Multitasking - It's how I get shit done, son.

I have this book I'm supposed to read for school (Empire of the Summer Moon) and do a book report/review by Friday. I also want to work out.

So, I have decide that thanks to the Kindle app on my iPad, I can do both. Then the crazy set in.

As you saw from Monday's post, I went 90 minutes, and somewhere around 7 miles while reading this book. It has been my life all week. At lunch, at home, and now at the gym.

The report is due Friday night at 11:30pm. Well, I have the kids this weekend and that means I have to go and get them. So, I'm not going to be home until almost 11. Not a lot of time to write a report. So, I pretty much had to have the book read tonight. With over 130 pages of a very slow moving book to read, I hopped on my trusty Precor glider/stepper/thingy tonight and away I went.

One hundred and thirty minutes (and ten and a quarter miles) later and I have about 20 pages left that will get read at lunch tomorrow. I will get to write the paper when I get home from work and have it done in time to hand in electronically.

I don't think I've ever worked out that long at a continuous pace... ever. There was always a break of like ten minutes, or something, in there. This was 130 minutes straight. Let's put it this way. I could have watched Empire Strikes Back and still had 6 minutes left after the credits were done. Wait a minute, looks like I know how I'm getting through my workouts from now on.

Oh holy crap!

I went to the gym tonight to accomplish two things. One - Work out. Two - Get some reading done for school. I got a lot of both done.

In the middle of my workout (originally a 60 minute run on the machine), two middle aged ladies couldn't figure out how to start up on the machine. I showed them how to get going on it. In doing so, I reset my machine by accident at around 30 minutes. I started it again, and now I'm counting down from 60 again. Crap. "I'll just stop at 30" I told myself. Well, I looked down in the middle of my reading and the counter was now at 20 minutes... I had gone 10 minutes past my usual 60. "I wonder if I can go the full 60?" So I pushed on and kept reading. Next thing I knew I was in the 5 minute cooldown aspect of it.

After all was said and done, 95 minutes - 7.5 miles. I could have gone another 90. I'm almost certain of it. But, the people around me might not like the smell too much.

Food and exercise log - 2-10-12

Exercise: Cleaning the storage room at work - 6 hours.

Food:

Breakfast: Banana and some orange juice (ran late that day)
Lunch: my usual favorite salad.
Dinner: Veggie fried rice ad buddhist delight.
Snack: chex mix

Food and exercise log - 2-9-12

Day 2 - 2/9/2012

Food :

• Awesome breakfast as stated here
• Big salad for lunch with assorted greens, carrots, cucumbers, baby corn, broccoli, red and green peppers, sunflower seeds and pepper
• Dinner: pasta with chicken substitute and minimal amount of sauce.
• Snack: Chex mix/mint cookies

Exercise : Didn't hit the gym today. My body needed the night off as my knees are not all that great. They still burn. Today (Friday) I'm kicking it in to gear again.

Note: I get that some of you probably don't care what I'm posting here. This is for me. I need to keep track of this and it makes me feel better.

Food and exercise log - 2-8-12 - day 1

Today was the start of the food and exercise change over.

Food :

• Awesome breakfast as stated here
• Big salad for lunch with assorted greens, carrots, cucumbers, baby corn, broccoli, red and green peppers, sunflower seeds and pepper
• Dinner: pizza.

I know what you're thinking. Pizza? Awesome dairy free crust, we put some meat substitutes on here and a very conservative amount of cheese alternative. It was nice. Plus, it's not like I ate a whole one like I used to.

Thanks to school work I didn't get to hit the gym until almost 9.

Workout : 

• 25 minutes on the elliptical. It's was the most my knee could handle.
• leg lifts/crunches/back extensions/curls on the matrix machines
• 6 lengths of the pool.

All of that took me just over an hour.

It was a good day. I completely forgot to weigh myself. I will get that tomorrow.

Tomorrow is yoga day followed by 30 minutes in the cardio theater.

I started eating a good breakfast again...

I'm on day one of the "make my body better so I am around longer" plan.

Those who know me are familiar with me never eating breakfast. I am quite the zombie in the morning. Yesterday I even left the house without my glasses only to notice ten minutes after I left the house.

I'm following a plan that has me eating a lot less processed foods.

One of the things I read and saw was a interesting cereal mix. It contained four different whole grain cereals, ground flaxseed meal, walnuts, almond milk, and fruit. I opted for a banana. I might put kiwi in as well tomorrow for a little bit of a bite.

It was pretty good. It is kind of odd not having any added sugar in my cereal (Lucky Charms are amazing) and it tasted good.

Lunch is going to be a salad. I think I'm doing some sort of pizza for dinner.

After that, time to hit the gym. Upright cardio on the elliptical followed by a few laps in the pool.

I'll update later with the start weight of this adventure. Pictures will follow at the start of each month in a sort of timeline fashion to show any changes.

note: I've had some doubters about my new journey here. I'm doing this for health. As I get older, I want to be around for the people I love, see them grow up, get old, and have great experiences with them. I can't do that from six feet under.

Big changes happening...

So, I've been slacking a little bit. Or, as my lady would say "hey, remember when you had a blog?"...

I'm back in school again. Am.Psych is playing another show, and I waited until February to start my new year.

On the school front, the stuff has been busy for me. More reading than I have done for any of my classes, and these are just 100 level classes. One of them in on interpersonal communications, the other one is on race in the geography in America. Some interesting stuff in there, and there is some overlap between the two classes. All I know is that I am doing a TON of reading.

Am.Psych: Yup. We're playing again. Headlining a night with Dark Clan and I:scintilla for our friends, Tony and Amie Asman who just got married not too long ago. We've got some new tricks up our sleeves, so this will be a good one.

As far as the starting a new year business: Over the weekend I watched Forks over Knives with my kids. This prompted them to want to see the next part that talked about the Engine 2 diet. Both are on Netflix instant if you have it. My kids were in to it and it seemed to open their eyes a little bit.

While I was watching it, I am listening as well. Even though I am vegan... and not a damn thing I eat is animal based... there are still aspects of my diet that are not the best. I think they put in best by saying "for most people that are vegan, that means they eat a lot of processed food."  Know what. He's right. I looked at what I was eating, a lot of processed or boxed food that says it's vegan, but when you get down to it... there is a lot of CRAP in there. Too many oils, added sugar, and added salt. Time for me to make a change. I can't stand the belly I have. It's been there for a while. I'd like to make it go away. So, starting on my next trip to the grocery store it's whole grains and oil free cooking for me. I know I can do this. I am not a fan of butter or oils anyway, so I think I can do just fine.

So, along with taking my diet a little more hardcore, I've joined a gym too. I have missed the days where I used to wake up super early in the morning eat breakfast, head down to the YMCA for a swim, come home and head to work. It really boosted my day. I know I had a lot more energy. It was during that time that I actually gained muscle mass and didn't look like a 145lb skinny kid.

I am going to enjoy this. I can go work out while I do my homework. The cardio stations have shelves so I can bring my iPad with me and read. I just have to figure out how my workout is going to work. I want to do 6 days a week of cardio if I can and alternate 3 or 4 days of weights to bring my strength back up.

Hopefully, I can have my belly gone soon. I know it won't happen overnight, getting it took a few years.

I'll keep people posted on progress. There might be some pictures that don't look the best of me in here... but I'm going to track progress of my adventure in this blog.

I think it's a good place to do it.

Today was better because... I got off my ass and got active again.