Skip to main content

Checking In

Things have been super busy between travel and family events, so apologies to my millions of dedicated readers for hitting refresh 50 times a day only to find no new content. I'll try not to let it happen again.

I recently went to Columbia with my wife on a 12 day trip. Unfortunately, that kind of sidetracked my SEAL training. Most of the trip was at high elevation and not very conducive to running at all, let alone 8.5 minute mile paces. I figured I'd give myself the time off from working out anyway.

One cool thing about Columbia is that they've got a bunch of really cool exotic fruits. We did a fruit market walking tour in Medellin, and tried something like 20-25 different fruits:





The trip overall was pretty cheapo friendly. Lots of available fruit, very favorable exchange rate and lots of walking. One of the hotels where we stayed toward the end of the trip had a scale, so I was pleasantly surprised to see my weight hadn't budged from 158 (after converting from kilograms, of course).

I caught a cold on the last day of the trip, so it was more like 3 weeks before I got back onto the SEAL program. The running was a difficult but manageable, and the pull-ups and sit-ups were no sweat. Those push-ups, though...basically impossible. It's amazing how much strength I lost so quickly.

I got one workout in that week after Easter since I also had to accompany my father to the doctor up on Boston that week and then prep for hosting my family the following weekend to celebrate my 40th birthday. So, it was was thing after another. Really, I've been only averaging 1-2 days a week of SEAL training, and my motivation has been waning. I've been plenty busy doing other stuff, but it's definitely hard to get back on track. I will do it. I just need to give myself a little more of a shove.

My diet has been slipping, and I went up about 5 pounds up on the scale by last weekend - mostly from overeating with family and chowing down on a lot of delicious leftovers. I've already lost a few of those pounds back. Most of it was probably water weight from excess sodium, but I definitely did gain a couple of fat pounds. Maintaining my weight below 158 is really difficult, so as long as I'm floating between there and 160, where I am now, I'm happy.

In other news, I've decided to give one more fitness tracker another go, and 21 hours in, things are looking pretty promising. After a couple of failed experiments, I've decided on a handful of requirements:

1) I like keeping my fitness tracker separate from my watch
2) I like the Fitbit ecosystem
3) I don't need all the bells and whistles of heart rate monitor and GPS
4) Decent 3-4 day+ battery life
5) Waterproof would be nice

So, I decided on the Fitbit Flex 2, which satisfies all of those things:


I received it yesterday, and really like it so far. With my Fitbit One, I had been manually tracking my bike rides into work and my SEAL training runs. This thing detected my bike ride automatically, and I suspect that it'll do the same for running. It also detected my sleep automatically. I also like that I literally never have to take it off except to juice it up. I can shower and swim and even scuba dive with it.

The battery life is rated for up to 5 days, which is around what I was getting with my Fitbit One. There are a lot of accessories for this that appear to be pretty guy-friendly. I found a black and metal necklace on Amazon that I may pick up in case I ever want to hide it for formal events, but the plain black band is low profile and looks pretty discreet. I think I've found a keeper.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Updates (2/9/2018)

Week one of BUD/S training is going OK. I can do everything but all the sit-ups (and of course the swimming, due to the lack of pool). The best I could bang out with sit-ups were 2 sets of 20, 1 of 15 and 1 of 10. But, at least I haven't experienced any soreness yet. Just the little bit of additional activity has me losing even slightly more weight. I'm holding my weight under the 40 pound loss benchmark on the scale every day now, and I'm feeling really good. I've almost forgotten how much I enjoyed running, which I'm sure has a lot to do with how much less of a strain it is on my body. I'm not going to lie - it was nothing short of exhilarating holding down the weight button on the treadmill for as long as it took to reduce the weight setting from 198 to 157- my weight from the last time I set it. It was definitely a bizarre experience. After the PowerWatch bust, I decided to try out another activity tracker watch. So, I ordered a Garmin Fenix 5X. It's...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tips, Avoiding Pitfalls and Staying Motivated

I found this system to be overall pretty easy, but know that if it required nothing of you, everyone would already be doing it. People would ask me when I first started, "Has it been hard?" My response was, "It's easy and difficult and then it gets easier." The easy part is that you know what you need to do: you've got your nutrition log and you know what you've eaten and what you can still eat at any point on any particular day. The difficult part is that your body will be furious with you when you first start. Your body right now is the deadbeat uncle/brother/cousin/whatever that is used to eating bonbons on the couch to his heart's content and is never asked to do any work. You can't expect him to have his bonbon supply restricted and being asked to go do some stuff without inciting his rage. Again, depending on how aggressive you set your goals, you can expect your body to react similarly. Another thing: don't be discouraged because yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carrying All That Extra Weight Around Is Stupid and Inefficient

If you have a hard time thinking of good reasons for losing weight, how about you try carrying a Thanksgiving turkey around in a backpack everywhere, every day and see how you feel. I'll spare you the trouble: you'll feel horrible. Granted, carrying all the weight you need to lose (give or take) in the form of a Butterball suspended from your back is much more uncomfortable than having it spread over your body throughout your face and all the way down to your toes, but it'll give you some idea of all the extra work your body has to do every day in getting you from point A to B. I remember dismissing all the chatter about how being overweight makes you excessively fatigued as fitness freak happy talk, but it's true. I used to be tired all the time and just chalked it up to the way a normal person feels after a full day's work. And, when I initially started this plan, I felt even worse because I was not only fat and tired but now hungry and grouchy too. But, as the ...
Post a Comment
Read more