Exercise

I posted earlier this month about starting the No S diet and shovelglove. This past Friday was the end of week 3 on these two systems for me, which strikes me as a good time to note my experiences thus far. During the three weeks, I only slipped up once, having one “failure” day for No S; in my opinion, it was a fairly minor slip up. I had dinner with my older nephew at a restaurant before going to see The Dark Knight, and my meal wouldn’t have quite fit on one plate at home. Other than that day, I stuck to both systems exactly as I was supposed to. Onto the observations:

No S

Switching from my former eating habits to No S led to their being many changes for me. Previously, I ate snacks (a lot); I ate sweets (far too many); and I often had seconds. Which would, of course, probably have a lot to do with why I’m currently fat (but shrinking, thank the lords of Kobol!) Cutting out all of those all at once was a bit of a ride the first few days, but after that, things smoothed out drastically.

On the first couple of days on the system, I considered chewing on my arm between lunch and dinner; when dinner time came around, I felt rather ravenous, ready to eat the proverbial horse. After those first few days though, the extreme hunger between lunch and dinner started to subside. Now, when dinner arrives, I’m hungry (as I should be), but not ready to leap into the bowl of mashed potatoes or steal the entire pan of baked chicken, retreating to my room like some overgrown (but hopefully still more attractive) gremlin.

Removing snacks from my weekday eating habits entirely has proven to be quite revealing; now that I’m not snacking all the time, I can see just how much I was snacking. As Reinhard (the creator of the system) points out on one of his websites, “No S makes excess seem excessive.” It’s also proven interesting to see what I want to snack on during S days, when I’m allowed to. Most of the crap I nibbled on all the time before - crackers, bits of cheese, rice cakes - just doesn’t seem appealing. It would seem that throwing such things down the hatch all the time was just a habit; now that the habit’s gone, I don’t really care about the foods. This goes for many of the sweets that I “loved” before; when I can eat them on S days now, I generally don’t want to. I prefer my treats on S days to be real treats, not some yucky little white powdered donut.

It’s also interesting how sticking to a rigid but simple plan has altered how I think. When someone offers me something to eat when it’s not a mealtime, my brain immediately throws out: well, duh, of course not - it’s not a mealtime! The same goes for when there’s dessert available after dinner. I don’t have to make any choices about it, because my habit has already done so for me: if it’s a weekday, the answer is no, good sir; move along from that cake. On to…

Shovelglove

Well, I think the fact that I stuck with this every weekday for three weeks says a lot on its own, but to elaborate:

Shovelglove is fast, it’s fun, and, believe it or not, effective. Having struggled with my weight for years now, I’ve messed around with a lot of different exercise programs, and the vast majority of them were boring and unenjoyable. For a lot of them, I’d even go so far as to say that they sucked. They were things that would have made me lose weight, certainly, but they were things that I wouldn’t do consistently. Something can be 100% effective, but if you don’t do it, it’s 0% effective.

I’ve stuck with shovelglove because it’s extremely enjoyable, oddly so; because it’s helping me lose weight (along with No S); and because in comparison to what I’ve tried before - lifting weights for nearly an hour per session - it takes up practically none of my time. That, and as I mentioned before, shovelglove caresses my inner geek. It’s exercise and roleplaying; I get to pretend I’m a farmer, or a chain-gang worker, or a guy on a steamship stoking the oven, or an elf (a very hefty one!), smiting an orc. I know, that sounds absurd. It is absurd. But I challenge you: get a sledgehammer and a sweater, and do shovelglove for a week. If you go the whole week without imagining you’re doing something like the above, well… I can’t help you. Are you human?

Results

Of course, doing these two systems would be pointless if they weren’t helping me in some way, but they are, as I mentioned above. So, how much weight have I lost? It’s hard to say, honestly. The scales at first went down a bit, and then they went up. At that point, I decided that obsessively checking the scales would be pointless. Doing shovelglove, I know for a fact that I’m packing on muscle; my arms are more muscular than they’ve ever been, even compared to when I was doing a lot of heavy weight lifting. Muscle weighing pretty much the same as fat, but being much denser, it’s hard for me to say how much weight I’ve “lost.”

So let’s talk slightly more practical results. Doing a simple “how snug are these” test with my pants, I’ve lost at least an inch, perhaps two, from my waist. One pair of shorts I wore a few days ago kept slipping down, practically falling off of me. I was able to slide them off without unfastening anything. For me, this was a bit like finding a hidden 6th toe on my foot - I don’t recall the last time I had trouble with my pants slipping. My arms are more muscular and much more toned, as are my legs (I’ve been doing Hindu squats as part of my shovelglove routine). All in all, I feel better all around, and I’m less, well, round. I’ve still got lots of roundness to me, trust me, but some of it’s gone. For a mere 3 weeks, these are results I can’t really argue with.

