Day 1/100
Brunch - 2 eggs, 1 slice wheat toast, high-quality H2O
Snack - Mini-bag popcorn
Dinner - Salad with homemade dressing (Olive oil), roast chicken, & the smallest baked potato I could find - it was pathetic, really.
Exercise - Walked 20 minutes. My back SEIZED up 5 minutes in and I had to keep stopping to stretch. Did ab exercises for 10 minutes when I got home, since the back pain is always a sign of a weak core for me.
Tags: exerciseAre you taking part in the Hundred Day Head Start?
My cousin promised to post a “before” picture, so I’m posting this to hold her accountable. She has her family lined up to support her with eating and exercise. That’s such a huge part of any diet, because your family are the people that will be most likely to sabotage you.
That’s right, I said it. Does this sound familiar?
“Let’s go to McDonald’s”
“Pizza! I want pizza!”
“But, it’s a special occasion!”
Don’t tell my I’m a cynic - I’ve been hearing those same things for years, and I’m betting you have also.
Don’t let the bastards get you down - make ‘em prop you up!
Tags: diet, exercise, family, supportSubscribe
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Tags: exercise, tipsWelcome, welcome, step right in, make yourself comfortable
So, here we are.
The move is complete, but I’ve still got some cleaning to do around here. Whaddya think? Like the new digs?
So, I’ll be finished getting the structure of everything I want this site to be in a few days. But, I’m ready to rock and roll - my exercise motivation is back, I spent Saturday morning working with the neighbors to fill every freaking hole on the road so I won’t have to worry about stepping in any more holes, and I have my blog ready to chart the journey.
Woot!
So, next up is getting a forum installed, along with some minor tweaks to the sidebar. It’s also possible that there’s a slight formatting issue with the first post on the page - we’ll see in a moment, I suppose. I have a bit of SEO work to do on the old posts, but you won’t be seeing any of that. The SEO tools available for WordPress make this move worthwhile, to me at least.
So yeah, I suppose you can tell I’m stoked!
Tags: exerciseCh- Ch- Ch- Changes, and some plans
Ok, we’ll start with the health stuff first: I’ll be starting back walking tonight. Day 1/100
Woot!
I still have soreness in the ankle in the morning, and when I get tired in the evening, but I’ve been exercising it lightly using exercise bands I bought at Wal-mart for $20. I’ve also been playing with my new Wii. Baseball and golf are tough on the ankle due to the spinning motion you need to use to get it to work best. But boxing kicks ass! Very much like cardio-boxing. I’m trying to come up with a simple way to rig the exercise bands and the Wii remote/nunchuck so my arms and chest get a resistance workout as well.
As for changes…
If you know much about domain names, you’ve noticed that I have this blog, and several others, on sub-domains of hundreddayheadstart.com. The primary domain is where I post about the sponsored review industry, but when I first picked up the domain it was intended to be for this blog and subject exactly.
I used this domain earlier this year to just get some thoughts off my chest, not really sure if i would stick with that subject or not. The good news is that I did, and I also restarted this health blog. So, I’m making some changes.
I picked up a new domain for the sponsored review blog: Bloggerista.net. Over the weekend, I moved the posts from HDHS to the new domain, now hosted at godaddy.com and powered by Wordpress. I’m really excited about making the move to WP and excited about the capabilities. It takes a bit more technical knowledge to get set up than Blogger; Blogger is definitely the most intuitive, easy-to-use platform for blogging. But, WP does so much more.
So, that move is done, mostly. The HDHS domain has a redirect script for now, until the search engines catch up. In a couple weeks, I’ll be making another change: I’ll be shutting down the subdomains and moving this health blog back where it belongs: www.hundreddayheadstart.com. I’ll also be moving it over to Wordpress as well.
That’s all for now. I’ll report in tomorrow, let you know how it goes tonight with the ankle and all.
Tags: exercise, walk, Wii, wiisportsRecovering from the Ankle Sprain
The first 10 days there was no improvement - none.
The last few days, though, big time improvements. I can bear weight and climb up stairs. Can’t go down stairs yet, though - can’t bear that much weight. It’s still painful, but manageable. The big challenge now is to not do too much.
I’ve been researching how to rehab this thing since I can’t afford to go to physical therapy 3 times per week. Looks like I’ll need some exercise equipment. Probably the most useful for this injury looks to be an exercise 
band. I can hold it with my hands or my good foot and loop it around the bad foot and gently work the ankle through X and Y axis with some resistance.
I’m also looking forward a bit to when I can finally start walking again. I’ve found recommendations to continue wearing a brace during exercise. I’ve found those elastic things at the drug store to be craptastic, but I saw one site that showed someone using their air cast. Not a bad idea, especially since I can’t afford a hinged ankle brace like the “real” athletes might use.
Ankle ligament injuries are a bitch, let me tell you. I’ve been through this too many times, and if I can get some surgical repair approved later this year, I’m doing it. My brother swears by it, says it is the best thing he’s done for his ankle.
How to get children exercising (without them knowing it!)
I’m still out of commission, but I came across a solid article from Dr. Sheri about exercise for kids. It mirrors my own thoughts on getting my kids moving throughout the week. Here’s an excerpt of her suggestions:
Additional suggestions to get your kids moving more:
# Whenever your kids have ten free minutes, encourage them to walk around instead of sitting down.
# Get your kids more involved in helping doing physical chores around the house, like cleaning, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and washing dishes.
