Tag Archives: Fitness Links

HFCS

19 Feb

High fructose corn syrup

Possibly the bane of good health?  Harmless substance with little worth?  Can we be sure?  THIRTEEN teaspoons in a single 12 ounce soda?  Is it genuinely this dangerous?

The missus has proposed that one of the first major changes we are making in our household diet is to try to eliminate as much HFCS as possible.  We’re desperately trying to help a certain eight year old boy stay under football weight limit, and we’re desperately trying to help a certain five year old girl find new energy and eliminate weight concerns.  Besides, the missus and I can benefit from some improvement, too.

There’s a reason that poor people are often overweight in America.  The cheapest foods are junk.  Pure junk.  HFCS is everywhere.  The list of places it’s NOT is much shorter than the list of places it IS. 

There’s also a reason that Christians are spiritually weak.  There’s a reason we fall for sin’s lies.  There’s a reason we’re not effective witnesses.  There’s a reason we don’t love like we should. 

We don’t eat right.  We look for “spiritual food” that simply makes us feel good.  We search out “worship experiences” that ignore our need for a Savior.  We expect the preacher on the stage to digest our food for us and spoon feed us only the parts we HAVE to have.  We’re spiritually starving to death and don’t even know it.  We love the bad stuff, even though it’s empty calories, and eat more and more of it. 

Here’s a toast to improving our diets.

Off the Wagon

5 Nov

So, I’ve basically fallen off the wagon.

It’s a pattern in my life that, along with a lot of other things about myself, I despise.

Six weeks ago, I was a determined fitness machine.  I was eating decent 95% of the time, I was forcing the workouts three or four days a week, I was sweating.  I felt good.  I felt pretty good about my health.  I got into decent shape and felt pretty good most of the time.

Then.

The past month has brought a lot.  A thirty hour straight stint at work absolutely crashed my physical reserves and true fatigue set in.  My schedule just doesn’t allow for recovery.  Then my wrist rebelled.  The wrist was injured in the same accident that broke my elbow, and although it wasn’t broken as far as we know, it will only take so much before it becomes a very painful part of my body.  This wrist, combined with the fact that the elbow has some weaknesses, too, pretty much put a big old STOP sign in the way of my goal of twenty pullups by the end of November.  (I don’t even know if I can still do ONE.)

Then something went crazy with my knee.  Have no idea what, but it’s almost better.  There wasn’t an injury; I didn’t do anything wrong.  It wasn’t a muscular problem, and it didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the joint.  It was almost like a hyper-sensitve nerve about a half inch under the skin – if I bent my knee and my pants pressed against the skin, or if I pressed against something else with the knee, the pain was just excruciating.

Needless to say, it’s hard to do even bodyweight squats in this shape.

Much is lost.  I’m not giving up, but it frustrates me to have to anticipate “re-taking” all that ground.

I go through this kind of mess a lot in my life.  I’ll be all gung-ho and determined for six weeks or so, and then something happens to bring me back down to ground zero.

It happens in my Christian life, too.  It’s a really good thing that we, as Christians, are defined by what CHRIST IS DOING in us and through us rather than by our own determination, goals, or success.  Because I’m usually off the wagon there, too.  Some would accuse me of not being truly on fire, of not being sold out, of just not “trying” hard enough.  I say that they don’t quite have it all together, either.  It often seems that the harder I try, the more I find myself falling apart.  I read the sign that a friend of mine has at his business which says “A Bible that’s falling apart belongs to someone who’s not.”  That’s noble, but, technically, my Bible IS falling apart, and I’m still thousands of miles from even being what I want to be, let alone from being what God really wants me to be.  (My Bible is falling apart more from bad construction than from excessive usage, is the point.)

There are fitness freaks that have no problem sticking with an exercise program for thirty years.  I congratulate them.  I bet they’ve got other problems that they hide.

There are Christians who probably read the Bible three hours a day and can spout verses like a fire hose connected to the Atlantic Ocean.  I’m impressed, and I congratulate them, too.  But I bet they’ve got other problems that they hide.

The “wagon” is a deceptive thing.  Being on the wagon in one regard by no means makes us perfect in all regards, nor does falling off the wagon mean that we are useless to God.  Falling off the fitness wagon should not destroy my self-confidence or my interest in being healthy (it DOES, but it shouldn’t…)

Off the wagon, but fully IN CHRIST.

Disclaimer – by no means am I proposing that we should avoid the wagon.  But we need to focus on Christ.  We fitness folk need to focus on healthy living, not on the next workout.