As a final note, I’ve chuckled a bit at the responses I’ve gotten from family members when I tell them what I’m doing for exercise. “You’re doing.. what? With a sledgehammer?” They smile and nod, as if saying: well, isn’t that nice, you’ve gone completely insane, and such an exercise routine will never work.

Except it is working. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, or in my arms, I suppose. The proof, not the pudding; it’s a Monday, and so I obviously can’t have pudding today!

Yesterday, I started two new daily routines - well, almost daily routines: shovelgloving, and no S dieting. Let me elaborate:

Shovelglove

I discovered shovelgloving a few weeks ago, but only glanced at the site; it seemed rather weird, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Yesterday, however, I rediscovered it via my daily consumption of feeds, and decided to read the whole page (something I don’t do much these days on the internet, I admit). If you’d rather not do that, in a nutshell: shovelgloving is wrapping an old sweater around the head of a sledgehammer, and then doing basic movements with your new “shovelglove” - shoveling, chopping wood, churning butter, smiting the orc (I’m serious). See, I said it was weird, and I meant it. But its weirdness gives it an awful lot of charm. How could anyone not pay some attention to an exercise program that has an exercise called “smiting the orc”?

Despite its weirdness, Reinhard, the quirky librarian in charge of the site, convinced me to give it a go. I like that shovelgloving makes exercise such a simple thing, rather than charting it all out - this exercise for that muscle, that exercise for this muscle. Sure, there’s a table of movements, but they’re all pretty logical, with the names (mostly) describing the action very well. I understand “tuck bales” and “drive fence posts” far better than I understand “lat extension to the rear” and “triceps kickback”… what do those things mean?

In regards to how often and how much you’re supposed to shovelglove, it’s dead simple: Monday through Friday, 14 minutes a day - no more, no less. You rest on the weekend. Reinhard has an interesting psychological explanation as to why he chose 14 minutes - it’s not a typical time block, so it doesn’t really register with a lot of people. 14 minutes? Sure, I can spare that, that’s nothing. But half an hour? That’s half an hour. I could watch a TV show during that!

I put in my first 14 minutes of shovelgloving yesterday evening, and it was a surprisingly hard workout. But it was also a hell of a lot of fun - in a quite weird way. I just hope the neighbors didn’t see me.

No S Diet

The No S diet is perhaps even simpler than shovelgloving. Here’s the diet:

• No Snacks
• No Sweets
• No Seconds

Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No calorie counting, no “you can’t eat that!”; just 3 meals a day, without constantly visiting the kitchen for snacks all day. And while I suppose things could change in the future, I’d say that at least during my lifetime, there will always be 2 days in the week which begin with “S”, so when I want some cookies or cake or whatever, I’ll know right when I can have them.

When I read about this diet, which I discovered via the shovelglove.com site, I thought: this is it. This is the best diet idea I’ve ever seen (and I’ve looked at my fair share of them, lemme’ tell ya’.) Why? Because it’s doable. I could see myself doing this for the rest of my life, because it’s simple, and it’s not going to feel like I’m trying to become an ascetic. I’ve tried counting calories before, and I discovered that it - ahem, sucks. Sure, I did it for a few weeks. And then I started to hate that little red book. Hate it. It made every meal a math assignment, and I think I’ve mentioned it in the past: I hate math! I’ve also tried diets that simply cut off certain foods, and that sucks even more than calorie counting. I like cookies, thank you very much.

I also think it’s going to be a great fit for me, because I know I’m awful about snacking; it’s probably the #1 reason why I’m fat (with a close #2 being that during most of my life, when it comes to physical exercise, I’ve been a lazy bastard - hey, I’m going for honesty here). Bored? Hit the kitchen. In the kitchen for a glass of water? Hey, grab a snack - it’s just one or two bites of food, right? Right, but those bites add up, chum. Read the nosdiet.com page for more about this, because Reinhard’s got some really good info about snacking and why we all should probably quit doing it so damn much. And for the record, no, I’m not being paid to write this. I’ve not even spoken to the guy.

I realize I’ve only done shovelgloving and No S dieting one day, but I must say - that one day felt fine. It didn’t feel like a chore that I had to make myself do, even the exercise - which I can’t say about many other exercises I’ve done. (I still love punching bag workouts, though!) I’m going to continue to give both a go, and if in a few weeks I’m still feeling fine with both, they may just become life habits.

(Sidenote: I read that apparently, many people respond to the No S diet and shovelgloving as I have - very enthusiastically. And then they discover that it’s not ultra easy all of the time, and they start to despair a bit. So I’m keeping that in mind - the diet in particular is a big change for me, and I’m going to have to be diligent. Here’s my daily calendar for shovegloving and nosdiet; if you see a red square, feel free to say “get back on track!” via the comments here.)

