Summer Shred!

20+ years into my career at IBM, I find myself working remotely a majority of the days and will only go into the office maybe once a week at most.  The demands of my job just don't require me to be on site as much as I used to be.  While I am still active by going to the gym a couple times a week (for strength training and cardio) and pickleball league on Wednesdays, I often find myself getting very little physical movement on several of the weekdays that I am working from home.  As I've gotten older too (I'm now 42 at the time of this blog post), I've definitely noticed that my metabolism just isn't as fast as it used to be.  I still like to eat and drink a fair amount throughout the week and changing the diet is not always easy.

My friend Alec from Twitch is a personal trainer and he even owns his own gym in San Fransisco.  He's always been good about trying to push people to be in a better physical and healthy state, so I've decided to jump on his Summer Shred motivational bandwagon.  I currently way about ~193 pounds, which is pretty heavy for me.  Let's see how much I can lose by the end of summer...but how are we going to do this?

Like I've said earlier, it's difficult to change diet.  It's also difficult to move around a lot when you're working from home all the time.  And finally, at age 42, the joints just don't hold up as well as they used to.  Extreme workouts are effective, but they also take a toll on the body.  So what can we try that doesn't require a major change in lifestyle, will get us more active, but also lower the risk of injury at an older age? The answer might be: a walking pad!

Alec has pitched how effective a walking pad can be and he recommended me the same one he uses every day.  It's the Vitalwalk Apollo 11 Elite and I just got mine delivered today!  The goal is to use it on days that I don't have pickleball or go to the gym for cardio, which will be approximately 4-5 times a week.  And on those days, the goal is to do two 30-min walking sessions at a brisk speed like 3-4 mph and the incline % of this pad goes up to 6%.  We're starting on May 15, so we'll come back in 3 months on August 15 and see how effective a walking pad can be.  Already I can tell that the walking pad will be something I can use easily while watching a baseball game, or even while I'm working on my laptop (since I got one of those stands that can raise up high if you want to stand while working).

You also know I loooove spreadsheets, so I'll document my daily walking amount over the course of the next 3 months.  There will be periodic weight checks that we'll use the scale at the gym to track.  The scale is a little inaccurate at times, but as long as we use the same scale to measure our weight, it should be somewhat accurate, right?

Wish me luck and stay healthy out there!