Chuck’s Home World

Try to be as fit as you can be, regardless of your diet. When starting off, the first thing you need to do is get fit. If you’re 5 pounds overweight or 150. Start exercising and get those muscles working. Start small and work your way up. If you lose your breath walking 150 feet, then you should walk 300 feet extra every day. The 600 and keep going. In a few week’s time you’ll be walking miles.

Of course you may need to check with your doctor to find out what kinds of exercising you may be able to do.

I’ve learned quite a bit over the last couple of years, and I continue to learn more as my fitness journey continues. I’ll be posting a few Diet Quick Tips in the coming days. Some of them are things that I’ve read about or heard in an educational seminar or other resource (such as a book).

Many of them are really just common sense that many of use choose to ignore. Before doing any of the suggestions, make sure you know the condition of your body and if possible check with your doctor to make sure you can do what I suggest.

Getting into a WT Routine is tough. The more I do it, the easier it is, but for now its tough getting back into that every other day routine. Today, my muscles are sore from yesterday’s workout.

I’ve been back to the gym for three visits as of this entry. The first visit was not the best, but I was sore for a few days after. This past Saturday, I started my new “plan” and will be going three times per week as instructed by the doctor. I went yesterday and I’ll go again tomorrow. I like going in on Saturday’s but I guess it really doesn’t matter which days I go in – as long as I get there before many other people do.

I picked up a new software package called “Private Coach 2″ and am slowly getting to know it. It’s not the best interface, but there are a lot of features.  Support has been great with Martin Menzel, but I have a feeling it’s another small company like Radium Technologies (who develop Diet Pro 2005).  As with Diet Pro there is a lack of updates (due to a single developer who is working on many projects) and so its going to be a while (2011) by the time a new version comes out. Private Coach 2′s is built using Java and there are some missing “Windows” features and feelings. I really hope that evolves overtime and gets better.

On the work front, I’m still keeping very busy with more and more work coming my way. Overall it’s still enjoyable, but there are times where I just can’t seem to focus on any one thing. I need to watch out for that and make sure I’m not starting to burn out.  Yesterday I seemed to make several mistakes – the first one was when I fixed something and applied other changes before I meant to – and then had to scramble to run utilities to insert missing data for the new structures. It would have been better had I taken some precautionary steps to prevent it, but it is what it is.

Today was another early morning; Lacie decided that around 1:30 AM was the time to start bothering me. I was able to put her off until about 2:30 AM and then finally gave up. I went to bed too early last night and today I’m going to pay for it. I guess I’ll have to keep the caffeine levels high to make it through the day.

I need to drop my cardio to only 2 times per week and start weight training again. My body fat is 32% and even though I’ve lost a good bit of weight (down to 216 from 280), the amount of muscle has been dropping steady. I lost about 30 pounds of muscle since September (with some amount of error in figuring). But even at 10% error rate that is too much. I need to have at least 150 lbs of muscle/bone instead of the 132 lbs muscle/bone I have as of last week. Gonna start hitting the gym and focusing on muscle mass increases – starting tonight!

Instructions from Dr. Dua are:

• Weight training 3 times per week
• Cardio 2 times per week
  • 1800 calories per day:
  • 200 grams of carbs
  • 150 grams of protein
  • 45 – 50 grams of good fat (omega 3′s)

All the blood work looks good. The cholesterol numbers were up a little, but still only 159 (up from 140 last time). My vitamin D levels are now 40 compared to 22 last time. I want to raise it a bit more (to around 50) but I’m above the 32 minimum that it should be. All the other stuff looks really good too.

Body scan shows that my legs are the leanest of my body with my left leg not quite as lean as my right. That makes a bit of sense because of my back issues affecting my left leg. My left arm is too more fatty than my right, but I am right handed. Of course my trunk is the worse part with the most percentage of fat, but that is expected.  And we didn’t even bother looking at the bone density, which was perfectly fine. I have good strong dense bones!

My head weighs over 12 pounds, based on the body scan.

Today I was expecting the normal body composition test where they hook up an electrode on my foot and one on my wrist then they run electricity through it and check the impedance. Today, I got onto a scanner that was used only for bone density, but has been upgraded to do a detailed body composition too. I can’t wait to see the results next week. The test can actually tell me how much I way without my head! And I was pretty happy with the scales too.

On Saturday, I spent time in PA visiting my friends Jean and Kenny. I helped Jean out with some technical stuff (resetting wireless router, transferring files from one system to another). After having a bit of cheese and crackers (OK a lot of cheese and crackers) we headed out to have a wonderful meal at La Cucina’s (including a very confusing chocolate dessert). Afterwards, we spent a little more time doing some tech stuff, before I headed out around 7PM. It was a very nice day. I’m looking forward to the next time that we get together. Overall I didn’t screw up the diet that badly. In fact I couldn’t finish my meal nor my dessert. It was awesome to be able to stop when I was stuffed, instead of stuffing it down in order to clear my plate.