Gnorb posted this entry today, which is actually 3 smaller posts rolled into one. He began the entry with:

Don’t you just hate it when you have a bunch of things you think are important to you going on, but then when you start to tell someone about them you realize they probably don’t give a rip?

I realized I’ve had a few things like that rolling around in my head - things that I’ve felt are fairly important to me, but I wasn’t quite sure if I could make a post out of any one of them. So, in the best fashion, I’m stealing Gnorb’s idea. Thanks, Gnorb. (Hope you enjoy your typewriters, and I hope you get your health issues sorted out soon!)

Point One. The first thing on the agenda: exercise. I’ve stuck with it. Days have been missed here and there, certainly, but the overall trend has been regular exercise. About two weeks ago, I started using my punching bag again. If you recall from the last post about it, I stopped using it because I was concerned that the house was going to fall in on me; that wouldn’t be good. However, upon inspecting where it’s mounted a bit more, I came to the conclusion that it should be okay. I’m going to keep an eye on the wall above the woodwork for any developing cracks, and if I see any, I’ll stop using the bag. Until then, I’m going to continue on. One good sign is that I’ve not seen any more little pieces of plaster on the floor after using it.

A week ago, I started the 100 Pushups in 6 Weeks program. I’ve been doing push ups as part of me routine, but I saw someone mention the site somewhere - a feed item, Twitter? - and thought it sounded pretty cool. I’ve done 4 sessions thus far, and am already seeing some improvement in my arms. Looking at the later weeks, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up with it - I’ve done well so far - but we’ll see. If I can’t, I’ll just start the program over and do it until I can keep up.

Finally, yesterday, I signed up at Mapmywalk.com, to.. well, duh, map my walks out. It’s a pretty neat service. You map out your walks on a Google Map, and the site calculates the distance you’ll be walking. Speaking of walking…

Point Two. I’ll now be taking two dogs for regular walks instead of one, as I’ve officially accepted that the dog that showed up is now ours. I’ve checked everywhere I know to check, and found nothing at all about her. No one has said “Hey, my dog!” when I’ve walked her with Gandalf, nor has anyone knocked on my door saying, “Excuse me, you’ve got my dog in your backyard.” So, she’s now ours. We named her Zoë. The name has some spunk to it, which she has plenty of. Perhaps a little too much - I’ve been paying lots of attention to both her and Gandalf, but she still keeps knocking their water bowl over…

And yes, particularly because Cas did some light badgering via email, pictures of the dog shall be forthcoming. Soon. I promise.

In keeping with making myself accountable, I figured I’d let everyone know how my exercise habit is coming along. There’s good news, and perhaps inevitably, bad news. But the good news is really good, and the bad news isn’t catastrophic. So:

The Good

The good news is, I’ve stuck with the exercising. I’ve not been exercising every day, but when I started the routine, I hadn’t planned on exercising every day. My goal was every other day, which I’ve largely achieved. Why every other day? Because my primary exercise has been punching bag work, which, due to its high impact nature, you shouldn’t do every day. I have, however, been doing other stuff as well: crunches, squats, push ups, and some weight lifting.

All in all, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made. I’ve not been obsessive about checking my weight, but I know my arms are already more muscular and a bit more toned. At any rate, exercising every other day is certainly a heck of a lot better than sitting on my butt and not doing anything at all.

But, like I said, there’s bad news, too…

The Bad

The not-so-good news is that I’m not going to be able to do punching bag work for a while. No, I didn’t break a hand (though I have twisted my wrists a few times - ow). Last night while I was doing my workout, I thought I saw some small, white particles falling around the bag. A few more punches, and I was sure I saw them. I gave the bag a really hard punch and looked up at where it’s mounted - white dust was in the air. Uh oh.

Upon further inspection, I found lots of those little white particles on the floor. These turned out to be pieces of, um, plaster. Apparently, all of the stress from the bag bouncing and swinging around has been silently taking its toll on the woodwork where the bag is mounted. In other words, if I keep using the bag where it’s at, I’m probably going to destroy the woodwork, and perhaps even some of our ceiling. That doesn’t sound particularly healthy, does it? That, and the Missus probably wouldn’t appreciate the destruction of our ceiling very much…

There are stands available for punching bags, but those run around $150 (or up); doable, but they look rather large, and I’m not really sure where I’d put such a device. There are also wall mounts, but again - I’m not really sure about a location for one, and honestly, I’d be afraid of the whole thing ripping down one of our walls. As I’ve mentioned before, a carpenter I am not.

So, for the time being, no more punching bag at home. I’m a bit bummed about it, truth be told, because I’ve really been enjoying it, but I’ve run out of ideas as to where to put it, and destroying the house in the name of fitness just isn’t going to cut it.

The Ugly What Now?

