Those times where I’ve made a good faith effort to get in shape were met with varying degrees of success. As with most people, the seemingly inevitable fall-back is met with confusion and disappointment. Even when hitting a “plateau” (while keeping up a high activity level) can be de-motivating, but in the end it’s because we choose to ignore changes that led to the plateau to begin with. It’s an ugly truth – but here it’s especially important to own our own failure. It’s either from dropping off on the level of physical activity, or we’re not being honest about changes in food choices. It’s simple to drop off the pounds at first – but when venturing away from the ‘straight and narrow’ path of strictly planned meals, the little lies creep in. “Oh, well – this salad is only 180 calories” (then pour on the gobs of full-fat dressing and other chunky sundries). Then, when we stop seeing the flattering results – we wonder where it all went wrong. Well, as always, it starts with personal choices and careful selection of facts that lead back to old habits – and old results. It is an ugly, ugly truth, but the only way to deal with it effectively is to be brutally honest about it.

To that end, I’ve jumped into the Apex Fitness plan with both feet, as part of my membership at 24 Hour Fitness. I’m like a lot of people that roll their eyes at the idea of calorie counting, and now I’m in full back-pedal mode on that account. And to be fair, this is a lot more than simply calorie counting. It tracks the balance of food types that you consume, and calibrates that against the burn rate through activity monitoring.  The more you know, the better – but you still have to remain vigilant. Just like the old saying “There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there are statistics” this would seem to be a place where that could apply. In their FAQ they refer to a common question on the dreaded plateau. The answer is what you’d expect – when people put in info about what they’ve eaten, it tends to be off by 20-40%. You can excuse it as a lack of experience or information – but at the end of the day it’s still a lie. And the same can be said for tracking of physical activities – a walk around the park turns into a 5-mile trek in the wilderness, uphill both ways.

Some of this is relatively easy to track. There are a lot of foods that are already listed on the site. And even putting in a recipe or a nutritional breakdown of an item is quick and easy. I don’t have a Bodybugg yet, but I have a feeling I’ll be pulling the trigger on that before the end of the month. For one – it satisfies my penchant for all things geek – and for another, it shows to be well-proven technology. (it would certainly prevent mis-logging a trip to the mailbox as a half marathon). I also really like how the site allows you to look at your personal trends over periods of time – again, this is statistics, and the value of the data is only as good as the information on which it’s based. And even though I’ve only been around this site for a few days, I can tell that it will be a useful tool for me.

Whether it will actually work over the long haul? I suppose that’s largely up to me. Aside from the testimonials of so many people that have used this approach, I’m also impressed with the way they’ve solved many of the problems from a technological perspective. I’m a technology guy, and they’ve done a lot of things that just make sense to me – and I think that will help when it comes time to really drill down and get right with the numbers to stay on track. There’s no place for calories and laziness to hide if a person’s really committed to be honest about what they’re doing and eating – and quite frankly that’s a bit scary to me. In many ways I’m way out of my comfort zone here (particularly in my workouts, where my ego has taken the biggest hit) but I have a feeling that this is exactly where I need to be.

Breakdown of nutrients taken in for one day

The positive stuff is pretty easy to explain. I’ve been walking quite a bit – mainly on the commute back and forth to work. I also made some common sense changes to my eating – mainly cutting out beer, desserts and between-meal snacking. That alone has accounted for the difference in my current baseline. But that’s what I call “accidental” improvement, and at this point I’m about focused, intentional change. And in that area, there was no mercy from my trainer.

The *one* device that I was told to fear was the Stairmaster. A co-worker raved about how it can break your will – and of course it’s the very first thing that the trainer put me on. I did a mere 10 minutes on the thing and I felt like someone had poured a 2-litre bottle of water on my head. It was the longest ten minutes that I can remember, so I’m pretty sure that it’s not only a torture device, but also a time machine too. I’ve decided that the original name for the device must have been “Soul Crusher”, but they changed it to make the thing more marketable. However, I survived – and I made it through the 20 minutes on the elliptical machine that he put me on right after. That was half of a warm-up. Tomorrow I have the honor of repeating this feat, but for an hour. Joy.

But I’m not in this to nibble around the edges. I’m not in this to make myself comfortable. I’m in this to make a real and deliberate change. So now I’m off to fill out a bunch of online forms to track food intake and my workout schedule – and will pick things up in the morning. I have a feeling that tonight I’m going to get a really good night’s sleep.

