[Fordmanchau]

Nothing much to update here.
My exercise regimen has went haywire in last 2-3 weeks. Getting caught inthe daily whirlwind.
Something or the other comes up. And I still have not got the determination to wake up in morning and do the gym plus last whole week was struggling with my health. Have just started coming to office since this Wednesday.
Will try and get back to my routine asap.

Forgot to add: Climbed 10 floors today in the office after a gap of few days. Was like a cake walk while munching on chikki's

[dj_2006]

Thanks SDP. I particularly like your section on excuses. Have taken note and will try to avoid those or similar ones.

Ajit, I faced similar issues, where we have work or are ill and can't exercise. To keep to schedule, just try and do very little, say 5 mins. I don't think the 5 mins will give you any actual exercise it will just help continue with your habit. Try it next time you are busy or ill just do very little. It might help! Also once you start doing it you might do a bit more. Hope this helps.

My update for last week:

1) Health: Did Yoga for 6 days (only 15 mins), with one day break on Saturday.
Went barefoot running on treadmill for 2 days (Tue and Thu). Did only 2.5 kms each time. Experience with Vibram is better now, as speed and rhythm has improved.
Have also reduced my dinner to 2 rotis from earlier 3.
Started night walk on days where I don't run, walk very slow for 20-30 mins and hear to old hindi music songs by Yesudas, Mukesh etc. Feel very relaxed and sleep better at night.

With this 3rd week of Yoga complete, feeling energetic, confident and more aware. Also getting into the habit of doing Yoga.

2) Meditation: Chanted 15-20 mins every day after Yoga. Spent 1 hour chanting on Sunday and attended a Buddhist meeting on Saturday.

3) Reading: Continued reading quotes with a theme for each day while traveling to work

4) Spending time with kids: Took my daughter to the Buddhist meeting on Saturday. Went to play for 1 hour on Sunday with kids - we played hide and seek, racing, backwards running and antakshari. It was Great! we all loved it.

5) Networking and connecting with people:
Not much progress in this area as I was busy in office. Only had lunch with office teams on Monday and Tuesday. Kept in touch with my BBM laughter group.

[SDP]

Update for last week:
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for briskWalk-cum-jog on 5 days (effectively 6 days) in the last week.
2. Missed Monday. Compensated immediately on Tuesday.
3. Instead of 3 rounds, started doing 5 from wednesday. My routine was 18-20 minutes earlier, now it is 30 minutes.
4. Walked up to the 10th floor 10 times during the week.
5. Attended an one hour meditation session on Monday.

#2 Reading
1. Seven habits restarted. Was going through a bad patch on the professional side for last 2 weeks. Going through the habit-1 'Be proactive' helped to come out of the rut. Also taught the 7 habits for 1.5 hours.
2. Reading "Critical Chain" -> No progress this week.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. This area has clearly slipped into the red. Need to refocus. I think, I did not allow enough time for the habit to form and snapped back into the comfort zone.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent around 3 hours this week cleaning and organizing the home.
2. Cleaning the underside of the recliner and cleaning the paint & dirt in the bathroom with acid were 2 big projects this week.
3. Hired a carpainter to do some work at home to get the home better organized.
4. Received Collinite 845 wax. Experiment with the window panes is pending. Most likely next weekend.

[dj_2006]

My update for last week:
1) Health:
Yoga: 6 days (only 15 mins), with break on Saturday.
Cardio: Went barefoot running on one day only Wednesday. I did 3 kms in 21 mins. Experience with Vibram is much better now. Also did 1 hour cycling class on Sunday at Gym.
Back to 3 rotis for dinner, as I started feeling hungry.
Continued with night walk on days where I don't run, most relaxing habit and I sleep much better at night.
With this 4th week of Yoga complete.
Measured my weight and body fat% at Gym, I am down to 77.5 Kgs from 83.5 Kgs a year back when I started going to the gym. This has taken my Body Mass Index to 24.5 (height 178 cms).
2) Meditation: Chanted 15-20 mins every day after Yoga. Spent 1 hour chanting on Sunday and attended a Buddhist get together on Saturday.
3) Reading: Continued reading quotes with a theme for each day while traveling to work
4) Spending time with kids: Was busy with office work. We went out on Saturday evening
5) Networking and connecting with people:
Not much progress, just kept in touch with my BBM laughter group.

[SDP]

Update for last week:
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for briskWalk-cum-jog on 6 days during the last week.
2. Walked up to the 10th floor 12 times during the week.
3. Missed the one hour meditation session on Monday.

#2 Reading
1. Seven habits completed.Taught the 7 habits for 45 minutes.
2. Reading "Critical Chain" -> No progress this week.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Still in red. Hardly 2 hours of core work this week.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent around 3 hours this week cleaning and organizing the home.
2. One large window cleaned (Sunday-morning project).
3. Experiments with wax are still pending.

