I’ve always had a strange body. When I was in high school, I could lift tremendous weights with my lower body, but could barely bench press the bar. As I’ve grown older, my lower body strength has declined somewhat, but it’s always remained greater than it ought to be. Meanwhile, I was still barely able to bench press the bar.

Because of this, I’ve never been very good at push-ups. In fact, I’ve always been terrible. On March 14th of this year, on a whim, I tried to see how many push-ups I could do. I did three, and those were marginal. Today, however, I tried again. I did 12, and they had pretty good form. In fact, I probably could have done more — I stopped more for mental reasons than anything.

This tells me that my upper-body weight lifting sessions are paying off.

But I want to be able to do more push-ups. I’d love to be able to one hundred push-ups. Tonight via chat, my buddy Nickel pointed me to a site that may help me achieve that goal.

One Hundred Pushups is a site with a single purpose: train anyone to do one hundred pushups in just six weeks:

If you’re serious about increasing your strength, follow this six week training program and you’ll soon be on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups! Think there’s no way you could do this? I think you can! All you need is a good plan, plenty of discipline and about 30 minutes a week to achieve this goal!

The One Hundred Pushups program requires participants to exercise three days a week for six weeks. Each day you perform five sets of push-ups, with a 60-120 second rest between each set. The number of pushups increase gradually until the final week, during which there’s a taper period (sort of like in marathon training). Then, a few days after completing week six, you go for the gold: one hundred push-ups.

I’m going to start this program on Monday. If things go well, then on July 28th I will perform one hundred push-ups. It seems unfathomable.

This may seem trivial, but it would be an enormous mental (and physical) victory for me to be able to do one hundred pushups. It’s right up there with completing a marathon. And while I’m skeptical that this goal can be accomplished, I’m willing to give it a shot.

Anyone want to join me?

“One of the things you’ll love about running,” Pam told me when I started in April, “are the statistics you generate. You can track as many numbers as you want.” She knows from years of friendship that I’m, well, obsessive about this sort of thing.

In 1997 and 1998, when I was biking most of the summer, I compiled a spreadsheet filled with data. And I track a lot of information about my non-exercise life. (Just imagine how detailed my numbers about web site traffic are!) So it should be no surprise that Pam was right — I do love tracking my running stats. This is made easier with the variety of modern cool tools available to runners.

Here, for example, is a record of the marathon training runs I’ve made on Saturday mornings for the past eight weeks. (With a final line for yesterday’s 10k race.)

As you can see, my first run was a slow four-miler on a cold, wet day in early April. (Well, I guess this table doesn’t show the cold, wet part…) I’ve gradually increased my distance — and my pace — until this weekend I’ll be running fourteen miles (at what I’m guessing will be about 5.00mph). I never would have believed I had it in me just two months ago.

What I find interesting, however — and this is the entire reason I created this particular table — is the data on my heart rate.

The importance of heart rate

Many fitness experts argue that heart rate is the most effective means of targeting specific workouts. After finding your maximum heart rate (MHR) through either actual or theoretical means, you are able to base your fitness regimen on percentages of this number.

For example, one commonly cited means of obtaining the theoretical maximum heart rate for men is to subtract your age from 220. Since I am 39 years old, my theoretical maximum heart rate is 220 minus 39, which is 181 beats per minute. But that’s only theory.

In reality, my maximum heart rate is much different nearly 10% higher than theoretical. In general, my MHR is about 194. I have, however, reached 196 beats per minute on the treadmill recently. (Still, I’m using 194 as my MHR for all calculations.)

Does it matter that my maximum heart rate is high? I don’t know. My resting heart rate is also high. When I wake up in the morning, it’s about 72 beats per minute. Sitting here at my desk, it’s about 75 beats per minute.

Based on your maximum heart rate, researchers have proposed several levels of exercise zones:

• Moderate activity — For warming up and cooling down, one should exercise at between 50% and 60% of their maximum heart rate. For me, that’s between 97bpm and 116bpm.
• Weight control — For maintaining fitness and burning fat, we should aim for a heart rate between 60% and 70% of maximum. For me, that’s a pulse between 116bpm and 136bpm.
• Aerobic — At between 70% and 80% of our maximum heart rate, we’ve entered the endurance training zone, where we training our cardiovascular system to more efficiently transfer oxygen throughout the body.
• Anaerobic — During hardcore training, your heart rate should be between 80% and 90% of your maximum, or between 155bpm and 175bpm for me.
• Maximum effort — When your heart rate exceeds 90% of maximum, you are exercising at full capacity.

