Fit Bit Surge

Oct/13-448, Oct 14-492, Oct 15-937, Oct 17th-528, Oct 18th 508

total push ups/chins 442,856

          In a way part of my interest in doing a million push ups and chins is related to an interest in keeping in shape- or fighting against the bodies ( or my bodies) tendency to age. In and earlier post I talked about some of the on-line tools I use to help with my fitness efforts. I think I included the fit bit app- but really the fit bit surge is the complementary wearable tool that collects the data. Before the Surge was available in Canada I had done a good deal of research about it. One of the most attractive features of the Surge is that it calculates heart rate without one of those cumbersome straps around your chest. Most people are not going to wear these straps all day long -so the Surge has an advantage that it can calculate your heart rate and calories burned all day long- not just when you are exercising. If you want to see how the device does this go check on the specs on the company website:https://www.fitbit.com/ca/surge .

        I like the fact that the device accurately calculates how many calories you burn each day while exercising and while at rest. I mentioned before that I use the myfitnesspal app to calculate calories in versus out. The nice thing about the fitbit app is that it will allow you to calculate your calories eaten versus calories burned. It will also allow you to automatically sync with an app like myfitnesspal, so when it syncs it automatically populates calorie burned data into your myfitnesspal. The watch and app have a number of cool features such as daily or weekly tracking of steps, kilometers travel weight change, average sleep duration and more. If you want to learn a little more about the watch and the app, check the link about. If you are looking for one more reason to consider the app consider my experience with the company described in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqS0nFfe5hs

A couple of my favourite online fitness tools

Sept/29-703, Sept/30-325, Oct/4-68

Total Push ups/Chins 439,252

In my last blog post I made reference to using the myfitnesspal app and the Fitbit Surge to help me monitor my fitness progress. This is a screen shot from the myfitnesspal app.
I took this screen shot early this morning so I hadn't yet added all my food for the day and as you will notice the app is registering zero calories for exercise. As I mentioned in my last post the calories in versus calories out theory of weight loss is probably fairly over simplified, however at some level if you want to lose weight you do have to burn more calories than you eat. We have worked with trainers and nutritionists who have helped us with our diet and workout routine - and the other nic thing about this app is it does help you track your macros fairly accurately. If I am being very focused  on my diet I Amy be cycling carbs and watching every closely at how many calories are coming from each protein, fats and carbs. If I am mainly focusing on losing weight I pay a lot more attention to creating a calorie deficit and maybe some attention to getting enough protein. 

I also mentioned that I like the Fitbit Surge as a fitness tool. There are a number of reasons for this but probably I should do a future blogpost about the FitBit Surge. However for this post I will say that one of the things I really like about the Fitbit is it will automatically sync with myfitnesspal. So the zero calories you see in the exercise section above will soon be replaced by an accurate estimate of the calories burned after the apps sync with each other. If you enter the number of minutes of each activity you perform in myfitnesspal it will give an estimate of the calories burned ,however the Fitbit gives an estimate based on your actual heart rate which is more accurate. Below is a screen shot of one of the Fitbit apps reports and this is a benefit to the Surge -there are a number of usual measures and fitness/health data points that the app will report on and graph. Overall these two make a great duo when it comes to technology to support your fitness program and goals. 

Calorie Burn

Oct 6-459. oct8-215, oct 9-285

total push ups/chins 419,418

 

Thought I should get a post in. I have been a little more consistent this week in posting on my other blog. Essentially right now tracking my efforts to get beach ready for Mexico next month. I have mostly been using the push ups and chins ups as an additional strategy to burn calories. I have been trying to do either supersets or small sets with only 30 seconds rest in between. Keeping that heart rate and calorie burn up. My heart rate monitor also measures calorie burn, which is interesting as I seem to be able to get my heart rate up quicker supersetting push ups and variations of chins, than when I run. Also overall I am getting a better calorie burn. Partly because I run at a slow shuffle and I have conditioned myself to do set after set of chin ups or push ups. If you want to see how my prep for Mexico is going check my other blog. http://20poundsdifference.blogspot.ca/

