7 Jul 2012

Towards a stronger, healthier and fitter me

You might have noticed the goal bar on the right column of my blog. This post shall provide an explanation. With this bar I track my weekly progress with biking and keep myself motivated. Each day I update the progress and seeing the progress motivates me to keep going. Knowing that you guys might check my progress every day as well, motivates me too. ;-)
A recent status of my biking progress bar on the right border of my blog

Currently, I am trying to do a lot of sports in order to become more healthy and fit. Of course it is a very nice side effect that the body becomes slimer and more defined as well. There's no doubt that I am enjoying the improvement of my body shape a lot. However, at the moment my focus lies on the health and fitness issue. I want to become stronger and healthier and improve my posture and physical capabilities in general. I have never been a sports enthusiast in my whole life and just focussing on getting a better body with sports has never been enough to keep me motivated on the long term. Maybe it was because my body has never been in a terrible shape anyway. My fitness, however, is in a terrible shape! And it has gotten worse and worse over the last years.

In the last years I have experimented with different kinds of sports: Yoga, weight training @the gym, weight training @home, cycling, running, horseback riding, rock climbing, swimming and aqua running. I have also experimented with different times for the workouts: I tried to do sports in the morning, sports during the lunch break, sport in the evening or somewhen during the day. But I have never been able to keep a regular exercise schedule for a long time. It was rather a discipline issue. I had and still have severe issues with work life balance. Resolving these issues is a challenge for me but I am aware of these issues and I am dealing with them and it gets better and better - very slowly however (like all changes that affect your whole life, i.e. you habits and your belief system). Recently, I have managed to find a way to integrate regular sporting activities into my life, however, and it's working well for a couple of months already. That's longer than ever before. Obviously, the only way to integrate sports into my life that works for me is doing sports on a daily basis. When it becomes an every day routine, it just works without a second thought and I start to really need it and still can focus my mind on other things (because the sports routine does not involve any thinking anymore). If I am not able to do my sport routine, my day just feels incomplete. Additionally, it is important for me to make the time - whatever happens, I have, have, have to do it, unless I am  suffering from a cold or an inflammation. There is no other excuse. There are no deadlines or obligations that are more important than my sports appointments!

For a couple of months now, I cycle on my bicycle ergometer in my bedroom almost every morning immediately after getting up. On average I cycle for about 40 minutes each morning, sometimes less and sometimes a little bit more (since I have my progress bar on my blog it's rather more then less ;-)). Additionally, I also do aqua running once a week for 1 hour - at least during the lecture period of my University since I am attending a course at University. So, in good weeks, my weekly cardio routine has a duration of around 6 hours. Furthermore, I do horseback riding once a week for 1 hour. I also do 1.5 hours of weight training a week but not that regularly, unfortunately. I'd like to do more weight training and some Pilates and Yoga on a regular basis as well and have to find some exercise routine and schedule that's appropriate for me.

In order to motivate myself to keep up with my sporting activities, I'll write a monthly recap post summarizing my sports efforts. Such a recap would also help me to review why my fitness and looks have improved or not improved (either is possible ;-)).

During the last weeks I have managed to loose a bit of weight and my body shape has started to improve a lot. Although I am focusing on health and fitness, the looks of course are not unimportant at all and do count as well. Hence, I really hope to be able to wear some short dresses soon, e.g. the ones shown below are really lovely:

picture & dress are both from COS
picture & dress are both from COS

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