More questions than answers

I’ve written all of this simply to note that my heart rates seem unusually high. Not only is my maximum high, but the heart rates I generate when exercising seem high (even when measured as percentages of max). When Matt saw my splits for Monday’s 10k, he was shocked at my heart rate. “That’s insane,” he said.

To be honest, I always fret when I see that my average heart rate for a run was 92% of max. This can’t be good, can it? Am I achieving any physical benefit at all by maintaining this for an hour? When I’m anywhere above 90% heart rate, I’m usually struggling to breathe well, and that was certainly the case during Monday’s race.

And what about my marathon training runs? My average heart rate there is about 81% of my maximum, which puts me just out of the aerobic zone. Is that okay?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I need to find out. I’m pretty much a fitness novice. I’ve never approached exercise in a scientific fashion — I’ve just gone out and done it. But I have to wonder if I might not improve my overall performance long-term if I’d spend some time exercising at lower heart rates. (Sort of like establishing an emergency fund before paying off debt?)

For now, I’m going to keep training at the same pace with my weekend group, but I’ll ease up a little on my mid-week runs. I’ll still do one day of quick stuff, but I’ll spend two days at a very easy jog.

Next week, by popular request, I’ll share information on my heart rate monitors. Yes, I used a plural there. I love my GPS-enabled monitor, and would be happy to review it. Also, I’ve had requests to write about my experiments with ice baths, and about how I recovered from shin splints. I’m finally starting to write articles with useful information around here!

After sharing my bread research on Monday, several readers encouraged me not to be so dismissive of Trader Joe’s. Heeding their advice, I made a trip to the nearest store (a 20-minute drive) to check out their bread selection. You folks were right. Trader Joe’s does have good prices.

I found my favorite bread — Milton’s Whole Grain Plus — for $3.29 at TJ’s, which is 50 cents less than it cost at Safeway. Even better, there were about a dozen other breads that were similarly priced or less expensive, and all of them looked to be on a par with the average breads from my previous post.

A few of the breads were even better. Following Lauren Muney’s recommendation, I picked up two loaves produced by Rainier Organic Bakery. Though they’re more expensive than cheap-o bread at the regular grocery store, they cost less than most major “healthy” breads. And they’re much more nutritious. Here are the stats on the two loaves I purchased:

Rainier Organic Sasquatch Grain & Seed Bread (680g listed, 794g actual)

$2.39 for 18 slices (13.28 cents per slice, $3.52 per kilogram)

per 38g slice: 110 calories, 2.0g fat, 110mg sodium, 18g carbs (6g fiber, 1g sugars)

Eating this is like eating a field of wheat. I’m not joking. This bread contains no artificial anything. It’s made from 16 whole grains and a couple of types of seeds, a little water, a little yeast, and some salt. There’s no flour and there’s no sugar. It’s dense. I like it. After eating this with some fresh chicken or turkey, I’m full.

Rainier Organic Ezekiel 4:9 Bread (680g listed, 764g actual)

$2.69 for 18 slices (14.95 cents per slice, $3.96 per kilogram)

per 38g slice: 90 calories, 0.5g fat, 105mg sodium, 16g carbs (6g fiber, 0g sugars)

While the ingredient list for this bread isn’t quite as impressive as the Sasquatch bread — there aren’t as many types of grains, and there’s a little molasses — it’s still outstanding.

Taste, however, is another matter. The Sasquatch bread is dry, but it has some texture to make it interesting. There’s no texture to this stuff. It’s just like eating sawdust. Flavor is okay, but if I’m going to choose between the two, I’m going to pick the Sasquatch bread. (And a tall glass of water.)

I didn’t recruit any additional testers for these two breads, so I can’t offer you any other opinions.

After spending the time (and money) to do these tests, though, I’ve decided to include only two breads in my diet. I’ll eat the Sasquatch bread whenever possible. If aren’t able to get up to Trader Joe’s, I’ll supplement with the Milton’s Whole Grain Plus. The latter is the best of the mass-produced stuff.

