Author Archives: InV4d3r

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #7

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Summer strikes the land. People were complaining during the last weeks that summer isn’t coming this year, but now is the time where we get all the heat. And this very heat is currently my main problem to actually continue my sports program.

It doesn’t really make sense to be on the treadmill running for like 40 minutes and sweat like halibut. I’ve got this serious heat problem when in motion. It’s also because my blood pressure is still very high and when doing cardio activities I literally start to glow. Another side effect is, that my cooling system is working very well and I do look as though I’ve been swimming fully clothed but rather running on a treadmill or the elliptical.

I guess, it’s quite obvious that I want to avoid such things as much as I can and on the other hand, and due to my high blood pressure, I don’t want to risk a breakdown.

my favourite July

But fortune smiled on me. My plan was to start swimming after a while of being in gym. It’s now almost four month of training and it’s time to reach for something new to prevent from boredom. Swimming has always been a joy for me and I wasn’t swimming since being in school. And by that do I mean a more tournament oriented kind of swimming. Just without an actual tournament.

I’ve been swimming on a lake here and then, but I feel like I should take this a little bit more seriously and go to the natatorium one or two times a week. The new cooling effect while doing sports and being in cool water is another thing that seems quite intriguing to me.

Honestly, it costs a lot of willpower these days to actually go to the gym. My sessions are at no more than three per week and mountain biking is currently cut off the schedule. The plan get below the 100 kg by the end of August draws more and more into a further distance, but it’s way more important to get through this period of heat without giving up the whole sports thing.

No pain – no gain. And it literally is a pain at the gym with 36°C and a humidity that’s almost tropical. I’ve ordered all things necessary for the natatorium and I hope they’ll be in my mailbox by the end of this week, that I can start swimming.

For the those of you who are in love with numbers, my weight is currently at 102 – 104 kg. Depending on what I ate and my whole condition. It’s fluctuating pretty much, but as long as the scale does not deflect I’m fine.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #6

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Almost four month after revisiting my personal “Straight Edge Project” it’s time to summarize several things.

Most importantly, this is the longest period of being “straight edge” since the very beginning of the project back in the days. Most, if not all, projects finished about 2 or 3 month and only a few things remained. For instance, to stop smoking was the most important thing and is still something I’m very proud of.

Several other things did not remain. Like doing sports continuously or eating healthy and more “efficient”. But these thing have changed. SE 3.0 was the first project that did not focus that much on strong rules and dogmas. This made it much easier for me to keep the pace and stick with it. I sure have schedule for my gym lessons and I do not eat like a pig each and every day, but there’s a spare room left for such things. Till one certain degree of course.

I’m aware of the fact, that one of these days I’ll have to face my very own motivation. This day has been reached and it does currently feel quite exhausting to do SE 3.0, but I’ll stick with it. No matter what. It’s very difficult, mostly because of the schedule my work day dictates me. I waste tons and tons of hours with commuting and my true spare time is limited to almost a single hour per day. I don’t count sports and such as spare time.

Most of the time at work I simply sit and don’t move around very much. So sports is something absolutely necessary to have, like a counter reaction. I have to do it, also because I see it as an prevention. I don’t want to suffer one of these office illnesses or drown in my own fat masses. I don’t do sports mainly for a fun reason, I do it because the daily life, especially at work and in offices, turns human beings into wounded, disabled soldiers of work.

It’s important for me to stick with the project, because my first milestone is still not reached. I wanted to get below 100 kg in August and currently I ply at 102 and 104 kg. I don’t really think that I can reach the mark below a hundred, but this doesn’t bother me that much. It’s way more important to get below the hundred to actually reach a first milestone.

On the other hand, it’s good to not have such a drastic drop of weight. What goes down pretty quick, goes up quickly as well. I want to avoid such things. What counts for me is the fact that I’ve finally managed it to have a continuity and a schedule I can follow without having a greater loss. The bigger loss is of course the commuting, which bothers me very much at the moment. But I don’t want my SE 3.0 get affected with the disaffection I have with my work day conditions.