[motomaverick]

Let me revive this thread today.

Started with Aerobics from last Friday and though its tiring with all the pespiration etc during the workout, its fun and not as boring as workng in the gym all alone.

So my reclaiming ur life on weight loss program has restarted once again. Today successfully completed 2 classes since Friday

My weight when last seen a month back was 80.2kgs, so need to check before the workout tomorrow.

[SDP]

Update for last week:
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for briskWalk-cum-jog on 6 days during the last week.
2. Was out of town over the weekend. Started at 4am on Saturday and reached around 12noon. Morning walk was out of question. Compensated on Sunday, by doing a leisurely 5km walk over 45 minutes. Thoroughly enjoyed.
3. Walked up to the 10th floor 10 times during the week.
4. Missed the one hour meditation session on Monday. Couple of weeks back, I was the only one left from the meditation batch at work. So looks like they would discontinue the sessions. So now its up to me and my own resolve to do meditation regularly.

#2 Reading
1. Seven habits continue. No teaching last week.
2. Reading "Critical Chain" -> No progress this week. (I am really getted uncomfotable at putting the same status on this book every week. I am going to pick it up again this week).

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Still in red. Hardly 2 hours of core work this week.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent around 5 hours this week cleaning and organizing the home.
2. Kido's b'day last week. So vacuumed our place, cleaned the window panes, cleaned the sofas and the chairs and got rid of some the accumulated junk.

-----------
Motomaverick,
Thanks for the updates. Glad that you have restarted.

[dj_2006]

My update for last week:
1) Health:
Yoga: 6 days (only 15 mins), with break on Friday.
Cardio: Went barefoot running only on one day Sunday. I did 3.8 kms in 30 mins. .
Back to 3 rotis for dinner, as I started feeling hungry.
With this 5th week of Yoga complete.
2) Meditation: Chanted 15-20 mins every day after Yoga. Spent 1 hour chanting on Sunday.
3) Reading: Read only a couple of days, need to revive this practice
4) Spending time with kids: Went for a walk with my daughter on two days. Bought a toy for Son.
5) Networking and connecting with people: Not much progress, just kept in touch with my BBM laughter group. Need to revive this in a couple of weeks after my office work is down to manageable levels.

[SDP]

Spending time in hobbies (e.g. birding) - definitely part of reclaiming my life!
Here's what I captured during the weekend:

Dedicated to fellow birding enthusiast and 'reclaiming' partner, Ajit!

















--------------------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by ajitkumarlb

...

Ajit, where are you? More than 2 weeks without an update.

[ajitkumarlb]

Well finally here I am, sorry folks last three weeks have been crazy and eventful!

There was not much to report on weight control, though food has been under control, only three 30 min work out session were possible.

First two weeks were a complete washout with job taking away almost every waking hour of the day. It was like being part of the Mickey's Fire Brigade!



Image Courtesy:
http://animationreview.files.wordpre...alt-disney.jpg

My office gym was recently updated and they have brought in two recumbent cycles so I have no more excuses that I was stuck in office, I just need to make time


Photography & Birding were even more eventful: on the 15th April, I had parked my Scorpio in front of Hebbal Lake in the morning for a birding & photography, and someone broke in to my car and took away 2 lenses, binocular, camera & laptop bag (fortunately laptop was at home) and a bunch of camera accessories (about 40k damage)








And couple of hours later, I bang in to a car in the front in a mini pileup of 3 cars and had to pay the guy 6k, I could have avoided if I had paid more attention, I was clearly distracted, fortunately no major damage to Scorpio except for the front bumper has a small crack.



But the last week was an absolute contrast. Took off from May day and rest of the week, this was planned earlier for my daughters aksharabhyasa at Sringeri. Visited Udupi, Sringeri, Horanadu and Bhadra Wildlife Santuary. Clocked about 1000 kms, I wish I have time to write a travelog.


Yet to process the photos but here are a few that stood out in the first pass of processing.

The resort is names after this one - River Tern


Interestingly the room I stayed in was named after this one: Pratincole


This one my favorite!




Though not a happy thing photographing animals in captivity, I could not resist this one, I was 3 feet away with almost nothing between me and the big cat, except for the half open safari bus door.




I need to make time for the work out that will be my primary focus for rest of the week. Will let you all know how it goes.

[SDP]

Ajit, sorry to hear about the car break-in, the theft and the rear-ending. Hope last week brought in some peace of mind and the much needed respite from work. Loved the bird snaps.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Update for last week:
#1 Weight-Control
1. Went for briskWalk-cum-jog on 6 days during the last week. My wife has started to join me for the walk. So the walk has been kind of leisurely this week.
2. Walked up to the 10th floor 10 times during the week.
3. Missed the one hour meditation session on Monday.

