A Liitle More Each Time

I'm getting to National Fitness Center every other day and I'm still able to increase my workout. That's great. I'm getting the hang of using the exercise bikes and I increased my workout by five minutes and five BPM on the heart rate. I'm up to forty minutes at 110 BPM on the heart rate monitor and had a good cardio workout today.

2.7 km swim today

Do a little more each time. That's my motto for as long as I can keep the exercise increasing. It's tough. I can't grip the weights very well. I'm going to start taking fish oil and I hope that will cure my arthritis.

Last Saturday I lifted weights, with some difficulty, but today was another good day of swimming. 2700 meters in just over an hour and a half. This brings my exercise average back up to 30+ minutes per day for January. I'm feeling better and my jeans are getting a little looser.

The weight is fluctuating but I think I can still loose 1% body fat for this month. I'll weigh and measure in on the first day of each month and post a new picture.

A good swim of 2.6km

Today I swam 2600 meters without any problems. This week went well. I can make it to the health club three or four times a week and I finally figured out that I need to run the exercise bikes in Cardio mode and adjust down for a good target heart rate. Yesterday I did 35 minutes on the exercise bike with a target heart rate of 105 bpm. Next time I'll increase that to 110 bpm.

Increasing the exercise a little each week seems to be working well for me. I'm starting to feel a few changes from all the exercise. I hope it will be visible. I plan to post a new picture on this blog on the first day of each month.

Every other day

I'm making it to the health club every other day. I'm still averaging thirty plus minutes per day. I hope to keep that up so I can answer my big question; "How much exercise does it take to add a pound of muscle?"

I'll use my body fat scale and do the calculation on the first day of each month.

A nice little swim of 2500 meters.

Today I swam 2.5 kilometers and I feel fine. My stamina seems to be improving a little bit. I'm going to try to increment the exercise every week. I was trying to increase my exercise every time I went to the health club, but that's just a little too hard.

I may hit a plateau in my exercise but that's not a problem right now. I'm averaging a half an hour per day of exercise. That's my first goal. The second goal is to go at least every other day to the health club. The third goal is to add more diverse exercises to this program.

The next thing to do is to figure out how to chart my exercise so that I can see it graphically.

Arthritis is a real pain

I renewed my membership at the Oak Ridge, National Fitness Center for the next six months. I'm staying in Oak Ridge to take care of my Mom who is 83, and unfortunately her Alzheimer's is getting worse. If I do go back to Golden, Colorado it won't be too painful to transfer this membership to The Point Athletic Club.

The real problem is that I have dactylitis. A form of arthritis that hits people with psoriasis. No known cure and its really making my fingers and toes hurt. It's really making it painful to grip the weights when I workout. Today I rode the exercise bike for 31 minutes instead of following my rotation and doing the weight training.

New Year's Resolutions

I've just been looking at my list of New Year's resolutions from 1982 and the list is still good. Lose weight, get organized, save money....

Nothing much has really changed. I want a place for everything and everything in it's place as opposed to a place for everything and everything on the floor.

Today will probably be a rest day on the exercise and a good day to do yard work. Exercising hard every other day looks to be more sustainable than exercising everyday.

Experimental Graph from Excel

Here is a weight chart I just made in Excel, that I then saved as a jpeg in Preview, and uploaded in Blogger.

A Good Swim

Yesterday was a rest day. Rest days are important part of training. On rest days you build back up some of the muscle you tore down exercising.

Today I swam 2400 meters in one hour and twenty-two minutes. That was a good workout but it's only one third Olympic speed. I really hope to get my speed up this year to one half Olympic speed. I'm doing a little more each time I work out. I may eventually hit a plateau but I'm going to do a little bit more each workout for al long as I can.

I need to figure out how to add graphs to this blog so I can show my progress.

Day One

This is me!

Today is Friday, January 1st, 2010.
My starting weight is 311.8 pounds, and I'm 50.3% body fat.

Hi,
My name is Erik Von Halle, and welcome to the DELTA Program. DELTA is my acronym for "Diet and Exercise for Lighter Transformed Anatomy".

My goal is to get lighter and healthier. My goal for this first month is to get to 49% body fat by February first. I hope to lose a pound per week. I plan to use this blog to document my progress and to answer a few questions. How much exercise is right for me? How much exercise does it take to add a pound of muscle? Can I lose weight with diet and exercise as opposed to just exercising?

I have a log book and I've been recording my exercise for years and it shows very little progress. I hope to use this web log to answer the question "What have I been doing wrong?"

The Plan

I'm in shape. Round is a shape, right? I've been putting on about five pounds a year since I graduated high school in 1975. That's going from 175 to an all time high of 330 pounds. It's affecting my health.

I am very well read. I've read lots of books and magazines on exercise. I've got a strong background in science. I'm an avid swimmer. I have access to lots of exercise equipment. I own a very nice BikeE recumbent bicycle. I have a gym membership at the National Fitness Center.

The plan is to use my Homedics body fat scale and a tape measure to record and graph my progress on the first of each month.

I will use cross training by rotating cycling, weight training, body weight exercises and swimming for at least three hours per week. I'll record my exercise and my daily weight in my log book.

I'm not sure what to do about my diet. I'm going to try to eat healthier and stop snacking between meals. I will also try to convert the snacks I do eat to fruits and health foods instead of junk food. The big change is to try eat a healthy brakfast everyday. Having an egg for breakfast each day seems to make a big difference in my appetite and keeps me from binging.