With the encouragement of my childhood friends who make up the About Men Radio crew, I’ve decided to fully embrace the AMR Fitness Challenge.
It’s not that I haven’t tried to eat right and exercise.
I’ve been working out consistently for nearly 15 years but I would say in the past two or so, I’ve slowed down.
Instead of working out for 45 or 50 minutes a day for six days a week, I started to do 30 minutes of exercise four days a week.
And with a desk job and being in the car four hours a day, that made a difference.
My doctor recently told me she wanted me to lose 15 pounds because my body mass index was too high.
So I am using the Fitness Challenge to get back to my old better habits.
After a July filled with travel, vacations and plenty of eating and drinking (and being sidelined with a medical issue for five weeks), I’ve started August off right.
I’m going old school with my workouts — relying on tried-and-true routines, such as circuits with weights and a Crunch Cardio Boot Camp DVD that has always served me well.
Now, here is the absolutely crazy thing: The harder I’ve pushed myself by extending my workouts, the better I feel, the more energy I have, especially at night when I’m working, and the better I sleep.
When I was only working out 30 minutes a day, I did not get those benefits.
I’ve also taken up MyFitnessPal.com to help me keep track of what I’m eating. It’s really simple math: You need to burn more calories than you take in.
When I was working out 30 minutes a day, I was just drawing even with my intake or eating more than I was burning.
I’ve tried a couple of different strategies: Eating more protein. Skipping sugar with my coffee. Eating more celery, carrots and peppers as snacks, sometimes with hummus.
I’ve signed up to run in a Warrior Dash in three weeks, so there’s more than the usual motivation to get going!
I’ll keep you posted…