  My car | 
Posted - 10/25/2004 2:26:09 PM | Weekly weigh-in: 246
Down 2 pounds from last week. I figure that tracking my weight here will help keep me motivated to stay on the wagon.
Anyway, this is my car:
It's a '93 Mazda Protege, which I bought in 1996, and have since put over 100K miles on (it's at 160K now). The car has served me well, but it's starting to have a wide range of problems that I really don't want to spend money to fix.
This past summer, I started looking for a replacement. I've wanted a roadster since I was a teenager, so I was looking at the BMW Z3 (which I like better than the newer Z4), Audi TT Roadster, and Chrysler Crossfire. But after a few test drives, my wife pointed out to me that I really needed to get something with more than 2 seats, since we have 5 kids, and I regularly have to pick more than one of them up while she has our minivan.
Fine, I started the search for an alternative. I really want something that I'm going to enjoy driving, so I came up with several criteria:- It has to be sporty. I don't need a rocket, but I want something that can move when I feel like it.
- It has to be somewhat unique. I don't want something that looks like every other car on the road.
- It has to be convertible.
- It has to have a back seat.
- It has to cost < $30K.
So I spent months looking for a car that fit these criteria, with little luck. Everything I looked at failed one or more criteria. I was beginning to feel that I was going to have to settle for something less than ideal, until I went to London.
There, I saw a car that I'd looked at before, and really liked, but passed over because it wasn't convertible. Except that the the one I saw was convertible. Turns out they had just come out with them, and they hadn't yet appeared in the states.
I went back home, did some research, read some reviews, and came to the conclusion that this car was exactly what I wanted. Last week, I paid my deposit and ordered a MINI Cooper S Convertible.
Buying a MINI ended up being more complicated than expected. There's only one MINI dealer in San Diego, and they charge $4-5,000 over MSRP (which is already $1-2K over invoice). There are a few dealers in LA that charge MSRP, but they have really long waiting lists (up to 12 months). Checking out some MINI driver forums, I found out that the prevailing recommendation among SoCal MINI owners was to buy your MINI out of state, and then either ship it or fly out and drive it back.
I did some more research and found out that the MINI dealer where I used to live (Salt Lake City) has a really good reputation and charges MSRP, so I ordered it from there. I'm still going to have to wait until late Jan/early Feb to pick it up, but that's much better than if I had ordered in LA. And the drive back should be fun.
In the meantime, here's hoping that my Mazda holds up for another 3 months.
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| Tweaking | |
Posted - 10/22/2004 1:41:54 AM | After getting some feedback from a lot of people, I made some changes to my workout. Since my main goal right now is weight loss, I decided to cut back slightly on lifting, and do longer - but less frequent cardio sessions.
So 3 days a week, I'm going to do a full hour of cardio. I started today, running for an hour. I'm not sure that I've done an hour of straight cardio EVER, but it actually felt really good. I'm just glad that I've spend the past 6 weeks getting back in shape or it would've killed me. I'm also going to mix up the cardio a bit, with cycling, running, and jump roping.
For lifting, I'm currently doing a 2-day split 3 days a week - on the days I'm not doing cardio. My routine looks like this:
Torso day:
Flat bench press
Close grip pulldown (or Front pulldown, depending on the gym I'm at)
Incline bench press
Bent-over row
Shoulder press
Lateral raise
Rear lateral raise
Shrug
Legs/arms day:
Squat (or leg press, depending where I am)
Seated leg curl
Leg extension
Calf raise (or calf press, depending where I am)
Skullcrusher
Curl
One rather radical change I'm making is that I'm only doing one warmup set and one full set per exercise. I'm reading a lot of material that suggests that the benefits gained from doing a 2nd and 3rd full set are pretty marginal (as long as the one set is done at full intensity), so I'm going to try it for a while and see how it goes.