It is exhausting and I’m very tired at the moment, but things gonna change.

Krásné město Praha

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There are not many journeys this years appearing on my schedule, actually the one I did the last couple of days will basically the only one. I’ve been to Prague for five days and it was worth every single minute. I absolutely recommend visiting this city. The architectural mix is intriguing. The hospitality of the inhabitants is simply awesome.

We, that is me and my girlfriend,  spent the nights in a hotel called “Aparthotel City 5“. We both are not those kind of people who need a lot of luxury on their journeys or a special high standard, but apart from this, this hotel has got its very own high standard. The owner, Kristina, is one of the most enthusiastic, polite, helpful person one can find in hotel business and tourism. Seriously.

Our room was very good as well. Clean, nice and functional interior and complementaries like coffee, Espresso and several blends of tea. We were absolutely, positively surprised. It was my first trip eastwards in Europe ever and I personally was expecting something “not so nice”. Call it stereotype thinking, but I actually did not know what I could have had to expect. In general, and I can only repeat myself, I was positively surprised.

The city caught me from the first minute. So many great vistas to view. You can reach all the important spots by walking and you don’t really need the metro or the tram. Actually, we had to catch the metro several times because we were foot tired. On our day of arrival Kristina gave us a really good introduction to the city of what we have to see and so on. It was quite helpful, because not all the spots we visited were mentioned in detail in our guidebook. Especially the relaxing atmosphere of  Vyšehrad was a greatly welcomed relief.

And that’s basically one of the things I liked the most about Prague. It’s a city with over a million inhabitants, but you don’t actually feel the rush. It maybe a tourist perspective, but I found it very relaxing and recreative. This is definitely a city I will visit again and I absolutely recommend this to everyone who likes city breaks and is tired of metropolises like Paris or London. It’s different and it’s worth every minute.

If you’re wondering why I don’t post any pictures, answer is very simple. They are currently not developed.

SE 3.0 Quick Update

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There are no massive updates this week on my sports program. Everything is going well. Last weekend I ran on the treadmill for one full hour, which is a milestone for me. Longest period till then has been 40 minutes. I was just in the mood to run for that long, it wasn’t planned.

I also do not focus my training on long runs like these. The main goal is still losing weight. My scale displayed a 103,2 kg  last week, which is by far the lowest weight I’ve got in more than a year. It popped up to 105,6 kg over the weekend, but I was eating sort of “very good”, if you know what I mean.

That’s my short report and quick update for this week. There won’t be any updates over the next two weeks or so, because I’m on vacation for a couple of days. I’m not quite sure if I can manage to do any sports, but we’ll see.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #5

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Another week has past and the project is still up and running. Just like me.

I actually had some serious digestion problems. This led me to a slow down of my training program. I mainly avoided the treadmill or in other words, I had to do several breaks to calm down. I can’t run with little aches and pains and I also don’t want to take sports to a point where it’s a sort of a suffering. I did a lot of spinning, used the elliptical and took a few rides on my mountain bike.

Last has also been a week of seduction. I was invited to a wedding and weddings are very well known for lots and lots of delicious, calorie rich food. I was aware of myself and the training program that I’m currently in and wasn’t eating like I would normally do under “usual circumstances”. To be honest, I’m that kind of person that eats like a sodding pig as soon as I can get fine and tasty things to eat.

My discipline has paid off well and the scale did not bump out and presented me a freaking high value. In fact, I’m still making progress and my weight is still going down. Dropping below the 100 kg mark will be difficult, but it’s possible.

Sports in general has become a routine over the last couple of weeks. It’s still nothing disturbing or something that bothers me terribly. I feel fine with this whole situation and I can’t even wait to actually start going to gym or grab my bike to simply power myself a little off. Like I already mentioned in one of my previous, it’s finally fun and no longer a strong, dogmatic project. Sports has become a part of my life and I really look forward and also work hard on it to keep it that way.

If you’re that kind of person that is interested in some facts and statistics about my whole sports activities, you can follow me on runtastic.com ( http://goo.gl/xY577 ).

