Stepping It Up

April and May have seen their ups and downs. Overall, the trend is still positive and I'm making progress things have just slowed down a little as life has thrown a couple disruptions my way.

First, the good news.

I started my exercise plan at the first of the year with a daily evening walk. My initial goals were 7000 steps and 20 "heart points" per day. Not long after, I added a daily lunchtime walk. Being in Texas, the lunchtime walk quickly got a little warm so in early March, I switched that to an early morning walk. Those morning walks started out at a fairly leisurely pace.

An example of one of my evening walks from January shows where I started. Evening walks started out at around a mile. In our hilly neighborhood, that felt like enough. Before long, I was aiming for 8000 steps per day. My lunchtime walks were about the same length and pace. 

When I moved my lunchtime walks to early morning, those started out the same. However, I decided to take advantage of the cooler mornings and started adding some stretches of jogging into the walks and gradually increased the pace and ratio of jogging to walking. I also started making the morning walks/jogs a little longer on the weekends. Morning jogs on the weekends are now usually between two and three miles.

Overall, here’s a sample of where I started (a mile walk), one of my longer weekend walks/jogs (about a 5k), and my fastest morning jog (at a pace of just under 11 minutes per mile). Considering I just started all this a few months ago and have never been a regular walker, let alone a runner, I'll take it.

Number are just numbers, and this is not the most important number, but here’s another chart that shows how my overall steps per day has also increased since last year. If you didn't already guess, that big spike from last October was the week of our Disney vacation. :-)

The bad news is not terrible, but my weight is not quite where I wanted to be at this stage. My weight loss is still headed in the right direction, just a little slower than I would like. My resolve was challenged this month by a combination of visits to Oklahoma and Florida, a family reunion buffet, a very rainy Spring, and a plumbing disaster that added a little extra stress.

The visits to Oklahoma and Florida were good, so I wouldn’t trade those for a few pounds. I’ll just need to work on staying more focused when some of those disruptions happen.

I’ve lost about 30 pounds this year (the 205 number in one my apps isn't quite right), and I'm down almost 45 pounds from my highest weight a couple years ago when I peaked at 212.

The monthly weight loss numbers for this year show how the pace has slowed a little. It’s still good, so I’ll take it and refocus.

And now for a few more odds and ends...

I've been using several apps and other resources along the way to help me out. the AI Assistant from the Guava Health app chimes in with advice from time to time.

I'm also using a calorie tracking app called MyNetDiary, and it gives me feedback as well.

Putting together these blog posts and looking at trends is how the engineer in me tries to keep the focus. The real test will be what the LDL cholesterol number looks like when I have my next appointment in July.

And I can’t end this post without one more shout-out…

Congrats to the San Antonio Spurs on winning the Western Conference Championship and heading to the NBA Finals! Go Spurs Go!