Alex Heberling

So it’s been about a week since I started my new health and fitness strategy.  I’ve been doing quite well at sticking to the routine so far:

1.  Eat more slowly, which will make me feel full more quickly, and therefore I will eat less.

2. Take baby steps toward a fitness regime.

I’ve been journaling my progress in a private LiveJournal I created a few years ago when I first tried out the Atkins Diet.  The documenting has proved very helpful in keeping track of what I’m eating, how much, and whatever else I do in regards to my fitness.

I’m coming to the realization that I’m going to be buying far less food in the future.  When you’re not eating three serving’s worth of something in a sitting, you get a lot more leftovers, and I already find myself with a whole lot more days’ food, even though I haven’t gone grocery shopping since I started this.

All in all, portion control and slow eating is really helping me.  I use the smallest dishes possible when I can, and I’ve successfully avoided extra snacking the past week, simply because I don’t really keep a lot of snacks around in the first place.  (Don’t really budget for them when I shop.)

As far as fitness and exercise, I’ve been doing the 200 Situps program.  I’m doing very well with it, as I rather enjoyed doing crunches in the past.  The program has been easy so far, so much that instead of taking rest days, I’ve been doing each day of the program one right after another.  I don’t get very tired at all from the crunches, so I figure if I do get completely whipped by the program one day, then I will start taking breaks.  But for now, I’m raring to go.  I’ve done 100 crunches or more for my daily max on three seperate occassions, so I’m well on my way.

I was going to do 100 Pushups, but when I took the initial test, I couldn’t even do one good form pushup.  I could only do a few knee pushups, and those were very shallow.  So instead of doing that program, I decided to do some wall pushups every day while I work on 200 Situps, in order to build up some arm strength and hopefully jump into knee or regular pushups when I’m finished. I can already tell there is some faint muscle forming in my arms and stomach, so things are going very well on those fronts.

I’m hoping I’ve lost a little weight this week (my next weigh-in is on Monday) but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I’ve gained a bit, since muscle is denser than fat and I haven’t gotten a whole lot of aerobic exercise.  I’m walking home from work whenever I can, but since it’s winter and there’s snow and ice, it might not be every day.  Plus, I found a hole in one of my shoes.  (Grumble.)

Little steps, man.  Little steps.