Oh yeah — I’m also going to try Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread, as recommended by Brad (and about a zillion others) on Monday. If this works as well as I think, I’ll be writing about it on Get Rich Slowly in the next few weeks. (You folks who have used the recipe, can you jazz it up with garlic, etc.? Or is it best to just follow it as stated?)

I eat too much bread. I like honey toast, PB&J, and the occasional tuna sandwich. But I know most bread is processed crap — it’s not a good addition to my diet. I’m particularly wary of the high-fructose corn syrup most commercial breads contain.

Because I’m that kind of guy, I recently decided to find the “best” bread at my local supermarket. I made a trip to Safeway and picked up all eight varieties of whole wheat bread the store stocked. Then I set to work analyzing each loaf.

I tracked how much I spent, how much each loaf weighed, how many slices were in each bag, the stated nutrition information, and the list of ingredients. To find out which bread tasted best, I sought input from five friends. The six of us conducted a blind taste test, and I jotted our impressions.

Here’s the product of my anal-retentive mind at work:

Oven Joy whole wheat (637g listed, 655g actual)

$0.99 for 22 slices (4.50 cents per slice, $1.55 per kilogram)

per 29g slice: 80 calories, 0.5g fat, 160mg sodium, 14g carbs (2g fiber, 1g sugars)

• “Sour, clumpy, doughy.”
• “Tastes like Wonder Bread.”
• “Wonder Bread with brown speckles.”
• “So soft! It’s difficult to spread anything on.”
• “For someone who grew up on white bread, this is very satisfying.”

Contains “enriched flour” and a bevy of junky chemicals. This bread does contain high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging makes no claims. It bugs me that because this is the cheapest bread, it’s really the only option for many families. This bread costs about a quarter what the better breads cost, but it’s crap.

Orowheat 100% whole wheat light (453g listed, 524g actual)

$3.79 for 20 slices (18.95 cents per slice, $8.37 per kilogram)

per 45g serving (two slices): 80 calories, 0.5g fat, 240mg sodium, 18g carbs (7g fiber, 3g sugars)

• “Tastes like honey.”
• “There’s fruits or nuts.” [There are neither.]
• “It’s difficult to cut with a knife.”
• “There’s a bitter taste.”
• “It’s dry. I don’t mind it, but I don’t like the spongy texture.”
• “It’s stretchy.”
• “This is the only one that tastes bad.”

Contains whole wheat flour and other fiber sources, brown sugar, lots of “gums” (guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan gum), no high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims that this bread has 40 calories per slice, no cholesterol (none of these breads has cholesterol), and 1/3 fewer calories than regular bread. Judged by weight, this is the most expensive bread I tested. It’s also the worst-tasting.

Sara Lee 100% whole wheat (680g listed, 680g actual)

$3.69 for 16 slices (23.06 cents per slice, $5.43 per kilogram)

per 43g slice: 120 calories, 1.5g fat, 210mg sodium, 21g carbs (3g fiber, 5g sugars)

• “This is visually pleasing — it looks like whole wheat.”
• “I like the chunks.”
• “It’s sweet and nutty.”
• “I can see actual grains.”
• “My favorite so far.”
• “My favorite of them all.”
• “This one’s good. I taste sweetness more than grain.”

Contains whole wheat flour, brown sugar, no high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims that this bread is 100% natural, and the ingredient list backs it up. This is the second-best bread based on quality ingredients, and it’s the best bread based on our taste test. (It’s my second-favorite.)

Orowheat Double Fiber (680g listed, 692g actual)

$3.79 for 18 slices (21.06 cents per slice, $5.58 per kilogram)

per 38g slice: 70 calories, 1g fat, 160mg sodium, 16g carbs (6g fiber, 2g sugars)

• “Very flavorless.”
• “This is bland and dry.”
• “It tastes sawdusty.”
• “It’s firm and there’s not much taste.”
• “It’s dry.”
• “It starts off well but doesn’t go anywhere.”

Contains whole wheat flour, lots of added fiber, gums, and chemicals. This bread does contain high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims this bread is an excellent source of fiber and vitamin D: “48% of daily fiber in two slices”.

