The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: Crissy Teena

I don’t know about you, but often business and vacation travel is an excuse to take a hit from the hamburger pipe, and extended travel means weight gain. In recent years, I’ve actually sought out hotel exercise rooms, which usually constitutes one treadmill, three TVs and eight people packed into a closet. However, it appears hotel food and exercise offerings are about to get a major uplift. According to a press release, Sheraton Hotels and Resorts has signed an exclusive deal with Core Performance to develop a training and nutrition program for guests that includes

new state-of-the-art fitness centers; healthier dining options; training programs offered on-demand in guest rooms; access to Core Performance’s customized on-line training programs; and a unique Conventions and Meetings program that enables enhanced performance. Sheraton properties around the world will begin to roll out Core Performance programming this summer and continue throughout 2008.

Hopefully, this move signifies a societal shift in exercise and nutrition. A Sheraton VP states “Our guests have told us that health and fitness are a priority and that they value tools to help them balance this aspect of their lives while traveling.” It’s exciting to see Sheraton use health and nutrition as a way to redesign its image and stand out from the rest of the hotel chains - hopefully Sheraton’s numbers rise and other hotel chains get on the nutrition bandwagon.

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I ran a 5k race today. Well, run is a little generous - I ran parts and walked parts. All in all, I finished with a time of 38-something - not bad for my first run in 15 years. I couldn’t have done that without losing the 75lbs. First the hills were killer, then the flats were killer, then the entire process was a killer. At least I saved a sprint for the last.

I don’t know - I might try a couple more before I give up on running. I definitely enjoy biking, and volleyball season starts Monday, so there’s lots to keep me active. I sure do like the idea of running through the backlots of Disney though, and I don’t know that I’m ready to give up on that dream just yet.

I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about Joost lately, so I was anxious to give it a whirl. I received my invite (did you get yours?) and fired it up for the first time yesterday, fully expecting an underwhelming experience. Boy was I wrong - this is the future of TV.

First I tried running it on the laptop over the wireless network. I never properly negotiated a connection, but that makes since - Joost is P2P-based, and must be pushing a large amount of information both up and down. After installing it on my main machine, I selected a user name and password, and began experiencing the brave new world of video.

This is, after all, a fitness-related blog, so I began looking for fitness-related video content and found three of note - HealthiNation, The Fit Show and The Recipe Channel. You can see the entire lineup at Joost’s channel page.

HealthiNation is a collection of videos hosted by medical professionals (or, at least, claiming to be medical professionals) providing basic information on a wide range of topics, including asthma, blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, healthy eating and more. The videos are short enough to keep my attention, yet long enough to cover the basic information about a topic fairly thoroughly. I also appreciate the powerpoint-like timeline at the bottom showing upcoming topics within a video segment. I could see this becoming an excellent resource to accompany searches on Wikipedia or health-dedicated sites like MedlinePlus.

I didn’t spend much time watching The Fit Show, but I was intrigued with what I saw. The channel hosts a wide array of videos, spanning from training videos, event coverage, fitness news and topical instructional videos. Chapman Media Group, who runs this channel and the channel’s website at http://thefitshow.tv/ (where you can watch some episodes through a flash player), states “The Fitness Network’s mission is to provide fitness content in an entertaining, educational, and inspirational style who’s voice resonates with the diverse fitness enthusiast demographic.” Buzz-word-speak aside, I was impressed with the videos on offer - training videos were shot using live trainers demonstrating the use of equipment and exercises, individual episodes contained news and training segments, and the professional quality of all videos matched or exceeded what I would expect from a cable TV fitness show. I will definitely be exploring this channel more. Right after watching another episode of GI Joe.

