Ok, so it’s obvious that I suck at regularly updating any kind of blog or other social media outlet. I get a whim, I start a blog, then life smacks me around a little and I forget all about my grandiose plans. You’d think I’d stop being surprised when this happens. I should, and yet somehow I am always surprised…

A lot has happened since the last post. My girlfriend and I have kept to our goal of doing one 5k (or other significant organized physical exertion event) every month for the past year now. Two of those major physical events are the biannual Square2Square ride, which is a 30 mile bike ride on the trails between Fayetteville and Bentonville city squares. We’ve done every one they’ve held for the past… 3 years? Basically, every single one they’ve held, we’ve done.

Also this past April I completed my very first half marathon with an almost respectable time of 3:07:44. Well, that’s my Garmin time. I can’t remember what the official time was, but it was within 30 seconds of that. And we are signed up for the Disney Princess half this coming February. In other words, it’s about time I start training for it.

There have been a couple of changes in the fitness equipment in the last year. I had previously upgraded my trusty (if slow to lock) Forerunner 15 with a shiny new Vivoactive. It is quite possibly still my favorite in terms of a daily watch. But earlier this year I splurged (thanks to a friend at Garmin that let me use his discount) and upgraded to the Forerunner 630 and the HR-RUN chest strap. Now, I’m not going to lie and say that I know what all of the data this thing throws at me means, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

This has meant, however, that I have basically ended my relationship with Fitbit. The Charge was disappointing, to say the least, and because I was already pretty heavily invested in Garmin for running I saw no need to continue carrying multiple devices. The only thing I still use that is a Fitbit is my Aria scale. While I could (and have considered) move over to a Garmin scale and have everything syncing nicely there, I’d lose out on integration with things like Trendweight. So I put up with occasionally remembering to manually update my weight on the Garmin app. Maybe one of these days someone will fix the MyFitnessPal -> Garmin weight sync thing. It’s *supposed* to push from MFP to Garmin, but it doesn’t.

Sadly, despite all of this extra activity, I’m still way heavier than I should be. I am fully aware it’s because I eat like shit. I’m trying to fix that now. I’m up to a 12 day MFP streak, and that’s logging everything almost every day. (I didn’t track the food from the halloween party last weekend, because screw that.) The trend line isn’t great, but it’s at least in the general direction I want it to go. I’m hoping to finally stick with meal prep this time and combine that with half marathon training to achieve some positive results.

Last year I upgraded my beloved Fitbit One to the (at the time) new Fitbit Charge. If you’ve read some of the other old posts on this site, you know that I am not a fan of wrist based activity trackers. I feel like not only do they read too many false steps based on hand movement, but if you’re, say, grocery shopping and pushing a cart around, you don’t actually seem to get credit for those steps. Maybe they all even out, maybe it’s not a big deal. I have come around to DC Rainmaker’s way of thinking, it’s not about the actual number on a given day, but about tracking trends in your activity level.

That being said, the band on my original Charge started coming apart, so Fitbit sent me a new one to replace it. I wore the new one up until I upgraded my GPS watch (more on that in a separate post) to one that I actually like wearing on a daily basis. I’m not one to wear two trackers on one arm (like my girlfriend does), so I decided to go ahead and completely remove the band off of the old Charge and carry it in my pocket as if it were a One. I have to say, it works quite well that way. I never used the notification or silent alarm options, and I’ve already covered my disdain for the sleep tracking of these things, so it works quite well as a pocket tracker. The only issue is the lack of clip. I’ve actually lost the tracker once during a 5k race when I moved my keys from the pocket the tracker was in. Fortunately, someone picked it up and set it someplace that I was able to find it later.

I do think that when this one does eventually die, I’ll go back to the One. Assuming that I stay with the Fitbit line. That’s probably a good bet considering that most of my friends also use Fitbits and the fact that about a year ago I also bought a Fitbit Aria scale. I like the company, I like their products and their support.

Speaking of the Aria scale, while I’m not super impressed with the body fat % calculations, the wireless uploading of the weight to the website is brilliant. Couple that with the website Trendweight and you’ve got yourself a nice way to keep an eye on important trends. Because as noted before, the actual numbers are less important than the overall trend.

