Things I love - Garmin Forerunner 210 GPS Watch

Back in early May I finally finished a major part of my journey into fitness by completing the Couch-to-5k program. Since finishing I've tried keeping up with my running and pushing myself to improve my pace and go further. I even ran my first 5k race last month (although according to Runkeeper, the course was short by half a mile). Running has definitely become a hobby that I love and one that I want to continue for a long time and especially one that I wish to improve at.

In celebration of finishing my first race, and partially because of the race length discrepancy and this thread on Reddit, I decided to look into getting a GPS watch. I started looking at the maps of my runs from Runkeeper (and Nike+) and my route always seemed to be all over the place, through buildings and cutting corners. I even spent one day moving all the points of one map so that they actually followed my route, and after I did my run came out to a further distance and faster pace than it had been before. I did a little more Googling on the issue of phone GPS vs dedicated GPS watch, started looking up reviews, and finally decided on the Garmin Forerunner 210.

Mango Banana Smoothie

One of the first things I did when I started my journey into fitness was try to start incorporating more fruits and veggies into my diet, and what better way to do that than with smoothies!

I just found a new smoothie recipe on Pinterest yesterday (I'm not sure why, but I've recently been on a Pinterest kick) and just happened to have a good majority of the ingredients. I decided to tweak it a little bit to fit more of what I have in my kitchen and give it a bit more protein. After my run today I decided to make this for my post-run protein.

Mango Banana [protein] Smoothie
(makes 1 smoothie)

1 small banana
1/2 cup frozen cut mango
1/2 cup fat-free milk (or your milk of choice, add more if you like a thinner consistency)
1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I use Designer Whey's French Vanilla)
1 tbsp flax meal

Nutrition Facts (per serving): 345 calories, 27g protein, 54g carbs, 5g fat

Directions:

Combine all items in a blender.

Blend.

Pour into glass and enjoy!

2013 - My Journey into Fitness

Now, I know, I know. I don't look like the type of person who needs a fitness routine. Yes, I am decently skinny and have been so most of my life, but I have never once been in shape. I have never been able to run for any extended (read: over a minute) period of time. The fittest I ever was was back when I was still going to the beach a lot as a kid and boogie boarding and swimming in the ocean. The least fit I have ever been was when I was dating my ex and eating and drinking way too much and gained probably close to 20 pounds over two years. The break-up phase didn't help with that at all either.

I've tried here and there about attempting to get fit again, and then always slowly stopped doing it. Ellipticals, trying to get into running (but not easing myself into it), Wii Fit, etc. Nothing ever really stuck. I hated all of it. I hated the gym, I hated that I sucked at running, and the hate eventually made me say fuck it each time.

So, what made it stick this time around?

Back in late August of last year, in another bout of hating my body, I bought a Fitbit. I had hoped that it would make me realize just how inactive I truly am, and encourage me to do more. And...it did! When I first got it my daily step count hovered around 2000 to 4000 steps a day during the work week. And on weekends...oh gosh, there were days that I barely even got 1000! This HAD to change.

Late fall of last year I started pushing myself to walk more. Instead of waiting for Rich to meet me somewhere after work, I'd walk the near mile to his office instead. Instead of getting up from bed in the mornings on weekends and going straight to the couch, I planned walks with MapMyFitness and Routeloops that I would have to do before I could sit on my ass and play games for 5+ hours straight.

Somewhere along the line I bought a scale too, but wasn't seeing much progress in weight. I was hovering around 131 for weeks.

So, despite saying during New Years that I wasn't going to make any resolutions, about a week in to January I decided to make more changes. I started taking the 5 flights of stairs up to my office. I started trying to sneak in little bits of strength training where I could here and there. I started using MyFitnessPal to track my food intake and realized how much I was eating serving-wise. This has also caused me to cut back considerably on certain foods and alcohol. I do still drink, just less.

After a while 4+ mile walks were becoming too long and I'd been talking about starting Couch-to-5k for months, so I finally bought some running shoes.

Tomorrow starts Week 5 Day 1 of C25K for me. And while I in no way feel I can call myself a runner (yet), I have made so much improvement over the last 5 weeks alone. The first day of the program has you walk 1.5 minutes and then run 1 minute for a total of 20 minutes. I could barely run those one minute stretches. And now, here I am, running 3 and 5 minutes at a time in the program. The last day of Week 5 is to run 20 minutes straight, and while I'm definitely worried about it I definitely think I can do it.

I've lost ~8lbs total since the true start of my journey back in January, and I'm nearly to my goal weight of being 120 again. It hasn't been difficult at all (well, except the running at times) and I honestly think that anyone can do it with a bit of discipline.

I'm still not completely happy with my body (who ever is, right?), but I think finishing C25K and being able to run 30+ minutes straight nearly daily will help. I also need to get back into my strength workouts. While I've been keeping up with my arms/shoulders/back and abs, I've basically stopped all leg strength workouts because of the strain I know running puts on my legs/knees and not wanting to over do it. (I am, however, trying to do Tuff Butt April to ease back into the leg workouts). I'd also like to get into yoga, because I'm not very flexible and it also seems like it's meditation-like, but I'd actually like some girlfriends to get into that with. I doubt I can talk Rich into going to a yoga class with me and I know I won't go alone.

