Well that was an overly complicated title. Let’s start off with the stats:
Fitbit, Runkeeper and MyFitnessPal:
Weight: 78kg (78.4kg)
Average calorie intake/burn: 3082/3459
Resting heart rate: 52 bpm (55 bpm)
Fitness score: 52
Average steps: 26k
Total minutes of cardio: 150
Pace: 7:00 (minutes/km)
Sleep: Something was seriously wrong with the stats so I won’t include them
I also want to add that I’m trying to follow the Nordic recommendations for a healthy diet but I need to change a lot about how I eat, and make, food to get good at it, and so I will return to it in the future. Me, a food blogger? Hm, why not!
Cardiovascular Exercise
The recommendations for cardio is 150 minutes on a moderate intensity. I try to follow this but I am not trying to be exact. There is a value range where your heartbeat is supposed to be while exercising but I believe strongly that if I go out running in tempo that makes me sweat but doesn’t exhaust me, it’s enough for my purposes of being healthy and avoiding injury.
My pace is actually much faster than what the above statistic show. This is because the GPS on Fitbit has been acting weird all week, and so I switched back to Runkeeper. A big increase next week doesn’t mean my speed has increased by an incredible amount in reality.
I want to again reflect on the fact that 150 minutes is a lot of time, even spread over 7 days. Considering I need to focus a lot on reaching it, and physical activity basically being my chosen profession, I will need to work hard on my ability to coach people in the future.
Resistance exercise
This week I did all my exercises at the gym outside. I’m lazy, and using the machines to get a full body exercise is very simple. I chose 8 exercises and did 4 super sets x3. And I did that on 2 different days. Body row — Bench press, Hanging leg lift — Dead lift, Lat pull down — dips, Levitation squat — Glute bridge (not pictured).
Next week I’ll do a different one. Probably only body weight exercises. I have a book called “Bodyweight Strength Training” by Bret Contreras which I will use for inspiration during a lot of the summer. When I’m lazy I will return to just using the easy machines.
I’m not fond of resistance training but I do understand the need to keep my body at least somewhat strong. I can absolutely feel the difference between weeks where I did my training and when I didn’t. If I’m very motivated I will choose some exercises to use as outcomes for progress.
I also need to dive into what the recommendations are when it comes to Repetition Maximum and how I incorporate that into my own training. Hint: I’m not doing 8-12 repetition maximum on all exercises.
Health indicators
Alright, let’s analyze my statistics a bit. I’ve lost a little bit of weight which is reasonable considering I’ve eaten a bit less than I’ve burned. To me this means that the information from MyFitnessPal and Fitbit on how much calories food contain as well as how much I burn is at least correct to an extent. My goal is to slowly reach a BMI of 22.5 which means a weight of 72 kg. That is quite far off but I haven’t set a time to reach it yet. So for now I’ll just watch out so that I don’t gain too much (I gained 3.9 kg during these last 3 months).
Since the current world situation began a lot of my routines got upset which brought me into a few months of turmoil. A small personal crisis if you will. It affected my sleep and exercise much more than I wanted to admit, but to sum it up: my conditioning went down the drain. This is why my resting heart rate improved so much over a week even though my exercise has been quite mild. My heart rate is usually around 50-48, which is where I expect it will return soon. Fitness score is supposed to match VO2-max. 52 is “good” for my group according to Fitbit. I’ll take it.
In conclusion
One of the recommendations for physical activity is mobility which I’m bad at doing. I will put together a mobility program that targets all large muscle groups and do it 2 times a week. Someday.
The recommendations aren’t just there for fun. They are functional and you’re better off following them in one way or another. That applies to me as well.
/Noa Greén
FysioNoa 