I’m coming up on two years at Boom Fitness and while I like it, I don’t love it. So I decided to see what’s out there. Figured it can’t hurt to be a diligent shopper so I hit NYSC & Equinox

Putting it as a pros and cons to help myself decide even though I think I’ve already made my decision.

Current gym:
Boom Fitness:
Pros:

• Not very crowded so I can get machines without waiting.
• Not that expensive (about $60/month)
• Relatively convenient

Cons:

• Not as good a value as it used to be since prices have come down in the market.
• Doesn’t have a good range of classes (that I don’t take anyway)
• Not on my way home so I can’t always make myself go.

New York Sports Club – I used to be a member of NYSC before moving (& joining Boom) but not the location that I went to today.
Pros:

• Between my apartment & the subway. Would take a conscious effort to avoid going. Not that I’m not capable of said effort.
• Promotional deal to returning members brings the cost to less than Boom Fitness
• Has more classes, but see above

Cons:

• Due to location it’s very crowded and I saw a lot of people waiting for machines. I don’t have the patience and would likely walk out vs. get my exercise in.
• Looked kind of dingy. Could be due to volume of use
• No pool at this location

Equinox:
Pros:

• On.My.Block – there’s no way to avoid going here without feeling guilty
• WOW. An Upper East Side Gym. Clean, nice lighting. Good number of machines. Amazing class schedule. Showers are like a spa and it *has* a spa
• No hard sell

Cons:

• Price. The initiation & monthly costs are high although there are plans that waive the initiation

It’s clear which gym I liked the most, but there’s no way I can swing Equinox much as I’d like to. Going to file it for when my financial circumstances change.

There’s a Gold’s Gym near the office, but none that I know of up here & since I tend to be more of a weekend gym go-er, I don’t see that working out well for me. None of the other ones listed up here are really close enough to be worth it. I really miss Planet Fitness. Can’t beat price.

So I guess BOOM it is.

I had a slower start to exercise then I wanted because I started off the year sick. Still, I made myself go to the gym on both Sunday and Monday and even a short workout is better than none at all.

So far, I’m in a good place for #GoTheDist. 21.41 miles out of a goal of 750 for the year and 175 for Q1. I think I can do it even when I switch to more walks over bikes when the weather is nicer. Speaking of nice weather, it was 13F when I left the house on Weds. AM & today when I was walking home from the gym it was 55F. Same city. Wish I’d had more time for an outdoor workout today. Maybe I’ll walk home one day this week if it stays nice.

After a few missed weekends in the fall due to other commitments, I’m back on track for 50 gym visits in this 6 month window. It’s good for fitness, it’s even better my wallet.

Food choices were mostly good too. I’m in my usual winter challenge of a lack of fresh fruit & veg & it being too cold for smoothies, but I’m making better choices.

So let’s see where the rest of 2012 goes.

Challenges of the activity variety. Back I mentioned a challenge that seemed interesting. Of course, I did nothing with it. Lately, I’ve been watching
challenge and I decided if I didn’t join I wouldn’t do it. So I signed up. I tracked nearly 520 miles this yr. of exercise from April to December. I think I can do 750 next year. Maybe my knee will even strengthen to the point where I can get past the first day of C2K.

Additional GOALS:
My next goal is 149.9 (aka below 150) and after that, 139.9. I’m not sure I’ve ever been below 140 since I was a kid. I think big G goal is going to be 134. Why the odd number? It would be a total of 75 lbs lost and gives me some wiggle room to gain a bit but still be a healthy weight (141 is the top end for my height). I hope to be able to tell as I get closer whether that’s attainable or maintainable.

If they look familiar, it’s because they’re the same ones from . In 2012 I will hit them. Between #GoTheDist and Back to Basics (grew out of the 30s board on the Weight Watchers’ site) this *will* be the last year I start overweight. #NoExcuses is my favorite hashtag for gym checkins on FourSquare. Time to apply it to everything else.

Some additional information about that 519.29 miles:

79.66 total hours

131 workouts

22,728 calories.

