SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #4

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 – #2

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.

The mystical cat report

Hello out there, it’s been a while since my last update on what’s going so far. First of all, fitness is still existing and starts kicking ass again. I cannot deny that I had some serious difficulty to get back on the track, but with this week, everything seems to be on a satisfying level. My stamina feels like it was the day I let the whole fitness thing fade away, for say, it’s still on a high level. For my circumstances. Actually, I still have like 15kg of weight too much on my bones, but like I said, I’m not facing any serious trouble during training. I’m running solid 30 minutes on the treadmill followed by 30-40 minutes on the cross-trainer.

I decided to take no prisoners and I also increased the weight on many exercise machines. I’m doing very well with this and I’m making a lot of progress in this particular area of my training. Besides losing weight is gaining muscles one of my main goals for now. I know, it sounds weird, losing weight and gaining muscle mass on the other side but according to the serious amount of overweight at the moment a goal that can be reached. Like losing at least 15kg of fat and getting like 5-6kg of muscle mass.

What else happened? Well, I got a little bit more into photo editing and developing of RAW pictures. I’m not making great progress but it finally is some progress to be found. I also joined a couple of new groups on deviant Art to get a little bit more feedback on my works. And of course a few eyes more watching my stuff. I’m also looking for a new camera, not for now but for the end of this year. I’m thinking about buying a Canon 7D, this camera got all the features I want and is not that expensive as the Canon 5D MarkII. At least, it would be a total waste of money according to the fact that photography is just a hobby mine. It’s like 1,500 bucks that ring on the bill, but I’m sure it’s totally worth it.

Gaming, another passion of mine. If the days has like 36 hours I would definitely play some games, but currently I don’t really have time to play some more story based games. I play a lot of “Bad Company 2” these days, for like one hour a day. There are still some games in queue that I need to play. There are plenty of games, as there are “Medal of Honor”, it can’t be more worth than “Homefront”. The “Dead Space” games, I started “Dead Space 1” several times, but never managed to finish or do any larger progress. Several LEGO games are waiting and so on. Most importantly, “Portal 2” is hopefully in my mailbox these days and I’ll definitely play this game as soon as possible.

Last game I played through was “Homefront” which was a kind of disappointing. Weird performance issues. Weird story and pace of the game. I can’t say that I didn’t like it, but, well, I don’t know. They whole concept was promising but the presentation was a big and epic fail on the whole line. I instantly switched back to my beloved “Borderlands” after finishing the four hour campaign. I barely had any interest in the multi player mode.

Straight to the basics

I’m a kind of proud for a very good reason about myself. It’s been a while ago where I announced the “Straight edge 3.0” project and it failed epicly. Actually, I never cancelled the whole thing. It was more a permanent breaking of rules set. The worst thing wasn’t the nutrition that bothered me, it was more the fact, that I wasn’t able to get my ass off to the gym and train. This has changed during the last three weeks. It started with one single session per week and finally reached the normal rhythm that it deserves. I can also proudly announce that I found the fun in sports for me again and that it does not feel like an evil force that gets me to the gym, it’s now pure lust and passion for sports. Due to the fact that I’m no longer smoking, for 10 month now, my cardio problems weren’t as big as they were when I was a smoker and started with cardio training. Nowadays it’s not a problem to do a one hour and a half of pure cardio, back in my days as a smoker I was gasping for air after nearly thirty minutes. You can be sure that there’s no reason for me to restart smoking.

Even alcohol consumption reached its lowest level since my childhood. This, besides non-smoking, has given my life a boost. No more drunk, no more any lost days because of hung-overs. I can say, without a doubt, that I feel much healthier these days, even on those days where I wasn’t that much into sports. I still do not consider to quit the “Straight edge 3.0” project, but like I said in a post before, I don’t want to be bound that tight to a set of rules as I’ve been in the two projects before, because this would cause a lack of comfort in living. Another important thing is, I still don’t waste time by watching my weight each and every day, because it simply doesn’t make sense. I prefer the overall feel of comfort and awareness of being “healthy”. This counts much more for me than stupid digits on a weighter. Finally, you notice an improved stamina more than one pound more on your hips.

