Saturday, January 18, 2014

A Better Me, A Better You

Author Jason Jack here, interneters! If you haven't read my prior two posts on how I lost weight and began a life long trek towards a healthy lifestyle, check them out now:

Losing weight taught me how to go out and find the best workouts and most nutritious foods for me.

After having worked off a total of 65 pounds during my senior year of high school, going from 225 on the scale to a lean 165, I gained a lot of knowledge, but I knew I had room for growth.

Cardio:
  • Phase 1: I started running in my room to lose weight. It worked fine, and that is how I shed over sixty pounds in a single year.
  • Phase 2: To add a bit more excitement and variety in my cardio plans, I began playing the music-dance video game, Dance-Dance Revolution (DDR) on a consistent basis for a solid four to five years. This is how I kept the weight off, increased my stamina, and was able to breathe better. DDR was great at improving my stamina.
  • Phase 3: Expanding from DDR, I went on to play full body workout video games such as the Just Dance series, the Zumba game series, and a variety of other physical-active games for the Wii videogame console. Full body workout was a focus for me in my ever evolving active regimen—it burns more calories and works out the entire body. Win win!
  • Phase 4: I continued my full body workout by doing long walks outdoors as well as taking walks prior to eating breakfast for a great boost in metabolism and even greater results.
Weights/Resistance Training:
  • Phase 1: I did not have a lot of money so I used Minute Made jugs full of water as free weights and bench press weights. They worked fine and I could feel the burn with multiple repetitions!
  •  Phase 2: When I could afford weights, I bought 20 pound dumbbells, a curl bar, and a set of leg weights to increase resistance while I ran and walked.
  •  Phase 3: In order to increase the burn, I began doing sets of different activities such as multiple sets of pushups, and curls.
  • Phase 4: I began doing more resistance training with resistance bands as well as doing a lot more body exercise like dips, lunges, burpees, mountain climbers, etc. that were full body activities as well as cardio. These type of exercises kill two birds with one stone, increasing muscle strength and improving cardio. This is my regimen to this day.

 Food:
  •  Phase 1: I ate food that I thought was healthy including granola bars, apple juice, and “health” branded TV dinners.
  • Phase 2: I added fruits and drink V8 Splash fruit juice that had less sugar and more nutrients than apple juice.
  • Phase 3: This phase came about when I met my significant other. She introduced a lot of vegetables to my life including cucumbers, broccoli, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, and more. I also stopped drinking any drink with sugar, and I began drinking sugar-free drinks such as Crystal Light. I introduced packet oatmeal and chocolate milk for breakfast.
  • Phase 4: I stopped drinking chocolate milk because it was too sugary and had too much saturated fat. I exchanged my pocket oatmeal for real, old fashioned non-instant oatmeal and introduced smoothies as meal replacements and as nutritious, tasty drinks. I got rid of any flavored drink other than an abundance of water and green tea. I also began eating home cooked meals, slow cooker meals, with the emphasis of clean eating. I also say no to ninety five percent of boxed meals.


There you have it—my evolution of cardio, eating, and training for the past decade. And I still have room to learn and to grow. I also hope you never stop improving your health as well.

I hope you enjoyed the last three weeks learning about my weight loss, and I hope it proved helpful or insightful.

Until next time.

(I'm an author of adult and children's books, a positive advocate, and lover of sweets [to my detriment at times]. What you just read is a snip-it of my ever evolving, very malleable philosophy of life based on experience, conversations, and years of studying. If you get anything out of reading my words, I hope it is to think and be positive :)




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