Now I didn’t hit either my mini weight goals in 2011 but those numbers are pretty powerful. Imagine where I’d been if I hadn’t logged that mileage?

It’s true that most of my on Pinterest is weight loss but I’m taking this one to heart in 2012

I probably still won’t blog worth shit, but I’m going to be accountable to myself.

I think I’ve found some of the motivation I had last Spring which is a good thing. Now I’m trying to harness it. Step 1? Go back to the tracking I did. Not just food tracking but weight tracking. And accountability. I still weight myself daily multiple times a day but don’t do anything with it. I’m bringing back this chart. I’ll clean it up and tweak it some as I’m no longer doing WW, but I think there’s some good data in there. Looking now, when I quit that is when I, essentially, quit losing. I haven’t been lower than that. It’s time to get back on track.

Now let’s see if I can do it over a weekend.

What did I do? I went back to the old points program and am using a hybrid of that and SparkPeople, which I’m finally getting the hanging of tracking with. There are days where I go way over points when I’m well within my calorie range, and then there are days where I’m not making the best food choices, but at least I can find the patterns. I’m curious to see how this goes and how it works for me.

Overall I’m still down 51.2 lbs from last March. Could it be a lot better if I wasn’t in a holding pattern since September? Sure. But it could be a lot worse. It’s still an average of 1.1 lbs/week and I’ll take that.

I started reading over The Girl Who Could (Formerly) Eat Anything, a blog from someone who posts on the WW boards and I realized that while I’ll never manage to post daily, I like how she does. I like her October challenge and I’m thinking about something similar for myself. I like the accountability. I’ve never been the world’s best blogger, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the period in which I was blogging the most is the one where I was losing.

food for thought.

what a difference a year makes

While at the gym on the recumbent bike and watching Notre Dame play Miami I realized that 50 lbs lost was the last goal I set that I was passionate about. Maybe I need goals to keep me going? I talked briefly about mini goals but they weren’t ones I was as committed to as the “magic” 50, so it’s back to goals.

My next goal is 149.9 (aka below 150) and after that, 139.9. I’m not sure I’ve ever been below 140 since I was a kid. I think big G goal is going to be 134. Why the odd number? It would be a total of 75 lbs lost and gives me some wiggle room to gain a bit but still be a healthy weight (141 is the top end for my height). I hope to be able to tell as I get closer whether that’s attainable or maintainable.

I’m not assigning a date to any of those. I want to stabilize and get headed consistently down before I worry abut when but I’d really like to be 140 at my next follow up with my doctor. That would be obese – normal in a year a and a half in doc time, and about 15 months, Weight Watchers time.

I’m committed that 2011 will be the last year I begin overweight.

I think I can do it.

I used to see it most with bacon. I didn’t like the points for 3 slices so I’d change it to 2 as if that would matter to my body. As if the calories followed what I wrote vs. what I ate. I’ve gotten better with that, but it’s still there.

I’d seen it with APs but it’s even more now that I’m tracking calories burned on SparkPeople. I was doing errands this evening and not wearing my HRM because I never do when I’m just doing errands. My logic in that I was doing these errands pre: WW so I shouldn’t count the calories/APs now. Ended up going further then planned this evening in search of a store with diet cream soda in stock for a total of a little over a mile, round trip. And all of a sudden I was thinking I wouldn’t get “credit” for the calories burned.

Ooof. I really need to get my head around this.

We also had an interesting discussion about my goal and whether it’s doable. It’s going to be an interesting six months for sure.

I was also happy at the appointment because his scale showed me up only .5 from Friday’s weigh in. That’s especially good because I was definitely not OP this weekend. I’m back on track food wise today and activity as well, thanks to the snowpocalypse. I’m down 3.8 lbs since I got back on track and I’ll take it.

So far, I’m a fan of Points Plus progress even i I’m not following it 100% yet

I’ll never be convinced that Tom Coughlin or Eli are the anti-christ, I just won’t be. Do they have their faults? Yes. Are they the reasons behind the GIants’ struggles? Not alone.