What’s the game plan now? Well, I’m going to keep exercising, that’s the plan! While I can’t use my punching bag currently, I’m going to keep doing the things I mentioned above, as well as start adding some other stuff into my routine. I’m aiming to alternate between upper body and lower body workouts, so I need to figure out what exercises will allow me to “cover all of the bases”, so to speak - I don’t want to neglect any muscle groups, as that can lead to injury (or so I’ve read over and over).

I’m not, however, going to stop exercising while I plan it all out with half a dozen books and three different color coded notebooks. I could do that, and I have such things in the past, but not this time. I’ll work on the details while I keep the routine going. I refuse to get bogged down in nitpicking over every little thing right now. The primary thing is to keep myself exercising regularly.

I mentioned before that I’ve become interested in using kickboxing for exercise, and that I bought a punching bag to make it more effective. When I bought it, I had planned on hanging it in our attic from a beam, which was in place for some sort of room construction (which was never completed). I followed through with this plan. Problems quickly popped up with this, though; problems which, admittedly, could have been avoided, if I’d done a little more research and put my grey matter to use.

But I didn’t. I got it home, lugged it up two flights of stairs to the attic, and hung it up as quickly as possible. Just like the overgrown kid I am - “A new toy!” Then I tried to use it and noticed the problems.

The first problem that appeared after mounting the bag in the attic and hitting it around a bit is connected to this simple fact: I’m not a carpenter. Not only am I not a carpenter, I never even took shop class in school; my knowledge of woodworking is woefully inadequate, more or less nonexistent, actually. Which, of course, would explain why I mounted an 80 pound punching bag to a beam that isn’t nearly sturdy enough to hold it, at least not for a long period of time with me knocking it around.

To make it clear, I did test the beam, or rather my wife did. She weighs a good deal more than 80 pounds, and she hung from the beam, and it didn’t give at all. We figured, okay, if it’ll hold her, it’ll hold the bag - simple math, right? Well, yes. But see, I didn’t proceed to push my wife around while she was hanging from the beam, throwing hooks at her and front kicks and all of that other stuff. She just hung there. Apparently, when you hang an 80 pound object from a chain, and then punch and kick it around, when the bag jerks down on the chain, there’s a little bit more stress than 80 pounds being applied. Who woulda’ thought it, right?

More specifically, when I hit the punching bag or, gods forbid, kicked it, bad things started to happen. The beam warped an awful lot, to the point where it went beyond “normal warping” to “hey, that might just snap in two!” It warped in both directions, both side to side and up and down. Furthermore, if I just shoved the bag and let it swing back and forth, I could hear the beam creaking at one point where it was attached to the ceiling. I could imagine the nails slowly but surely squeaking out of their holes.

I also discovered something else that could be seen as “not good.” Shortly after mounting the bag, I noticed a thick, white wire running along the top of the beam. It crossed over to another beam, and went to a light bulb. Oops. Okay, so I mounted an 80 pound bag on a weak-as-jelly beam that has a live electrical wire on it. Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done…

The final blow (pun woefully intended) to the plan of having the punching bag in the attic was heat. Summer hasn’t even officially arrived yet, and our attic is already hot. Once summer arrives, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if temperatures up there hit 120 Fahrenheit. While I know that you’re supposed to get warmed up during exercise, I’m not sure a heat stroke is on the agenda for health and weight loss.

Of course, all of this led to me not using the bag much. I was afraid of it falling on me, I was afraid of getting electrocuted when it fell on me, and I was afraid that if I spent more than half an hour up there, I’d either collapse or melt, perhaps both. None of that sounded appealing. I also didn’t use it simply because it was out of the way; it being in the attic proves that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” holds at least some truth.

So, having had enough of not using it, I went on a scouting mission in our house to find a better spot. All of the ceilings were more or less out of the question: we have an old house, in which the ceilings are 1) about 9 and a half feet high and 2) covered with plaster. I didn’t really want to buy another chain setup, and I really didn’t want the bag slowly making the hole in the ceiling bigger and bigger. Success in my search came quickly, however. I’m not really sure what it’s called, but there’s a sort of portal between the large part of our bedroom, and a smaller area; that portal has some quite thick woodwork, and being part of the wall, I figured it’d be sturdy enough to hold the bag. The bag was remounted there, and my guess proved correct: solid as a rock. I’ve used it three or four times now, and haven’t seen any problems.

Hopefully, having the bag in my our bedroom will help me stick with it, as it’s obviously far more accessible now. Certainly, I’ve already used it more in the last couple of days than I had in the past few weeks, when it was in the attic. Let’s hope the expert at Duke University knows what he’s talking about when he says that our environment plays a large role in what habits we have. (I’m still unconvinced that willpower plays no role, though. Having the bag in my bedroom will probably help, but I can still walk by it without using it, unless I throw some willpower into the mix.)