Before I go on about how I am being ultra healthy, I want to make sure you understand that I drank pretty much all the booze in Canada last Friday.  ALL of it.  I spent a solid 12 hours split between a patio and a club.  I have always been that type of guy.  I drink like a fish one night but try to live fairly pure the other days of the week.  This includes working out and eating right.  Lately, I have been slipping.  My weekdays have been filled with either drinking or going out to dinner.  As a result, my working out has really dropped off as well.  I am easily 6 lbs over my ideal weight right now and I want to make sure it doesn’t get any further than that!  I felt my lack of conditioning when I went for my first run in almost two weeks on Sunday morning.  I barely got to 2 KM before I started to flake out.  I had to walk after I hit 3 KM.  The next day my legs were sore as hell.  My body was acting like I don’t ever run!  Not good.  My usual running route is about 4 KM and it doesn’t affect me the next day.  One thing that probably didn’t help is that my headphones broke!  I have weird ears, and finding ear buds that fit are damn near impossible for me.  The standard iPod ones wont stay in my ear even when I am standing still.  I decided to go with an old school pair with an actual head band.  I am tired of running and feeling like I need to keep my hands over my ears.  I finally decided on a set from Nike that are great.  It’s the Sport Motion headphones.  Nothing special.  Nothing fancy.  It is just a simple, clean design that is awesome…like me!  Here they are:

Alright, so my new headphones are definitely helping me get back on track with my workouts.  What am I doing about the other aspects of my lifestyle?  I guess we can start with nutrition.  Step 1 is to stop drinking during the week.  Check!  For me, I eat healthy when I plan my meals.  If I wait until I am hungry I will eat absolutely anything.  Planning my meals allows me to keep track of the nutritional balance of my meals and it let’s me substitute healthy options.  Speaking of that, I have also tried to introduce some new items into my cooking.  Today I just cooked up some quinoa as my side, as opposed to rice.  Quinoa is a bad-ass power food that has a ton of benefits including being a complete protein!  It cooks up just like rice, so you don’t need to learn anything new!  Here is how it looks when cooked:

So there you have it - the steps I am taking to get my life back on track.  Obviously, this isn’t the only thing I have changed.  It seems that once I make one little change for the better, other things seem to fall into place.  I am 100% single.  I am not dating anyone, even casually.  It has been a very long time since that has been the case.  I am definitely enjoying the free time.  As a result of that extra time, I have rediscovered my passion for reading.  The best benefit to all of this - I am saving money!  Slowing down the drinking and dating is like winning the lottery!  With all this extra bank, I may have to invest in an iPad or a Kindle.  Two very different devices, I know.  I just have to decide what I need the most.  Stay tuned!

Monday’s are always tough days for me.  I spend time in the gym with our trainer who really kicks our ass.  This is all part of the firefighter pre-service course that I am in at college.  Back on January 19th we did an initial assessment of our fitness and body composition.  Since I have no shame, I figured I would post the results up here.  Hey, if I have no problem posting the results of my trades then I should have no problem letting you know if I am a fat bastard or not!  I haven’t included all the stats, just the ones I thought you would find most interesting.

Age: 30

Height: 5 ft 9 in

Weight: 162lbs

BMI: 23.92

This is Body Mass Index, which is pretty much a height and weight ration.  It does not take into account whether you are composed of fat or muscle.  But it can be useful to know if your weight is proportionate to your height.  My minimum-maximum range for BMI is 21.66 - 31.64.  I am on the lower end so I am looking good here.

BMR: 1758

The Basal Metabolic Rate is a pretty cool stat to know.  It is the number of calories your body can burn at rest in a day.  So, my body burns 1758 calories even if I don’t get out of bed for 24 hours.  The higher the number the better here so I am trying to improve this by losing fat and gaining lean mass.

Body Fat: 16.8%

This stat is pretty obvious.  My range for this is 14%-19% so I am right in the middle.  I need to get this one down to around 13% or so.  I have been increasing my cardio workouts from zero to 3-4 a week.  That, combined with a controlled diet, should allow me to get to my target.

TBW: 60.9%

Total Body Water is a very important stat.  My range for this is 54.3% - 60.7%.  As you can see I am above my max in this category.  I would like to be even higher!  I used to always be on the lower end of this test and I payed the price with some kidney stones.  I hydrate myself like crazy now!

60 second push-up test: 40

I was able to do 40 push-ups in a minute.  Not bad.  I am pushing my muscular strength and endurance so that I can comfortably be over 50 in this category.

60 second sit-up test: 46

I am close to top marks in this category.  If I can get to 51 I will score perfect on the fitness test.  With the increased workouts I should be able to hit that without an issue.

Today was day 1 back to school.  I won’t lie, I got my ass handed to me in the gym.  As you probably know, I am doing a firefighter pre-service course designed to prepare you to get a job as a firefighter.  We spent day 1 doing some practical work including getting our bunker gear and learning how to get all of our stuff on properly.  Less than an hour of this day was spent in the gym.  Wow.  Our instructor knows her stuff.  Yours truly definitely needs to up his intensity of his training.  I need to get into a running routine as well.  I normally try to avoid running in favor of other cardio exercises, but I can’t get away with that anymore.  I need to do some real running out there.  I definitely have some big areas to improve and I will let you all know how I progress.  As I mentioned the other day my blog posting frequency will remain at a minimum of 1 post per day, but I will only be throwing it up late in the day.  That probably only threw you guys off this one day, as I didn’t have anything up for your Monday during working hours.  Sorry!  So, today I am not sure if I will trade, but I will take a look.  If I do make a trade I will throw it online tomorrow.  What I can offer you today is something pretty cool.  This is a montage of every Simpsons couch gag.  I thought this video would go on forever, but thankfully they sped it up.  It’s pretty cool to see the evolution of the show.  Enjoy!

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Update: The fockers who run the universe pulled out some copyright bullshit and had the video removed from Youtube.  I have updated the post with a different video…hopefully this one will stay up for more than 24 hours.  If not…well…nothing I can do.

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