600 sit-ups this week! 55 reps in a set! 105 reps in 4 sequential sets. Next week’s goal: every day 100+ sit-ups. Here’s the deets for this week completed:
Exercise record:
20190219 30 SU + 200m swim + 20 SU + 20+30 SU
20190220 30+15 SU + 25+30 SU
20190221 30 SU + 50 SU
20190222 30 SU + 20 SU + 30 SU
20190223 20 SU + 20+20+20 SU
20190224 238.0lbs 124/93 108bpm 34bmi 33% body fat 166lbs lean mass 55 SU
20190225 236.2lbs 25+20+20+20+20 SU
So I’ve made some good progress on my goal to 50000 sit-ups by time I’m fifty years old. I’ve been thinking a lot about other goals and I will have several more… but for now, I can announce my second 50 goal: to lose 50 pounds by time I am 50 years old. I weighed 238lbs this morning and losing 50 would get me to 188lbs. This is a little higher than my ideal weight of about 170, but would still be an enormous improvement. My current weight is the highest it has ever been. So, as I work my way down, I hope to find ways to make it completely sustainable. I also know that I can lose fifty pounds much faster than the three years until I am fifty, but by making it a long term goal, I can also aim for sustainability. I will start by doing some things that have been successful in the past:
For exercise, I know that cycling and swimming are good. But bad weather can kibosh those so I will also get back to using the elliptical. I’ll start tracking that exercise and reporting it here too.
(Photo is me today as I post this. I’m not going to share a full-body image. I think those are kinda gross. As my weight improves, it will be easily visible in my face. )
425 sit ups this week. 50 reps in one set. 4 sets of 20 reps in one session. Three new records for me this past week. Goal for this week: 550+… gotta really push myself. I’ll start by doing 30 reps every morning instead of my more normal 20. Gotta average 80 reps per day. Starting to seriously consider that I need to lose weight to make the overall goal possible; probably 25-35 lbs!
In other news, my brother has a great proposal up on the LEGO Ideas site. Check it out and vote to support it:
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/5d8d64af-1292-4714-b0ce-9bdbd123a94c
I got only 300 sit-ups done this past week. I skipped Thursday and only did a few on Wednesday. But, I did 45, my highest in a long time in a single set, then did another 22 a couple minutes later. I can feel my body reaching the “this is easy” threshold. Soon. This coming week, I definitely want to do 350, but hopefully 400. I also need to accelerate. I don’t know if it is possible, but I hope in just a few weeks to be doing 700+.
We had a great team meeting today. There was lots of great consultation. One personal high note was an insight about myself. I listed off some things I aspire to being good at: a Baha’i, a father, a husband, a teacher,… an artist. When I got to that, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I couldn’t speak for what felt like a couple minutes. I have much to explore with that idea.
Here are some photos of a recent clay sculpture, after it has been glazed and fired:
I did another 285 sit-ups this past week up to and including today, Feb 4th. This brings me to 590 so far. I’m still continuing to accelerate, but I have quite a ways to go to get to a good number per week: about 4000! My goal this past week was just to break 200 so I’m doing well. This next week I hope to do 350 in the week. I’ve also added doing multiple sets in a session, so far just twice. So my expectation is that I will do a single set every morning of 20+ and two sets every evening of 15+. I’ll probably do more.
In other news, I started tanning again. I find it incredibly relaxing. I’ve never really liked massage, and so this works well for me. I don’t need a lot of time to relax: 12 to 15 minutes is great. It’s warm, has a huge amount of white noise from the fans that run, and it’s completely private. And, particularly in the winter, I really appreciate the light.
I’ve been working from the BERTEIG office downtown as much as possible. It has brought focus to my work and has given me the regular company of two of my colleagues: Iryna and Shradhdha. Mostly we listen to music as we work independently. But it’s nice to see other people around. Sometimes other colleagues or visitors come in as well. I work on marketing, sales and consulting with customers. Iryna does bookkeeping. Shradhdha does software development. My only complaint is my desk chair is a bit uncomfortable. Maybe my CFO will authorize the purchase of a new chair sometime soon! At home I have a fantastic chair by Humanscale: the Diffrient World. I love it more than my Aeron.
This past week up to but not including the 29th of Jan, I completed an additional 170 sit-ups, and reached 305 total so far. On the 29th, I also did my first set of 35, although the quality of the last few was low. I hope to get 200 done this week… remembering that I have to get up past 500/day to reach my goal by age 50! I’m starting easy the first few weeks, by only doing maximum two sets a day. I’ll start doing more sets the week after next, and try to get to 50 in a set around the same time.
I also ran our kiln to the first cone 04 bisque firing. It went mostly smoothly, but the kiln-sitter cone broke rather than bending. As a result, I’m not 100% sure that it reached cone 04. Here are a couple pics of what we put in:
One week has passed towards my goal of 500000 by my 50th birthday. I just had my 47th birthday so I have 365 x 3 + 1 (leap day) – 3 = 1093 days left.
I did 10, 20, 20, 25, and 20 reps over the days since my last post. Because I have a long ways to go, I can be patient with myself.
I’ve thought of taking a “before” picture, but I’m not really doing this for weight reasons. I hope it will help in that regard, but really it’s for general physical fitness. Sit-ups are one of the easiest, most flexible self-powered exercises. No excuses about equipment, space or convenience possible.
Small daily successes at first.
Today I did my first 20 sit-ups towards my goal of 500,000 by the time I turn 50. Over the next little bit, I’m going to try to figure out other 500,000 goals too.
It started last week. I was working at a client doing a bit of executive coaching (oh, by the way, my sabbatical is over!). One of the people I was working with is a guy who clearly takes care of his body. I asked him about it, and he said that he had actually originally wanted to be a physical trainer. He then gave me a very simple piece of advice (which I’m only partially taking): start by doing just a little bit of exercise every day. Don’t make it complicated: sit-ups or push-ups is fine. He also told me that he doesn’t use a gym. He just does stuff at home.
So then today I was thinking about my upcoming birthday where I’ll be turning 47. That’s pretty darn close to 50. Somehow that got me thinking about my goals for turning 50. Usually, my goals are health-related since that is the part of my life I take the least care of. I thought of a few different ideas, but the one that stuck? The goal of 500,000 by 50.
So, I did some mental math (I love math). 50 is three years away for me… roughly 1000 days. 500,000 divided by 1000 is 500. When I was a kid, I was able to do 70 sit-ups in a minute. I can get there again. That means that if I slowly by linearly get better at this, somewhere around the middle of my 3 years, I will need to do 500 sit-ups per day, and if I can only do 35/minute at that point, that’s a reasonable 15 minute-ish workout. Seems do-able. If I can continue to speed up, then 500,000 is do-able,… but still a tough goal to reach.
So that’s my first 500,000 goal.
I’m thinking of others, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.
PS. I got an 81 as my final mark in my Math 3020 Introduction to Abstract Algebra class, and an 88 in my Math 2155 Introduction to Mathematical Structures class. Not bad for an old guy!
The past few days have been busy, stressful and low-sleep day’s so I’m surprised that I haven’t gained a bunch of weight. Yesterday I did manage some cycling despite skipping class. And last night I had a nice long sleep which helps with stress levels. I’ve got a busy weekend so hopefully I can keep up with a semblance of good eating. I’ve been increasing my meat, dairy and vegetable consumption and reducing (slightly) my sugar and starch consumption.