Tag Archives: health

Sweating in Style

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“I will always love you more than anything,” my sweetie said, “but this is close.”

Just what is it that is threatening to usurp my position at the pinnacle of my sweetie’s affection? Another man? A cute dog? Nope. An exercise machine. It all started a while back when we decided that we needed to get more aerobic exercise on days we didn’t get over to the exercise room at my sweetie’s folks’ place.

(“We” in this episode is a slippery concept; while on paper there were two of us involved in the decision, one of us (won’t say which) did pretty much all the thinking and deciding, while the other’s role was agreeing. We all know how onerous that can be.)

My sweetie went online and found what appeared to be an excellent deal on a compact elliptical trainer. It arrived in its great big box and we assembled the thing eagerly. “Wow!” we thought, “for that price, this thing is excellent!”

In fact, we were absolutely right. We started using the machine regularly, and more-or-less wore it out. There was a design flaw where one of the bolts on the pedals should have been left-handed, and the pedal would come loose. Things got bent, and eventually more parts started failing. It just wasn’t sturdy enough for the amount of use it got in our home. We decided it was time to upgrade, and off to the stores we went.

We wound up at Sears, who carries a selection of NordicTrack equipment. We were looking over what the store had to offer, and it turned out that the local repair guy was there at the same time, tuning up the floor models. He was a friendly guy, and he told us about the machines from a repair man’s perspective, with no vested interest in what we bought. (In fact, now that I think of it, he would probably benefit more if we bought a less reliable machine.) He also showed us that some of the machines folded up. We looked at one of the machines he liked in the folded configuration and I said (quite wrongly), “That’s about the same size as the one we have now.”

We bought it.

Our Elliptical Trainer, Fully Deployed

Our Elliptical Trainer, Fully Deployed

It’s pretty large. The first problem was that the box didn’t fit in our car. Not even close. So the friendly Sears guys unpacked the whole thing and loaded the machine piece-by-piece into the car. (“Friendly” in the above is not just a throw-away adjective, they were really nice.) Even so, it was a trick getting one large component into the back of the car. Of course, once home, we had to lug all those parts up the narrow stairs and into our apartment. Getting a good workout already!

I assembled it with only a small amount of cursing (the electronic console is still a little loose), and we beheld our new machine. “It looks a lot bigger than it did in the store,” I said. We rearranged some furniture in the bedroom and wheeled the beast in. It fit just right in its corner. Now came the big test.

Our Trainer, Tucked Away

Our Trainer, Tucked Away

This thing is AWESOME! Smooth and solid and quiet. It doesn’t make my knees sore. It does make me sweat and my heart beat faster. My sweetie will spend an hour on it, some days, and always more than 30 minutes. Me, I’m in for twenty minutes just about every day, cruising along and catching up on my “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” podcasts (I’m up to January of this year). Just exercising and chuckling at the funny radio guys. It’s a nice way to take a break.

Yep, burning calories at an accelerated rate now qualifies as “taking a break”. That’s pretty sweet. We have both been using the machine regularly for a few months now.

One word of advice to those who might consider the NordicTrack E5Vi Elliptical trainer: go ahead and spring for the AC adapter unless you’re absolutely certain you won’t be using the built-in fan (but you will anyway). My one quibble with this device: You have to remove the battery compartment door to plug in the AC adapter. Now there’s a tiny screw and a plastic door to keep track of in a drawer somewhere.

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A Quick Health Question

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Three days a week I work out. It’s about 50-50 aerobic and resistance training, starting with thirty minutes of rowing machine and treadmill, followed by crunches and weights. It feels pretty good to have done it.

After working out we generally spend a few minutes with my sweetie’s folks, then we drive home. I’d estimate it’s at least half an hour between the end of the workout and our arrival home. Each time, on the way up the stairs to our apartment, I get a massive head rush.

Anyone know what’s causing it? Should I worry? When I was younger I had low blood pressure, but last time it was measured my blood pressure was on the high side. I haven’t lost a significant amount of weight, but I think I’m in better shape.

Any insight or wacky theories are welcome. Thanks!

Thanks!

Health Update

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Honestly, I don’t think this episode is very interesting. That happens sometimes. Still, if you want to learn the magic secrets of my fitness success, read on! Lose weight! Get in shape! No dieting! Extra hyperbole!