I'm going to do this for six weeks, after which I'll slowly start to drift back toward more lifting and working only one or two muscle groups per day. If things continue the way they've been going, I should be down to 220 by the end of the year - maybe even lower.
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| Tuesday, October 19, 2004 |
| Back on the wagon | |
Posted - 10/19/2004 4:01:29 PM | It's been a while since I've updated this, so I think that a non-development post will do well to get me back in the habit.
I've been struggling with my weight for years. When I a kid, I was always heavy for my age. This got better around 5th grade, when I shot up to 6 ft (where I stopped), and started exercising regularly. Initially, exercising consisted of pushups, situps, pullups, and some running. I soon started lifting weights regularly and did a minimal amount of cardio. I was in good shape throughout high school, where I wrestled and played football. When I graduated from high school, I weighed about 195 lbs - mostly muscle. I continued for a year after that, and got up to a 350 lbs bench press.
Then I went to Korea for 2 years as a missionary for my church. While there, I was able to keep in fairly good shape, but couldn't lift weights, so I lost a lot of strength and size. I mostly jumped rope and did some bodyweight workouts, but not consistently. When I got back I was around 185 lbs. After that, I went back to school, got married a year later, and then became busy trying to support my family, so I didn't workout consistently. My eating habits changed, and I started gaining weight. Within a couple of years, I was up to 240 lbs. In the fall of '96, I decided it was time to lose weight. I started the New Hilton Head Metabolism Diet, ran every day, and did a regular regimen of bodyweight workouts (I didn't have access to a gym). Within 5 months, I'd lost almost 40 pounds. Unfortunately, at that time, I changed jobs to something more demanding, and also decided to go back to school (I'd been off for 3 years just surviving). With the change, my regimen fell apart, and I started to gain the weight back. 2 years later, after another job change, I got a gym membership and tried again to get back in shape, but I lacked the discipline to diet. My next attempt to get back on the wagon came a year ago, when I tried the South Beach diet. It went really well - I lost 10 pounds in a little over a month - but I wasn't exercising, and I craved my favorite carbs ALL the time, so it wasn't sustained, and I gained all the weight back and then some.
This year, I peaked at 263 lbs, and finally, early last month, I committed to a sustained effort to get back in shape again. I read an article that said the middle of the afternoon was the best time to work out, and I realized that I could eat lunch at my desk and go to the company gym in the afternoon (making it harder to skip the workout). I looked at the diets I'd been on and came up with guidelines for eating (with a high protein/moderate good carbs & fats focus) that I thought would both allow me to lose weight while not leaving me craving all the time.
I've been following this for about 6 weeks now, eating pretty healthily and working out six days a week for an hour. I've lost 15 pounds and I feel great.
My goals are weight loss and building muscle. I know that those two things are conflicting in many ways, especially in the diet. So for now, I'm doing cardio and weightlifting every day, but I'm not expecting major gains from the weightlifting. Once I get to my target weight, I'll cut back the cardio to three days a week.
Right now, cardio is riding an exercise bike for 20 minutes. About every other week I'm doing a 10+ mile mountain bike trip as well - this in preparation for a 250 mile trek I'm making in the spring.
My current lifting split looks something like this:
Mon/Thu
Leg press
Seated leg curls
Seated leg extensions
Side leg raises (bodyweight)
Standing calf raises (bodyweight)
Tue/Fri
Seated row
Bench press
Lat pulldown
Incline or decline bench press
Wed/Sat
Shoulder press
Upright row
Dumbell flies
Dumbell curls
Overhead tricep extensions
Forearm curls/extensions
Mod/Wed/Fri
Abs
Lower back
I'm doing most exercises for 3 sets of 6-8 reps, with < 45 sec breaks between sets (which I usually spend stretching) and no rest between excercises. I also vary the excercises pretty regularly.
Anyway, the reason I'm posting this here is mainly as another incentive to stay on the wagon, but I'd also welcome feedback on my workout if people think it could be more effective.
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