<p>Wish I could say I was doing that great, I haven’t really exercised much, been eating healthy (with very few cheat meals), so I haven’t put weight on. Work has been absolutely over the top with stress and hours, and I think it triggered mono like symptoms, including my skin being really reactive with a massive hystamine reaction, not pleasant. I literally drag my tail home after a 10 hour day, and if not working more at home, am so beat I couldn’t pick up a weight or do much of anything without keeling over. I am feeling a bit better, but it is frustrating, this has really thrown me for a loop with my fitness stuff. Good news is my wife bought me some nice squat stands for my birthday (now officially a dirty word) that can work for a lot of different things, can use it with my bench to do bench presses and inverted rows, and of course can do squats and such with it there:). </p>
<p>Lovely 70 degrees & sunny here. Finally Spring has sprung! Had a nice hike to the grocery store & farmer’s carry on the way home. Planning another walk after dinner with DH. :)</p>
<p>Hang in there musicprmt. Any chance to take a 15 min walk during the day Just to clear your head??</p>
<p>It is so weird to think states are having snow still! Here it is 80 degrees and sunny. It was a really pleasant day. Our weather over the weekend was not so pleasant. I considered it a nice foreshadowing of this year’s hurricane season. ;)</p>
<p>Well, a change of pace for me. 50 degree sunny weather, so I put on hiking boots (to get through the snow/mud on the little cut-thru out of the condos) and walked my standard 5K hilly route. No jogging in the hiking boots. Pretty easy going on pavement, with no backpack. The hills definitely don’t get my heart rate up anymore. Virtually the entire walk was at or below 60% of my max and peaked out at 68% a couple of times.</p>
<p>I did get in a good test run. My watch hasn’t arrived, but the matching [HD</a> video action cam](<a href=“http://www.blogcdn.com/es.engadget.com/media/2013/08/garmin-virb-06.jpg]HD”>http://www.blogcdn.com/es.engadget.com/media/2013/08/garmin-virb-06.jpg) showed up, so I recorded a lot of video in all the different modes, just generally seeing if I could figure the thing out enough to hike with it. Both the new watch and the mapping GPS unit will operate the camera, taking video and/or still photos.</p>
![http://www.blogcdn.com/es.engadget.com/media/2013/08/garmin-virb-06.jpg]HD](http://www.blogcdn.com/es.engadget.com/media/2013/08/garmin-virb-06.jpg%5DHD){kind=link}
<p>Here’s some [url=<a href=“Garmin VIRB Elite Hikes Napali Coast Hike - YouTube”>Garmin VIRB Elite Hikes Napali Coast Hike - YouTube]video[/url</a>] shot with one of these cameras on BB’s favorite hiking trail in Hawaii. I’ll practice a little bit and maybe get some nice scenic footage this summer.</p>
<p>If anyone is interested in a good basic 20 minute abs / core video workout, iPod nazi is giving away the first video in his ab series for free:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazingabssolution.com/free/”>http://www.amazingabssolution.com/free/</a></p>
<p>It’s 23 minutes with him explaining the exercises and doing them in the video while coaching you up. This one is suitable for any skill level, including a complete beginner. It’s three sets of five exercises:</p>
<p>Plank
Side-plank
Bird dog
Spiderman touches
Hip Lifts</p>
<p>Zero equipment needed. He does the workout on a yoga mat in his backyard.</p>
<p>^That actually sounds like my mini-core routine, except my planks are continuous front to side to front 
Since I seem to have trouble putting it and the kbs in lately during dinner prep, I tried an experiment yesterday and put it in after dreadmill yesterday morning.</p>
<p>I am going stir crazy waiting for the sloppy snow to recede adequately on my hill. I’d been hopeful to be in my microspikes by now! I think I’ll cry if it snows one more time.</p>
<p>Musicprint, the great thing about the wagon is its always nearby to hop back on I too have been a victim of exceedingly long workdays of late, but trying to snatch a bit of time early morning helps combat that. Which doesn’t mean I’m not OFF the wagon half the time…which is how I know its always nearby to climb aboard ;)</p>
<p>In my case, my health and fitness plan of late looks like me chasing around the same 3-4 pounds in perpetuity. Kinda like Sysiphus, excep of course the hill is out of commission :)</p>
<p>Deb922, it is perhaps a good thing for you h to practice retirement by hangin with the locals…I hear it takes some getting used to for workaholics 
Mine plans to die with his boots on, as they say…</p>
<p>MomWC, enjoy the weather and stay safe!</p>
<p>An easy swim. I have a meet coming up. I felt completely inadequate, so I have to work on my mental toughness the next few days, </p>
<p>Does anyone here do Pinterest??? I came upon this board today and it is chock full of yummy looking recipes using “superfoods”. Not just salads. Not just celery sticks! Really, really yummy looking filling recipes!</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.pinterest.com/annamwikstrom/superfoods-recipes/”>http://www.pinterest.com/annamwikstrom/superfoods-recipes/</a></p>
<p>Just had to share it with someone. Would do it here at work but since it doesn’t have Jimmy John’s or Doritos in it, I don’t think anyone will be especially interested… (not being rude, but truthful! Just had a conversation this morning with some co-workers about how they can’t lose any weight/inches - one of them which had just finished eating a toaster struedel and a bag of caramel popcorn for breakfast!!!)</p>
