So, a day passed with essentially no exercise, and another day is looking to pass in much the same way. The fact of the matter is, I have a thesis to write and jobs to vie for. I am going to try my darnedest to get some exercise done tonight but it is looking increasingly less likely.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some research data to analyse.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Lessons from Day 2
Meals today: Oats for breakfast, with currants stirred through; Subway for lunch: roast beef, no cheese, sweet chilli sauce; kangaroo for dinner (again).
No games for me today; there are some builders here, and they get here heinously early. For some reason, my stupid male pride - or perhaps my paranoia - doesn't really want to do Wii Fit whilst there are more blokish men around. And busting out the drum kit to play Guitar Hero by myself would look a bit odd.
So, I packed my shorts and a loose t-shirt in my bag for uni, and went there. I was planning to walk down the hill to the bus stop (and then back), but damn it all if I wasn't already running late when I couldn't find my ID. And then, to make matters worse, when I had decided to drive to the station instead, I couldn't find my keys. So, yeah, I was late for uni, and I had missed out on some precious incidental exercise.
Incidental exercise is pretty important. It's basically the reason most people can stay in shape without constantly going to the gym, and the downfall of incidental exercise has been blamed for the current obesity crisis. With this in mind, I'm trying to find ways to increase my incidental exercise that won't exacerbate my extreme tardiness.
I'm starting to notice a trend, though: I'm not getting any exercise in my arms. Pretty much all my incidental exercise is walking - I don't have to do any heavy lifting as part of my daily routine. The heaviest thing I carry is my laptop bag and that goes over my shoulder, where, in all reality, gravity does most of the work. I need to start... carrying things, I guess.
I went for a 3km run around the lake tonight, where I realised the value of warming up by not doing it.
No games for me today; there are some builders here, and they get here heinously early. For some reason, my stupid male pride - or perhaps my paranoia - doesn't really want to do Wii Fit whilst there are more blokish men around. And busting out the drum kit to play Guitar Hero by myself would look a bit odd.
So, I packed my shorts and a loose t-shirt in my bag for uni, and went there. I was planning to walk down the hill to the bus stop (and then back), but damn it all if I wasn't already running late when I couldn't find my ID. And then, to make matters worse, when I had decided to drive to the station instead, I couldn't find my keys. So, yeah, I was late for uni, and I had missed out on some precious incidental exercise.
Incidental exercise is pretty important. It's basically the reason most people can stay in shape without constantly going to the gym, and the downfall of incidental exercise has been blamed for the current obesity crisis. With this in mind, I'm trying to find ways to increase my incidental exercise that won't exacerbate my extreme tardiness.
I'm starting to notice a trend, though: I'm not getting any exercise in my arms. Pretty much all my incidental exercise is walking - I don't have to do any heavy lifting as part of my daily routine. The heaviest thing I carry is my laptop bag and that goes over my shoulder, where, in all reality, gravity does most of the work. I need to start... carrying things, I guess.
I went for a 3km run around the lake tonight, where I realised the value of warming up by not doing it.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Lessons from Day 1
Breakfast: Omelette with tomato and haloumi
Lesson the first: cut up the tomato into little pieces. My omelette ended up looking rather more like scrambled eggs. To my surprise, I could actually taste the missing yolk (one out of two eggs). Ah well, it didn't taste bad, just different. Put way too much pepper on it; be reasonable with such things. The haloumi was a delicious touch.
After breakfast I went and did some Wii Fit. To refamiliarise myself with the whole thing I did pretty much every exercise and yoga position. I did pretty well, not bailing out on anything, even though I desperately wanted to at times. Major discovery here: your hands do a lot of supporting when you're in the pushup position. The parallel stretch or whatever it's called, where you basically just hold that position resting on your forearms, had me shaking with the effort pretty quickly.
Wii Fit is pretty good about incentive. I completed my tenth total hour of exercise (in a year, no less!) and it upgraded my standard piggy bank (which stores how much time I have spent exercising) to a bronze one. I think I can safely assume that I will be getting a silver and gold one fairly soon.
Lunch: Saté chicken skewers
My first thought upon seeing these in the freezer was "someone is pretty fancy about their satay". But either they got the satay drastically wrong or this is something different; lots of herbs, no peanuts. Horrendously overcooked them, but after the hours of exercise was glad for the meaty meal. Had a salad with cos lettuce, sugar snap beans and more fried haloumi (the stuff is freakin delicious).