Franz Oregon Trail 100% whole wheat (737g listed, 737g actual)

$3.59 for 17 slices (21.18 cents per slice, $4.87 per kilogram)

per 43g slice: 110 calories, 1.5g fat, 220mg sodium, 21g carbs (3g fiber, 4g sugars)

• “Yuck. This tastes like soap.”
• “It doesn’t taste good. There are floral notes.”
• “This is the same bread as the first [Oven Joy], but maybe a little sweeter.”
• “It’s overbaked.”
• “This is my favorite flavor so far, but not my favorite bread.”
• “This is much sweeter than the other breads.”

Contains whole wheat flour, honey, “refinery syrup”, “soft white wheat flour”, “dough conditioners”, no high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims the bread is healthy, low fat, and a good source of fiber, “with delicious pockets of honey”.

Orowheat 100% whole wheat (680g listed, 706g actual)

$3.89 for 18 slices (21.61 cents per slice, $5.72 per kilogram)

per 38g slice: 90 calories, 2g fat, 190mg sodium, 18g carbs (3g fiber, 3g sugars)

• “This is like the first one [Oven Joy].”
• “There’s lots of air.”
• “When you chew it, it bounces back.”
• “It has a hint of multigrain flavor.”
• “This is rubbery.”

Contains whole wheat flour, honey, cracked wheat, molasses. This bread does contain high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims this bread is whole wheat with a touch of pure molasses. This used to be my staple bread before I discovered Milton’s Whole Grain Plus.

Milton’s Whole Grain Plus (680g listed, 816g actual)

$3.79 for 18 slices (21.06 cents per slice, $5.57 per kilogram)

per 38g slice: 90 calories, 0.5g fat, 125mg sodium, 16g carbs (5g fiber, 3g sugars)

• “Decent texture — a more earthy flavor.”
• “There’s little bits of stuff. It’s my favorite.”
• “This bread is more heterogeneous, but the flavor is kind of blah.”
• “It’s nutty. It has a good crust.”
• “This is grainy. It’s tasty. It has the best texture.”
• “It looks better than the others. It’s firmer. I like the whole grains.”

Contains whole wheat and other whole grains, brown sugar, honey, no high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims that this bread has 24g of whole grains per servings, and that it may reduce the risk of heart disease. Note that my loaf had 816g of actual bread, making this the second-best bargain at $4.64 per kilogram.

Franz Big Horn Valley (737g listed, 757g actual)

$3.69 for 17 slices (21.71 cents per slice, $5.01 per kilogram)

per 43g slice: 100 calories, 1.5g fat, 200mg sodium, 20g carbs (3g fiber, 3g sugars)

• “It’s soft and light.”
• “This is gummy. It’s too airy.”
• “There’s not much whole wheat flavor.”
• “There are no chunks of anything.”
• “It’s sweet. It’s okay.”
• “This tastes processed.”
• “It’s not particularly great.”

Contains whole wheat flour, honey, brown sugar, no high-fructose corn syrup. The packaging claims no artificial preservatives, flavors, colors, or ingredients. This bread has the “purest” ingredient list of all those I tested. Unfortunately, the great ingredient list is undone by the taste.

Conclusions

The cheapest bread we tried was the Oven Joy whole wheat. Unfortunately, it’s also the worst bread for you. It has little nutritive value. The best-tasting bread was the Sara Lee 100% whole wheat, which everyone liked (and most liked best of all). Unfortunately, this bread is a little “spendy”, containing more calories and carbs per slice than most other breads.

My favorite bread turns out to be Milton’s Whole Grain Plus. This was the only bread other than the Sara Lee that most of us liked. (I thought it tasted best.) It has a fine ingredient list (though there are a couple of chemicals), decent nutritive value, and reasonable cost.

It frustrates me that it’s so difficult to find a decent bread at the supermarket. Not everyone can afford to shop at a natural foods store or a Trader Joe’s. (I didn’t even look to see what these places had to offer.) Most people shop at stores like Safeway, and if they want to eat well, their choices are limited to breads like the ones I tried.

On Sunday, I went over to a friend’s house for a marathon board-gaming session. I ate too much home-made chili (Will is from Texas) and drank too much ginger ale.

“Do you have any diet coke?” I asked before choosing the soda.