ELI MANNING:
On the benching of Eli that so many seemed to want yesterday. Yes, the INTs are annoying as hell. Yes he hit a career number. Yes that’s absurd that he’s seemingly regressing, although he’s also throwing for career high TDs so Eli isn’t all bad. I do not think benching him yesterday would have solved anything. He was trying to be a hero and tie up a 20+point deficit which led to poor decisions, but he equally could have driven for a TD if things had broken a different way*. He’s still the Giants QB and that’s not changing. I don’t know why they didn’t just go to the run once the game was so far out of hand, but then again I didn’t expect them to come out of the 14 point hole. I think he thought they really had a chance. He does, however, need to learn when to take the sack and/or throw the ball away like on that last pick.

and O’Hara. There’s been a lot of criticism of the run since O’Hara returned and Seubert went back to Guard. But where did the run success come from in the first place? Was it playing against porous teams (Redskins, Dallas, Houston) and then more solid teams who studied film and knew the Giants would go to the run? Who knows.

on both Eli and O’Hara, Coughlin has never been shy to bench a player when needed. Saw it with both RBs yesterday, Manningham a week or two ago, Diehl and McKenzie in the penalty fest in week 3… If he thought either were as much of a problem as media and fans do, they’d have been benched. Sometimes I like to trust that the coaches know the team and the game better than we the fans and the media do and that they’re making the right decisions. Yes, I realize that this is the complete opposite of how I’m usually ranting on Joe Girardi.

No QB is immune. Montana left SF, McNabb was traded.. Eli is no Montana, but I really think Eli is the Giants franchise QB ala Simms and he’ll be here a long time. Personally, I’m glad for that.

TOM COUGHLIN
The drama around Singletary’s firing, whether or not it was on the team plane and after refusing to resign makes me ever so glad for the way Giants handle things. We will never see a situation like Shanahan and McNabb with the dirty laundry aired in public. That’s just not how the Giants do things. They have class. That is why I see one of the three happening with respect to Coughlin and this off season:

• he finishes out his contract. Lame duck or not, I could actually see this as the most likely given the uncertainty of the CBA and a lack of desire to pay two coaches next year when there may be no football.
• He retires at the end of this season. Could see Giants allowing him to do this given his history with the team and it accomplishes the same goal.
• He falls on his sword to save a couple of players and or asst. coaches and resigns. Given the tone in his press conferences this season, I see that as perhaps more likely even than B.

I don’t see Coughlin getting run out of town, nor do I think he deserves it. Some have made good points about the football IQ of this team and the boneheaded misakes – and I agree. But how much of that is coaching? You cannot coach an RB to hold onto the damn ball. Tiki was “fixed” because he wanted to make changes – Bradshaw and Jacobs have to want that. Jacobs doesn’t seem to have wanted anything since he got paid. Have Bradshaw’s fumbles increased because he’s had more touches? I’m not sure. And Nicks’ fumble that was overturned on a challenge? What the hell was your #1 WR doing returning kicks to begin with???

I’ve seen some frustrating game management that I do put on the Coaching staff, like yesterday not having any challenges left to challenge the INT that most certainly would have come back. But there are other things that go way beyond coaching. You can’t fire the whole 53 man roster and what happens when the players make some of the same boneheaded mistakes with all new coaches in place? What happens when AJ Burnett is awful again in 2011?

DEFENSE
My main question with the D, are they quitting on Tom Coughlin and Fewell? I don’t think so. It would have made sense quitting last year because there were issues with Sheridan throughout, but they were playing hard and smart football earlier this year. Part of me thinks that if they’re quitting on anything, it’s the offense and constantly having a short field with which to work. That would make sense given a season of turnovers and building frustrating, but I’m still not sure I buy it.

There was a lot of hype and rah rah when the Giants went on a run weeks 4-9. It was fire both in week 3, heroes in week 5. If everyone would get a little perspective it would be less feast/famine. Season isn’t over yet, but whether or not they fail to make the playoffs or win the Super Bowl, there’s a lot to think of for 2011.

Me? I’ll be watching as I always am. I bleed blue and losses don’t change that.