Welcome to my fitness wiki. Going to document my goals and what I want to do and how I do it. What I watched/read/tried.
Goals
This one is simple:
Loose weight
Gain strength
Make is sustainable
Those are my main goals. My weight fluctuated in the past 10 years between 69 and 82 kilograms. Reflecting on it I remember that I feel the best at my lowest weight. 69kg is not necessary, but 72-74 range is good enough. When I cary less weight I feel energized and more mobile and even more strong.
I like the feeling of lightness and energy it brings. So that is my main goal.
Strength is just a side effect of losing weight, feeling more energetic and actually doing exercises. I don’t care that much how my muscle look, but I like the feeling of strength. When I can win the goal playing football using my body, or pulling my body weight on various bars. Or being able to do surfing (requires tons of strength). I like that feeling of being able to climb difficult mountain on my bike or being able to run distance I never imagined.
And obviously I want those things to be sustainable. I don’t want to loose my weight fast and then get it back two month later. The same with strength. I don’t need to become strong very quickly if I’m going to loose it again later.
KPIs for 2023
Get my weight down to at least 74 kg and maintain it for the most of the year.
Being able to do 12 pull-ups.
Run at least one half marathon. On Jan 10, 2023 I registered for my first one ever. In Warsaw on March 26. I have 10 weeks to prepare.
Do a week long biking trip.
Journal
I’m going to keep my journal here. Basically I’m trying to record what do I do each week.
Observations
Volume over intensity. I noticed it with running. When I do easy runs without trying to die, there is way higher chance I will run tomorrow. And my speed and distance automatically increase not by intensity of my runs but by quantity. Whenever I did regular common runs regularly - my numbers always increased.
I automatically loose weight when I skip one meal. Usually if I skip dinner(don’t eat after 6) I see that my weight goes down. If I do it few times per week - that usually is enough. It’s also possible to skip breakfast. Idea here is to prolong window when I don’t eat. Can be 14-18 hours. This basically sends signal to the body to start burning fat.
I actually enjoy feeling of being slightly hungry. I told to to my friend and he couldn’t believe me. But it’s a familiar feeling. When I don’t feel full, but slightly hungry I’m more energetic.
Changing my diet is not so important. Whenever I trained I still allowed myself some pastries and it all worked out. Don’t need to restrict myself heavily. As long as I skip one meal 3-4 days in one week and do exercise 3-4 days per week I’m going to get closer to my goals.
I cannot run when I had any type of spicy food (even moderately spicy). I always have stomach issues and it’s a challenge to run.
Challenges
building routine is hard in general. It’s even more difficult for me since I move around a lot. Sometimes it takes time to find new running route, or place to do pull up. Restarting routines in a new place is challenging. Flights mess up sleep, first few days in new city I go out more, so it takes around one week to adjust.
Too much information online. I watched tens of hours of Youtube videos. Sometimes I watch more videos on the topic than actually do exercise. What helps me was starting to organize information. Eg if I like some exercise I will save it to this wiki.