Wow. 14 moths since the last update. Told you I ignore this blog as much as the others…

Quick update on fitness stuff.

In 2015 my GF and I agreed to do a 5k every month of the year. We succeeded (well, June was a mini-triathlon instead of a 5k, but I still count that.), and we are *NOT* doing that again this year. It’s easy to get a 5k in from spring through fall, then it gets to be a pain in the ass. And I don’t like running when it’s super cold.

Last January – March the company I work for had a “biggest loser” style fitness challenge. Everyone chipped in $10, the individual who had the highest percentage weight loss got the pot. In addition, because this was team based, the team with the highest percentage won a paid day off voucher. I didn’t win the pot, but my team did win the day off. I never got to use said day off, but that’s neither here nor there. Starting weight was 240-ish, ending weight was 220-ish.

Between then and now, I gained all that weight back. No real surprise there, I stopped running and went back to my bad eating habits. Basically, the only time I ran past March of last year was when we did the 5ks. No training plan, very inconsistent workouts, shit diet. The recipe for falling off the wagon.

It’s fitness challenge time yet again. I’m in the same team as last year, starting weight was right about the same. My progress hasn’t been great the first month, but I’m starting to make improvements. On thing that’s different this year is that official weigh in days are Monday instead of Friday. I’m not super fond of the change, but it is serving to make me more aware of what I eat during the weekends when I’m with my GF. I’ve noticed that we don’t eat that well, which is sad considering she’s a vegetarian and we normally eat basically the same thing. Too much cheese pizza, not enough decent food, I guess.

I have started going to the gym a lot more. Anyone who knows me knows I detest getting up early. I’m a night owl, I like staying up late. So the fact that I’m getting up at 0500 at least 2 days a week and going to an HIIT class might strike a few as one of the Biblical signs of armageddon. But it’s been going pretty well. Granted, my criteria for a successful class is one in which I do not throw up, so the bar is a little low.But progress!

I’ve acquired some new pieces of kit over the last year, but I’ll make some separate posts on them. In short, I’ve upgraded my GPS watch and Fitbit, plus added a Fitbit scale. But again, more on those later.

I’m not going to lie, I love my Fitbit One. I’ve had it since May of 2013, it’s survived a trip through the washer, several very wet runs and lots and lots of sweat. It is the bar by which I measure all other fitness trackers.

The controls are both minimal and simple, the fact that it does not reside on my wrist means that I’m not getting a lot of false positive steps from extraneous arm movement, and most importantly to me is that they have a well documented open API. Almost every other fitness site or app can pull data from and update Fitbit’s data. So no double entry if you’re tracking your food through MyFitnessPal, your running through Runtastic or Runkeeper, or you’re trying to earn free stuff through places like Everymove or Achievemint. Because all of these can interface with Fitbit, that allows it to be kind of the hub. You track a run in Runkeeper, it updates Fitbit, MyFitnessPal syncs your food to Fitbit and sees that you’ve added a run so it adds that to its information as well. Easy peasy, right?

And while I do appreciate the fact that I can sync my device to my computer without the need of a smartphone, I don’t like that I have to use their little bluetooth dongle to do so. With the target demographic of the Fitbit, the chances of them not having a computer that doesn’t have bluetooth is almost nil. Give me the option of using the built-in bluetooth of my laptop, especially since the adapter is very small and easily lost. (Seriously, I lost mine for about 6 months before I found it attached to some random USB hub that I forgot I had.)

One thing that all of these trackers claim to do is sleep tracking. Let’s be very clear here, these devices are monitoring your movement and making best-guess judgement calls on what your quality of sleep is. It’s kind of like web statistics. Minimal inputs + mystical arbitrary calculations = sleep quality. As you can probably guess, I’m not a fan. In addition to this, due to the form factor of the One, you have to slip the device into a velcro sleeve that you wrap around your wrist before you go to bed, then put the device into an “activity” mode. I think I used this functionality for about a week before I quit bothering.

Pros: Simple to use, long battery life, minimal false positive steps from form factor, open API, talks to most common apps and websites.