Back From Vacation

May 11-12

total push ups/chins 356,955

I just got back from a vacation to the beautiful Mayan Riviera. It was beautiful, the weather was great, and it was just me and Cathy-so the company was exceptional. As you can see above- I didn't do a lot of push ups or chins while I was away. A couple of days I made it into the gym on the resort ( which was quite well equipt). On the 11th I did a few sets of chins as part of my workout. If you want to see the damage down over 7 days of 5 star all inclusive dining in Mexico- check out my other blog:

http://20poundsdifference.blogspot.com/

Otherwise it is time to get back to work.

pretty good so far

Dec 8-937,dec9-305,dec11-811,dec12-470

total push ups/chins 339,828

weight 196 bf%21.2

On Christmas day of 2006 I weighed 224 pounds. About a year before I had weighed 260 pounds and lost 60 pounds by being incredibly anal about how much I ate in a day relative to how much I exercised ( with a little help from FITDAY.com). I started a job-where food was readily available all day long and I started to head back towards 260 again. I decided it was time again to get serious about the push ups and chin ups. In January I decided to start counting the push ups/chins and started this blog, by this time I was back down to about 206 pounds. I seem to have a hard time getting my weight below the 190's or the bodyfat below 20 percent-but I am in better shape than I was when I started and I look better in my 40's than I did in my 30's. I am still a good distance from my goal of a million push ups and chins-but the pay off has been pretty good so far.

Leanscale

Oct 18-100

total push ups/chins 322,840

weight 192.5 bf 18.3%

So far I have been able to follow thru with rule #3-don't go to bed until you have burned more calories than you have eaten. Sunday was a little hard. We decided to go to the breakfast buffet at the Deerfoot Inn and Casino. I ate 3200 calories worth of food. It was fantastic. However Sunday evening I had to workout for two hours and five minutes to burn it off. Running, weights ab work and chin ups. It was worth it -but it made it hard to follow rule number three that day. I found this new app for my Ipod that should put a little prospective on this process. It is "Leanscale". The App is designed for people who use a bodyfat scale. The challenge with this type of scale is that they are so sensitive to anything that affects your hydration level. Exercise, drinking too much water or too little all affect your percentage rating. You enter your weight and percentage of bodyfat into the app. The program then tells you the trend of bodyfat and lean, not just what your percentage is like today, Today my weight is up and my BF percent is down. The other day my BF percentage was up. The app today tells me that my trend average over the last three days is that I have gained 2.6 pounds of lean mass and lost 2.3 pounds of fat-I like that trend.

Getting close to 300 k

JUne 3-274,june4-243,june5-292,june 6-109,june7-324,june 9-540,june10-121,june12-168june 13-278

total push ups/chins 296,233

weight 192 bf18.5%

In my last post I said I was going to try to get a few 1000 push up/chin up days in a week. Well since my last post I have done zero days where I did 1000 push ups or chins. Talk about jinxing yourself. The good news is I have been fairly consistant this week in doing some push ups or some chin ups almost every day. On the 10 I did an hour of push ups.Sets of ten reps with 60 seconds rest in between-straight for an hour. Yesterday I did the same thing for chins. One hour but instead of sets of 10 I was doing mainly sets of three reps. This week I guarantee I will get at least one one thousand rep day done.

New App

May9-237,may10-1000,may11-185,may12-763,may13-1014,may14-1001

total push ups/chins 290,056

weight 187.8 bf%18.4

Found a Matt Furey app for the Iphone. Matt Furey is the guy who wrote combat conditioning. Essentially how to hindu push up and hindu squat your way to health, weight loss,fitness etc, Anyway the app is designed to do "deck of cards workout"-in which you alternate hindu push ups, hindu squats, v-sits and table tops. Not a bad app for free-I would be disappointed if you had to pay for it. The rest of the app is blog entries aimed at selling his onn-line products.

