1) we couldn’t physically move all of our things 2) We were so fried from working we didn’t have time to organise things ourselves. The removals company were excellent and did a fantastic job.

Once we were in we had problems such as broken washing machines and leaking showers and dodgy electrics. Almost all of which are sorted now.

Here are my current priorities:

1) to go to the local gym 2-3 times per week
2) to completely de-wheat my diet
3) to start growing my own vegetables in the garden
4) to keep costs low by going cheap

These are my top 5 things to try in May. Lets hope I can be more successful then my Easter resolutions!

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I plan to post everyday over the next 2 & 1/2 weeks. I am in a really good mood today as I have 17 days off work. I have several things going on, work is hard. But that’s my job I can’t complain. It pays the bills.

I want to focus on the fitness side and also get everything sorted financially too.

We move house next Tuesday, and probably won’t have full internet access until Friday. I will however post from my phone so I can keep this blog updated.

Some of the things I am working on:

2 weeks of Crossfit.
Run & Ride Sequencial days
Clean Zone Diet
No hardstuff
Organise “special” joint project
Organise thoughts for personal project

After all that I need to catch up on school work and also relax, decorate the new hobbit hole.

Current amendments:
No hardstuff
Regular exercise
no hard feelings

Current reading list:
The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: A Spiritual Classic
Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock Monster Movies & the Truth About Reality

About The Resilience Factor

“The ability to recover quickly from illness, change, or misfortune; buoyancy.”

This book is interesting, it gives you several self diagnosis tyepe quizzes to complete, of which I completely failed and seem to be a snivelling shell of a man, who can’t say boo to a goose or take any sort of pressure. Not my own opinion of course, but disturbing all the same. Actually, it might have been my mental arithmetic skills, when I added up all the scores but ho hum!

The book then goes on to describe how to try and deal with situations that test your resilience, one thing that I am trying to do is work on my ABC’s.

A – dversity
B – eliefs
C – onsquences

I take from this that all adverse situations are a test of my beliefs in my self and the consquences of giving in to anger, is to be further suffering and problems later. A lot like Karma.

Recent purchases
Aside from the hobbithole. I have also updated all of my bike kit. I have a bought a lock to lock up my bike at work, and also patches and tools. I also need a new back tyre and chain cleaner then I am set for bike kit.

Saving ideas
Equal parts debt clearance and savings for projects.
Leaving cash & cards at home to stop spending.
Shopping for food online and limited budget at budget shops (Lidl & Aldi).

Overall, as usual big things are afoot, but if I am resilient and strong things will happen and keep happening. That’s all I can expect from this crazy world!

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Image: ‘My Horizon‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41864721@N00/1415725079

So the reality of it is that I am a couch potato. I have come to this conclusion from my escalating weight and unhappiness with my physical appearance.

I am going to keep this post short and sweet. Here is what has happened.

1. I read this – Couch to 10K
2. I did this:
   
3. Which made my heart do this:
   
4. Not even a mile without some sort of fitness emergency. Wow, I really messed myself up this time. After the 1st 400m my right knee was hurting. This may take some time.

PLENARY

What I learnt today was that I have to start small and gradual if I am ever going to do anything. I am also a lot less fit then I thought. I have to stay positive and stick with the couch to 10k for 10 weeks.In 10 weeks I will be 27 years old. This scares me.

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Wow what a month. Well it is nearly 2 really. I have had my first Christmas away from my immediate family, though I did spend Christmas day with my family.

I have set myself some new goals, fitness and personal. Today is the day I kick it all off.

I will report back if it is successful, I think I will be. I don’t know quite why I am blogging this. Its probably something to do with public accountability. Maybe thats is why I am so stop start too?

I feel strong though. Mentally strong. I feel I have a purpose. I feel the need to push myself on. I want to break myself down to my component parts and start again.

“Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.”
- Evan Esar

I want to find me. I want to fond my limits and push them. I want to feel alive. I think in modern life we worry too much about everytthing. I want to get back to me.

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”

Buddha.

If I can punish myself the most, make myself hurt the most, then no one can ever beat me. No one can ever hurt myself as much as I can. And this is also the reverse.

“The only person stopping me, is me”
Paul Williams.

I am my own worst enemy. Well enemy, lets go to war. Lets light the paper and see where this goes. Lets blow this up.
Finally. The truth I needed to hear:

”
For some of you, it’s decision time. You know it and you’ve known for a long time. Of course you can find more reasons not to change and more ways to rationalise what you’re not doing, being and creating… or you can simply stop with the excuses and explanations… and change. Once and for all. You can train like you wanna play. You can be the change in your world. Today can be ‘just another day’ and this post can simply be ‘just another one of my articles’ that you don’t act on – or it can be the start of the most incredible journey you’ve ever had.

I made my choice long ago.”
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/learning-personal-development-from-elite-athletes.html

Here’s to the future.

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Image: 'start....' http://www.flickr.com/photos/7779670@N02/3391941385

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shoegazing, with snow by massdistraction
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Hello? Is this thing on….

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