Planning Makes Perfect: Health (4 of 5)

I just weighed myself using my family's Wii Fit.

136 lbs.

That's an increase of like three pounds from last Wednesday, or there abouts.

That's awesome. Like, woah.

Unfortunately, there's no way that's all muscle, like I want it to be. I've exercised three times since then: skim boarding at the beach, a workout yesterday, and a workout tonight.

Irregular workouts won't do it. I'm going to get on a schedule and work out on those days, even if it's not the work out that I had planned. If I'm dying and I really can't do it, I'll at least do some yoga or stretches.

I'm going to start doing Crossfit again. I'm pretty convinced it's the best training regimen out there for full body fitness. It's all about active movements, pushing yourself to your absolute limit, and shocking your body with different exercises every day. It's free and the exercises are posted daily in a three on one off format.

Navy Seals, SWAT teams, firefighters, olympians, they all use it. Designed to take only about a half hour, you really get in there, hard, and get out. I did it for a month about a year ago and nearly puked on a number of occasions. In only a month I was in massively better shape. Stronger, leaner, great stamina.

The only problem I had with it will probably be remedied by doing the workout on my own. I wasn't seeing any real increase in size. I was more cut, but the size that comes with strength gain wasn't there; I think it's because the class we did it in was geared too much for an "Everyone can do it!!!" kind of feel. The range of body types was huge. From mine and my friends' 20-something fit bodies to a couple people who might be classified as obese to a 65 year-old woman. I'll be able to do the suggested routine (we didn't follow the website) and work at my own pace to focus on the things I want from the work out.

I think I'm gonna be able to grab my older brother's weight set this weekend, so I won't have to join a gym. Also, my weight vest that I used for climbing will come in handy once I get rolling with it.

That takes care of exercise, but diet will also be an important routine.

For now, I'm going to continue my quantity over quality approach. I'm loving being full all the time and when I'm not full, I'm on my way to the kitchen to get that way. I'm averaging pretty close to five meals a day and I swear I ate about a pound and a half of shell fish last weekend.

It seems to be working pretty well, as I've gained three pounds already. Now that I'm on a work out schedule, I may have to start eating even more to sustain my calorie intake.

Eventually, I'm going to do a little bit of research and create a version of MaxDiet that works for me. Or, if I'm not satisfied with my findings, just get on the MaxDiet.

I just can't add that to all I'm working on right now. I know that if I throw myself into the fire more than I am, I won't be able to sustain it and I'll wind up stopping something that I'm working on. I don't want to do that as everything I'm working on is extremely important.

Another aspect of my health that I have to work on is my sleep schedule. It's not as miserable lately as it has been in the past, but it's by no means what you would call good. Usually at least two before I'm in bed, up anywhere from eight to ten. Seeing that, I would have called that great a month ago. But I want to strive for greatness now, not what I would have called great a month ago.

I've had periods during the day where I'm exceedingly tired for no apparent reason, sometimes needing to take a nap, which isn't something typical of me. I guess it's just because of the shift my sleep schedule has undergone. It was four to five every day the last couple weeks I was in Austin before I got to sleep.

So, there's my fitness/health/exercise/whateveryouwanttocallit plan. I won't be able to kick Crossfit into high gear until I get a weight set, but I'm going to do my own workouts on the same days until then.

Soon, I'll be kicking ass and taking names. Huge lists of names.