Physical #Fitness – 20 Pullups

6 Oct

So I’ve set a goal.  It’s not going to be an easy one, though.  There will need to be intermediate goals.

Twenty consecutive pull-ups.  The number came from a website I found – pull-ups-training.com. I don’t like their training program, but it’s a good goal.  The site also seems to be a bit “dead”.

Is it realistic to shoot for 20?  For most folks, maybe.  For me, well, it depends on how much torture the plate, pin, and screws in the old elbow will tolerate before overtraining sets in.  Some days it seems it can tolerate much more than it can on others.

I don’t really have a plan.  Currently, I’m doing “reverse” pull-ups, which basically means I’m jumping up and then letting myself down slowly, to try to build up some strength.  I can do something like 4 or 5 basic pullups, depending on how strict we are with the definition and movement, but I sometimes pull the muscles in my neck due to the strain and intensity.  I want to build up some more shoulder / lat strength, and the reverse pull-ups are a good way to do that, I’ve been told.

Can I do it in six weeks?  I THINK so, but probably not “easily”.  I’m going to shoot for 10 in three weeks and see how that goes.  So…

10 consecutive pullups by October 30.  20 consecutive pullups no later than November 30, tentatively.

Physical #Fitness – Pushups and Pullups

4 Oct

So I’m sort of unofficially trying the One Hundred Pushups challenge again, but I don’t really like the system that the website promotes.  I want to do a hundred, but that’s not my only fitness goal, so I’m going to modify it.

There’s also an offshoot called twohundredsitups.com, and another that is twohundredsquats.com.  I do like the idea of three major emphases, but the high quantities don’t really do the kind of things that I want my workouts to do.

Thus…

I am shooting for a hundred consecutive pushups, maybe a couple or three months out.  I plan to work hard on pushups, with three workouts per week that involve pushups or a bench press / triceps / chest training emphasis.

Doing 200 squats would be an awesome accomplishment, but I haven’t decided if I’m committed to that one.  Maybe I’ll see how many I can max out with sometime next week.

Situps?  No way.  I hate situps.  My neck hates situps.  My back hates situps.  Maybe hanging leg raises, but I doubt that 200 is an achievable goal.  Maybe 100?

However, I am now the proud owner of a Gold’s Gym Pullup Bar (the door gym part of this set) and I am determined to meet the military minimum for pullups, and hopefully get a good deal beyond that.

While there are a lot of exercises out there in the world, I am convinced that huge increases in strength and ability can be accomplished with just the pullup, the pushup, the squat, and the jumprope.

As I decide more about how I’m going to proceed, I’ll write more.

Current pushup goal is 40 by the end of next week.  (10/10/2009)  Pullup goal is 5.  I cannot even really do 2 right now.  As far as squats, I’m not sure right now.  I’ll try to do a max test on Monday if I have a chance.  (Long day at work anticipated…)

Quick shoutout to twitness.net, a Twitter based method of tracking One Hundred Pushups workouts.

Physical #Fitness – Ten Minutes

1 Oct

A favorite read of mine, even though he’s getting more and more commercial in nature, is Vic Magary’s GymJunkies website.  Vic often gets to the heart of the matter while others only try to sell their stuff.  (Vic still tries to sell some stuff, and since he’s a trainer, I’ll let him by with that.  It is, after all, his way of making a living.)

Between spending a lot of time at the football field with my son, spending a lot of time at the football field with my daughter, and spending a lot of time at the football field watching my wife do her photography thing, I’ve been really disappointed in my workout situation.  There’s also some other issues, such as a big old dose of discouragement due to some financial issues and some other things that have my nerves on edge, but my most convenient time for working out has almost disappeared in the past week.

Vic recommends keeping a bodyweight workout “ready” for these times, so I’m going to formalize a plan.

I still want to focus on getting those 30-40 minute workouts in a couple times a week, but I’m also inventing a 10 minute bodyweight workout for the days when I can’t pack it all in.  This will be a work in progress, but this is the start…

  1. Jumping Jacks – 25 minimum (4 count)
  2. Pushups – 25 if possible, if not, as many continuous as possible
  3. Standing Knees to Elbows, crossed – 25
  4. Squats – 25 is possible, if not, as many continuous as possible
  5. Pullups – 6 if possible
  6. Repeat complete sequence as many times as possible in 10 minutes.

I’ve got to get a pullup bar inside the house somewhere as it’s getting cold and the outdoor workouts are coming to an end.

I’ll switch the Squats for Lunges, Jumping Jacks for Hopscotch, and the pushups for Burpees from time to time.