Are you serious about your physical fitness? Six questions to ask yourself now.

Inside a recent simpleweight conversation.

“When are you going to get serious about your weight loss?”, asked my wife

I was kind of surprised by the question.  I mean, I measure my activity, my biometrics, and some of my food everyday. I talk about weight loss and overall fitness often.  I think about it, read about it, and sometimes even pray or meditate about weight loss.

My response was, ” I am serious.”

My wife then asked,  ”Are you?”

I have let this stew for weeks.  In fact, I don’t remember the date of the conversation.  It could have been months ago, but it feels more recent than months.  So, I put weeks.  The fact that I don’t remember the date, but vividly remember the conversation details is telling. Turning that question over and over in my head.

Am I serious about my physical fitness?

I’ve watched a few other bloggers struggle recently with this same question.  It often times is when we go dark.  What I mean by dark is when we’re not posting details, when we’re not measuring, when we’re not checking in publicly.  There is value in that.  Still, it reminds me of a conversation that I read about Knowing vs Doing and personal finance.  What I mean by that.  There is a difference of reading and learning about fitness and weight loss and actually doing it.  Knowing doesn’t make you lose weight.  Knowing doesn’t get you physically fit.  Knowing is just that.  You know.  Doing, now that is the difficult part.  Anyone can know what to do.  Doing takes disciplined action.

So, I thought to myself.  So, my wife doesn’t think I’m serious.  Well, Am I serious about physical fitness?  I’ve been formulating this over and over again.  My first thought then is.

What does it mean to be serious about physical fitness?

1. Move Everyday! I’m not talking about getting up, walking the few steps to the shower, then the few steps to kitchen to eat breakfast, then the few steps to the car, and then the few steps to the office, etc.  I’m talking about actual moving. Measurable Physical Activity.  Do I make it a priority in my every day routine to be active?  I have to say No.
2. Eat less food by eating only enough food until I’m not hungry. I do not do this at all. This is probably the biggest challenge for me. I always eat until I am full. I love food too much. I think, oh I have to have more of this.  its so good.  So, No.
3. Measure my progress to track trends. I weigh myself everyday.  I weigh some of my food everyday.  I don’t do enough physical activity to measure. Although, I measure items, recently, for the first time in a long time, I have not actually tracked the data except for the mental head check.  So, No, I don’t track the trends.
4. Control emotional eating by keeping a food journal. Nope, don’t do that.
5. (optionally) Eat healthy food. Eat Mostly plants (fruits, vegetables).  Stay away from sugary items, and get plenty of protein and fiber.  For the most part i do this.  I mean, I often eat Turkey based Chili, Tacos, Pasta Sauces.  I often eat vegetables at every dinner and lunch.  I often have fruits at lunch.  I eat whole grain breads, whole wheat pastas, and brown rice.  I try to eat poultry for protein with the occasional beef product thrown in there.  We use mostly olive oil based items rather than butter.  My snacks are rarely candy, although sometimes I splurge.  The issue for me is two fold:  I eat too much (see number 2) and sometimes I eat an over abundance proportionally of carbohydrates.  So, I’ll say yes.  I eat healthy food.
6. (optionally) Get enough sleep. Studies dictate that sleep helps with everything.  It helps keep the mind fresh which in turn helps keep you mentally sharp to deal with the day to day psychological struggles over eating. For the most part, I do sleep fine. Although there are times where work dictates fewer hours of sleep.

I have to say; it’s not looking good on my part.  Am I serious about my physical fitness?  The facts may dictate that I Know what to do, but my actions dictate that NO, I am not serious about my personal physical fitness.  You might have different criteria for being serious, but whatever they are.  I’d say if I look objectively at my situation, then No, I am not serious.  My actions speak louder than my words right now.

My next thought to myself, that I’ve been struggling with is:

Why am I not serious about physical fitness?

I mean, I have a fitness website.  I encourage everyone around me everyday to be active, to eat healthy, and to measure progress.  Begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey wrote.  Why?  What’s off in my motivations?  I finally came to the conclusion, that I don’t know.  I know it seems like a cop out.  It is.  Yet.  I have to be honest with myself first.  If I am not ready for it, then move on.  Am I ready to make the conscious effort that is necessary to change many years of bad fitness habits.  why now?  Why ever?  Good question.

So.  I know what I need to do.  I need to move, I need to eat less, and I need to measure my progress.  Will I do it?  stay tuned.

Are you Serious about Weight loss?  Ask yourself:

1. Do I move everyday?
2. Do I eat less food?
3. Do I measure my progress?
4. Do I control my emotional eating?
5. Do I eat healthy food?
6. Do I get enough sleep?

Let us know how we can help you get serious about your physical fitness.

System is Faster and better than ever

Hey Everyone.

We’ve done some maintenance on Simpleweight.  It is now faster and better than ever.

Please let us know if you find any issues, and as always, let us know how we can help you make weight management simple.

System Maintenance.

Hi Everyone.  If you reach Simpleweight Now.  We’re going down for some simple maintenance.  All steps on our path to a simpler weight management tool.

Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick – Metronome Interval Strength Training Hack.

I recently began interval strength training as a form of exercise.

For those new to different types of workouts, interval strength training is a form of circuit training. Basically, I perform a group of weight training exercises in sequence with little rest in between. I target different muscle groups, and I perform the circuit of exercises twice with little to no rest between exercises.

At first, Interval Strength Training was really difficult for me to do. Why?

