Day 10: Lazy Day

Well some of you will be probably be wondering where the update on the exercise regime has gone for today.  Well I’ll answer that, it has gone out the window.  I woke up incredibly late, I had quite a rough night sleep last night and there was a lot of things on my mind – will be spending my time over the next couple of days tackling this worry and ensuring I never get like this again.

So today, unfortunately no exercise has been done on my part.  However, I do have a nice jacket potato to look forward too along with a glass of orange juice.

However, tomorrow I will do my 30 minute exercise challenge as normal, I won’t punish myself or say I’m going to compensate you all for the day lost..  so tomorrow my 30 minute exercise will be back.

 

Day 9: Busy Stuff #blogboost

I think this morning must have been one of the busiest morning I have had thus far.  It has just turned 10 past 11 in the morning GMT and all I have managed to get complete from the time I woke up is get the kids off to school, wash up, have breakfast and I’ve not long finished my 30 minute work out and I have now finally got round to updating my blog – think tomorrow I may have to get up slightly earlier… hmm 7am??

I’d also just like to point out that the bananas were bought yesterday along with some fresh orange juice – hmm will be careful with this as it can be quite lethal.

Anyway, so today, how did the work out go.  Well excellent, if I’m honest, although there were parts of the work out that I found a little bit difficult as I was rather stiff this morning, possibly from yesterdays work out.  However, this morning, I thought the best way to be able to loosen the joints would be to start off with a 3 minute jog… just to warm up the body… this seemed to do the trick just nicely.

So once the running was done, and I was firmly warmed up I thought I’d get down to some twists and turns, focusing on both the torso twists and the elbow stretches.  By the end of it I must admit I certainly could feel the pain, however I didn’t have too much time to worry about it and got straight into the step up challenge.

I was now up to the end of my first 12 minutes.  My next step would be to get into my boxing, I didn’t do too bad at this giving it near on everything I had and coming very close to beating my highest score that I set yesterday.  I wasn’t too happy with this result as I came 5th, so I decided to have another go at this and did a lot better coming 2nd overall.

I was now up to my 20 minutes, so rather than doing another set of step up challenges I thought I would do a long jog.  I managed to do really well at this and got an average burn out rate of 80%, my highest to date, even the Wii Commented on how great my rhythm was.

To round off my full 30 minutes of exercise I did another 7 minutes of hoola hooping, with all my legs and joints clicking and snapping into place.

Overall the workout was certainly a good one and I am hoping that tomorrow I will be able to build on my successes today and turn them into excellent overall results.

Day 8: Weighing In and Working Out #blogboost

With today being the 8th Day, today was the big day in which I would go for the weighing in to see if all my hard work was really paying off.  So morning routine get the children off to school, have some breakfast and get myself onto that Wii fit for the all important weigh in, partner home today so all being well should prove an interesting day.

So with breakfast eaten, a bowl of Weetabix and the coffee drank, it was now straight onto the Wii, turning it on, even I was slightly nervous, even knowing what I had seen on Friday.  As I went through the motions of the body test, I finally took the necessary step of opening my eyes to reveal that I had lost a further 3lbs.

My weight is coming down at a nice even pace, all I have really changed in my diet, thus far is my activities – I am now carrying out my 30 minutes of daily exercise in the morning, I am also meeting my partner from work which is also taking another 20 minutes of exercising time, so I’m out and about for at least one hour.

This accompanied by the alteration of diet, I am now well into my first box of Weetabix, and today I will be picking another food to stop myself from snacking (or rather if I need to snack I can reach for this piece of fruit).  So without further a do this weeks healthy choice for me will be a banana.

Working Out

So with my head firmly set on the loss of 3lbs I got straight into my workout this morning, with some torso twists and some upper arm bends.  I did really well on both of these.  This was followed by some boxing taking me up to my first 10 minutes being completed.  With the body now fully awake and ready to get active I thought doing the step ups would be a great way in which to get my lower half moving.  

I’ve been talking about my partner at number one for a couple of days, well today I finally knocked her off her top spot with a score of 324 points, after a good 3 attempts at trying to beat her.  I then rounded off my second set of 10 minutes with carrying out a bit of hoola hooping.  I did 6 minutes overall, and I must admit my hips, back and joints were all clicking and crackling as I moved myself (or tried to) in a round about circular shape.

With both my left and right hip circles, looking a little better I got an excellent score and managed to, unknowingly, knock my partner off her top score with a massive 1500 spins .

