No. 5: The One That Shows Progress

We are now into the first weekend of August, I am back at work but only have two weeks left of my current job.  I'll be moving back into the personal training world after a week's holiday at the end of the month, and my life will be en route to where I want to be.

Over the last few weeks I have been getting into regular training, but haven't posted the workouts as I have been playing about trying to improve my speed, strength, stamina and skill.  I now feel that I'm beginning to get there.  I have also been on quite a strict diet to help improve my recent ill health, it also has the benefit of guaranteeing weight loss.

The diet is from the book Eating Without by Barbara Cousins that aims to tackle a number of health complaints.  The principle is to cut out all of the things that can stress the liver and digestive system, allowing your immune system to return to full function.  Currently I am dairy, yeast, gluten, caffeine and alcohol free and make sure I steer clear of added salt and artificial additives of any sort.  My diet consists of meat (limited amounts of red) and fish, vegetables and fruit (trying to limit to two portions a day, but struggling with this!), nuts and seeds, water and herbal tea.  Sounds hideous, has taken some adjustments, but has been surprisingly doable!  The time when I struggled the most was when we were out for a picnic for someone's party.  We were assured there would be fish etc, so hadn't bothered preparing anything ourselves, when we got there it was salmon encroute and lots of other lovely stuff that I couldn't eat!  It was miserable, I won't lie!  For me I either need to be far more prepared or steer clear of the temptations all together!  However, I have been doing this for three weeks now, coupled with the exercise, and I am 9lbs lighter, which I assure you helps to keep you motivated.  I am pretty sure that I'm feeling better in myself as well, but it's hard to distinguish from feeling so bloody virtuous!

In future I am going to post my body measurements and some key exercise measurements once a month or once every other.

No. 4: The One With The Resources

Just a quick post to share with you some of my favourite resources on the web:

1. CrossFit   (www.crossfit.com/www.crossfitendurance.com)
• One of the best fitness regimes around and also one of the best free resources on the web
• I wholeheartedly agree with their philosophy to exercise and nutrition
• Posts a workout every day, has forums, journal articles and great instructional videos
2. www.bodybuilding.com
• Enormous online resource for free & isn't just bodybuilding, but fitness in general
• Great workout and metric tracker and free training/nutrition article library
• Bodyspace hosts a huge online community for support and inspiration
3. www.bodyrock.tv
• Great catalogue of home workout videos with some nutrition information as well
• Has a workout video every day with people posting their scores
4. Peak Performance   (www.pponline.co.uk)
• More sports performance and sports medicine oriented and generally quite in depth and scientific, but a great resource if you're that way inclined
• Good articles and forums

Happy browsing!

No 3: The One With The Hows

I have decided that I will put overviews of everything in this blog with more detailed information about my training and how I'm progressing on bodybuilding.com.  It is a great, and free, tool for tracking your training and your body metrics, whether you are aiming to lose weight or to increase size, it can all be logged there.  And if body building isn't your thing, don't be put off by the name as there are plenty of users who aren't body builders either and there is a huge amount of information on all sorts of training.  My username is garethunderhill and you can search for me in the bodyspace section.

I will aim to keep posts more short and sweet in future, but this will remain a place for my ramblings.  As I develop my skills at this and get more into it, I will use various methods for updates.  You can post comments and questions to this blog, or to my Gmail account if you wish for more privacy, which is greu79@gmail.com.  I will put stats on bodybuilding.com as mentioned above and will update any interesting information, news and events to twitter where my username is @greu79. And, if I get really carried away with all of this, I may well start posting videos on youtube, where my username is garethunderhill.