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #4

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Another week has passed and I’m still into the so called “Straight Edge Project 3.0”

Basically, everything has turned out as a fine routine that doesn’t bother me much. To be honest, I do not currently feel like doing anything else than sports. I went to gym four times and I took two one hour rides last week with my bicycle with a distance of 23 km. According to my fitness app did it burn almost 1,700 kcal each. The cardio program over the week burned around 7,000 kcal and I made a distance of almost 90 km. Very exciting numbers that will hopefully get a decent meaning in the future.

Just for comparison, in the week of 25.06. to 01.07. I burned 4,087 kcal. In addition, I do not feel exhausted or anything similar. It was one of my problems the weeks before that I totally needed to rest for some days. But thanks to the diversity of my training schedule I’m able to keep my sports activities up for five to six days a week, without burning out.

This was also one of the main problems I had with my previous projects. It was always the same and it started to feel like Groundhog Day. These days I have all kinds of different sports activities to face during the week and that means a lot of gas. I absolutely enjoy sports and do not see it as a duty or something forced. It costs a lot of my spare time, but I currently do not actually have a problem with that. Week days are mainly dead days when it comes to social interaction.

One of the most important numbers people are interesting in, when talking about fitness programs is the loss of weight. In my case, I started back in May with something around 110 to 112 kg with a height of 188 cm. My body mass index was scratching the 31. Currently my weight is around 104 to 106 kg with a BMI of something around 29.5, which is still obese. Luckily, one does not recognize me as an obese person. Mother nature gifted me a fine figure, that still suffers from tons of unwanted fat packages, but in the end I don’t look like a typical burger-fast-food-victim.

My plan, or first milestone I want to reach, is to get below the 100 kg. Hopefully it will happen by the end of August. I don’t want to lose weight to fast, because I think, and know, that this is not healthy. I also plan to start a jog outside in free nature by the end of August. I’m not on a rush. And I don’t want to lose the fun for sports by being impatient.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #3

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Another week, another sports report. In case you’ve missed it, Spain is the old and new European Champion in football. But that’s not what this post is actually about. The last week wasn’t a very successful one. I’ve managed to do what I wanted to, but it felt kinda hard and tough.

The weather is currently very warm and I’m that kind of person that heats up very quick. One of my main problems on the treadmill is the heat I produce. I sweat like a waterfall without actually getting any cooling. I’ve to do several breaks during a run on the treadmill. Not because I’m getting tired or something, I’m getting too warm. Like I said before, the weather is also a reason.

I’ve been in a great condition on Saturday, where I managed to stay almost three hours in the gym doing my strength program followed by endurance/cardio training. I spent only thirty minutes on the treadmill. I felt great and like I could run for hours, but I ran into another overheating problem. The rest of my gym session was spent on the elliptical. Always a good way to cool down a little bit while also burning calories.

Apart from that fact that everything felt a little bit like chewing gum, I’ve to say, that I’m getting better. I’m no longer that exhausted during the week as I was weeks before. Sports finally turns into a part of my daily living and it also doesn’t bother me, that there’s such a great loss of spare time, that I could use for other things as well. It does no longer feel like a duty, it’s more a hobby that I totally enjoy. I hope that this condition will last.

My weight decreased a tiny little bit, but not that much. Which is good actually. I don’t want to see the value on the scale to drop in an enormous speed. Which is, logically, quite unhealthy. I still stick to my nutrition plan, if one can call this a nutrition plan. Exceptions are set for the weekends. But it does not end in excessive gluttony. One pizza or something similar has to be enough and it actually does the job and calms my lust for anything else pretty well.

These are the key data for the last week of my straight ede 3.0 project. Stay tuned!

Exaggerated focus

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“The best camera is the one that’s with you.” – Chase Jarvis

With apps like Instagram, CameraFX and even Photoshop Express one does have a large variety of tools of the trade to chose from to be creative. I’ve got a common job like every other common, working person that does not leave me enough room to carry my SLRs with me to wherever I want. I also do not have the chance to process my pictures in Lightroom each and every time I want to. So I took the quote by Chase Jarvis and made it my personal challenge. My phone is my buddy that’s with me all the time and it’s the device that captures pictures when I’m without my beloved SLRs.

