Looks like he and I got a little in common. Heh. Hmm, I gotta work out more consistently and watch my diet if I wanna get abs like that. His name is Kwon Sang-woo. Pic from popseoul.com

This is a great article to stay motivated and work out. I need that.

How to Get the Exercise Habit link

Repetition.

All habits are formed through repetition. Psychologists say it takes 21 repetitions for a behavior to become a habit. I suspect it takes longer than that. If you can find a way to exercise for at least 21 consecutive times, you have a greater chance of making exercise a part of your lifestyle.

Ok, I will do one kind of physical activity everyday. Doesn’t matter what it is: gym, basketball, running, washing cars, cleaning, swimming, doing laundry, whatnots.

Be accountable to someone.

Use the same strategy on yourself by choosing an exercise buddy who will hold you accountable if you miss your workout. A trick that works is to make a bet with a good friend. A Michigan State University study found that people who bet with a friend were 97 percent successful in sticking to their exercise programs.

Just made a bet with my good friend. If he could drop under 200 lbs, I’ll buy him a MJ shoes. If not, he’ll buy for me. :-)

Prepare your exercise clothes.

I need to do that.

Begin, the rest is easy.

There are days when I don’t feel like doing my weights but, invariably, I find that if I just begin, I get a great workout. According to Tommy Pamintuan, Resident Manager of the Apo View Hotel in Davao and an avid exerciser, every time he doesn’t feel like working out, he reminds himself that if he just starts, the rest is easy. He says that he has never finished an exercise session regretting that he did it. On the contrary, he says the regret comes when he has decided to skip the workout.

Yup, gotta keep that mentality. Great, now I feel motivated. :-)

Decided to get back into working out more diligently. Gotta stay committed.

After sleeping in late today—played two rounds of poker the following night, which I got 3rd and 4th place—and had a quite number of beers as you can see in the pics, I forced myself to lace up and step outside. Oh, it was so nice outside and I was enjoying the weather more than my run. I told myself I’ll pay another visit to my same birthday buddy, good ole George Washington. So, I ran to the capitol, then to the Washington Monument. It was really nice as there was a rich diversity of people enjoying the spring. Then, I saw Lincoln Memorial on the other end, where Martin Luther King gave his most famous speech, and was pretty surprised that it wasn’t really that far, maybe 1/2 mile away from the Washington monument, so I decided to run there, alongside the reflection pool.

I took my time and carried a leisure pace till I got home. Then, I decided to look up the Google pedometer mashup map that will tell me how many miles I’ve ran after entering the pinpoints. Check it out.

It said 8.76 miles. Wow! I’ve ran that far? and I entered my weight, 163 lbs, and said I’ve burned 1080 calories. I don’t know if that’s accurate but I was surprised at the numbers. Not too bad for a 25 years old guy who drank 6 beers and ran almost 9 miles the next day. :-)

Workout, Posted via Sidekick II by natech.

Managed to get myself out to workout after finishing work at 7 pm, then 45 mins drive back home (should be 30 mins but not in dc traffic.) :-(

Did supersets, then got out on the track. I started on the lane one as first lap, moved to second lane as second lap, and so on. Toward the 8th lane, I was panting hard and the eastern wind was blowing at me. I feel good, able to get “knots” out of my body. Hope to keep it up.

Tomorrow’s Friday, hooray!

After being lazy for the large part of this summer (wow, soon over), except for playing golf, wait, that doesn’t really count as a real exercise because you could weigh 300 lbs and still be able to hit the ball over 300 yards and I was having this crisis figuring why should people worry about having a six-pack abs while you should be enjoying life–eating lots of foods, drinking beers, watching movies with popcorns, playing golf and more beers—because in the end, no one can live forever. But that all changed after I saw a really fat tourist woman struggling to take a seat in the metro and I could see the cellulites all over her legs. And one time, I was running toward the metro to get in before the doors closed and after I got in, I saw a fat guy trying to run too but he couldn’t run very fast and the doors shut on him, as to say “Sorry, you weren’t fast enough.” Also, I don’t want to see my life flash before me by having a heart attack. So I decided this was enough to get me back to the weightlifting room.