Yesterday, I got up around 5:30 AM, but around 1:30 PM I decided to take a nap. I slept for a few hours in the afternoon and that made me stay up later than usual. I think that help me shift my sleeping time.  I’m tired of getting up at 2:30 – 3:30 AM everyday when I don’t need to. I’ve been getting pretty good sleep, just starting too early in the evening and getting up too early for the day. Hopefully with the time change, the extra sleep over the weekend and some more effort on my part, I can get my nightly sleep and still get up early enough to workout before work.

This week at work is going to be another busy one. That’s OK. I can handle it. I may have to take a mental break now and then, but otherwise it’s challenging and fun. I just wish some people would get back to me with their testing results and suggestions.

Overall the diet is still going pretty good. I’m still dropping the weight but doing so very slowly. I think it’s best to drop it pretty slowly because its more likely to stay off that way. In a couple of more weeks I’ll be going in for another body composition to see how much muscle mass I’ve lost. I’m sure its a bit because I’ve not been doing any muscle building at all. I really need to get back into the gym!

We’re in the middle of another snow storm, but this one is worse because of the winds. The expected snowfall is less than what we had over the weekend, however due to the winds the state has closed down.

Well, it snowed yesterday. It looks to be about 3 or 4 inches so it’s not too bad. Thankfully it’s happened on the weekend as well, and I’ve been sick so I had no reason to go out.

Anyway, today I’m actually feeling pretty good. I hope to get a few miles in, but we’ll have to wait and see how things go. I sure do need to start burning more calories, so I can continue to drop the weight. I have a follow-up on Feb. 23 and want to be lower than last one by at least 5 pounds.

I decided to see if I could speed up the Netbook. I’ve ordered, for Monday delivery, a new hard drive. I’m going to try out a solid state drive (SSD). I went with a drive that was not quite as large as the one I have, but I could have gone with one that was half the price (and half the size), but decided to go with the extra storage.  The SSD should give me a bit more battery life (but its lasting all day when I put it to sleep when not needed), but it couldn’t hurt to get more out of it.

Windows 7 Pro does boot pretty fast on the machine, but there are a few applications that I’d like to make run a bit faster and these are disk related applications (a couple of database and Lotus Notes based).

I should run some benchmarks before and after.  I’ll have to find some good free software to help me with that. I’m sure one or more of the computer mags I get will have one or two that I can use.

I guess I’ll end this post and talk about the Apple iPad that was just announced this past week. My overall feeling is “ho hum”, but if I got one for free then perhaps I’d be more excited. I mean, the iPod Touch was one of those things that I felt I didn’t need, but now that I have one (free from 2008 Christmas party) I really like it.  I think the only thing I really like about it is the ability to have something quick and fast to browse the web while watch TV. The netbook is OK for that, but the screen resolution on the netbook leaves a lot to be desired.

Yeah, I couldn’t think of a title for this entry so I just went with that…

Its around 3AM as I write this short posts. Its been a little while since my last post so I thought I’d throw a few things up here. I’m sick and its tough to sleep right now so I figured why not take advantage of the time. I’d actually try to do some work, but I know I won’t be able to focus on getting anything done so I’m not going to!

In my previous post I mentioned a new work laptop and BlackBerry. I’ve received both. I’m pretty happy with the laptop so far (Dell e6500) but haven’t really needed to use the phone yet. It’s not active on the BES yet, so I can’t use it. It’s a Storm 2 so I can compare it against my original Storm. Its OK, but I don’t like the call buttons being under the glass. I like my Storm’s separate buttons.

I’m still in the process of getting the necessary tools installed in order to start developing a bit for the BlackBerry. I was thinking of going with Adobe Dreamweaver, but it’s so expensive and I can do what I need to do with free tools.

Work continues to keep me very busy. A newer high priority project has begun… it’s tough because I can’t seem to get some existing projects done because something of higher priority always comes along.

Final entry note – I weighed in this morning and I’ve dropped a few more pounds. I know I’m somewhat dehydrated though so I’m sure its not a great a loss as the scales are showing, but I’ll live with it for now. I just hope it continues to drop instead of hovering around the same readings…

I’m just getting over a quick cold. I’m surprised that I’m feeling better already. Still have some stuffiness in the head (more than normal) but I’m definitely feeling better.

Saw Dr. Dua yesterday (Tuesday) and it was a good visit. I was down to what I was visit before last and have dropped the couple of pounds I gained over Christmas. I’ve reduced my daily calorie budget to 1600 cals, and will continue that until I’ve dropped a few more pounds. I really hope to get into the gym this weekend. It will be the first time back in a few months and I really need to get in there. Hope I feel up to it.

Work is still keeping me very busy. There is talk of me getting a new laptop and a blackberry (IT Spare) for some development work. That will be nice on both accounts.

That’s all for today. I’ll try to post more later.