Fit for February challenge?

[TheRabbit]

Anybody up for it? Today is the 1st and I woke up feeling like shit this morning. I hate feeling like garbage at the start of the day. Time to get off my ass.

Anybody in for a month long challenge of eating right and exercising?

It will include:
A daily workout of at least 20 min. 5 of 7 days per week.
Calorie tracking.
Meal sharing.
Progress reports.

If anyone is interested, I will post daily meal ideas with nutrition (as best as I can). I use the app "my fitness pal" to track calories.
I will also post a daily workout that you can follow if you want, or you can do your own. I am considering my workout plan level as "beginner", so anyone can do this. If you already have a routine, you may want to just follow yours but post your daily check in.

I started with light cardio. I took the bear dog out with me. Walked at a brisk pace for 5 minutes/ran 10 minutes/walked (cool down) for 5 minutes. This was a very easy start, but I haven't done much of anything in months.


So who is in? Anybody?

[TheRabbit]

Breakfast:
1 serving of steel cut quick oats w/ brown sugar (170 cal)
3 egg whites (48 cal)
1 slice wheat toast with 1/2 tbl spoon of peanut butter (175 cal)
1/2 of a large apple (I had honeycrisp) (65 cal)
8oz Orange Juice (not from concentrate) (110 cal)

Total 568 Calories

[Mayaca]

I KNOW SexOperator6 will jump on this! He runs with CHAINS and shit.



I am gonna tighten up on my diet and workout. I have to get ready for busy season around June.

I will participate in the discussions.

[TheRabbit]

Mid morning snack:
Chocolate chip granola bar (Quaker) (100 cal)
Dannon light & fit greek yogurt (strawberry banana) (80 cal)

Total 180 calories

[gamgee]

I'm waiting for Mushy In March.

[TheRabbit]

Lunch:

Subway 6" Turkey on Wheat
No cheese
All veggies
No sauce
Salt and Pepper
(280 Cal)

Green seedless grapes 1 cup (62 Cal)

Total 342 Calories

[UnderTheStars]

Great idea, Harvey!

Shit's hitting the fan in personal life, so can't really participate here, but I will follow along.. About a week ago I started making very healthy changes for my sister and I. Eliminated sweets, cooking very healthy meals. Goal is to lose weight, become fit by summer.

My Fitness Pal is a great app. I lost about 25 lbs on that a couple of years back. Gained it back. :/ Stress is a huge trigger for me to eat poorly. Working on that. The stress isn't going away.

[TheRabbit]

I'm sorry life is knocking you around, Undie. If you need to chat, just email me.

[9mmCerebellum]

I'm in.

Breakfast - 2 egg omelet with 2oz smoked ham and 2oz oyster and 2oz shiitake mushrooms. A little onion in there too. Copious amounts of coffee.

Lunch is looking like seared tuna steak leftovers on top of a salad of baby romaine and spinach. Probably some nice fatty French dressing.

I did 5k on the treadmill in my bare feet and averaged about 4mph. What I lack in speed, I make up for in sweating a lot.

I highly endorse the C25K running plan - My entire life I was never a runner. Just not built for it. Never thought I could do it. It's designed for people just like me who think they can't run. It is a high intensity interval training plan and it produces some good results, fast, to keep you encouraged. There's a free phone app that helps you keep time, just look up c25k.

[TheRabbit]

Outstanding. I will post mid afternoon snack and dinner when I get home.

I will try to get full nutrition workup of today's food posted this evening.

[Mayaca]

I was going to post this in Harvey's fitness thread, but it turned out too long for a post, and I didn't want to derail it.



A few concepts, some of which I see you already have, but should be pointed out to folks who may not know:


Protein at breakfast- Very important to have a good solid amount of protein early. It stabilizes blood sugar, so you don't get the energy roller-coaster and crave sweets. You have better energy through out the day.

Many meals- If you think about a camel....... it goes a long time between water, so it has a huge hump to hoard when it can. Your metabolism reacts to your diet. So if you go a long time between meals, like skipping breakfast, then the bodies reaction is to slow the metabolism so it can maintain energy reserves between meals. It also stores as much as possible. BUT if you eat 5 meals a day, (smaller of course) then you actually increase your metabolism and begin to burn energy more efficiently.

Paleo works-


A lot of people carry extra weight because the body is inflamed. Our grain based diet is not what the body was designed to run on. Energy can be taken from sugars as in carbs, or it can be rendered from ketones (broken down fatty acids taken from protiens)


Paleo works because it is a ketone based diet, as is Atkins, and several others. In simple terms, eat mostly meat, then veggies, and very few natural carbs, and absolutely NO processed carbs.


There have been tons of studies on the health impact of a ketone based diet, the ones I have seen point to it maintaining mental and physical health beyond what you guys would believe in an internet post. There is an article in "Frontiers in Pharmacology" that showed a ketone diet HALTING alzheimers, MS, and several other neurological disorders.

When I don't drink soda, and focus on eating meat and veg but avoid heavy starches, I drop 10 pounds in 2 weeks with no extra workout. That is simply the internal inflammation from dealing with the sugars in cola.

[Mayaca]

In NO way did I mean this to be a thread for me to tell everyone else what to do. I also had hoped that y'all would chip in with your own health and diet tips.

[UnderTheStars]

The most success I've had so far is similar to what you wrote...

Focusing on eating whole foods, less grains, and many mini-meals snacks through the day - like a bird. Started the day with a protein shake with spinach, kale, etc.. and went from there. Always grazing. Plenty of water, plenty of good-source protein.

Workouts were things like stair climber, sit-ups, push-ups, free weights, aerobic exercise. When a gym was available: weight training plus leg/ arm/ torso machines. Got to the point where I could do one-armed pushups.

Women- weight training is very good for you (when done correctly).

[TheRabbit]

By all means, please merge this into my thread. Totally belongs there. Also, very good and accurate advise. I planned on getting more into this in the coming days.

[Night]

In the past, I have done extreme dieting. 800 calories a day. I write down everything I eat and keep a running total of calories. Some days I would have to go to bed at 6:30 because I'd blown all my calories for the day