Yesterday, I went out for a run and shit, I was completely out of shape and all of my body began to itch, due to a lack of oxygen, and it had gotten so bad that I had to scratch myself like I was having mosquitoes bites all over my body but that had nothing to do with the itch as it was just trying to tell me to stop running and that I was not in the shape to do even 2 miles. I walked, then managed to end my run. A light bulb was turned on in my head; I gotta work out, period.

Today, I got myself out of work and went to a weighlifting room down in the basement here. It’s shitty, looks like we got the equipment/weights from the prison. Shouldn’t that be the other way around? Since this was my “first” day back into the weightlifting room, I did a warm-up workout:

135/10/3* chest bench press
40/10/3 chest dumbells flatbed press
10/2 chest/shoulder dips

60/8/3 biceps bar curls standing
25/8/3 biceps dumbbells curls seated
25/8/3 biceps concentration curls

75/10/3 triceps bar overhead flatbed
70/10/2 triceps cable pull rope

25/2 inclined situps
20/2 leg raises flatbed
20/2 crunches

* lbs/reps/sets

and

13 mins on treadmill ~ 2.1 miles

I know I’m going to be pretty sore for a few days but after it passes, I should be good and work out hard.

Here’s my rough summer workout plan on a five days basis.

Monday - chest and back/shoulders

Tuesday - cardio workout - running or do supersets on weights

Wednesday - arms workout - biceps, triceps, abs

Thursday - cardio workout - running or do supersets on weights

Friday - a follow-up workout - whatever muscles areas that need more work or stretching ( use lighter weights), also, on this day, you can measure your bench press max.

Weekend - do a leisure workout, be it golf, disc golf, a run in the park, play football or basketball, etc.

And watch your diet!
And don’t forget to eat a lot of fiber and almonds too.

Today, I decided to do something on the second day of summer. For some reason, somehow, I lost motivation to go to the gym to work out and gradually became a couch potato (*gasps* even you, Nathan?) right before my eyes, and keeping myself warm from the winter, for almost three months. My best excuse is that I think it’s related to work—too tired to work out when I get home from work and that it was already dark by the time I step out of the cubicle. But, um, that was, like, two months ago and it’s summer now! Get off the couch, Nathan!

So, today, I joined the gym membership here at USDA. They have a fitness center called ESDRA something. Although their equipment sucks, must be from the prison, it only costs me $24 dollars a month, can’t complain abt that price and I can work out during my work hours. First, I weighed myself and I believe that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been, 4 pounds below 170 lbs. I don’t think I’ve ever been more than 170 lbs, staying steady at 160 lbs but today, the scale said 166 lbs. *ahem* It was like setting off the fire alarm in my brain. “Must work out and lose weight.”. I’m aware that once you reach 30, your metabolism rate goes down and it’ll be harder to lose weight and you may be stuck with beer belly for the rest of your life. I want to get rid of the flab on my belly and stay that way till I meet my own death.

My goal isn’t to buff like Arnold Schwargennzer (sorry, I know that cliche is getting old and boring) but be more toned and leaner. The biggest challenge is and always will be my food cravings and try not to eat more than one serving, meaning not two, three cups of rice, having two whoppers from Burger King, or eating 10 foot-long worth of sushi rolls. You can see where I get the flab from. :-( Next challenge isn’t about how many reps or miles I should do/run today but simply getting my ass over to the weightlifting room or onto a treadmill. And to do it everyday except for Sundays.

That’s it. That’s the two things I have to do—watch my diet and exercise regularly. As easy as it looks, it’s tough and no wonders we have such a word called discipline.

In the past two weeks, I’ve been running and I thought it’d be cool to sketch out my running route and show to you what my route looks like. The route involves some downhills and uphills, which actually makes it more fun and challenging too. There’s a heavy traffic at the intersection of Florida Avenue and New York Ave and I would often have to stop and wait till there is a clear path to get across the intersection. My average time seems to be approx. 35 mins and is about 3.5 miles long. Well, you can imagine me running along by that red line on the map. :-)