Once complete, I went straight back into my boxing rounding off an excellent work out with not only beating my score but getting another star on the overall performance.

So this weeks exercising has achieved a 3lb weight loss and an excellent set of results for me.

Day 7: Back to it #blogboost

So it has been a week since I started doing all of this Wii fit exercising.  Over the weekend, I have to admit I didn’t think it all through.  As I didn’t eat healthy and as for cutting down on the alcohol well that didn’t happen either… so not a good end to a really progressive week.

Anyway, today I thought I would spend my 30 minutes doing a wide range of exercises, my sides weren’t hurting as much as they have been and I have to also admit I don’t feel as groggy as I have done these past few days.  So this morning normal routine, get the kids sorted, and the missus out the door – no need for me to pop to the shop this morning as we had done a weekly shop yesterday.

Once kids had been sent out the door, it was a case of have a bowl of weetabix and then get straight onto the Wii for my 30 minutes of exercising.  With that said, I unplugged the Xbox 360 and got myself onto the Wii balance board for what would prove to be a highly interesting and successful work out.

Last week I was talking about not doing too well on some the tasks, such as boxing and press ups, today was the reverse of this.  My boxing I did 3 or 4 times today resulting in 12 minutes of constant battling with a punch bag.  Each occasion I kept beating my previous score, I have gone from a score of 319 to 324 .  I’m really pleased with this.

Once I’d done this it was onto my twists and turns… now I didn’t beat my personal best however, I did do really well on the overall performance.  I then completed 20 reps on each arm of the upper arm stretch… which did rather hurt.  However, I did that and it felt really good to have achieved this.

I then thought, right let’s do some step ups, I had a good 3 or 4 tries at this… but I still have been unable to beat my partner at this…she still holds number one for this… but that will all change over the next couple of days.

After this it was a case of a quick go on the old hoola hoop, I did really well at this knocking one of my partners children off number one.  :D

Excellent work out and now ready to really start the day!!

Day 5 and 6: – Day of Rest #blogboost

Ok, now we all know the story of the creation, that god created the world in 6 days and on the 7th he rested.  I, am not God, however, therefore with this in mind I decided that yesterday Saturday 21st January 2012 I’d take a day off from my exercising and spend the day resting up and getting myself ready for another 5 days of working out.

So what did I do with myself, well I thought I’d spend the day with my partner.  We don’t see a lot of each other due to one reason or another, we’re usually either working hard during the week and thus don’t see much of each other or when we do see each other I’m more and more focused on the overall concept of my new business.

However, this weekend both myself and my partner gave us both time to enjoy each others company.  Friday I handed the notice in for the current house that I’m living in and we’re moving to a new property in February 2012.  Yesterday, Saturday, I spent the day with my partner enjoying a few hours of shopping for new things for the new house and having a quick bite to eat.

We also spent sometime with friends and ended up coming home at 01:00 Sunday morning.

So on Sunday, we decided we would spend the day together, off we went for a Sunday carvery and an amazing couple of hours out down town carrying out the shopping…

Now as for the rest of my Sunday, I will be carrying out my ROW80 check-in and will also be getting everything organised for another busy week ahead.

What are your thoughts on having rest between exercising?? 

Day 4: Press Ups #blogboost

No, I’m not making a naughty film or a new song for the adult rated CD, after all that just doesn’t make sense or fit into my interests.  However, I’m on day 4 of my exercising regime, now how am I getting on, well I’ve blogged about the aches and pains, the fact that yesterdays workout didn’t go according to plan, well if yesterdays didn’t go according to plan today was.. well a lot better.

Up early this morning 07:30, yes I know I really do need to work on getting up at 06:30 in the morning to really get myself in the mood for sorting everything out.  Anyway, up and out the door..coffee and some money for my driving lesson, yes believe it or not I still cannot drive… but we’ll get onto that another time.

Once my driving lesson was done, straight in the door and upstairs ready to get started on the all important exercising.  So straight in with a few press ups, 10 in total… and a few left and right stands for good measure… blimey did I hurt after doing those.  I did pretty well on these so I thought I know I’ll try the new challenge of a Press Up challenge… straight onto it… – I won’t embarrass myself but lets just say it didn’t go well

So 6 minutes in it was time to get physical, so onto some twists which I thought I’d have a go at doing 6, doubling the amount I normally do, oh yes it felt good doing those.  Once complete, I thought right best get onto the all important boxing… 4 minutes worth to be exact..

