The month in hindsight

Woooh! Finally. It is done!

"Well, the first month at least!"

Really, I have been waiting for this week with such great anticipation.

It has really gone a month since I started this blog - and with it, this challenge!

So with no further delay, it is time to look back and see what this all has lead to.

At the moment it definitely feels like this month, even just the month itself, has brought some major changes. Changes that I can feel and effects that I can see and measure.

"What would those be?", you may ask.

The first and major difference is that I can start seeing the muscles coming back. They can actually be seen and felt.

My natural contours in my face are starting to show up a lot clearer and my face actually looks less like a stone, while the eyes are no longer as heavy. 

 "Hell, even smiling is way easier and happens way more often!" :D

Then of course, there has been a noticable increase in my performance, stamina and energy levels.

I have actually started taking pictures, just to be able to see the difference as I go on with this. I can say that I can definitely see the difference. Yet, I think it is a bit early to publish these pictures.

"Why?", you may ask.

 To be honest -

Because it takes 4 weeks for you to notice the difference.

It takes 8 weeks for the people close to you to notice the difference.

But it takes around 12 weeks before everyone else does!

You guessed it, this is just part one. More details are to come!

Stepping it up!

After that very cold night, I really thought about it and I think it would be perfect timing to step things up a bit in the cardio department.

I think it is time to introduce some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into my program.
This is a concept that I was taught very early during my phys ed classes during school; push, push, give it all you got for a minute - then relax and wind down for a minute. Then do it all over again, 10 more times.

"So why do this, what are the benefits?", you may want to ask.

The main objective of this exercise is to train your heart. Training your heart to pump out more blood in less beats. Effectively, lowering your pulse a bit, but not the effect.
It is also good because it will allow your body to react much better in "explosive" situations, for example when you need to make that small sprint to get across the road or catch the bus.

"You know what I mean, we've all felt tired at one point when we suddenly had to push our bodies to the limit for that short amount of time."

Another very good effect of this is the boost to your metabolism. Specifically the body's regulation of blood sugar, particularly after meals. This is something that appears to be confirmed by studies as well as by the Men's Health Magazine.

One of the studies was recently published in the New York Times blog the other week.

Yup, this goes in the bag! But let's not go overboard.

I will be adding this as a small 10 minute exercise - which gives me 5 intensive minutes and 5 minutes of rest - on the cross trainer, in addition to my current 20.

Shivers :o

Yes, this day has been really, really cold - and most people who know me, would not say that I'm a person that reacts to cold.
So therefore, it must be something else!
If we're to believe my mother; shivers and chills are some of the first sign of your body reacting to weight loss.

"And I do belive my mother. ^^"

So I guess we might actually make a mini hindsight out of this.
The blog has been up for approximately two weeks and I can definitely feel the changes. Specially in my arms, shoulders and the flanks.

Let's take the healthy aspect first. So far, my diet has been:

• Sandwich and sugarfree vanilla latte in the morning
• Chicken salad
• Piece of meat or chicken, only addition being herbs
• Boiled vegetables

So far, I have been sticking to this quite strictly.  

"Yes, I know that lattes are still bad but it wouln't be 

an experiment or progressive goal if I did everything right from the start!"

I must say though, the weekends have got to be the worst days to do a diet. When you're not working or busy somewhere, it is very, very easy to get back into the thought patterns of hunger. At least I felt a lot hungrier.
Think I should drink more water during the weekends.

The workout has been kept up as well.
For the past two weeks I have had 8 successful gym sessions and 2 days of prolonged walking at a high pace.
A total of 10 days of exercise and only 4 days of rest.

"Awesome, more than expected but no feeling of burning out yet!"

Perhaps it is time to step up the workout a bit. At least the cardio.

But no definite numbers on the weight yet - even though it has gone down - I leave for the monthly hindsight!


As for the gold, well, I just started to write about the theory in my last post, but I can say that my amount has been increased by at least 50% since the start - which is not too bad for two weeks.

