THE ANSWER

This blog started with the question: How much exercise does it take to add a pound of muscle?

My answer is one hour of hard exercise can build one once of muscle.

My scale is telling me that if I exercise for a half hour per day I can add a pound of muscle in a month. This is on my schedule of alternating swimming, weight training, and aerobic exercise.

I've had back injuries, arthritis and lots of pain which literally hurts my exercise schedule. My diet has been variable so this is a tentative answer. I'm keeping an exercise log book and I'm weighing in and taking my measurements with my tape measure and body-fat scale on the first day of each month. I'll have more data this year and I hope a more definitive answer.

October is getting to be a better month

I'm doing a lot better on my exercise this month. I'm not quite averaging thirty minutes a day. It's closer to 28 minutes a day.

I swam 2100 yards in 68 minutes today, with Friday and Saturday being rest days. I am trying to make small increments each time I exercise. I am alternating Swimming, Exercise Bike, and Weight Training. Next time I swim I should do 2200 yards and next time on the Exercise Bike needs to be 32 minutes. That's an increase in my stamina/exercise of over 3% per week.

I'm going to try to graph this and see if my exercise keeps increasing or plateaus.

Not a good summer

I threw my back out lifting boxes in June, and again in September. I am recovering nicely in Oak Ridge, Tennessee now. I have restarted my exercise program now that is October. I am trying to average thirty minutes of exercise per day. Unfortunately it was very little exercise for this summer.

West Nile Fever

I got bit by a mosquito on a lovely Fourth of July weekend and despite having a wonderful time at parties I came down with West Nile Fever.

July was a pretty miserable month. I was so sick I lost ten pounds.

Back in Golden, Colorado

Hi Everybody.

Big gap in the blog. I left Oak Ridge, Tennessee and came back to Golden, April first. A lot has happened since April. Mostly me falling off my exercise program and getting some fairly painful psoriatic arthritis. My exercise dropped down to less than ten minutes per day.

I've been doing a lot of reading about my condition. I am experimenting. I am off of artificial sweeteners. That is helping the arthritis, and I think the psoriasis is going into remission. I've been reading about leptin and I'm trying to go on a low carb diet. That seems to help keep my appetite under control. I may try to be a vegetarian a few days per week. That also seems to cut the appetite way down.

Last week I threw my back out and I've spent most of the week flat on my back in bed. Oh well. At least the back injury killed my appetite and I'm under three hundred pounds again!

I hope to resume swimming soon and light exercise next week.

I'm 53

I am 53 today and I feel it sometimes. Vitamin I is my new best friend. I've been reading about health, medicine, psoriasis, and arthritis. The more medicine I learn, the more I want to stay healthy.

Stamina is up

I did 50 minutes on the exercise bike at level 13. That's an increase of only 5 minutes but it's also an increase of 10% in my stamina for the month. I got my heart rate up to 120 bpm. I feel like I'm on the right track.

I'm only averaging 18 minutes of exercise per day for March, and I need to get that eventually up to 30 minutes per day. I averaged 25 mpd for January and 24 mpd for February. I'm feeling the difference. I hope to start looking better this summer.