Sunday Funday - By celebrating the "Sunday Funday" you can extend your weekend festivities just a little longer before hanging up your party pants. This day typically starts out with mimosas or bloody marys aka hair of the dog.
It then typically continues through out the day until you find yourself
wasted by about 6:30ish. Since the "Funday" ends early enough, you can
rest assured that you will go to bed aka pass out early enough to be perfectly refreshed for work on Monday morning (thanks Urban Dictionary).
For me, Sunday Funday usually consists of getting prepared for the week ahead, grocery shopping, expense reports, laundry, packing for the week ahead as well as some yard work. Today I added food preparation, in the form of home made salsa, caveman style.
6 plum tomato's chopped up
A bunch of cilantro
1/2 an onion, maybe more
A hot pepper, today it was a ghost pepper
A few spoonfuls of garlic
Pepper
Cumin
Throw this in a food processor and pulse a few times..........instant salsa. For whatever reason we have a rule in the house, and right now a very unpopular rule, if you use the food processor you have to clean it.
I'll take the cleaning bullet, since the freezer is filled with stuff that sits nicely under fresh salsa.
Tomorrow yet another food adventure begins, 30 days at a minimum, but I will survive.
I have a lot of windshield time as well as airplane time, and my mind being what it is I start thinking. On last week's trip home I asked myself, what is fitness? And what defines it?
I live an interesting life, every week I meet a handful of different people in different geographical areas that work in very diverse industries. Every week I end up dining with these folks and more often than not the conversation turns to diet & fitness. After all these years I still follow the 2:1 rule, which translates to, 2 ears and 1 mouth, so I use them in that proportion. My 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Cooley would be so proud.
Recent channel surf as I was on a hotel "Dreadmill"
It seems that between bites of their chicken fried steak and french fries that they want to talk about the latest fitness infomercial, eat this lose that, or lose that by eating this, and I listen. I listen as no one says "Hey, want to go with me to my gym this evening?" and I listen as they order desert.
Everyone has their own definition of fitness, is it how fast you can run a mile? Is it your cholesterol number? Is it maintaining your food macros? What defines fitness for you?
It comes down WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO DO!
Not looking to insult the masses, but fitness isn't about infomercials, cd/dvd's, shakes or powders..... yes, those things might "help" but they're not the end all to be all. If those "Before & After" infomercials fuel your juices look then read this.
You have to decide that you've had enough, that you're tired of buying XXL, tired of using the extender belt when you fly or tired of the doctor entering your exam room with his head hung low.
Is it as simple as calories in vs. calories out? In a nutshell no, yes you will lose weight, but does that signify being physically fit?
I live in a house with someone who has single digit body-fat, (It's not me!) but since their diet consists of things that have never had a heartbeat does that means they're physically fit? Can they run a mile? Can they do 25 push-ups? However, if you ask them, they'd say they're healthy, and they probably are.
Check out James Carter in the video above. James is a blast to watch, he does things that makes my spine hurt, but if you saw a picture of James standing still you might not think he's the healthiest person around.
Next up, according to my wife is my Man-Crush, Rich Froning, 4 time winner of the Crossfit Games and a very fit dude. Rich nails the textbook definition fitness, seriously who wouldn't want that physique?
Finally we have Brian Shaw, 6'8" and weighing in at 415lbs, and by the way, 3 time winner of the World's Strongest Man competition. Chances are you won't see Brian on one of those early morning infomercials because "Beach Muscles" really aren't going to help you deadlift 880lbs.
So, what exactly is fitness? I guess it's similar to beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder.
Yesterday was the first day that I've trained squats in several months. Yes, we do a bunch of squatting in Crossfit but often it's body-weight or part of WOD where your quads just don't get that brutalized. Well, a very standard 5x5 squat progression yesterday left me wishing I had installed handrails in the bathroom this morning, even the dog felt my pain.
A few days into the 52 DC, and I'm already seeing some results. The scale has moved to the left a few markers. After all these years I know that my metabolism is very easy to figure out....... carbs.... if I want to lose or gain weight it's all based on carbs, and to make it even more crazy I lose/gain weight evenly across my pasty white body. I out weigh my father by a solid 50 lbs yet my pants waist size is 2' smaller than his.
Last night I finished reading Joel Osteen's book, You Can, You Will. In my humble opinion the book comes down to a couple of points; be nice and have a positive attitude. Joel digs in a bit deeper and breaks it down to these 8 qualities:
♦ Keep Your Vision in Front of You
♦ Run Your Race
♦ Expect Good Things
♦ Have a Positive Mind Set
♦ Commit to Excellence
♦ Keep Growing
♦ Serve Others
♦ Stay Passionate
I love reading non-fiction. ever since my parents gave me Norman Vincents Peale's, You Can If You Think You Can when I was a teen. I tend to gravitate towards biographies and the life improvement genre. Next up on the nightstand, Rich Froning, First: What It Takes To Win. The 4 time Crossfit Games champion will hopefully have an interesting tale to tell.
are gone..... We are 27 days into the "New Year" and my gym is for the most part EMPTY. Possibly since I live in Florida everyone is already slim, trim & beautiful and myself and a select few have at our disposal a fully equipped (PURPLE) gym. Even the red-shirted trainers have been standing around more and more this past week.
On a brighter note I got on the scale this morning and I met half of my January goal, to be under 220 lbs the other half is to remain below that number for the month of February. Even with a hearty serving of Wings with TNT Man the other day I managed to still drop some weight....... It's going to be a great weekend, some lifting, some running, some swimming and some biking.
Lots of cool holiday gifts, a Stretch-Out-Strap, foam roller, and The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises.... The book was something that I have wanted for a long time but spending the $15.00 to add another book to my library was just something that I really didn't want to do. As with most of the exercise books that I've I started out by skimming through and then focusing on the chapters that interest me. The book is packed with lots of good information, showing how to do exercises with barbell, dumbbell as well as kettlebell. There's a section of warm ups and body weight exercises.
So it's the 12 week fat loss workout...12 weeks should be ample amount of time to see some body composition changes. Low sets and high reps for the first week with the later weeks changing to higher sets and lower reps.
I ran the the first workout this morning and even with the rests my heart rate did manage to get up there.
and the final Christmas gift was a weight sled....something that I've wanted for a long time. I finished today's workout with sled pulls and sled rows...yet another way to get the heart rate up.