"And the Ashes of Al'ar to boot!"

I wonder what would happen if I tried to increase this to two servers... :D

Again, no definite numbers yet, leaving that for when a month has passed!
But here's a snapshot of a day during the past week. :)

On the other side of the computer screen

So there has been a lot of focus on the health aspect so far.
Granted, it is the more interesting part of the challenge. But I think it is time we talk about money, virtual money and the ways to make it.

For a bit of backstory; this is something I felt I wanted to do "just because" - I am a completionist and I have always liked achieving things that are not very easy nor commonly done.
Thus, hitting the gold cap - obtaining the maximum amount of gold that a character can carry - is something that naturally fell into that category.

But when it comes to achieving it, there are two main ways how to do it in WoW:

• Grinding/farming
• Trading / Auction House

Both are very effective methods and work very well. There is even a viable middle ground between these. But the main difference between these methods is the amount of time you have to invest in order to succeed.

Grinding/farming for gold is one of the oldest ways to get money. It is what it sounds like; you take your character, go to a place were you felt that you had a lot of gold or sellable material dropping for you and then you "set up camp" there, basically killing the monsters in the area. Over - and over - and over - and over - and over again. Once this is done, you start the cycle again at "over".
However, grinding/farming is something where you have to be constantly present and keep performing various actions. Thus the time you invest into it is huge for the profit you get, I would even say that the investment is greater than the profit in this case.

Another way is of course to combine the options - a good example is when you run older content, for the sake of money, rare drops, transmogrification items or simply for the vendor value of the items.

"Yeah, I have actually ran through things like Molten Core and Upper Blackrock Spire, killing everything - yes EVERY..ehm..ONE - and filled up my bags with the loot. Believe me, bagspace will be your friend here"

When doing this, you will of course gain quite a lot by simply selling the items off to a vendor - but you can also make quite a lot by placing a lot of the drops on the Auction House, for example cloth and other crafting material.
Again, on the question of time, this is still quite time consuming as you got to run the instances, but you get a nice bonus when you combine this.

Then you also have trading, where you need substantially less activity due to the ability of sales occurring whenever you are offline. This is something quite effective and can hold a lot of opportunities if done correctly.
That said, the auction house itself will not make you rich, not from scratch. Don't get me wrong, the Auction House is ultimately going to be the main actor in your stride to wealth, but there are a lot of underlying streams that you have to learn to understand.
The first - and most important - thing to understand is that certain actions and strategies can only be performed when you already have a lot of money.

"Spend money to make money, right?"

"This is where it gets interesting."

Workout!

Today, I wanted to talk a bit about the workout and what the gym sessions consisting of.
So far, my gym sessions have been broken down in the following way:

Warm-up: Every time

15 minute walk to the gym.

Cardio: Every time

20 minutes on the cross trainer machine.
160 strides per minute and alternating "terrain".

Strength: Alternating chest and back.
72 hours of rest before engaging the same muscle group again.

Shoulder press - 40 kg, 

Chest - seated press - 60 kg

Chest - Butterfly - 40 kg

Back - seated pulls - 50 kg

Lats - seated pulls - 60 kg

"Yeah, this may seem like a small amount for my size and it is less than I used to do, but I decided to go with easier weights to get my body used to physical workout."

As you can see, I have not been including anything for legs nor arms - and there are reasons for it. 

Right now, I exercise my legs enough due to the amounts of walking I do and it doesn't feel like I need more muscles there, not yet at least.

Arms are a different matter though. One of the first things I was taught about muscles is that the arm muscles are not very useful.  

"However, ladies, I do know that you like to look at arms. That has not slipped me by. ;)"

Think about it, if you are ever lifting something or carrying something, how often do you only use your arms? The answer is; very, very seldom.

Now you might think back of some incident where you remember your arms being so tired that you could barely lift them. Remember that moment again and this time ask yourself; could you have done it differently? 