# Make a game out of raking the leaves in the yard.
# Take your kids with you when shopping for groceries (as an added bonus, use the time to teach them about which foods are healthier to eat).
# Put on some music and have an impromptu family dance.
# Send your kids outside to kick or hit a ball around or throw a Frisbee.
# Get a basketball hoop to set up in your driveway and send your kids outside to play regularly, or walk to the nearest neighborhood school and use theirs.
# On nice days, take your kids to the nearest park to walk or play.
# Encourage your kids to take the dog out for a daily walk (it needs exercise, too!).
# Always have your kids walk around the house while talking on the telephone.
# Have your kids walk in place, dance, or simply move while watching TV – at least during the commercial breaks.
To these I’ll add a couple of the things I’ve been doing:
- Races. My daughters LOVE to race in the yard and around the house. I time them with the stopwatch function on my cell phone and they enjoy hearing that they are getting faster. Timing helps by letting me know when they’ve done enough - if the times start getting longer, they’re tired or hot. Time to stop. In effect, this serves as an interval workout.
- My oldest daughter likes jump-rope, and can jump for 15-20 minutes at a stretch.
- Playgrounds! I’m a believer that there is no better workout for a kid. It’s a full-body workout done for an extended period of time at a variety of speeds and levels of effort.
- We live in Florida, so swimming is big. We don’t have a pool, unfortunately, but we take advantage of every offer to have the girls swim with friends or family. We also have the
beach.
It’s summer. Can you challenge your kids to do something physical every day until school (and PE and fall sports!) starts? Can you challenge yourself to make it fun for them? What are your ideas?
Tags: children, exercise, kidsMaybe I was a little ambitious
I underestimated just how much the pain of my injuries would take out of me. In addition to the ankle, I have road-rash on both knees and elbows, both elbows are swollen, and my ribs are bruised. All that from one fall, if you can believe it.
Being forty years old sucks.
I just couldn’t do any exercise. Physically, I’m a wreck. Obviously, I need to take a few more days to recover. Last night, my ribs hurt so much I couldn’t fall asleep.
However, I did keep my diet goal in check - 1,699 calories. I can do better, but 1800 is a prime fat-burning zone for me. I lose weight at that level, without feeling hungry and cheating. When I add the exercise and walking back in the mix, I should begin to drop weight steadily. For now, though, I’m sticking with the diet challenge. When I’m capable of more, I’ll do more.
Diet Challenge: Day 1/100
Tags: diet, exerciseWhere do I go from here?
Now that the walking is out for the next 3 to 6 weeks, I need to come up with other hundred day head start challenges. Because that’s the POINT of all this, isn’t it? Not waiting until after some event or date to get started improving my health?
There are still things I can do. For one, I can pay MUCH closer attention to what goes into my mouth. I popped over to myfitnesspal.com, a website I wrote about on myother diet blog a few weeks ago. After plugging in my height, weight, goals, etc, it gave a recommendation of 1890 calories/day to reach my weight loss goal of 2 lbs/week, along with exercising every day for at least 20 minutes.
So, here are the new challenges:
1. For the next 100 days, I will not eat more than 2,000 calories/day, and will average below 1,890 by the 100th day.
2. I will exercise every day for 20 minutes, minimum, for the next 100 days.
How will I exercise? Obviously, for the first couple of weeks I will be limited to exercises that don’t require me to bear weight on my right foot. That leaves a whole bunch of upper body and core strength exercises. Here’s a starter list, to which I will be adding:
- Chick-pushups (on my knees - I know it’s a sexist name, but my gym teacher used a much more graphic term, so live with it)
- Crunches - a whole variety of standard and raised-leg crunches.
- Block-hauling - tie a rope to a cinder block, then sit down and drag it in to you. I can also spin around and pull it over my shoulders.
- Supermans
- Leg lifts - variety of 6-inch and scissors
- Leg extensions - on back and on all fours
- Bridge form knees
- Chair March
- Balanced twist - site on but with legs in the air and back at 45 degree angle, then swing arms from side to side slowly.
Alot of stuff comes from my past experience, but some of it also comes from Ron Jones bodyweight exercise site. If you are a beginner, or have physical modifications, this is a great resource. Tons of exercises, and many can be modified around limitations.
I’m going to try to keep track of what I do and how long I do it and post the results here for accountability.
Tags: ankle brace, diet, exercise, fitness, InjuryStarting over, again!
I made it 13 days in a row, and missed yesterday. I spent the afternoon mowing and dehydrated myself. I suppose I could count the mowing as my exercise, but it was a riding mower. ;-(
How did I dehydrate myself? I mowed the whole lawn in first gear. Super-slow. I was ticked off at the world and wanted to be alone. Mowing gives me time to work it out.
But, the beauty of the hundred day head start is that I don’t have to wait for some event in my life to pass before starting again. Those 13 days just make it easier to restart, in a little better shape. It would be easy to wait this week. My wife goes in for surgery on Tuesday. But, I’m going for it anyway. Started today, Day 1/100.
Tags: exercise, family, surgery