Once complete, I was starting to feel the pace, and the sweat starting to fall from my brow down to my face…yack.  Quick swig of water and a wipe of the face and straight back into the 6 minutes of the step, which I did that well on I beat my personal best and have almost knocked my partner off number one.

After this over for a bit more boxing rounding the work out to 20 minutes.. I thought right I’ll do some hoola hooping, unfortunately I didn’t do too well on this exercise.  The right side I did no problem, but the left, well that was something to be desired… even the circle it drew after looked more like a square with a kink in it.

So I was now up to 27 minutes.. so I decided I would spend an extra 5 minutes doing some running, so I did a small run, followed promptly by a longer run.  Unfortunately by this time my Wii Board was telling me to change the batteries… so I managed to complete my full 35 minutes, today of exercising and have currently got the batteries on charge.

Also, I’m going to leave this open… I did a body test today and something quite amazing has happened… I will have to tell you more on the official weighing in on Tuesday.

 

Day 3: Synch or Lack of #blogboost

So yesterday I blogged about the aches and pains of this exercising lark, today I’d like to talk about one of my weaknesses, something I don’t like doing but I think its imperative.  I have quite a problem with coordination, and this affects my ability to do certain tasks, such as drive a manual car etc (que the jokes for automatics lol)

Well today I had a go at the rhythm step, for the advanced user, now given I struggle with the basic, the advanced one would be quite difficult for me, but hey I thought I’d have a go.  True to form, my feet, arms and legs were everywhere, so I’m confident the exercising I did on this task would certainly not go down as one of the top fitness tricks of 2012.

Anyway, that said, today wasn’t a great day, woke up late and I’m still aching from the past couple of days worth of exercising.  So onto today, I started off with my first set of press ups – and true to form they were awful, I could barely get 1/2 way down without my arms and back giving in, let alone doing a side ward stand, so wasn’t a good start here.

Then I got back up and carried on with the twists, focusing on my pelvic and torso areas, and yes they bloody hurt.  However, as the saying goes no pain no gain.  After the twists I did a quick 3 minutes of boxing which resulted in  a pretty good score, so at the end of my 10 minutes of warm up I was pretty amazed with what I had/hadn’t achieved.

Next, I thought I’d do 5 minutes of jogging, now if you know anything about the Wii Fit, you will know that you simply stand still and jog on the spot.  I didn’t do too bad at this, and achieved a burn rate of 76%, not my best by any means as my previous scores indicate I achieved a burn rate of 80-90%.  Once complete, I was back onto doing some hoola hooping, only a quick 3 minutes as the sides were aching quite a bit.

Once complete, I did another 3 minutes on the step ups, before finally going all out on both the rhythm step that we spoke of earlier which took another 7 minutes.  I rounded the session off with a good old fashion boxing session, which almost saw me knocking my personal best off the top of the chart.

Tomorrow, I want to focus more on these press ups as I think if I’m a big guy, my arms should at least be able to support the weight.  Feeling pretty bad about that work out as didn’t get some of the scores I wanted – but hey onwards and upwards.

More tomorrow…

Day 2: Aches and Pains #blogboost

Well, its day 2 of my new fitness regime and have just eaten my 2nd bowl of Weetabix in 2 days, nom nom.  However, at present, I currently have a couple of aches and paints in my hips, pelvic region and my shoulders, probably caused by the exercises that I have been doing over the past 2 days.

So this morning, ok, I’ll admit I wasn’t awake at 0630, and in fact I was awake at 0400, needless to say I rolled back over and went back to sleep till around 0700/0730.  Straight away I was up and into the kitchen to enjoy my first cup of coffee of the day, although my back was absolutely killing me.

Washing up sorted, and now its just a case of getting the children off to school, and the missus isn’t too far behind them.  So once kids had departed and, silence filled the room and after a wonderful healthy bowl of Weetabix, on goes the Wii ready for another 30 mins of exercise.

Doing similar moves to yesterday, including the torso and hip twists – which caused more pain.. followed briefly by around 20 elbow crutches with a Wii remote… this will be changed next week with a 500ml bottle of water.  Once complete, I was straight onto some boxing, doing really well and almost beating my best of 305 points… – will be aiming to beat this in the coming days.

So after the warming up, I was already up to 10 mins worth of time, so I thought I’d give the step ups ago, and to my surprise I did better than yesterday.. I have yet to beat my partner,who can get perfect on it every time… – another goal for the next couple of days, so after another 6 minutes of this I thought I’d give the hula hoopy thing a go.