I had to think:

• What exercise I was doing?
• How do I do that exercise?
• What exercise is next?
• How many repetitions was I on?
• Where am I in the 4 second cadence?
• Am I using the correct form?
• Did I just hear my 2 year old daughter dive into the toilet?
• Who is going to sign up for Simpleweight.com next?
• Will the Cubs win the World Series?
• Man this exercise is burning pretty good now.
• Will the …. as you can see too much to think about, my mind starts to wander, and I just get lost.

With interval strength training, you use a cadence to lift weights in a rhythm. While contracting the muscle, I count 2 seconds and then hold 2 seconds, then while releasing the muscle, I count 4 seconds, repeat for 10 repetitions with no rest.

For example, for a bicep curl, I count 2 seconds up, hold 2 seconds, then count 4 seconds slowly releasing the bicep curl back down to the resting position. I immediately lift again using the same cadence until I reach 10 in the set and move on to the next exercise in the circuit with little or no rest (30 seconds or less) in between sets.

As I mentioned before, the problem I had was I got lost in all the counting and thinking.

UP, Two, Three. Four
DOWN, Two, Three, Four
UP, Two, Three, Four
DOWN, Two, Three, Four
What Repetition am I on?

How do I stop all this counting?

I use a metronome to maintain the cadence. A metronome ticks at whatever rate you want. I set my metronome to 60 beats per minute and let it tick off my cadence. Google Metronome, and you’ll find all sorts of web-based metronomes to use.  Of course you could use an iphone app as your metronome of choice. Of course you can use a loud clock or watch, but I find a metronome better especially a digital metronome that allows you to set the beats per measure.

See, you can set a digital metronome to 4 beats per measure. which means:

Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Tack, Tick, Tick, Tick.
2, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Down, Tick, Tick, Tick.
3, Tick, Tick, Tick.
Down, Tick, Tick, Tick.
4, Tick, Tick, Tick.
etc…

If you are using the Colorado Experiment workout, described by Tim Ferris, which uses a 5 second cadence, just set the metronome for 5 beats per measure.

Whatever cadence you use, your mind is free to count the number of repetitions while the metronome does the work of keeping your cadence straight.

A Weight Management Journey

Well, hello everyone.  It’s good to get simpleweight back up and running.

First off, why the simpleweight hiatus?

Well, this project has been a labor of love for my brother and I.  We had an idea, we ran with it.  When we came up with simpleweight, at the time, there was not many web ways to manage your lifetime fitness goals.  There were quite a few Diets, but nothing that was diet agnostic.  Also, at the time, all the weight loss websites were a pain in the neck to use.  They just weren’t that simple.

Since the time we hatched the simpleweight idea, we have seen numerous new web tools, competitors if you want to call them, and other ways to maintain and track your fitness goals.  We have always had a decent amount of users, nothing that would put us in the A-list of websites, but enough to say we were attaining some of our goals.

Yet, we stumbled and lost focus.  Simpleweight started to see competitors, and we started adding features because we felt like we had to rather than because we should. We were not getting real as 37signals would say.

One of our original goals was to make this weight website so easy that you’ll actually use it.  Well, I used it, and used it, and used it.  Yet, at some point (August 17, 2008), I stopped.  In fact, I fell off the weight management wagon.  I not only stopped using simpleweight, I stopped recording any data.  Yeah, I weighed myself everyday, and still do.  I would weigh my food still, and track my exercise on my various fitness related gadgets, iphone apps, or my pedometer.  I just never recorded the data I kept.

Tracking data and not recording data doesn’t make the data very valuable.  In fact, it is almost worthless.

A Return to Roots

Why Simpleweight and what can we choose to do?  Because it is all a choice.

I have a couple of options with simpleweight:

1. Keep it as is. This is not an option in my book.  The experience I can see from my usage and the aggregate patterns I can identify from users, that simpleweight needs to be easier and more useful.  During my hiatus, I tried competitors products, and I was just as dismayed at the lack of usefulness.  If I had found a sound competitor I could recommend, I think we’d close up shop, but I couldn’t find anything phone based, web based, or desktop based that was easy to use that provided the right amount of data to help with weight loss and weight management.
2. Tweak it. We could do this, but I think there is just too much baggage.  Sometimes, we need a clean slate.
3. Throw it out and Start over. This I think might simpleweight’s best path.  To Get Real about what exactly is the absolute necessity required in managing ones fitness and add to it the pin-point focus that’s necessary.  There is a big challenge here.  More to come on that.
4. Just Throw it out and give up. I’m not ready for that.  I still think there is a value to tracking ones fitness, and I think we can do it in good fashion.

So, What’s our Challenge?

The big challenge is there are many parts to weight management and fitness.  There is food out (exercise), food in (eating), the physical factor (actually going throw the physical motions), the mental factor (behavioral psychology behind eating and motivation for fitness), and finally the out of our control genetic factor.

The question for Simpleweight is:  How can we best help you, our user, with your weight management?  What can we do to help?  What data can we help you collect?  How can we present that data to help you mange your fitness?

For example, there are social networks all over the place that will help you stay motivated.  Do we need to include that in our implementation since the psychology of eating is such a strong factor?

Other questions we ask, Who can we help?  How can we help?  Then finally, Is it possible for us to make a living helping you all or should we just chalk it up as giving back to the community?

How can we make a weight management website so simple you will actually use it?

These are decisions we are going to make over the next few weeks, months, days, however long it takes.