Starting my Exercise Journey

Recently I have not been someone that focuses on exercise too much. Normally I just eat what ever I want and the extent of my exercise has been walking my dog around the block. A few years ago used to work out, take lots of hikes, and mountain bike when ever I could, though the biking was not all that often. Then I had my first child and my cares shifted I dropped exercising to have more time being a father. Having fitness and exercise not be my life it was easy to drop and I did not think too much about it until today. Below are the results of that lack of doing much exercise at all. I will say I don't know how accurate the Samsung watch body composition results are but I know the scale is accurate. Going forward I am going to use these as a baseline for my progess in the journey of exercising. Every morning I am going to weigh myself and then use the watch to take the body composition. 

I would not have considered myself that overweight and I am healthy where I am at but there is another problem happening that made me see how out of shape I have become. Over the past 4 years I not only have been a father with less time to exercise I also started working remotely. I get to spend a lot more of my time with my kids and got to see lot of milestones happen that I would have missed if I were to be in the office such as them starting to crawl or walking for the first time. Working remote was a very big improvement in my life and my overall staisfaction with life. The downside here is I used to walk to lunch or walk around the building to get to meeting rooms and my co-workers would like to take the long way to get extra steps in so I joined them. Working remote means I only have to walk like 20 steps for lunch and it cost much less to have meals cooked than it does to order out so I end up eating more. It also means I can just eat snacks all day while working. Working remote also means I get to wear sweatpants all day long and not put on a proper pair of pants, why would I who is going to see me? Well I had to go to conference so I pulled out one of my suits and the main problem with my current lifestyle became very clear to me. There was no way to suck in my gut enough for the pants to button and the jacket was very clearly too small now. 

It is time to start a journey an exercising journey. 

The start of this is going to be focused on the losing the extra mass I have gained so I can wear the pants that used to fit me a few years ago. I have a treadmill, my mountain bike, and some weight lifting equipment that a friend gave me when they moved and I thought I was going to use though I never have. I am going to use this equipment and some outside activities to get me started exercising. I also have a samsung phone and a samsung watch to log my steps, my percent body fat, calories, and other health things. I should go on a diet along with this but right now I am going to keep my diet as is and slowly cut things out. Starting to exercise I am assuming will make me hungrier but I will not eat more than I did before. I will start logging what I do eat to make sure that when I decide its time for a diet I am in the habit of logging my calories and I will have a base line. 

I am Starting the exercising today. I am starting smaller and only going to start with going on the treadmill for walks. I will focus on the steps for now and overall time spent on the treadmill. In a week or two will increase the speed on the treadmill and start running instead of just walking. When the time is right I will wipe down the dust on the weights and start lifting those as well. I might also add in some biking to get outside of the house as fresh air would do me some good.

Updating the blog will be frquently though I am still deciding on the frequency. I am thinking this will be daily with a larger post on Sundays. If this becomes too much then it would be closer to 3 times a weeks. I know I wont see any results on the scale for a while as it takes a while to lose weight but having my treadmill numbers both speed and time increase will make me happy to see tracked. As such posting the scale, body composition, and treadmill numbers will be what I post each time. I will be adding other thoughts in about my progress and my opinions on how I am doing for each post though  I will be focusing on the exercise part of this not so much about the weight. 

You might be wondering why blog about this instead of just doing it or posting it on a social media site. I want to share the journey the way I want with longer form text and pictures added where they are needed. I don't feel social media sites are not set up to share things in this way. I would have to make multiple posts and add things multiple times a day to get the same information across or post multiple things at the same time. Example is in this post the scale showing my current weight and body composition images would both need to be posted with text on why I am doing it. I would not keep up with social media posts this way. A blog will help keep me on track better than than posting all of this on social media and I will have a place where others can read about it all in one place. I will also be able to keep up with posting to the blog.

I am off to start my journey! Have a wonderful day and thank you for reading!