Nike: Just Do It

I have honestly never paid attention to these nutritional labels before on food products... until this week.

I am not a person to be persuaded into exercising and losing weight from the New Years Resolution buzz but I am,  however, persuaded to exercise and lose weight when I reach a certain weight. That weight for me is about 200lbs (90kgs). But for the last 6 months or so I have been hovering around that area with very little fluctuation.

My first 18 years of my life I have been very active. I worked out at the gym, played a lot of rugby, and ran a lot of miles. Needless to say, I was in decent shape and athletic.
Age 19, I went to Las Vegas to do some volunteer work which meant I couldn't continue with my usual athletic activities. In those 24 months I gained a depressing 50lbs. Got back home and shredded off 20 lbs as easy as I gained them.

This week I was tired of being out of shape, so I am deciding to do something about it by training for the Chicago Marathon. Okay, am I really training for the Chicago Marathon? No, but "Nike Running" has a Chicago Marathon Training Program which I am doing. It has given me an outline for what distance I need to run everyday. Starting out as a beginner (even though I have run two triathlons, two half-marathons, and run State in HS), I should be ready to run the marathon distance in 15 weeks. I hope I can keep this up. It's not bad now because I'm doing a relaxed internship but next month I start an intense series of finance courses and my wife will have a little baby boy.


So far this week I have run 6 miles and did Billy Blanks BootCamp Cardio Inferno. This was very tough for me. It's an intense 45 minute cardio workout. I bought this DVD last year when I was in Las Vegas and did some exercise at home. I did it today for the first time in a long while and could not go all the way through it, a couple times I had to take a rest. Tomorrow I will be refereeing a rugby match and on the side of that will be doing a 4 mile run.
My goal eventually is to get back where I use to be - running 10 miles in 60 minutes. Currently I am struggling with 3 miles in 30 minutes. Sad day!

The formula to losing weight is to exercise and eat healthy. I am exercising, but now I'm also diving into the healthy eating lifestyle. Although pizza is delicious and high in calcium, it's also high in calories. Who knew that strawberries has more Vitamin C than an orange. The other day I had a homemade double cheese burger - 1,000 calories!! I have learned that all those rumours about fruits and vegetables being good for you is true. They are low in calories and have a large amount of goodness in them. Life cereal has a substantial amount of Iron in it.
To calculate my calories and all that stuff, I have been using this app called MyFitnessPal. It's actually been quite interesting to me and have enjoyed finding out just exactly what I am eating.

Now enjoy some fun cartoons I have found on the web...