As part of my new year’s resolution I started exercising again. But my resolution isn’t the stereotypical “lose weight” or “exercise more”. As you probably figured, it’s to Do More Doing.
As stupid as it sounds, I almost convinced myself not to exercise to not be one of the sheeple that make this resolution year after year. However, I took a step back and decided that I need to Do More Doing.
About a year and a half ago I had some great success hiring a personal trainer at Orange Shoe Gym. I lost nearly 30 pounds in 4 months! It was great and I thought I had successfully changed my lifestyle so that I would keep the weight off. I was wrong. I stopped working out only a couple of months after I stopped my personal training.
This time I’m taking what I learned from my personal training and trying again. There are 2 actions that need to take place to stay successful, cardio exercise 3x/week and maintaining an appropriate diet.
Exercise
The best way I learned to lose weight is to exercise for 30 minutes at 80% maximum heart rate several times a week. When I had my personal trainer, I used Polar F6 Men’s Heart Rate Monitor Watch (Black Coal, New Design) to make sure I was in the correct percentage or zone. It works great and you can use it no matter what exercises you decide to do. It’s pretty expensive, though, so if you are working out at a gym or have a treadmill I would recommend that you just get the Polar T31 Non-Coded Transmitter and Belt Set. You can wear this belt around your chest and it will transmit your heart rate to your exercise equipment. You don’t need to try to use the metal handles while you’re running and your heart rate is recorded the entire time.
Diet
In order to maintain an appropriate diet, I’m trying to use an iPhone app called Lose It!. After entering a bit of information, it will tell you how many calories you can consume daily and how long it will take you to achieve your goal. It has nearly any food you can think of already programmed in it and you can add whatever it doesn’t have. In version 2.0 website synchronization (with additional charts and graphs), email reminders and summaries, social media integration, and friends have been added. These are meant to help motivate you to keep on keeping on. Feel free to add me as a friend and maybe we can motivate each other.
Another motivator is the current Million Pound Challenge that Princeton Club and Second Harvest are sponsoring. For every pound of weight lost they will donate 10 pounds of food to a pantry of your choice. Sounds like a win-win to me. You do not need to be a Princeton Club member to participate. (And on a side note, you will likely donate more food by using the “exercising” vs. “weight loss” selection).
Happy New Year!