"In most cases, the answer will be; yes."

Thus, for the moment, arms do not have priority in my workout, but in time, I know I will need to add them as well - if nothing else, then at least for the sake of proportions. ^^

This is the plan for Jan/Feb and at the end of February, I will look over this again and see if anything can be increased or needs to be changed.

A wild manifesto appears!

Right,  to make this work, I will need a plan - a manifesto according to which I shall be making the changes, an agreement between you, readers, and myself!

This is something I have been thinking about and it has come down to these two main items which affect weight, that I will be focusing on;

• Food intake

A lot of the sources that you will find on this subject will say that the diet and your eating habits are the main players when it comes to weight loss. Something that really caught my eye in this matter was the article on Exercise and Eating on the popular E-zine AskMen.com.
They do also mention that society today is pretty much designed to make us gain weight.

"Let's fight the system! Too soon? Oh."

• Exercise

Common sense has taught us that exercise is supposed to make you lose weight, because you are sweating, you are using the energy you have and when you run out - you use what you have stored. After doing some research, I have started to doubt that this has as much effect as I initially thought. But having said that, is is still very effective because it:


a) Builds muscle and gives your body shape once you start losing the fat.
"When you lose fat, there will, all of a sudden, be space where the fat used to be. As my intentions are not to end up scarwny, I'd love to see some more manly shapes."

b) It helps to regulate your apetite, reducing the constant desire for food.
"It wasn't only until a friend mentioned in a chat we had after his amazing comment, that I realized I was doing the same; Going to the fridge when I am bored."

Of course it has a lot of other benefits as well, but rather than listing them, it is better if you check out the second part of the Eating and Exercise Connection yourselves.

_______________________________________________________________________

Before I digress too much, to the plan!
The plan is ultimately to change up my diet to the point that it will result in weight loss, while not giving up everything that I like about food.
I don't want this to be some kind of "drop your lifestyle for another while achieving your goals", I actually want the changes to matter and to not feel forced.
"We all know that when we're forced to something, it's all of a sudden not as enjoyable anymore."

On the diet side, I shall, for the first month:

• Have two-three meals each day. (Due to working hours, 3 may not be feasible at all times)
• Cut out a lot of carbs from the food. "This is a subject that has been discussed on and off, more on this later."
• Greatly reduce intake of carbonated drinks, as well as sugar.

On the exercise side, I shall:

• Go to the gym, at least 3 times per week.
• At least one day, in addition to the gym, where the exercise consists of an hour walk.
• Power-walk on my way from work.

Alright, this is looking good. I can do this. More updates to follow!

Readers, anything I missed?

Some numbers

Seven months. It sounds like a very long time. But actually, it is 207 days to be exact.
But that said, time is something I always found very relative. So to make it easier, let's pull some numbers.
 Let's start with the weight.

Starting weight: 145kg

To hit my target, I need to lose 45kg. 

"Seems fine"

This averages out to about 6.5kg per month. 

"Woah, that took one crazy turn! :o"

Under normal circumstances, I would only imagine this happening during the first month of excercise because that is when you usually lose all the excess water that has been bound in your body.
But I guess under these circumstances, more effort will be added - and needed.


While on the other side of the computer screen, we have goal number two; the virtual wealth.

Starting gold: 115,000

To hit my target, I need 885,000 more.

"Right, numbers making it look big."

Actually, this would average out to approximately 126,500 gold per month.

Or 4,220 gold per day.

"Wow, but that's almost like a normal day's casual sales."

Right, at this point, it seems that this may actually be possible, quite easily. Mainly because of the theory that you have to spend money to make money. In broad strokes: the more you can spend/invest, the higher the return.

Why? Because you get the ability to reach access and trade in more markets. (For example enchanting materials and gems)

I do find it quite funny, for some reason I always thought the second goal would be harder to achieve - but when you're breaking it down like this, it makes you rethink what you just gotten yourself into.

But is it enough to give it up? 

"HELL NO!"