After that, my second bout of exercise for the day: 20 minutes running up and down the stairs. I must admit, at first I felt kind of stupid doing this, but after a while the effort of it started to hit me. This is a three storey house so there are two flights of stairs, one on top of the other. So I was in a continuous corkscrew motion, up and down. This made me a little dizzy, but nowhere near as dizzy as the exhaustion.
Some might say this was cheating; that I was not using my games systems. This is both incorrect (I had Muse playing on my PS3) and completely missing the point. Pretty much everyone has stairs somewhere in their house. If you don't, then you probably live in a decently long house and can run from end to end, or do a circuit. I'm not in a gym, I haven't got a trainer. That was the point of the whole thing.
Dinner: Kangaroo
I had a barbecue a couple days ago and someone left behind some marinated kangaroo steaks. The advice I got to cook them was "very hot pan, for not very much time". Good thing I like rare meat, because these things were rare. Seared on the outside but still very much a deep purple on the inside. That said, they were tasty and tender and the marinade was delicious. I'm looking forward to cooking the rest of them, perhaps for tomorrow's lunch.
Had pretty much the same salad as lunch, only threw in some carrots and currants. Not bad, and the currants gave it a refreshing sweetness.
Crazy times
I've just watched two full AFL games in a row. I love watching the game but normally don't have the attention span to last more than a quarter. Something about all this exercise has made me immune to shiny things.
Lesson the first: cut up the tomato into little pieces. My omelette ended up looking rather more like scrambled eggs. To my surprise, I could actually taste the missing yolk (one out of two eggs). Ah well, it didn't taste bad, just different. Put way too much pepper on it; be reasonable with such things. The haloumi was a delicious touch.
After breakfast I went and did some Wii Fit. To refamiliarise myself with the whole thing I did pretty much every exercise and yoga position. I did pretty well, not bailing out on anything, even though I desperately wanted to at times. Major discovery here: your hands do a lot of supporting when you're in the pushup position. The parallel stretch or whatever it's called, where you basically just hold that position resting on your forearms, had me shaking with the effort pretty quickly.
Wii Fit is pretty good about incentive. I completed my tenth total hour of exercise (in a year, no less!) and it upgraded my standard piggy bank (which stores how much time I have spent exercising) to a bronze one. I think I can safely assume that I will be getting a silver and gold one fairly soon.
Lunch: Saté chicken skewers
My first thought upon seeing these in the freezer was "someone is pretty fancy about their satay". But either they got the satay drastically wrong or this is something different; lots of herbs, no peanuts. Horrendously overcooked them, but after the hours of exercise was glad for the meaty meal. Had a salad with cos lettuce, sugar snap beans and more fried haloumi (the stuff is freakin delicious).
After that, my second bout of exercise for the day: 20 minutes running up and down the stairs. I must admit, at first I felt kind of stupid doing this, but after a while the effort of it started to hit me. This is a three storey house so there are two flights of stairs, one on top of the other. So I was in a continuous corkscrew motion, up and down. This made me a little dizzy, but nowhere near as dizzy as the exhaustion.
Some might say this was cheating; that I was not using my games systems. This is both incorrect (I had Muse playing on my PS3) and completely missing the point. Pretty much everyone has stairs somewhere in their house. If you don't, then you probably live in a decently long house and can run from end to end, or do a circuit. I'm not in a gym, I haven't got a trainer. That was the point of the whole thing.
Dinner: Kangaroo
I had a barbecue a couple days ago and someone left behind some marinated kangaroo steaks. The advice I got to cook them was "very hot pan, for not very much time". Good thing I like rare meat, because these things were rare. Seared on the outside but still very much a deep purple on the inside. That said, they were tasty and tender and the marinade was delicious. I'm looking forward to cooking the rest of them, perhaps for tomorrow's lunch.
Had pretty much the same salad as lunch, only threw in some carrots and currants. Not bad, and the currants gave it a refreshing sweetness.
Crazy times
I've just watched two full AFL games in a row. I love watching the game but normally don't have the attention span to last more than a quarter. Something about all this exercise has made me immune to shiny things.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Gamercise is the new Exercise
Wow. This is it. My first cup of coffee without sugar since... well, since I started drinking coffee, I suppose. Fifteen? Sixteen?
It's not so bad, actually. Certainly not as bad as I was expecting.
