Return of Exercise Logging

Once upon a time, I used both Fitbit and DailyMile to log my fitness, for group classes and walks and runs and lifting and whatnot. Then I decided I was tired of logging things in multiple places, so I ditched DailyMile. With it, though, went any history of progress, as it included moods, free text, equipment, tagging, and other features that Fitbit doesn’t.

While I do track what I do and how much, I haven’t been tracking how it went. So, in an effort to a.) get my sorry butt to the fitness center more often and b.) remember what the heck I did there, I’m going to start logging the deets here.

For example, today’s kickboxing class was a good class overall — got my heart rate up, got in the zone — but since I’d tweaked my back while gardening on Saturday, I made sure to take the high impact stuff down a notch. Low-jacks instead of jumping jacks, normal squats instead of power squats, high-mark-time (marching-band style) instead of “jumping rope.” That doesn’t mean I took it easy, though: even when I was modifying moves, I tried never to phone it in. (We were all just about out of juice with 15 minutes still to go — including the instructor!)

I also noticed that my hip flexors were especially tight afterward, and I stretched as best I could after the traditional post-class ab crunch session.

Next time? Eat a better breakfast — a Pop-Tart and a latte didn’t cut it — and show up early enough to get my usual lower-body stretching done before class.

I’m kind of on a roll with weight loss and developing healthier habits. Let’s see if I can ramp up my activity, too.

Rookie Mistake

“I haven’t been to a fitness class since the holidays started,” I admitted to no one in particular as I picked out my locker before Wednesday’s kickboxing class. “I’m about to get my butt kicked.”

How right I was.

I made the mistake of jumping back in full throttle, at the same level I’d been participating before I took my little two-month exercise sabbatical. I was so looking forward to kickboxing, and I was also looking forward to my first non-treadmill workout with my new Fitbit Charge 2. I went for it HARD.

Two days later, I can certainly tell I was a little too aggressive with my bob-and-weaves and my jab-cross combinations, among others. My upper arms and the backs and insides of my thighs are stiff as hell.

So, of course I continued my sub-par decision-making by opting out of my previously planned treadmill walk, and choosing instead to spend today’s lunch break querying my WordPress MySQL database in preparation for my annual Year In Review post.

Being muscle-sore has the added bonus of always causing me to weigh in heavier than I would expect, presumably from inflammation and water retention. Add that to a late-night fatigued eating binge (more poor decisions!), and my weight this morning sailed right past Oh Shit and bordered on Jesus Fuck.

Kickboxing is scheduled for Monday of next week. My official Weight Watchers weigh-in is Tuesday, department lunch on Wednesday, then a Barre Sculpt class on Thursday. No matter what the scale says, no matter how I feel physically or mentally, my health — my fitness, physical and mental — has to come first. No more skipping workouts, no more late-night binge eating.

I’ve had a couple of years to stabilize at this weight (or thereabouts). 2017 is the year when I buckle down and take it to the next level.

Whatever that means. I’ll know it when I see it.