Android Nerd's 30-Day-Shred - Level 1

Ok, let me premise this post with some background about myself.

I'm a 40-year-old nerd who like most of you joined this site because improvements were needed in the diet and/or exercise area.

My wife and I live in Wisconsin and baby #3 is on the way sometime around Christmas.

I've dealt with my weight being much akin to a yo-yo, but for most of my adult life (read: post-college) I've been over 200 with exception for a few brief trips below for short visits. Typically my weight is around 230-240 and occasionally to see what it looks like from up there, I make the trip upwards. My highest weight ever was 265 (I'm 5'11” BTW) I think in 2009, but I managed to lose a mess of weight then it's slowly crept back up to 254 where it was in the middle of August when I decided that I had enough and I wanted to lose some weight so that I could be around for my kids and not just be the chubby part of the couch.

On 8/20 I started walking, I quit smoking, and I started watching what I eat. I weighed in that morning and logged my weight and my food pretty much non-stop since then. I still eat what I want for the most part on weekends, but I do make an attempt to not overdo it, but tis the season for football, chili and Oktoberfest beer, and I'm only human. So far I've lost just over 20 pounds and as of 10/20 I had walked over 200 miles, with a sprinkling of jogging thrown in there. I really want to be able to run an entire 5K and it bothers me that while I can run a continuous mile on the treadmill, I can't do it outside for some reason. Oh well, I digress...

I was reading a lot (and a lot, and a lot more) about exercise programs and I decided that I was going to try the Jillian Michaels 30-Day-Shred. I got the DVD and it looked really nice on my desk. Where it sat. For like a month. Mocking me. I ignored the mocking.

So I finally decided that I was going to try it. This past Monday I did level 1 for the first time. It took me a while to figure out what weight dumbells to use, but I think I have it dialed in right now.

So Tuesday comes and I can't help but think of how useless that “video” portion of the video is. I mean there's only a handful of exercises and once you know how to do them, why do you need to watch the video?

So here's where the nerd in me raises his hand. I grab my phone (Android) and do a Google Play search for “workout timer” or something like that because I wanted something that would just give me an audible sound that 30 seconds had elapsed. I was just going to put a white-board in the basement and write down the exercises and after 30 or 60 seconds, I would move to the next one when the noise told me to.

I ended up with a couple apps but really liked this one...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pimpimmobile.atimer&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5waW1waW1tb2JpbGUuYXRpbWVyIl0.

If that link doesn't work, do a search for “HIIT Interval Timer” by Pimpim Mobile

So I find a list that is online of the breakdown of all the exercises from the DVD and I go about entering them into the app. Tuesday evening I didn't use the DVD, but instead fired up the app and did the workout that way and it worked just splendidly. In fact, I was so sore that I could barely do Day 3, but it had nothing to do with the app.

I also noticed that I didn't have any “transition” time built in between exercises so that I could get into the right position, or grab the weights, or something like that, so I added some of that, typically 5 seconds between parts where you had to get up, or down, or grab weights, etc.

I did that last night and it worked pretty darn well, if I do say so myself.

So now I just need to enter level 2 & 3 into the app and probably watch the video of each of those a time or two so that I know what I'm doing and bingo, off I go.

So what does any of this long, boring, rambling post mean to you?

Well, if you have an Android phone, and are somewhat savvy, I've done a bunch of the work for you! I can “export” my workout to a file that resides on my SD-card of the phone. I would think that in theory, I could email that file to someone and if they knew how to put files from a PC onto their phone, they could “import” it and do the same thing I did.

Anyway, just food for thought, and if anyone wants to try it, or has any questions, feel free to hit me up here.