Cons: Easy to lose, proprietary bluetooth adapter for PC/Mac syncing, proprietary charging cable

Mehs: Sleep tracking is somewhat arbitrary, as is the active minutes calculations

About a week ago I received my Pivotal Life Tracker 1 that I pre-ordered months ago, so I thought I’d finally get around to doing an official comparison with actual data and graphs and shit. I now have 3 activity trackers; the Fitbit One, Garmin Forerunner 15, and the aforementioned Pivotal band.

I’ve been wearing the FR15 and the Pivotal on the same wrist to eliminate any potential dominant arm issues (I’m right handed and both devices are on my left wrist) and the Fitbit is kept either in the 5th pocket on my jeans or clipped to the right pocket of my running shorts.

I’ve always thought that the FR15 was a bit… overly generous with the steps, it’s almost always at least 400 steps more than the Fitbit and sometimes way more. Because of this, I wasn’t holding high expectations for any tracker band, let alone a $12 band (or more appropriately, a free band with you $12 annual app subscription). Aside from some problems with the app on Christmas day and the day after, the Pivotal is tracking surprisingly close to the Fitbit.

Now, I am fully aware that this is a small data sample and it has at least 2 days of invalid data thanks to the app glitch, so I will be continuing to wear all 3 devices for another couple of weeks. I’ll also go into more detail with each tracker in separate review posts. This post is really just a quick intro and setup.

So much for regularly updating a fitness blog. And for actually sticking with a plan/workout schedule/achieving goals…

Oh well. Shit happens. A lot…

Quick catch up: Didn’t develop or stick to a running plan this year, mainly because everything in my life changed. New job, new schedule, new apartment, new relationship. And pretty much all of these hit at the same time, early in the year. You would think I would have had time to adjust and get back on track, but you’d be wrong. I’m still adjusting to having to be up and productive by 0800, but that’s easy compared to the attempt to adjust to my girlfriend’s social calendar. I have been insanely busy and at least 3 orders of magnitude more socially active these last 10 months than I have the previous 10 years. But it’s good, I truly enjoy most of the things we go do together. It may not all fall under physical fitness, but it’s done wonders for my mental well-being.

So what brings me back here? Simple. I’ve put on 10 pounds in the last 2 months. And I want to start running again, I miss it. (And I just got yet another gadget, so I have a few reviews that I need to do.) The good(?) news is that I have access to a gym now. The bad news (for me) is that my girlfriend prefers to work out at 0530 instead of a reasonable hour. So there’s going to be more adjusting in my future if I want to actually be able to run a real 10k in 2015.

Last summer I started a Couch-to-5k training program. I was rather sporadic to begin with, I’ll admit, but after I came back from vacation I started running consistently and while I technically never completed the program, I did run two 5ks and tried my hand at a couple of other programs (a 5k improver and a 5kto10k plan). Then it got cold and wet and the holidays came and went. Next think I knew, it had been months since the last time I had a decent run.

So Friday I started a Zero to 10k program. It felt a little odd running such short intervals and distances, but it was nice to get a decent run in while it was relatively warm. I may skip ahead a little, but I may just stick with it as is to get back into the swing of things. I’ve missed running.

Now, for the next couple of weeks it’s going to be unseasonably warm here, so it’s a good time to get back to it. What I’ll do when the weather goes back to normal and there’s snow on the ground, well… We’ll see how strongly the running bug has bitten me by then. But I suspect I’ll hold on running until the weather clears again. What? I’m a wimp when it comes to cold. I’ll admit that.

It comes from this. Because that’s how I feel sometimes when I start digging into different exercises/plans/methods/whatever.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m bothering with the whole “getting healthy” thing. I look in the mirror and don’t see changes, I look at what I’ve done in the way of workouts for the week and wonder what happened to my grandiose plans… And then I usually get distracted by something shiny and forget what I was thinking about.

Fitocracy has helped me a lot over the course of the last 9 months in terms of ideas for what to try next, support, nutrition advice (always taken with a grain of salt, this is the internet after all), and general fun. But with the turn of the year they’ve added a way to see your total stats for 2013. Suffice it to say, I was a bit surprised by the numbers.

Total pounds lifted in 2013: 107,645. Keep in mind that I don’t have a gym membership and that I really just kinda faffed about with weights, so I’m rather surprised I got that much. The number for 2014 should be *much* higher.

