Fat Guy Radio

First, how have you been doing on your Couch to 5k program? I’ve been walking 20 minutes every day at lunch. The 260 minute total was the minimum you should have walked in Month 1/Phase I of this more conservative C25K program. I found this program over at Beginner Triathlete. The second month is detailed below. There’s more walking and a little bit of running. This is very doable for a “big” person.

Second,are you subscribed to Fat 2 Fit Radio? Fat 2 Fit Radio is the really the continuation of the Fat Guy Radio show. Jeff Ainslie and I discuss weight loss, diet, fitness and exercise topics every week. We also take a look at news articles that deal with these subjects as well. Take a listen and see if this fills a gap in your life.

Third, is your brain working the best it can? Mine isn’t. Over the next 12 weeks or so I’m going to be posting about the new book Brain Rules. See the post previous to this one for more information.

Here’s a table of the second month’s schedule:

That’s going to do it for now. Get walking and running and I’ll talk at you again in a month or so for the Couch to 5k Update. Be safe and be healthy.

Artist (Song Played):
Geoff Smith (Loving on a Big Hill)

 

 Fat Guy Radio Show #40 [11:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Brain Rules is the book by John Medina that looks at “12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school”. I found the whole topic fascinating and so I had to order the book. I just received the book from Amazon and over the next 12 weeks I’ll be taking a look at each of the principles and giving you my take on that week’s principle as well as some ways to integrate that principle into your life. To see if you’re interested in this topic, check out the interview by Geoffrey Grosenbach of the Ruby on Rails podcast and video that I posted of a talk at Google.

As a quick aside, the hardcover book that I received, had inside, a DVD that gives you an overview of the rules. Also included on the DVD were three chapters of the audio book. The book also has an associated website, BrainRules.net. The publisher, Pear Pres,s did a great job giving you a bunch of extras along with the book. This is one of the first times in a long time that I haven’t felt screwed by getting a book in the hard cover edition. Kudos to them.

So…Rule #1 is exercise boosts brain power. The big idea is that when you’re moving, your brain works better. I’m not going to give away all the details of the book here. You’ll have to buy a copy for yourself. But, sitting and peak brain function aren’t compatible. The desk and cubicle, Medina says, are the worst possible environment for optimal brain power. He mentions something called a Walkstation as a possible fix for getting your brain working better in the office environment. The walkstation is a treadmill built into your workstation. So instead of sitting at a desk, you’re active at the desk. Hence, you will function better at your job. I did a quick Google search and found a couple references. Apparently the Walkstation is not being produced, but the idea has caught on. Below you’ll find links to homemade walkstations that you could use as a template for your own. This idea could also be used with a stationary bicycle. Medina mentions he uses a walkstation type setup and it took all of 15 minutes to get used to working this way.

Myself, I don’t think this is going to happen here in my office, but I do my own sort of “active sitting”. I use a large fitness ball as a seat. It turns a sedentary desk job into an active desk job. It ain’t perfect, but it’s a start. You can get these sort of fitness balls at any sporting good store or big retailers like Target or Walmart.

That will do it for week 1. Check back next week when I tackle Rule #2, The Human Brain Evolved Too.

External Links:
Homemade Walkstation
Another Homemade Walkstation
Engadget Post on Walkstation

The time has come to re-initiate the Couch to 5k program that I had to abandon a couple months ago. Knee pain is gone. I’ve been walking, though not as “religiously” as I had planned. With the extra walking, the knee wasn’t getting better fast enough. I stopped the walking for a couple weeks, and voila! Pain free.

The second part of getting back on the Couch to 5k program is find another program that has a longer schedule. The previous program had a crazy, in hindsight, 8 to 9 weeks to get my ass from the couch to running 5k (approx. 3 miles). I’ve finally settled on a program I found at Beginner Triathlete. This is their “conservative” schedule to getting to the 5k mark in 7 months. There is also a program that will get you there in 4 months, roughly twice the time in the original plan I was following. I feel somewhat vindicated that the “aggressive” program will take 4 months, meanwhile the plan I was trying to follow nearly made me lame. Okay, maybe that’s overstating it a bit.

Here’s a table of the first month’s schedule:

So as you can see the first steps of this program should be easily done by anyone. Also this bit on the page prior to the training schedule made me feel a little bit better.

“Use this if you are overweight. Will be easier on your joints. If you find that your knees hurt on this, it may be wise to lose some weight with a proper diet and start out with a swimming/cycling regimen for several months until you have lost some weight and have established an aerobic base.”

I think that pretty accurately describes me. So here goes. Follow along with me as I will almost definitely reach my goal. I will continue to make audio posts from Utterz. These will go over the feed as podcasts.

Let’s go!!

So I decided to start a new category, Life Hacks, that don’t necessarily fit into the weight loss/fitness category of most if not all the posts here at Fat Guy Radio. This first post is about a book called Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Geoffrey Grosenbach of the Ruby on Rails podcast recently did an interview with the author, John Medina. There was little Ruby or Rails talk in this interview. It mainly focused on the topics in the book.

The first topic he brings up is that if you were going to create a uniform for school age children to wear, it would be gym clothes. The premise being that the brain works best if the body is stimulated first. Children, actually everyone, should exercise before sitting down to learn. I shared this information with my wife and she had a personal story that solidified this theory in my mind. She said that before any standardized test that she administered to the children of her class, they were 4th graders, she would have them do 15 to 30 minutes of physical activity. She would also feed them a miniature sized Snickers and orange juice. The children in her class always did extremely well on these tests.

A second topic, that I identified with was the difference between what he called larks and owls. Larks being those that are early to bed and early to rise. The owls are those of us that would be much happier working until 3am and then sleeping in until noon. I identify with the owls, but start time at work is 7am. Ouch. I still tend to stay up until at least midnight or slightly later because I feel most productive. How much more productive would I be if I had the opportunity to work at those “owl” hours?

The speaking style of John Medina is very interesting, if not downright strange, but at the same time it is very hard to not listen to him. He’s strange, but engaging. I’m personally buying this book to get all the details of each of the 12 principles. Check out the links below to hear the two parts of the interview. Click on the image above to head to Amazon to purchase the book.

John Medina Interview Part 1
John Medina Interview Part 2

Peace,
Russ

So I’m checking the stats today, not for Fat Guy Radio, but for The Podcast Studio. If I had it to do over again, and I have done it over again, I would have picked a different name for this blog/podcast. Maybe then I wouldn’t see the following search end up at my site.

fatguy russ turley

Think long and hard when you name your podcast or blog. Then stop and ask somebody else what they think.

On Fat 2 Fit Radio, we recently did a show on gastric bypass surgery. In fact it was an interview with a recipient of gastric bypass surgery. He had a standard gastric bypass, on where the duodenum is bypassed and the small intestine is re-attached to the smaller pouch that will now be the stomach. We also mentioned an alternative surgery, the lap band. Lap band is actually not the correct name for the surgery. The correct name is vertical band gastroplasty. It was mentioned, but not much information was given. Here is a video I found today that shows what happens in a vertical band gastroplasty surgery.

If you didn’t hear the podcast, check out show #20 over at Fat 2 Fit Radio.

Vertical Banded Gastroplasty - What Is Vertical Banded Gastroplasty Video - About.com

Who has one? What a load of crap. Don’t ever confess to having bought one of these. Dismantle it and throw it away in small pieces over the next couple weeks.