I should probably say that I have dragged Rich along on this journey too, and he is in much better shape than I am! I'm extremely thankful for the days he's pushed me when I wanted to stop (or not do anything at all) and for slowing down and going at my pace, because I know he could go further and faster.

Feel free to add me on Nike+, MyFitnessPal, and Fitbit!

My Fitbit Ultra

So for the past few year or so I've been contemplating buying some sort of wearable fitness monitor. My first choice was the Jawbone Up, but given its severe issues (and no given ETA on when the 2.0 version might surface) I slowly started looking at other options. Mainly the Nike+ FuelBand and the Fitbit Ultra.

Now, the FuelBands are everywhere. I know of at least 4 or 5 people at work with one, and when I was still an active user of Path I had at least 3 friends there who would sync theirs with that application. Having many active friends and seeing the way the FuelBand could integrate with social apps was very tempting. But I didn't like the idea of wearing it on my wrist, as I tend to talk with my hands, and I also didn't like the idea of measuring my activity in their Fuel Points.

The Fitbit Ultra measures your steps taken, distance walked, and floors climbed (both hills and stairs count, every 10 feet is a floor) and calories burned. The floors climbed part was a big selling point for me because...I live in San Francisco! SO MANY HILLS. It clips easily on to your pants or bra (I usually wear mine clipped to the little inner pocket on my jeans) or you can just put it in your pocket. It also comes with a bigger belt clip for thicker items. Also comes with a wristband to wear at night and track your sleep!

You can sync your Fitbit with the website, showing you pretty graphs of your activity over time.

Along with tracking your fitness and setting goals on the Fitbit website you can also track your food, water intake and calorie intake/burn! Although I have to say their food options aren't as vast as LoseIt or MyFitnessPal's, but you can link your Fitbit to either of those apps and it'll sync the food you enter there. I also find myself trying to drink more water to see that little glass fill up throughout the day.

Now, I'm not a very big fitness person, so I really held off on buying one of these because of that. How could I be sure this wasn't just my gadget addicted self craving a new fix? But when I saw them on sale on Amazon for 25% off I just couldn't help myself. Plus I was SUPER excited that it would come in before PAX Prime, which were my most active days so far.

I've had it for little over a month now and I can definitely say I'm more motivated to boost my step count. Wait for Rich to come to me after work or walk to his office (about .8 miles away) and wait? Walk! Go to the closer train station or walk to a further one? Walk! Just a few weekends ago I suggested that instead of taking the bus from my place to Rich's that we instead walk the 2.5 miles. That's not something I'd normally suggest. I'm even packing my sneakers for my trip to Indiana this weekend to go hiking with my dad at the State Park we're staying at!

I especially love all the data and how it's displayed on the website. I love trying to beat my own personal bests, earning badges, and (secretly) competing with my friends I've added on the site. Which, by the way there aren't many of so I hope more of my friends get these soon!

However, there are a few issues.

While it boasts that it syncs wirelessly, it only syncs wirelessly with the dock...which has to be plugged into a computer. So, not really all that wireless. The newly announced Fitbit One and Fitbit Zip do sync wirelessly via Bluetooth with Android and iPhones. Oh, if I had only waited a month!

I've also noticed that on bumpy bus rides (*ahem* MUNI) it can register steps and floors. One work around for this can be starting an activity on the Fitbit (holding down the button until a stopwatch appears) when you get in the bus/train/car, stopping it once you're out and logging the activity as "driving/riding a bus/etc" on the site. This will clear out any steps it registered for that time, but it's not always easy to remember to do this. It does not register escalators or elevators or smooth car/train rides. So that's good at least.

And, finally, I don't know how accurate the sleep recording mode is. Basically if you're not moving it considers you asleep, even though you could be wide awake and just laying still trying to sleep. Although it is interesting to see how often I move around at night.

I'd definitely recommend the Ultra or its upcoming successor, the One, for the person looking to make some improvements to their daily lifestyle/fitness, or looking for some motivation. If you're already a highly active person you'd probably get more satisfaction out of a device with a heart rate monitor and more accurate distance measurements.

All in all I am completely in love with mine and so happy I purchased it.

Now I need to go walk around the house some to boost my steps before the end of the day!

Walking in circles,
Ky

Losing it.

So I've been slowly losing the weight I gained during my nearly 2 year long relationship; my "relationship gut" per se even though I didn't ever have a gut, but I did gain about 15+ pounds. Bleh.

I attribute the weight gain to the fact that I was actually eating meals. Normally I'm not much of an eater, but with my ex we would have big dinners almost every night and snacks and beers on top of that.  Now everything is back to normal and I come home and just kinda snack on and off instead of forcing myself to down as much as I can of a meal.  I don't actually have a scale so I can't say for sure I'm losing the weight, but I can kind of tell I've lost some.

I always read that the majority of the time when you lose weight you lose it in your face first.  Apparently, this is not true for me as my face, or so I feel, is still kind of ... fatter than before.

Instead, of course given my luck, I'm losing weight in the only place I was happy to have gained it.

My boobs.

So good bye, slightly bigger boobs, it was nice knowing you.  Maybe someday we shall meet again under different circumstances.