An Introduction

Like practically everyone I know, I too have certain goals in life regarding physical fitness and good health. During the second half of last year, right after I hit the 50 mark, I decided to make a little more effort in improving my physical condition and health. The problem for me has always been the time commitment - I always knew intellectually that in order to make any changes it would require dedication and time - the hardest part of this is to actually schedule time to devote to exercise.

First a quick overview:

Coming out of High School I weighed 175 at 5'10" - the only exercise I was getting was an occasional tennis match with practice sessions. This poorly scanned image is from my Senior HS annual...

High School Annual Image -  about 1979/1980

Going into college I initially played racketball and finally just table tennis as the courts were always to busy to use. My weight got up to about 180-185 and stabilized with a fairly sedentary lifestyle. This is a college shot from 1982

In the early 90's I started to do weight training and got into the best physical condition of my life, with a weight of about 190-195. I was lifting heavy with a group and could easily run 3 miles at a jog.

1990 with some friends from the gym

 It all went downhill from there. By 2001 I was drinking beer as a supplement and getting very little exercise...

San Diego Comic Con 2001 I think

As I got more involved working in office environments, my exercise became an occasional visit to the gym and my weight started to rise. This image is from about 2007.

I stopped exercising completely by 2008 or so except for an occasional weekend activity - my weight got up to the 210-215 level. Since that point with every little exercise, my weight got up to my high of 233 - that was just before I got back into the gym on a regular scheduled about 6 months ago. This is the most recent image of my from late 2012.

Up until this past Sunday 2013.01.06, I maintained a steady weight of about 225 without changing any of my eating habits. Luckily, except for an extravagant number of calories and occasional junky snack, I always try to eat good quality foods. Typically I make meals at home using the best ingredients I can afford - if the prices of organic produce is relatively close to the regular produce, use the organic, for example. Also, I've been working out 4-5 times a week, doing a push-pull routine with heavy weight and light cardio. I've found that even though my weight has maintained at about the same level, my arms, shoulders and legs have firmed up and my waist have been shrinking.

Starting Monday 2013.01.07 I've adjusted my routine to do more of a caloric burn - I've swapped the cardio-to-weight training ratio to be heavier on the cardio side and am now doing a circuit-training routine of about 20-25 exercises/sets, working every body part with 15 seconds between a single set of each. The idea is to slim down a bit with minimum loss of muscle mass. I've also adjusted my diet to reduce the number of carbs (and restrict to unprocessed whole-grains only) as well as overall portion sizes. As of yesterday, my starting weight is 226.6 - today, Tuesday 2013.01.08 my weight is 225.0. I intend to weigh-in daily. I've also started up a "MyFitnessPal" account and will add both my meals and exercise going forward. I intend to do this for 8 weeks as part of a weight-loss competition  with about 16 other people at work. More info in my next post.

-- John