Rules for Straight edge 3.0 project

So here’s to you, in a very short and simple way, the rules for “Straight edge 3.0 project”. I’ll give some details of the goals of the very project in later post.

1. No smoking!

2. There’s no alcohol consumption on training days or the days before training.

3. There’s no consumption of any unnecessary sweets at all.

4. There’s no special nutrition plan, just eat healthy and well-balanced.

5. There are at least three training days at gym per week and one optional training day with a sport of choice.

6. Every fourth week is a so called “hardcore week” with at least four training days at gym and one optional training day with a sport of choice.

7. Find relaxation and rest on days without sport and training to avoid injuries or infections.

8. Improve hand-eye-coordination and reaction time by using modern technologies.

9. Improve your stamina and reach a healthy BMI.

As you can see, the set of rules is not as tough as it was in projects before for one simple reason, it costs too much time and energy in everyday life and finally leads to a lack of luxury and well-being. To keep all this in balance I introduced the hardcore week so that I’m not turning into a gym addict or something like that. I also find it very important to find relaxation, that’s why I set rule number 7. I got a weird infection during the first straight edge project and I don’t want to let this happen again. Even on the first training days it is very important to avoid any kind exaggaration or presumption.

Rule number 8 might be strange to some of you, but I found out during the first two projects that my “gaming skills” also improved, so I want to train on this, too. To get it all straight, this project goes away from a monastary style of living, more to something balanced and capable for everyone out there. I don’t want to waste my whole free time with training and healthy food, I want to keep a little vice in my life, because I think that this is healthy, too. I erased the caffeine rule, for one simple reason, I love coffee – PERIOD.

The first month

There’s exactly one month that has past in the ‘straight edge’ project. A few friends and colleagues of mine followed me more or less successfull on my stone covered path to the ultimate “edginess” and some who tried to follow cancelled the whole project after a few days. Time for a conclusion…

Like I said a few times in the past, I feel much better now and I can’t say that I miss something urgently. I feel more and more comfortable with waking up at 04:00am to get off to gym to practice my every day workout and training. The training itself turns to a more interesting and less boring point by now because the muscle regeneration and buildup process is nearly done and I can focus more on cardio training. I have done a lot of muscle training, especially bulge, back and legs, to get a kind of more body control in the cardio training and to obviate joint problems. I had these problems last time where I started with sport though, mainly in my knees.

Every gym session, including last week, implied the cross trainer and the bicycle as the only cardio gear. From this week on I decreased the amount of muscle training and increased the cardio training, it’s now about 30 percent muscle to 70 percent cardio training instead of 50/50 that it was before. I jog every day on the treadmill and soon will start with rowing, each 30 minutes plus crosstrainer (40 min) and bicycle (10 min). I guess that this will give me an enormous boost to my reduction of weight (hopefully). I have to mention that the bicycle is only warmup gear, because I ride my bike as much as I can in everyday life.

workout by *Geironimo

My weakest point are my passion, or better obsession, for sweets and chocolate. One rule says that I am not allowed to eat chocolate and I almost made it to live without it. Well, I eat ice cream nearly every day but this is for sure going to be stopped with the next milestone of this project. And I bought me a bar of chocolate yesterday BUT it’s got only 528kcal on 100g and it’s a bar of plain chocolate. One piece every third or fourth day won’t really hurt.

One thing that I absolutely don’t miss are cigarettes and alcohol. Two good things about this are #1 it’s better for my health living without alcohol and cigarettes and #2 I save a lot of money because I don’t have to buy this shit. Drugs are taboo, too.

Well, what can I say at last. I feel very well with my new circumstances in life and I am pretty sure that I will continue with it after 15th July.