“No,” said Will. “And besides, that stuff is awful. It’s worse for you than regular soda!”

“Come on,” I said. “I know it’s bad, but worse than regular soda?” I was thinking of the two giant diet cokes I’d had with my greasy hamburger a couple days before. I was thinking of how I used to drink two or three diet sodas every day.

“I’m serious,” he said. “That stuff will give you diabetes. Look it up.” And so I did. Turns out Will was telling the truth. Sort of.

Diet drinks and obesity

In 2005, Sharon Fowler and her colleagues from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio presented eight years of research data that explored the link between obesity risk and soft drinks. According to the WebMD summary of the study:

Fowler’s team looked at seven to eight years of data on 1,550 Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white Americans aged 25 to 64. Of the 622 study participants who were of normal weight at the beginning of the study, about a third became overweight or obese.

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

• 26% for up to 1/2 can each day
• 30.4% for 1/2 to one can each day
• 32.8% for 1 to 2 cans each day
• 47.2% for more than 2 cans each day.

For diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

• 36.5% for up to 1/2 can each day
• 37.5% for 1/2 to one can each day
• 54.5% for 1 to 2 cans each day
• 57.1% for more than 2 cans each day.

For each can of diet soft drink consumed each day, a person’s risk of obesity went up 41%.

Obviously, there’s a difference between correlation and causation. This study is not meant to imply that diet soda causes obesity, just to point out that diet soda consumption is a “marker” for the condition.

Metabolic syndrome

More recently, researchers have reported a correlation between diet soda and metabolic syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic describes thusly:

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Having just one of these conditions — increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels — isn’t diagnosed as metabolic syndrome, but it does contribute to your risk of serious disease. If more than one of these conditions occur in combination, your risk is even greater.

Basically, metabolic syndrome describes risk factors for diabetes and heart disease. According to The New York Times, this recent research indicates:

The one-third who ate the most fried food increased their risk by 25 percent compared with the one-third who ate the least, and surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

Of course, the best solution is to forego pop altogether. Diet soda leads is associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Regular soda is dense with calories. Water has none of these drawbacks.

I did a good job of sticking to only water for a couple of weeks, but I’ve allowed myself to slip. I find that when I do the water-only thing, I feel better, weight-loss is easier, and I make better choices all around.

Every gym I’ve ever been in has had one of those heart rate charts on the wall showing me where my heart rate should be depending on my goals for that exercise session. To burn fat, then my heart rate should be X beats/min, but to improve my cardiovascular abilities then it should be Y beats/min.

These charts have always given me fits. My number one goal has always been to burn fat, but my target heart rate (THR) for fat burning is so low that I don’t feel like I’m working out when I’m in that zone. So I get bored, start working harder, and leave my ideal fat burning zone–according to the chart anyway.

I’ve always been kind of a gadget guy, and right now I’m a sucker for fitness gadgets. I just spend half an hour looking at electronic body tape measurers and electronic heart rate monitors. I already have the chest strap for the heart rate monitor that came on my treadmill and it works on the machines at the gym so I have the ability to accurately train in specific heart rate zones. But I don’t really know much about the zones I’m supposed to be training in.

In his book, Precision Heart Rate Training For Maximum Fitness and Performance, Edmund Burke sums up the research on heart rate zone training AND provides some work out plans for athletes of different abilities. I found the book extremely helpful for clearing up my major question about heart rate training. Does it matter if my heart rate exceeds the typical weight loss heart rate zone?

The simple answer to this question is a resounding “no!”

But let me provide a few of the details that led me to the answer. Traditionally, the typical “weight loss/fat burning training zone” is between 55%-65% of your maximum heart rate (MHR) as determined by the common formula of 220-your age. My MHR is somewhere around 186 bpm which means that my fat burning training zone should be between 102 and 121 bpm. While in this zone, approximately 50% of my calories burned will come from fat, and the other 50% will come from glycogen stored in my muscles.

In contrast to the weight loss/fat burning training zone is the “aerobic/cardiovascular” zone. This zone is defined as being between 65%-85% of your MHR. Therefore, my aerobic/cardiovascular training zone should be between 121 and 158 bpm. While in this zone, approximately 33% of my calories burned will come from fat, and the other 67% will come from glycogen stored in my muscles.