Still below 20 percent

Feb 22-75,feb23-473,feb 24-424

total push ups/chins 260,263

Weight 185.8 bf%17.8

Well I am still not quite used to seeing the scale below 20 percent bodyfat-but I think I can learn to live with it. The :Lose it" -app on my ipod touch is awesome. Fitday is great but the immediate feedback of calories eaten versus calories burned has this really nice way of making you think twice about reaching for that cookie. Everytime I think about eating something I really don't need I pull up the exercise log to figure out how many minutes I would have to run or do push ups to burn it off. Yah most of the time it is not worth it. However the other side of the coin comes into effect also. I don't think twice about having a caramel miachiatto at Starbucks if I know I have and hour to 90 minutes that night to burn it off- I figure if I exercise for 90 minutes I deserve it. Really is there another good reason to do 90 minutes of cardio. I can't think of one.

Up and Down

Nov18-602,nov19-640,nov21-755,n0v22-897,nov23-652

total push ups/chins 228,628

weight 194.2 bf 19.8

My bodyweight and percentage of bodyfat are still going roughly in the right direction. Overall the trend is that I go up in weight on the weekend when I indulge with the family -this weekend it was pizza and a little wine. I haven't had anything to drink since August so this hasn't been a factor in terms of adding calories. However we had two bottles kicking around for ages so we drank 1 1/2 bottles. Between the pizza and the wine you could see it on the scale on Sunday. Then all week I essentially fight to undo the damage done on the weekend. Overall each week I am weighing a little less than the week before -so the progress is slow and not uniform -but progress non-the -less. Push ups are going well. Still need to do about 560 a day to make the quarter million target by New Years.

Downward trend

Nov13-320,nov15-375,nov16-510,nov 17-745

total push ups/chins 225,082

weight 195.4 bf% 20.3

The chart to the left is the update on my bodyfat percentage fluctuations since this August. As the trendline indicates even though daily up and down fluctuations might give you the impression that the percentage is not moving downward, the average is definately going the right direction-down. I need to average 566 push ups or chins a day to meet my goal of doing a quarter of a million by the New Years- so I am going to need a few big days to make the average. Still do-able but a challenge. Of course a million push ups/chins is a challenge I suppose-so what the hell.

513 a day

OCt29-310,oct31-708,Nov1-575

total push ups/chins 219,205

weight 197.4 bf%21.4

" You didn't stop playing because you got old, you got old because you stopped playing"

I read the above quote somewhere- where I can not for the life of me remember. Anyway it is a really good quote. I suppose it is along the lines of ''-you are as old as you feel''. For the most part I was feeling kind of young this week -had some good push up/ chin up days. I have missed the odd day here and there,I am still on track to break a quarter of a million by New Years. As of today I have to average over 513 chins and/or push ups a day to reach the target.

Nordic Track arrived

Oct 22-582,oct23-530,oct24-520

215,886 total push ups/chins

weight 198 bf%21.6

I have had some good "push up" days. To reach the goal of a quarter million push ups/chins by New Years ,I now have to do about 501 push ups and/or chins a day. If this week is any indication I should be able to make it. The new Nordic Track Incline trainer arrived yesterday. Well after setting it up after work last night I couldn't be bothered trying it out. Not a good sign. However today I did try two of the "easy" workouts, the 150 calorie workout and the 250 calorie workout. A little challenging , but "easy" doesn't describe the workout, but I wouldn't say "hard "does either. Anyway the machine is great. Sound quality with the mp3 hook up is great. The fan is a welcome addition when the thing goes into 40 degree incline mode. Lets see what happens to the percentage of bodyfat now.

perfect fitness workouts

aug29-10,aug30-200,aug31-190,sept1-210,sept2-50

total push ups /chins 201,965

weight 199.6 bf%21.9

Well the workouts from the perfect fitness website are pretty good. The assisted one arm push ups are hard, but ironically I find myself looking forward to them on off days. I am alternating the pull up and push ups routines (one a day). I am actually doing all three push up work outs on the push up days and all three pull up workouts on the pull up day. Call me obsessive, but the volume of just one of the workouts seems a little too low at this point.