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Morgan. That is a boys' name, let's start with that. I know there are some girls called Morgan, but fuck them. We're talking about me.
I, like many people, purchased Wii Fit quite some time ago. The idea of the balance board enticed me like the Wii Remote did all those years ago (two, by my count). It was yet another stroke of genius from Miyamoto - an easy, natural way to play games, that could still be challenging.
I liked it, but of course, the game aspect wore thin. There were nine true minigames, nine forms of exercise disguised as games, and a hell of a lot more exercises disguised as exercises. It was a little like Wii Play - great for showing off the hardware, and good fun, but little more than that.
Fast forward almost a year, to the present day. I weighed myself recently. I won't recount the events leading up to this; let me assure you they are exceedingly boring. The results are a little more interesting.
I am 20 years old, I am 180cm tall, and I am 87.2kg.
I don't know about you, but to me, that sounded like a lot. More than I was expecting, anyway. Well, thanks to Google for confirming it; yes it is. My BMI is 26.9. I am seven kilograms overweight.
I know what you're thinking, right? "Seven kilos, pfft. I'm 150 kilos and five foot six!" Yes, yes, your morbid obesity is killing you. But I've always been the skinny guy, and suddenly finding myself overweight is a serious blow to my psyche. I can't pretend I'm one of the "muscular" people whose BMI will be higher than normal; quite the reverse. So you see, "skinny guy" was all I had. It may not be "footballer", but it was okay.
So what's the upshot?
There is no way I'm joining a gym. I did it once, and it was expensive and unpleasant. Maybe I'll go into details some day, but this post is long enough as it is.
So, what to do? Well, I say that, surrounded by video game peripherals. There are three guitars, a drum kit, four wiimotes, four nunchuks and a wheel. Surely, one of these is going to help me move my body in such a way that it loses weight.
Yes, this is my plan: I am going to lose weight using nothing but videogames and the information I have gathered from watching The Biggest Loser. Except I am not going to be eating Bürgen bread by the truckload.
To that end, I am going to finish my sugarless coffee, and have an omelette for breakfast. I'm even going to throw out one of the yolks! Yes, only one. Baby steps.
--gormster
It's not so bad, actually. Certainly not as bad as I was expecting.
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Morgan. That is a boys' name, let's start with that. I know there are some girls called Morgan, but fuck them. We're talking about me.
I, like many people, purchased Wii Fit quite some time ago. The idea of the balance board enticed me like the Wii Remote did all those years ago (two, by my count). It was yet another stroke of genius from Miyamoto - an easy, natural way to play games, that could still be challenging.
I liked it, but of course, the game aspect wore thin. There were nine true minigames, nine forms of exercise disguised as games, and a hell of a lot more exercises disguised as exercises. It was a little like Wii Play - great for showing off the hardware, and good fun, but little more than that.
Fast forward almost a year, to the present day. I weighed myself recently. I won't recount the events leading up to this; let me assure you they are exceedingly boring. The results are a little more interesting.
I am 20 years old, I am 180cm tall, and I am 87.2kg.
I don't know about you, but to me, that sounded like a lot. More than I was expecting, anyway. Well, thanks to Google for confirming it; yes it is. My BMI is 26.9. I am seven kilograms overweight.
I know what you're thinking, right? "Seven kilos, pfft. I'm 150 kilos and five foot six!" Yes, yes, your morbid obesity is killing you. But I've always been the skinny guy, and suddenly finding myself overweight is a serious blow to my psyche. I can't pretend I'm one of the "muscular" people whose BMI will be higher than normal; quite the reverse. So you see, "skinny guy" was all I had. It may not be "footballer", but it was okay.
So what's the upshot?
There is no way I'm joining a gym. I did it once, and it was expensive and unpleasant. Maybe I'll go into details some day, but this post is long enough as it is.
So, what to do? Well, I say that, surrounded by video game peripherals. There are three guitars, a drum kit, four wiimotes, four nunchuks and a wheel. Surely, one of these is going to help me move my body in such a way that it loses weight.
Yes, this is my plan: I am going to lose weight using nothing but videogames and the information I have gathered from watching The Biggest Loser. Except I am not going to be eating Bürgen bread by the truckload.
To that end, I am going to finish my sugarless coffee, and have an omelette for breakfast. I'm even going to throw out one of the yolks! Yes, only one. Baby steps.
--gormster
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