Week 6 End

Octane Fitness xR6000

Here we are, another week gone. I have had a busy week. The cold that I had last week has improved a great deal and I started going to the gym this past Monday. Now, I joined this gym a few years ago when they were taking pre-opening memberships. Monday was the first time I actually set foot in the place. It's a beautiful place. It has been about 10 years since I was in a gym with any regularity and they have come a long way. The place is huge, and most everything is state of the art. My current machine of choice (I'm concentrating on cardio at the moment) is some sort of hybrid between a recumbent bike, an elliptical machine and a stair climber. I'll try to get a picture of it tomorrow and add it here. I have no idea what it is really called, but it works great with my bad knees. Update: It is an Octane Fitness xR6000 and is listed on the company web site as a recumbent elliptical.

I mentioned in a previous post, that I got a fitbit activity tracker as well. I've had that for a couple of weeks now and it really helps to keep track of your activities and kind of reminds you to be active. I had a particularly active day today, logging over 13,000 steps and over 6 miles travelled. I have 92 minutes of "activity" which includes my workout as well as other activity that is constant for more than 10 minutes at a time. It also keeps track of calories burned (over 3500 so far today and will likely approach 4000 by day's end Update: burned over 4000 calories for the day) and even tracks my sleep. It has been a very worthy investment at about $99.

I have told you before about the app I have been using to track my eating, MyFitnessPal. It has been invaluable in logging calories, and links easily with my new fitbit to share information from that app which harvests the data from the tracking bracelet via bluetooth. My exercise information is shared with the MyFitnessPal app and the food info is shared back to the fitbit app. It's all pretty seamless most of the time. I have noted that the calorie allowance for the fitbit is a little less than MyFitnessPal, so I go with that one since the name of the game here is losing weight.

Today makes day 6 in a row for hitting the gym. I tried to change things up a little and hit the elliptical for about 15 minutes before going to my other machine. That may have been a mistake. The knees have been complaining all day, so I may have gotten a little over ambitious this early on. I know I have only been doing this a week, but I long for those days when I could get a 1000 calorie burn on the elliptical in one session.

2/13/2016 just shy of 25 lbs lost

I have my week end weigh in coming up later. I'm hoping to achieve the 25 lb mark, if not tonight, then before the weekend is over. I'm very close. I'll update this post with my weigh in soon.

Update:
Well... I missed by 2/10 of a pound. I was hoping for an even 25 lbs. lost, but I'm sure it's coming soon. I am still ahead of schedule at nearly 25 lbs. in 6 weeks. The pace I am actually aiming for is 2 lbs. a week so I have doubled that pace so far. It will and has slowed down for now. I'm confident that if I keep up my exercise I will be able to maintain it though.