When I first made the leap over the pond from Prague to San Jose, I knew things would be different. First there are the obvious benefits of sharing an abode with one’s sweetie, but there are other changes as well. Notable changes included diet and exercise. I paused today to contemplate their effects. Good habits are the best health insurance anyone can have.

Behaviors:

Diet: I eat just as much as I did in Prague, in fact, I think I eat more. But while volume has increased, so has quality. Home-cooked meals are just plain healthier. (Did you know that there are special heavy versions of mayonnaise sold only to restaurants? No one would buy them in the stores, they’re too obviously unhealthy. But at your local diner your taste buds will rejoice, and you will say, “man, they have good salads here,” never knowing just how much saturated fat you dumped into your gut while thinking you were eating healthy food. But I digress.) My sweetie loves to cook and I love to eat her cookin’. Despite that I’m sure my fat intake is much lower, and my salad intake is through the roof.

Diet part 2: Alcohol and caffeine. Going from being a bachelor who wrote in bars in Prague to being a significant other who works at home has curtailed alcohol consumption considerably. Reduced calories from beer may completely offset the extra calories from all the food I’m eating. Not that we are teetotallers, mind; I still enjoy the joys of grape and barley, just not as much. Caffeine intake is down as well, as I won’t have five cups of tea to hold off the beertender.

Exercise: My sweetie already had a workout schedule for three days a week, and naturally I joined in. We join her family and because her brother is autistic the schedule is very rigid. This means no weaseling and no putting off until later. When it is time to work out, we do it, and I’ve been taking my gym time very seriously. (Although ‘gym’ is a bit of an exaggeration – the development where my sweetie’s folks live has an exercise room with a few machines in varying states of decay.) My sweetie and I have tried to extend out exercise habit to some of the off days as well, but that’s not been as successful. Just today I geeked around all afternoon and plain forgot to get up and go pursue Jim. Still, I’m getting a good workout on a regular basis.

Results:

Weight: I had really hoped to lose some weight. For one thing, my knees won’t last forever, but they’ll last a lot longer if I can take some of the stress off them. It’s too early to tell if it’s a trend, but if anything I’m gaining weight. Weight can be a deceptive measure, however…

Shape: Now here we have some good news. Although my weight may not be trending the right direction, its distribution certainly is. More muscle, less fat. I haven’t measured, but I expect I’ve added an inch around my chest. Some of my shirts are noticeably tighter up there. That’s good. From her vantage point, the light of my life tells me that my waist is getting trimmer, at least on the sides. So far my pants don’t feel any looser, but hopefully the belly fat will start to go eventually as well. There’s no hurry as long as the trend is in the right direction, and there’s still plenty of fat left on me to burn. (The very top lump in the classic ‘six-pack abs’ is visible if you know where to look and catch it in the right light.)

My arms and legs, never places to gather fat, look pretty good, if I say so myself. Not muscular by any stretch, but good definition. It’s gratifying. I flex my legs sometimes just to watch the muscles pop out.

Joints: My weakest points are my elbows and knees. Unfortunately almost every exercise ever invented applies force through those joints. (Maybe I need the Thigh Master!) So far they’re holding up all right. My old separated shoulder bothers me sometimes. Good candidate for arthritis, the doctors told me back when I was doing physical therapy. No point worrying about it, though.

Other: When I was younger I had very low blood pressure, low enough I wasn’t allowed to give blood. My resting heart rate often dipped below 50 (funny story about that… for another day). That was a long time ago; last time I had my blood pressure taken the nurse said it was on the high side – high enough to warrant watching. I haven’t watched. I don’t have any real measure of how I’m doing except that after working out I’ve been getting head rushes, like I did in the old days. It’s hard to believe only a few months of exercise could make such a dramatic difference, though, especially since I still have at least twenty pounds of extra fat on my frame. The head rushes may actually be a warning sign of something else. (I poked around online but didn’t find much helpful.) I just took my pulse and it’s 57 bpm, which I think is on the low side, which I choose to believe is a sign of cardio health.