Miles traveled: 413.7. This is the one that really surprised me. This number includes walking, running, hiking and I assume bicycling. Maybe even kayaking or swimming (not that I swim, but still). If you told me this time last year that I would not only start running, but would run in a couple of 5k races during the hottest part of the year I’d have laughed at you and then taken away your crack pipe. And yet, I managed more than 400 miles on my own.  Pretty god-damned amazing if you ask me. And yes, I intend on at least doubling this number for 2014, if not shoot for an even 1000 miles. Will I make it? I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try.

So even though I may not see any changes when I look in the mirror, I know that I did something that, for me, was almost inconceivable. I’ve lost weight, I’m making better food choices and cooking more than I’m dining out, and I have what I think are perfectly reasonable and achievable goals for the coming year.

Yesterday I stayed home sick and I didn’t bother logging everything I ate. I know I went over on carbs, mainly because of the little container of yogurt and the serving of beans. The serving of beans (400g) had 57g of carbs. The 6oz container of yogurt has 33g, the vast majority of which is sugars. Now, I know some of those are from the blueberries themselves, but I doubt all of them are. The lesson here is that I need to pay more attention to yogurts. I may just have to buy plain greek yogurt and add my own flavorings.

The question of carbs and fresh (or frozen) fruit is one that I’ll admit confuses me. I love fruit. Strawberries, apples, grapes, cherries, pineapple; all of these I will gladly sit down and eat entire containers of in a single sitting.  Tracking via macros, however, that’s a sure fire way to blow through my allotment in a hurry, while remaining well below my calorie count for the day.

I’ll get it figured out soon, especially once I get rid of all the junk food. And stop buying it… :p

Yesterday was day 1 in trying to eat according to macros as defined by iifym.com’s calculator, which are roughly 45% protein, 40% fat and 15% carbs. I was doing pretty good up until I got home from work. See, I was already still really hungry after eating my “lunch” at work (I work a 1p-10p shift, so my lunch is everyone else’s dinner), so I was still kinda hungry after eating my last meal of the day. At that point, I was just about on target with carbs but still significantly under for protein and moderately under on fat.

So what do I do? I had a bag of the gluten free white cheddar Cheetos and ate at least 3 full servings. *sigh* Maybe I should up my carbs a little until I get used to thinking of food as macros and not calories…

Still, today is a new day. I never beat myself up over something as simple as this, I just try to find the lesson and move on.

I’ve been on this fitness journey for a while now, starting back in September of 2012 when I realized that I had put on at least 25 pounds in the previous 6 months. Through the use of MyFitnessPal and basic calorie restriction, I managed to drop that weight in about 9 months.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I found Fitocracy and signed up. I made some great friends, have learned a lot (and have a lot still to learn) and have tried several types of workouts. I surprised myself when I discovered that I enjoy running and by completing a couple of 5k races in 2013.

Now that it’s winter and cold, I’m not doing a lot of running so I’ve been looking for stuff to do in my house with minimal equipment. I’ve dabbled with bodyweight routines, yoga, different “challenges” (squats, push-ups, etc). So far, not much is sticking. Most of my friends on Fito are proponents of picking up heavy things and putting them down again. Of course, most of them have a gym membership or some impressive home equipment (DIY power rack built by an engineer, anyone?).

I can’t really say I’m “training” right now, I’m really dabbling, trying to find something that connects with me as much as running does. Between kettlebells, a few plates and a pull up bar + assistance bands I’m sure I’ll find something. I just need to make some changes and get off my ass.

In that vein, I’ve started focusing on my diet again, trying to cook at home as much as possible and track by macronutrients this time instead of just calories. I’ve set custom goals in MFP to assist in the tracking, cooked a weeks worth of food and packaged it ahead of time and am doing my best to avoid the ever-present candy and donuts at the office. Today is my first day of this, I can already tell it’s going to be a little rough until I adjust to it. Too much holiday indulgence, I’ve fallen off from my rather strict IF regime, and too many cravings for sweet things lately.

I’ve got plenty of support from my friends online, I just need to find something and stick with it. Hopefully updating this regularly (unlike all my other blogs that get ignored) will help with the motivation once I figure out something that I like,