<p>I (used to) follow a couple pages like that on Instagram. Gorgeous, healthy, yummy foods. I will link their pages at a later time. I couldn’t stand always seeing unattainable food pop up on my feed! :P</p>
<p>Why are they unattainable??? </p>
<p>4 miles on the exterior loop of the USC campus and then cut through campus (gorgeous) on the 2nd loop. It’s a 2 mile loop and felt very safe. It was light. Campus is completely fenced in and locked down at night- requires student ID or guest pass to get on campus. Gorgeous day in LA, although it was only 49 degrees when I ran. </p>
<p>A non-working college student has only so much to spend on food…and only so much space to store the ingredients. :)</p>
<p>Hi everyone. Been away for awhile.</p>
<p>Fist, I want to send a big shout out for the 20 x 5 pound celebration! Fantastic. Second, a shout out for 5000 miles! Wow. Everyone continues to inspire me even when I don’t post.</p>
<p>Yesterday was my 2nd anniversary of clean eating. I lost 43#, put 20 back on, but have lost 10 of the 20. I have never made it past the 6 month mark when eating/exercising so I feel pretty excited to have made it 2 years and especially with the bounce back from the 20.</p>
<p>I bring my breakfast, lunch and snacks to work and one day I forgot them, and decided to fast for the day. There were times when I felt hungry, but the feeling passed and I made it through the day really quite easily. Now when I have eaten well, but an hour or 2 later feel hungry, I just remind myself that I have eaten and the hungry feeling will pass. </p>
<p>I am thinking of getting the garmin vivofit or similar product to celebrate.</p>
<p>Well, the new Garmin arrived. Wow, it’s always like being lost in a maze of menus when you first look at one of these things. Fortunately, I’ve explored enough Garmins now to at least have a clue to start deciphering the way the things work. </p>
<p>I’ve got the time set (pretty easy, the GPS satellites take care of that!). I’ve got it linked to a heart rate monitor. I’ve got it linked to the Airdyne speed/cadence sensor. I’ve got it linked to the TEMPE remote temperature sensor (the watch has one built in, but you have to take it off your wrist to get an accurate reading). </p>
<p>I’ve done a test workout and have successfully uploaded the data to the Garmin Connect website and to the program I use (SportTracks). I’ve successfully created a custom Airdyne workout in Garmin Connect and uploaded it to the watch (still haven’t gotten my SportTracks workouts to upload to the watch yet). </p>
<p>I’ve created a custom “Strength” activity profile to use for my indoor workouts with some data pages (time, elapsed time, lap time for sets and rest, heart rate, heart rate % MAX, min/max heart rate, basement temperature, etc) appropriate to those workouts. I’m about to go test that out! With any luck, it will lift the weights for me…</p>
<p>Now, if I could just get that dang Betamax VCR to stop flashing 00:00. ^:)^ </p>
<p>I’ll help you with the Betamax if you give me some tips on how to prevent my 8-track from eating my tapes</p>
<p>Wow, iDad. That’s huge progress with the Garmin! Did you take the plastic off the face? :)</p>
<p>Well- today was the first full day with the Vivofit. I like it. I walked a bunch with it yesterday around the USC campus and it was fun seeing all the steps accumulate. It is generally comfortable. I’m not sold on the security of the clasp and may enlist H to figure out a way to make sure it doesn’t catch on something and come undone and fall off. Even a little piece of duck tape or something. I wore it to sleep, but the sleep data isn’t much, really. I might not do that regularly. The criticism in the reviews is that it doesn’t have a backlight. Doesn’t bother me, and it means the battery lasts a year. I synch it easily with my iPhone Garmin program and may synch it with my personal computer when I’m home. Today I wore it on my run around USC just for grins. I got over 7000 steps in my 4 mile run. I got a little OCD about it today while I was stuck in a conference room at a downtown LA law firm and the red line telling me to get up and move my butt got more and more persistent. Walking to the rest room did not appease it. It finally gave me a break when I got to LAX and walked around the airport. I’m over 15,000 steps for the day, which won’t happen if I don’t run with it. I think a goal of 7000-10000 non-running steps will be good for me. Mine has a purple band.</p>
<p>Back from the basement. New toys worked perfectly. Here’s part of the action:</p>
<p>[Basement</a> workout](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube)</p>
<p>Wow. I’m seriously impressed! Great exercises and strength! How did you video yourself?</p>
<p>I used the new Garmin VIRB HD action cam. Just set it down and aimed it in generally the right direction. I can stop and start the video recording from the watch. Basically end up with a bunch of clips that get spliced together in the software. I edited out all the panting like a dog parts! :)</p>
<p>I think the real-time heart rate monitor in the lower left corner is a nice touch. I can’t wait to try that on the dreaded Airdyne intervals! </p>
<p>This is actually great to see the exercises. I see some stuff to work on.</p>