Down weight- a bit

July 5-413,july 6-60,july7-411,july 8-100

total push ups/chins 191,792

weight 199.6 bf % 24.2

I did go away for a few days leading up to and over the weekend. I managed to keep my weight under control. Well the truth is I went up about 7 pounds because I didn't get a lot of workouts in. I was just determined to get my weight back down before I did a post again. So I am down a portion of a pound from where I was last time I post -about a week ago. I suppose it is a good thing you can go wild and binge over a long weekend -go up about seven pounds and get it back down in about a week. My percentage of body fat has gone way up -but it seems to fluctuate up and down a bit as my weight goes up and down. Actually after my binge weekend-many pieces of pizza and chicken wings-I was up to 207 but my bodyfat was a little under 20 percent. I thought "great I didn't work out and I ate like a pig but I gained muscle and lost fat ( according to my bf % reading anyway). The next day it had jumped back up -so I guess easy come easy go

Apr27-470,Apr28-310apr29-560

total push ups/chins 175,429

weight 202.4 bf%22.5

I am having a little trouble keeping below my target weight goal line. I have been fairly close to the daily target weight-so I am not going to loss any sleep over it. I am still within striking distance of meeting my target for May 15th. Our usual Fast Food Friday with the family doesn't help alot- typically I spend the rest of the week trying to bring my weight down.

500 a day

Jan16-505,Jan17-535

Total push ups/chins 150,716

Weight 203.0 bf% 20.7

Since New Years I have been averaging 496 push ups or chins a day. My daily average for last year was 222-so January has been a good month. It used to seem like doing 200 or 300 in a day was a big deal-but now that I have determined to try to do at least 500 a day- I just seem to get them done somehow before the day ends. If I haven't got my 500 in a day I end up doing sets of 10 by the side of my bed until the 500 are done.

Attempted a maximum effort for chin ups last night-got 13-almost got a 14th.

Goal Graph

Jan 11-550,Jan12-586

total push ups/chins 148,226

weight 202.2 bf%23.6

Here is my fitday weight goal graph as of today. It is a little hard to read, but the straight line represents the trendline I will need to maintain to hit 185 by next New Years. The squiggly line underneath is my actual recorded weight to date. As you can see by the graph even with the ups and downs-I am apparently ahead of schedule to make this target. Of course the challenge is when I reach the sub 200 lbs point -but knock on wood. Haven't tested myself for maximum chins or push ups in a while-but my total daily numbers are going okay

Weekend weight

Jan3-515,Jan4-570

total push ups/chins 144,262

weight 203.8 ,bf% 24.3

So far this year three or four days in I am hitting some decent push up/chin up numbers. Typically I loss weight all week long and then spend the weekend pigging out and puttin the weight back on. This weekend I went down in weight overall. Not a bad new trend for the New Years. On the quest for 100 consecutive push ups and 100 consecutive chins. On the good news side of things I was able to do 12 consecutive chins yesterday. The bad news is I thought I could do about 40 consecuvtive push ups -I tested myself yesterday and was only able to do 30 in row.

losing a pound a day

Dec28-430,dec29-304

total push ups and chins 141,577

weight 205 bf %23

Down another half a pound. Since Christmas that has been four and a half pounds of weight lost,pretty close to a pound a day of weight loss. I would be thrilled to believe that the weight loss could continue this way and if it does great. I don't seem to have a ton of trouble getting down to 200 pounds, however the real test is whether I can get down below 200 pounds. If I keep heading south of 200 I will be pretty happy with the kettlebells. I have been fooling around with the kettlebells for a while. Pretty much anything you would want to know about working out with kettlebells can be found on Dragondoor.com. Pavel Tsataouline who brought this ancient strength building tool, to consciousness in the west, has his books and courses featured on the site. I have been lurking on the site and it's forums for a while. When I got the two 16kg bells I started to fool around with them a bit-but the forums say buy the book "Enter the Kettlebell" and follow the program in it. So finally I did and have been following the RIte of Passage Program outlined in the book(along with push ups of course). Seems to be working pretty well so far. The website for dragondoor is quite simply :

www.dragondoor.com