10 minutes worth, and yesterday I manage to complete the entire set, however, today, my hips were very stiff and I ended dropping all my hoops with just 10 seconds left, was not best pleased!!!

So with just 4 minutes left to do on my work out I finished it off with another session of boxing, did better than the 1st time I had a go at it earlier in the day.

Overall, 2nd day in, things are progressing, there is pain… but as Mr T would say:  Quit your jibba jabba – more tomorrow .

Making a Start – #blogboost

As some of you know, we have been looking at trying to get ourselves a bit more healthier this year and unfortunately, thus far, we have been unable to achieve this due to one reason or another, perhaps it’s mainly excuses as to why we haven’t started the fitness regime.  The other area that also needs focus on is the diet, eating chips and sausages, although very tasty, doesn’t really do much for our bodies in terms of the whole fit body and leads to all sorts of complications.

So with this in mind, we thought, we would make a start on our fitness program by taking the following steps:

Water

If there is one thing on this planet that makes us all feel better after a really crap day in the office is Water.  So over the coming weeks we’ll be drinking quite a bit of this wet stuff.

Weighing In

We’ll be honest, we haven’t been on the scales since the end of New Year, why?? hmm well because we’re scared too, over indulging at Christmas is not uncommon.  So with this in mind, and with a deep breath we’ll be carrying out a weighing tomorrow, 17/01/2012 and subsequently every Tuesday there after – look out for our blog posts thereafter.

Exercising 

Ok so what exercising regime have we got, well in all fairness we haven’t got one, according to medical news, at least 30 minutes of exercise a day should be sufficient enough to keep things in check.  With this in mind we’re thinking of this sort of regime:

1. 5 Minutes warm up and some nice gentle exercises – the sort of stuff that really does hurt your back and arms – but gets you in the mood for the main bit
2. 10 Minute free style run – we were considering going out running – but upon checking for the whole running trainers and gear.. hmm we’re a bit short on this – so the Wii will have to do
3. 10 Minutes of hoop the hoop – aka circling your hips in a big circle mimicking the concept of a big ring around your body
4. 5 Minute worth of boxing, or punching thin air depending how you look at it.

So how are we going to get started on this well, we have been thinking about aiming to get up and about for around 0600 in the morning ready to start the day off with a good old exercising session followed by a nice healthy breakfast… toast anyone??

Healthy Eating

Ok, now lets look at this, we want to keep in good shape and the exercising will help, but how about the eating frontier.  Before we go into too much detail we should say we have a very sensitive stomach, and when we say sensitive we mean that.  So we’re planning on introducing a new food each week, substituting one meal per day with something healthy.

So here are the plans for the next 4 weeks, these will run Sunday-Sunday

• Week 1 (Jan 22nd Jan-28th): Weetabix will replace our traditional breakfast of nothing at all or something less healthy i.e. a fry up, we will also reduce our alcohol consumption.
• Week 2(Jan 29th Jan-Feb 4th) Introduction of one piece of fruit to subsidise snacking so a Banna will replace crisps and chocolate
• Week 3(Feb 5th – Feb 11th) Introduction of another piece of fruit possibly grapes, we will also cut down on quantity to decrease weight gradually
• Week 4(Feb 12th – Feb 18th): Brown bread introduced, we would like to point out that this maybe delayed due to the high fibre within.

We’ve also added a new category called weight loss – and you can track all of our progress within that category

Quotes and Business Talk

As we’re writing this we’re currently sat looking over a quote that we received from our card suppliers.  We’re really pleased with the price and, providing we can organise  it all will probably become the main supplier of the Add Deal Loyalty card.

We are also in talks with another supplier who will provide all of the back-end infrastructure… i.e. the bits that will make it all work.  Providing all goes well we could be looking at a April/May launch.  We are also looking to get in touch with the local council so that our reward scheme becomes a localised project for many people to get involved.

We’re looking to make Add Deal a lot more than just another loyalty card scheme, with really annoying vouchers and bonuses we’re looking to make it the new way in which people will be able to shop, save and spend.

Also with the high street being as quiet as it is, we’re hoping this card will be seen as just one tool within its arsenal with which to bring people back to the high street.  We also have some pretty cool ideas on how we can boost tourism in your local town and high street – more on this over the coming months.

This is probably the best news we could have ever come up with thus far… our next steps are to complete the business plan with our marketing strategy, financial information and goodness knows what else…

Add Deal is going live very soon