It sounds like I should be training in the lower zone if I want to burn more fat calories, right? Well, let me explain the math to you. If you exercise in the fat burning zone for 30 minutes you can expect to burn approximately 220 calories (depending on your choice of exercise). 110 of those calories burned (50%) will be fat calories. If you instead exercise in the cardio burning zone for 3o minutes, you can expect to burn approximately 330 calories (again, depending on your choice of exercise). 110 of those calories burned (33%) will be fat calories. Realistically, 30 minutes of exercise burns the same amount of fat calories regardless of your training zone. But, if you’re able to bump up your heart rate for those 3o minutes, then you’ll burn a 100 more calories. Burke sums it up best:

If your goal is to get leaner, the bottom line is to cycle, swim, or run at the highest intensity that you can maintain for 30 minutes or longer. You need not give consideration to the type of fuel burned during an activity to guide your exercise prescription. Until proven otherwise, when it comes to weight loss, a calorie burned is a calorie burned, regardless of its origin.

We were supposed to wait until January 1, 2008 to launch this blog, but I’ve decided that I can’t wait. My resolution at the beginning of this year was to weigh less at the end of it than at the beginning. I’m back up to where I started after losing 12 pounds earlier, so it’s time to do this now!

Who am I? I’m fat guy #2. I’m 33, 5’10″ and weigh 221 pounds. According to this, I am obese; It’s a depressing fact. But still, I don’t look at myself in the mirror and say the word. I realize that I’m fat, and have been for much of my life–but I have a hard time attributing the word “obese” to myself. Maybe I’m still in denial.

I’ve been a yo-yo dieter for as long as I can remember. My first diet was my senior year in high school. I lost 30 pounds by starving myself and working out with the baseball team. In college, I put on a lot of weight, but I was still very active. I worked out, played IM sports and pick up basketball. But, thanks to beer, the taco truck and my fraternity brothers, my intake definitely exceeded my output. By the time I graduated I weighed 228 lbs. I dieted again, this time with medical and pharmacological help. I saw a doctor who prescribed the now banned “miracle” drugs, fen-phen. I am using the term “miracle” because for me they did work miracles. These drugs working together helped me drop 50 pounds during the summer of 1996 without any of the very negative side effects. I was thin again, and in shape, and loving life. From 1996 to 1999, I managed to stay relatively thin. I worked out, and often rode my bike to work. We moved to Portland in 1999–I still worked out, but not as much. I was learning a new career and putting in long hours on top of the 60 minutes in the car each day. I started gaining weight as soon as I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve dieted several times since I’ve been here. I weighed 190 pounds when we moved here and now…well you know how much I weigh now.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a quick fix kind of guy. If fen-phen were still legal, I’d be downing those puppies in a heart beat. They worked wonders for me. They suppressed my appetite, and pepped me up. I hardly slept at all that summer, but I dropped 50 pounds in 10 weeks. It was amazing to see how fast the weight could come off. In fact, I wanted to drop more; It was addicting. Obviously, quick fixes don’t work long term for me. I need some lifestyle changes. Instead of losing weight fast and gaining it back over the subsequent years. I’m going to concentrate on a slow and steady approach to GETTING FIT SLOWLY. I’m going to change my life. My immediate goals are to drop 1-2 pounds a week while increasing muscle tone and cardiovascular shape. I’m no exercise guru, I don’t have any experience with personal training or the exercise industry. I’m going to be totally winging it with one thing in mind. I want to achieve a daily calorie deficit by controlling what I eat and exercising as often as possible. Come with me as I embark on this journey of personal improvement. If you have the same quest as me, I hope that I’ll be able to give you all encouraging words and find some useful tidbits to help you.

This isn’t just about sticking to a new year’s resolution. I have two kids and a wife–they love me and want me to be around for a while. I love them and want to be around for a while. I want to help my kids make good lifestyle choices. I want to set good examples for them. I’m afraid that at my current rate of weight gain that I won’t be able to be active with them in the near future–this cannot happen. I want my wife to want me. I want to walk down the street with my shoulders back, unafraid that my manboobs stick out too far. I want to fit into my 34 (or even 32) inch inseam pants. I want to be confident about my physical appearance. I want to be healthier. These are my reasons for get fit slowly. What are yours?