I have to admit, I had high expectations after watching the first two channels. Unfortunately, The Recipe Channel was a little disappointing - I expected a cooking show like something I’d see on the Food network, with a host cooking and talking during the show. Instead, this channel hosts several videos (not yet the hundreds claimed in the description) that appear to be hand-held cameras swooping over ingredients, hovering over cooking bowls and accompanied by new-agey hokie music. While I don’t personally care for the videos, I do appreciate the thoroughness of the video example and the short video lengths. I see this channel being a great accompanying resource for a searchable recipe directory website, but not a channel I would regularly browse.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed with what Joost has to offer so far. It can only get better from here - as Joost adds channels and interactive widgets (which add features like chatting with others viewing the same channel, channel ratings and more), TV will move from a static armchair channel-surfing affair to a serious web2.0-esque overhaul. I can’t wait to see what Joost has up its sleeves.

Now, for more Transformers.

Thanks to Stumbleupon (wikipedia entry), I’m discovering a slew of useful sites hidden in the “invisible web”, which comprises an estimated 90% of all Internet sites. Here’s the latest interesting sites I’ve discovered:

How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise (stumble reviews) - while I typically ignore “lose weight fast” type articles, this one by Tim Ferriss was worth reading. I wrote a response, modifying Tim’s rules to be more compatible with lifestyle change.

CalorieConnect (stumble reviews) - nice AJAX-powered calorie lookup for common foods. The list doesn’t seem to contain many restaurant-specific items, but it’s a fast and easy resource for quick food lookups. It appears there might also be a nutrition and exercise journal service - if so, I’ll add it to the list of services I’m reviewing.

The Training Station (stumble reviews) - list of 100+ animated pictures demonstrating different exercises, grouped by muscle group.

The Full FATFREE Recipe Collection (stumble reviews) - huge list of recipes, nutrition information and more.

BrainReady’s Top 5 Brain Health Foods (stumble reviews) - Interesting article; also available at the site - daily puzzle worksheets, podcast and more.

CalorieLab (stumble reviews) - HUGE listing of nutrition information, including restaurant items. Site also has RSS feed for health news, calories burned calculator and more. Great find!

What happens if you drink a can of Coke right now? (stumble reviews) - chronicles how your body reacts to a Coke during the first hour after consumption. Fascinating article, I’d love to find more like it.

Mark’s Daily Apple (stumble reviews) - health blog with interesting, unique articles.

You never know what kind of health and fitness stuff you’re going to stumble across. I’m reviewing every site that inspires me enough to “like” or “dislike” it - you can follow my reviews and join up as a friend at http://charshman.stumbleupon.com/. Stumbling yourself? I’d be interested to see the interesting things you’re finding - leave ‘em in the comments, along with your stumbleupon ID so I can join your friends list.

Well I’m dropping something down to let y’all know how it went. Don’t worry I’ll try to give more details in another post, as well as a picture of my number. But ya, I broke 24 minutes. That wasn’t an official goal I set for myself, but the fact is I usually run my normal runsat about an 8 minute mile.

Few quick things I can mention though…. And it’s probably good for other people to think about. For all my talk about running being a solo activity and testing yourself, it’s damn harder to do in person. Looking around there were lots of people in quality gear all appearing to be in great shape. It’s hard not to compare yourself to others. For all my noncompetitivenature, I was getting nervous. In fact I about psyched my self out with all the tension building up without a focus .

And I think that affects a lot of people. Whether it’s your first time or first in a long time, there is that sense of public scrutiny. How you handle that anxiety is another matter : raw self-confidence, pride, vanity, frugality, or whatever. Something that will get you to toe the line, waiting for the gun. For me, it was a little pride and vanity. I had brought along my cheerleader, my beautiful wife, and there was no way I was going to back down in front of her. Especially for fears that seem silly even in my own mind.

Pacing around at the line, I jockeyed for position. Didn’t want to get too far in front or too far back. Once the race started, all the built-up tension was focused and flowed out of me into my running. Sadly, it left a little present behind. Lactic acid in my arms. People may not think your arms get much of a work out while running, but proper and more efficient form uses the movement of your arms. By a mile and a half, my arms and shoulders were killing me. I had kept them so tense waiting for the race to startthat they were worthless. They hurt so bad I’ll even admit I walked 4 times, for about 5 seconds each time, because of the pain.

As is obvious from my numbers (60 out of ~250 and 7:43 min miles) it goes to show that you should NEVER go on appearances. You, and they, might be surprised as you pass them by before the end of the race.