Health and Nutritional Things

So last night, I had a whole conversation with my mother regarding health and fitness. She has been going to the YMCA since the beginning of the year, but from what she tells me, has gotten minimal results.

After finding out what her routine was (spinning and weights multiple times per week resulting in over 1 hour stays in the gym), I had a few thoughts:

• Ineffective cardio. Her body is probably used to the spinning classes.
• Ineffective targeted weight training. Spot training doesn't work.
• Diet. Diet. Diet. - If you are working out a lot (albeit possibly the wrong way, but activity nonetheless) and not seeing any results at all, a close look at diet is warranted.

I then went on a tangent about how we all lie to ourselves about what we eat. I do this all the time, apparently, now that I think of it. The times when I say, "oh a little of this is ok" or "I worked out hard today"... those are mostly bad and I, like you probably, am lying to myself about just how bad something is for me. I say mostly bad because you cannot be a food nazi at all times. You have to allow yourself the things you really like, but you have to earn them.

Anyway, I recommended to her that she keep a food log to see just what she is eating. I didn't suggest to actually change anything, just start logging which will enable her to see, from an empirical standpoint what exactly she is ingesting. Recognizing this deficiency in myself I too decided to start logging my food today. In the past, I have done this with just pen and paper, but that eventually failed because I got tired of carrying it around with me. In light of that I decided to re-purpose my mobile blog from well, mobile blog to food log.

Using my iPhone, I will upload an image of everything that goes into this fat mouth of mine for the world to see. Actually, I just like that it auto-tags the food with the date and time. Even if I am out  somewhere, all I have to do is take a picture of it so that I can remember it. Later, I can go back into the blog and edit the details of what I actually ate. I only have one thing on there right now, but if you want to check it out or RSS it, feel free. The address is http://bmgfoodlog.blogspot.com.

Hopefully, this will help me to better understand in total what I am ingesting.

I am pissed off that I didn't go to conditioning class this morning. I hurt my shoulder last Friday in a very lame attempt to do a shoulder roll, which pretty much resulted in me crashing into the freakin' ground shoulder first. It's still giving me some trouble when I move it in different directions, so I decided to take the safe option and let it rest for a few more days.

I will be going to black belt class tomorrow morning to be sure I don't fall behind in the material. After that, Victoria will be testing for her senior blue belt in TKD. She feels like she is not ready, but I think I have more confidence in her than she does =).

Up for this weekend, I think Madagascar 2 is being seen tonight. There's a UFC tomorrow. Not sure where/if we are going to watch that. The Shaolin open house is tomorrow which we may or may not get to. It depends on when Victoria is finished with her testing. Sunday is the sparring festival at the Shaolin school as well. I don't think I will be sparring due to my shoulder but I would definitely like to go, watch, and support.

Have a great weekend.