#2 Reading
1. Seven habits continue. No teaching last week.
2. Reading "Critical Chain" -> No progress this week either.

#3 Planned 'core' work
1. Three hours of 'core' work last week.

#4 Home-maintenance (neat-clean-tidy)
1. Spent around 4 hours this week cleaning and organizing the home.
2. After the renovation of the kid's bedroom, the contractor has been dilly-dallying picking up the last lot of 4-5 bags of debris from my parking space. After a buch of followups, finally, on Saturday morning, I got rid the debris myself and cleaned up the parking space really well.
3. Read about how to remove water-stains from taps and other chrome-plated bathroom fixtures. Bought a bottle of vinegar and cleaned a few fixtures. What a difference! After cleaning one fixture, applied a layer of collinite wax on it, allowed it to dry and then buffed it. Hopefully that should prevent water-stains in the future. Would experiment for a few days and then do the wax treatment for all chrome-plated bathroom fixtures.
4. Went to a local nursery and picked up a couple of flower-plants. In our home, since last 7 odd years, no plant has survived more than a few months. May be we were not taking adequate care of them. Anyways, this time we got good soil and natural fertilizer. We are also planning to spray the leaves every day so that dust and pollution doesn't get to the plant. Let's see how it goes this time. BTW, to bring in more personal accountability (and a little bit of healthy competition), I have adopted one of the 2 plants and wifey adopted the other one.

[selfdrive]

Update for last week (s)

Swimming classes:
Tried to get my son into swimming classes again. We went for 3 days but he was not interested later. The pool at the local health club is too crowded and he does not like it. Plus the coach is a bit tough on him I will try to initiate him into swimming at the pool in our own society beginning next week. Should be some good exercise for me too though I dont really swim well. We have the floats though!

We bought two rolls of kite thread (one maanja, one normal). Also sourced a kite roll and rolled out the two threads one on top of another. So the maanja has gone at the bottom and will be used on outdoor kite flying attempts once we have practised a bit in the building backyard. Also bought a couple of paper kites (5 bucks each) and used the normal thread to fly a kite for about 30 mins. Wind conditions were not ideal, but we had fun. So we will give it a go sometime next weekend.

We began morning father-son motorbike rides within the society and late night walks over the last 4 days. Its going well though we intend to replace the motorbike with bicycles soon. Maybe end May by the time I get a seat for my bicycle.

Thats all for now. Hopefully some more updates later in the month on the cycling and swimming sections.

[AVR]

Finally have some progress to speak of:
1) Started running - Manage alternate days of brisk walking/running for about 4 kms.
2) Cut down smoking - Reading this book Alen Carr called the Easyway. Plus resisting the urge quite often. Also, don't smoke the full cig anyways. Its a start.
3) Been quite a few crazy weeks so finally took a weekend off to Udaipur with wife. Hogged on Laal Maas and Keema Bati so running will have to compensate for that again.
4) Following up regularly on two jeeps that are being done up. Takes a few hours every week of visits/calls but easily the best diversion from stress for me. Always works.
5) Gym is still on the to-do list. #notetoself

Not much as such but a start is a start

[ajitkumarlb]

Landmines worked very well last week and nothing to report on any front.

Only solace is I have remained at 92 in spite of 4 weeks of no work out.

Hope this week goes better, it did have a good start with 30 on the recumbent cycle.

[Lalvaz]

Originally Posted by SDP

Keeping in mind the possibility that some of you might have missed the "roll-call", sending a quote-alert - which is difficult to miss

Hi SDP - The quote alert helped, Thank you. I got into procastination mode once again, but your quote alert really worked wonders. Seeing how dedicated you guys were, I felt ashamed, and vowed to make amends. Its been tough, but for the last one month, here are the lifestyle changes I've made.

Diet: Dubba of home cooked food for lunch everyday, with a strict watch on sweets. Dinners, I do eat out, but again no more than 3 times per week.

Exercise: Gym atleast 3 times per week, brisk walk every day, golf twice a week, and just started playing squash today, Gosh its tough, but I can really see how little stamina I have, and I will try really hard to stick with it. Also take the stairs to the 9th floor at work atleast once or twice a week. Must confess, my legs turn to jelly post the 7th floor. And I thought I had muscles, damn.

Miscellaneous life changes: Trying to accomplish a lot of things that were on the backburner for ages, finally appeared for my CISSP examination, finally been hitting the books. Trying to clear my mind. On the cards later this year is a long overdue holiday, and this time, I'm going to make it happen.

So thank you SDP, thank you very much for the wake up call.