Of course, I’m limited to a file format like JPEG that does me the opportunities like RAW does. I barely have any  option to do any preprocessing like choosing the aperture or the exposure. And the quality itself cannot be compared to the results you would receive with a professional SLR processor and sensor. But these things do not actually matter, what matters is the composition.

One of my weaknesses in photography is an exaggerated focus on technical details and in reverse I often fail on the rules of composition. The phone camera gives me a fine chance to take pictures pretty basic. As previously mentioned, the quality does not matter. With a picture that may deserve it, I can also wait till I’m home and edit it in Photoshop to get it top notch.

I hated Instagram for quite a long time, because it’s yet another app with filters and effects. After a period of giving it a try, I finally came to the conclusion that it’s a good way to process pictures quickly and easy. And you’ve also got a good way to share them with your friends or publicly. One might say, one can do this with almost every other app as well, but I finally felt comfortable with the Instagram community and I don’t like to share every sodding picture on Facebook. The opinion of a complete, unprejudiced strangers counts more to me, than an opinion of a friend on Facebook.

I’m not going to post these mobile pictures in communities like deviantART or 500px. I still believe that these platforms were made to display artworks with a high standard and even (semi) professional artworks. Even though they do look “pretty fine” I still believe that these mobile phone camera pictures do not belong there. Additionally, there are billions of people out there that share pictures like these on almost every common social network, there’s nothing special about them in a hobbyist way. You don’t need any more of them spread out.

So for me it’s a good way to improve my composition skills and learn. With Instagram I’m also limited to square format. Which makes it easier on one side, but also difficult on the other side. I do not only use Instagram, CameraFX is another great app as well and even Photoshop Express does the trick. If you’re interested in my pictures, search and follow ‘InV4d3r’ on Instagram.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #2

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Two weeks ago I gave you guys a short report about the current progress of how well or bad things actually are. First of all the good news, I’m still into sports and gym and I’ve managed to go at least three or four times per week, depending on the week’s schedule.

The second good news, my overall condition gets better and better. I’m getting more used to the cardio training and the training sessions are not as exhausting as they’ve been in the very first weeks back in May. My main focus is still on the the treadmill with sessions up to 65 minutes. I do not increase the speed, only the session time to have quite a good amount of fat burning. Increasing the speed will not happen before September or October.

Besides the treadmill my second machine of choice is the spinning machine with a moderate or high drag, depending on my condition. As a person who uses the bike for almost everything, I can easily handle higher difficulties. I also stick to a moderate speed that I usually drive out on the street. Difference here is, once again, the time and the continuity. Riding the bike for forty minutes constantly on the street and in the city as well is barely possible.

Apart from the whole endurance training comes the strength training in one training session per week. Until now it is not a training that I use to get giant muscles, it’s more to help the supporting muscles grow, like back, belly, legs, arms and shoulder. Focus here is the back and the belly. The most important thing to get good training results is to have a well trained centre. Well, that’s what I’ve heard from a fitness trainer years ago and I still stick with it.

My weight hasn’t actually decreased that much. The scale  bounces between 105,9kg, which was the lowest value after a training session, and 109,4kg, which was the highest value after the wedding feast last weekend. The current average is around 107,5kg. I wasn’t expecting and still am a drop of weight before the third month of this “project”.

Just a short reminder, this whole thing was meant to be something that could last for quite a long, long time in my daily schedule. The first two projects where set for a specific period and I then abandoned sports and got fat and unathletic again. I try to avoid this by finding a way to integrate sports and healthy nutrition in my daily life without feeling the lack of anything. For now, I can say, it’s running pretty smooth and good. Here and there are some things in my food plan that shouldn’t be there, but I’m aware of that and I try to avoid or replace them with something different.

As you can see, I’m making progress and everything looks very promising. Hopefully the weight will drop in about a month or so. We’ll see.