Going forward I’ll be using this blog to track some of the points (high and low) in the course of taking on a new physical training regimen.  I set goals some time ago, and while I’m not any further away from them (and in some ways I’m substantially closer), I’ve not been moving toward them with purpose. Well, that’s all about to change. I just signed up for a membership at the 24Hr Fitness that’s next to the Arclight theater here in Hollywood, and I’ll be getting on with the daily routine of – well – setting up and adhering to a daily routine.

That’s not to say that I’ll give up blogging about food and drink. I really enjoy both – and I have no plans to change that. However, it’s likely that I will be indulging with less frequency – so expect to see more info/whining about the workout to balance the notes on wine, sweet potato fries and spicy sushi.

As an interesting side note, I just read an article about how business managers are influenced by a person’s physical attributes when considering everything from hiring to promotions. And of course that’s both a tacit and sometimes overt rule here in Hollywoodland. Aside from one’s physique being a sign of general health, it also has real-world implications for a variety of more subliminally judged situations. It’s easy to discard as “glib” and “shallow” to consider that reality, but they’re actually based in long-standing patterns that a fool ignores at their own personal and professional peril. Make no mistake, I’m doing this for myself – but I’m not stupid – at least about this…

Consider this a "before" picture

So now I’ve just got to deal with the physical adjustments to the new routine and demands I’m placing on my body. This feels a bit like the Master Cleanse that I just pulled off last month (albeit in a different region of the mid-section). It was strange and uncomfortable at first, but once I got over the first cycle or two I was in cruise control. This will probably take a bit longer, but as they say, it’s time to literally “suck it up” and tighten up the abs.

…it’s great motivation to keep pressing on sets. However, I was praying for death at the end of an hour. I don’t believe that I *over*did it, but when it actually hurts my arms to raise them above my head to wash my hair I’m thinking that a quick session in the jet tub before crashing in bed tonight might be a good idea.

I have some errands to run on the Burgman today, so I’ll go ahead and get them in now before the heat gets completely out of whack. I still have the second part of my workout to do today (core/stretching) but that will have to wait for later, and will certainly be indoors.

But recently I had a chance to run some car-only errands using a friend’s BMW. On the plus side, it has a performance envelope that’s akin to a motorcycle – on the minus side – it can be uncomfortable as hell. There’s a reason for that – this type of BMW is not designed for fat people. When you’re stuck in traffic with various parts of a racing-inspired bucket seat forcing you into proper posture, you start to notice these things. Mind you, I’m actually smaller compared to my peak weight when I worked the day-gig in IT (~30lbs and counting) but I’ve noticed along the way that the little things I say to myself have gone from “hey, not bad, your pants have gotten baggy” to “you’ve got to tighten up that gut or no one’s going to let you near the pool for fear of a harpooning incident“. That’s the difference between the “Fat Guy” in my head controlling the conversation versus the “Fit Guy” calling the shots. It was something that dawned on me while sitting in stalled traffic – another all too rare moment of clarity – imagine my surprise.

Every once in a while (particularly when I’m at the end of a longer treadmill run) I’ll still hear Fat Guy trying to negotiate with the Fit Guy. “Hey, that’s as long as you ran two days ago and you’re not gasping for breath this time – why not take a break to celebrate?” This is the same voice that would say “Hey, your boss is a jerk and you work really hard – why not go out for a big juicy hamburger and a chocolate sundae?” – the familiar sound of that voice – always looking for the easy way out. And quite frankly, that’s why I think I’ve recently plateaued in the pursuit of several fitness goals. So yesterday Fit Guy told Fat Guy to shut the hell up – amp’ed up the weights, blew out my sets and even slipped into the sloppiest form I could tolerate – and quite frankly Fat Guy thought I was going to die.

But I didn’t die! Not only that, I’m not really that sore today. Fat Guy is shocked. Fit Guy is unimpressed.

So I’m going to use this little revelation as an opportunity to put Fit Guy fully in charge. Fat Guy gets to take a back seat (where the cushions are more comfortable anyway). I’ll be setting up some sort of workout/fitness tracking blog on this site to mark my progress – both to keep friends and family in the loop and to keep myself honest. Once I figure out the form that will take I’ll post a follow-up with the plan and layout.

Fit Guy out.