Healthy Update

This past year, I entered into a few rounds of the office "Biggest Loser" contest and won once. They did a few three-month periods where everyone was weighed weekly on Wednesdays and judged on comparative percentage lost. There was a $20 entry fee, plus at least $1 for each weigh-in assuming you lost weight, $2 if you stayed the same and $3 if you gained. On the first go around that I entered, I won after having lost nearly 5% of my weight in 12 weeks.

My secret? Well, first off I feel like I cheated a bit because all of the other players that round were ladies. They fought hard, but it's an apparent truth that men lose weight more easily than women. And I am pretty sure I outweighed all of them the whole time so the percentage thing helped me. I switched to taking the stairs every day to our fourth floor office; up once in the morning, down at lunch, up after lunch and down at the end of the workday. I drank LOTS of water, I mean ridiculous amounts. I stopped drinking soda, probably forever. Even diet soda, as I've learned that it doesn't actually help you lose weight. Go figure.

I worked out a little here and there, but not overly regularly. All these small changes stacked up and were effective. And so I won a few hundred dollars. In the next and subsequent rounds, other men in the office joined in and really killed it. One of them ran every day. One of them was doing some sort of "juice-cleanse" thing that sounded like no fun to me, but it worked well for him. I outweigh all these guys too. As the winter got colder, I was not going to be exercising even the little amount I'd done before and we'd dropped the health club membership. So others won and I'm genuinely happy for them, cue applause.

It seems they are not going to go another round this year with our office Biggest Loser. I'm not sure I'd have joined in anyhow. That being the case, I still want to keep my activity up and the gains (er, losses?) I've had this year in place. I'm hovering at 250 pounds and I never want to be heavier than that again as long as I live.

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With that in mind, I've been stumbling on a few workout / exercises that I can do myself indoors. I'm always believed that if you are not going to work out regularly on stuff you can easily do at home, then there's no point to getting a gym membership. Here are a few entries that I've saved recently.

Here is a second one with animated demonstrations. It's specifically for abdominal stuff.

I'll update as progress happens (or doesn't).