Conclusion:

Overall, I have to say that there’s something to the whole “eat right and exercise” fad. It’s working for me, and I’m not depriving myself in any way. It’s actually… fun! As a bonus I get to watch my sweetie work out at the same time. Yow!

Thanks!

A Public Health Reminder

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When you were a kid I’m sure your mother told you to be careful on cloudy days because while you may not be motivated to do anything to protect yourself, you can still get sunburned.

I just wanted to let you all know that this fact is absolutely true, and applies in foreign countries like, say, South Korea as well. If you were to go out without a hat and without adequate sunscreen you could really fry your face, turning your forehead bright red. If you happen to have your hair pulled back because of the wind, the sunburn can get way up on your scalp. Nobody wants that.

There’s no particular reason I’m telling you this now; it’s just something that occurred to me yesterday afternoon.

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Keeping up with Jim

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A few days back my sweetie and I were at Target on a quest for the propane cartridges that fit our grill. Those are hidden away in the sporting goods section, and while we wandered up and down the aisles looking for them, my better half discovered the exercise gizmo department right next door. Uh, oh. We already work out three days a week, but we wanted to get something to help us on the off days. After some deliberation we decided on the TriCord Total Body Workout Kit. It was inexpensive, and since the TriCord TBWK includes three cords of different resistances, it was a TBWK that the two of us could use at the same time. “I’ll use the low-resistance cord, and you can use the medium,” my sweetie said. Perfect! Home came the TriCord.

The box contained four things: three colored rubber tubes with handles on the ends, and a DVD. The DVD is where the real value is for things like this, providing a routine that fits in a known time and provides a more-or-less complete workout.

Monday day we got into workout clothes, broke out the rubber bands, and popped the DVD into the player for the first time. The intro told us how great the product we already owned was, then introduced us to the workout. There were three people to lead us, arrayed on mats at the edge of a pond in a beautiful Japanese garden. Charles was a big muscly man, the guy whose name appears on the box, and who narrated the DVD. Advanced users, he said, people of strength and virtue, should follow him and use the high-resistance band. To his left, Eve and her large breasts were going to pursue a more aerobic workout with the medium-resistance band.

Then there’s Jim. To the instructor’s right was a graying gentleman, not tall, obviously not a “fitness professional”, just a regular guy. “For you losers out there,” Charles explained, “you fat and worthless wastes of oxygen, here’s Jim. Jim will use the lowest-resistance band and cheat on every exercise to make them easier. He will shrink from exerting himself while he ponders what TV shows he’s missing. We paid him in donuts.” (I don’t think that’s quite exactly what Charles said, but you get the idea.)

The introduction ended; the time had come to work out. I took in hand the green medium-resistance band, emulating Eve and her large breasts. I stretched the band a few times, experimentally. Feeling good. After a few limbering-up exercises it was time to start pulling rubber. Clumsily I assumed the first position and stretched along with Chuck, Eve’s breasts, and Jim. So far, they were all doing pretty much the same thing. We moved on to the next exercise. Most exercises involved combining a body motion, like a lunge, with the pulling action, so that the routine had aerobic and resistance training at the same time. Most of the real work in this routine seems to concentrate on arms and shoulders, so I’m not sure about the “Total” in Total Body Workout Kit. Still, I was starting to break a sweat, and there was a long way to go yet.

Soon I abandoned following Eve and turned my gaze to Jim, the gray-haired beer-drinking slacking cheater. The guy like me. The thing is, after a while Jim was kicking my ass, too. “Four more,” Chuck said gently while soothing music played. I made one more attempt to pull both arms up and gave up. One thing I’ll say for the TriCord TBWK, it keeps you honest. I discovered just how much weaker my left arm is. It’s easy to cheat on exercise machines. Yet there was Jim, swinging his arms up, elbows straight, a bored expression on his face.

In the end, Jim kicked my ass and didn’t break a sweat doing it. To be fair I was using a higher-resistance band, and I didn’t have some big muscly guy standing between me and the beautiful woman exercising with me, so I did score a couple of points toward a moral victory. Still, Jim kicked my ass.

But not for long, folks! I’m gunning for Jim and his wooden expression, his deceptively-toned muscles, and his stomach flatter than mine. Someday, when he least expects it, I will triumph over him, and with the green rubber band, to boot!

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