Project Bike

As a health professional there is also an image to keep and you have to be careful of the things you do. If you eat fast food or enjoy a piece of cake at a client site because there was a birthday party you are soon to hear, “What are you doing? You can’t eat that, you are supposed to be setting an example!” I just wanted some damn cake! More times than not I do eat health foods, about 85% of the time to give an estimation. I also have a list of about 15 foods items that make up the bulk of my nutrition and all of them are healthy. The problem I have as a health professional and as a human being is the exercise. I am right up there with you if you are one of the millions of Americans that do not get the recommended exercise during the week. I, more than a lot of people, know about exercise. I know how much you are supposed to do to get the desired result you want, the type of exercise, how to do them properly and so forth but the problem is……I don’t. I make excuses just like everyone else. Some of my favorites to use are, “I’m just too tired today” or “There is always tomorrow.” I never use the excuse that I do not have enough time because I know that is a load of bullshit and I can’t even lie to myself that much. I am always trying to find something that I enjoy doing that will get me the results I want, think Ryan Reynolds in Blade Trilogy. I want to have a low body fat percentage and a lean cut look. I know how to do it but I just don’t. I always put it off for another day or I get into these workout spurts and then I get bored with whatever I am trying.

I go through workouts like most people go through fad diets. I have tried Cross Fit, making my own work outs, getting workouts out of men’s health, Insanity, going to the gym, boot camps, the jersey shore workout, the Troy/ Brad Pitt workout, etc. I got into a year of doing mud runs which has stopped due to breaking my ankle. My most recent endeavor involves watching a guy on You Tube who puts out different workouts on a weekly basis, I think his channel is called six pack abs I think. They are actually not that bad and because I travel I think they will become pretty handy.

I want to try to find exercise that I will enjoy doing on a regular basis. Well….here goes a shot at something else. I will try bike riding. I have actually not rode a bike since I was in my early teens and I have yet to test out the saying, “It’s as easy as riding a bike.” If I fall I am going to be very pissed at that guy or girl. I am turning 28 next week and I know that if I want to get serious about my goals it has to be now because after the age of 30 things become a little more difficult in the exercise category including building muscle mass, maintaining muscle mass, bone mass density, and the list goes on. It turns out getting old really sucks or parts of it anyway. I will start this new journey this weekend when I return home from my work trip. My goal is to have enough endurance to ride down to the beach on the weekends from my apartment, roughly 45 miles rough trip. I will use my new friend on YouTube to motivate me during my travels and on a couple days during the week but I want to bulk of my exercise to come from cycling. I bought an inexpensive bike from Wal-Mart to start off and all the cool gear to go along with it.

However, my adventure didn’t start out the way I planned. I am in Wal-Mart ready to pick out the bike I want. A guy at one of my clients is an amateur BMX rider and has offered to put together my bike for my while I am gone. I am instructed to buy the bike in an unopened box so that he knows all the parts are there. I am ready to be a good soldier! <Salute> Well see what happened was…….the guy sent me three bikes that he thought would be good from Wal-Mart and they were out of my top pick so I decided to go with number 2. I asked the lady if I could get the bike in and unopened box. They didn’t have any more other than the one that was already built on the rack. I had an internal struggle moment at that point. I didn’t want to have to wait until the bike came in and take it to the guy to put it together. I WANT IT NOW!! I gave in and got the bike put together and had to fit it into the trunk of my car so that I could make it home. It also turns out that in the past 15 years they have made some unique advancements to bikes because I couldn’t even figure out how to put the damn kick stand down at first. I thought I bought a bike that was jacked up. I finally figure out the kick stand and now my new bike is sitting in my living room getting used to its new home while I am away. I will take it out for a spin on Saturday and that will start Project Bike.

I am going to document as much as possible along the way as well as my biometrics and photos. I currently weigh 224 as of 8/1/12. I will post some before pictures below so I can track my progress in more ways than one. I have a 39in waist. My goal is to get down to a 37in waist and get my weight down to 200 while still having lean muscle.  

Day One! 8-4-2012

So today was the first day of my bike riding adventure. I woke up and immediately packed everything up, made sure everything was adjusted and set out about 10:30. I had a path in minf that I wanted to follow. If you are familiar with this area, I went down the rode the runs by Lowes on 646 to 96, down 96 to HWY 3, HWY 3 to 646 and back to the apartment. If I had to guess I would say it was 7 or 8 miles maybe a little more. I am definitely a long way from riding to Galveston which is about 60 miles round trip. My legs felt the ride and I am sure I am going to feel it tomorrow but it was a good start. It felt kind of weird to ride in the rode but like a good biker I used my hand signals when I turned and followed the rules of the rode. I even saw a group of biker coming down HWY 3 and they waved to me like I was part of the new club. This is just the beginning.