Wow. Has it really only been less than 5 weeks since we started the Health Challenge? That is so hard for me to believe. Granted, I started a couple of weeks before everyone else, but really even I’ve only been doing this for about 6-7 weeks. So let’s review the results so far shall we?

• In less than 5 weeks since I officially started I’ve lost 15 pounds. That is 8.6% of my body weight.
• If we include the 2 weeks prior, I’ve lost 21 pounds. That is 10.8% of my body weight
• I’ve lost 3.5% of body fat.
• I’ve gone from doing 30 curls and 35 pushups in one day to 50 plus 300!
• I’ve lost at least 2 inches off of my waist and people have really been commenting that my appearance is dramatically different.

Now, it’s also important to note that I have not spent a single penny on diet aids (no pills, plans, books or anything else), I’ve not stepped a foot inside a gym, and in fact, the only weights I’ve used have been two 30 pound dumbbells. The only thing I have used since I started, is a whole bucket-load of discipline. And this should absolutely prove that you can do it too. You just have to want it!

Ok gang. Whether you are on my Health Challenge or not, International Push-up Day is only hours away at this point, and I must be the only fool on the planet who was ever willing to pay for your push-ups!

Don’t forget that I’m going to make a $1 donation to Heifer International to help the needy for every push-up you do (up to $1,000 total)! So if you won’t do them for yourself, at least do them for the poor people around the world!

There are three ways your push-ups turn into credits for Heifer:

• My strong preference is that you post them on Twitter as you’re doing them. So if you do 10, send a Tweet that says something as simple as “10 pushups #HealthChallenge”. It’s important to add the #HealthChallenge for those of us keeping and eye out for tweets with this tag. If you don’t know how, you can use TweetDeck (Cali Lewis shows you how).
• You can leave a comment here on this page each time you do them. Same thing, just drop it below.
• If you have a blog, you can keep track of your push-ups on your blog. Just link back to this page to create a trackback I can follow when you post your first update, then keep updating your blog post throughout the day. I’ll go to all the linked blogs in the comments to count up the push-ups within the next couple of days.

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I’m back with another Health Challenge update for you guys. It’s been about two weeks since the last update, and when I last came to you I weighed 183 (down from a high of 195). Those of you who are checking in on the Health Challenge page have seen me documenting the changes occurring as a result of the Challenge, most recently, the fact that I dropped below 180 today for the first time in a long time.

Here is the current summary of activity and results. I did workout on the days in between, but didn’t document except on days when I took a measurement.

As you can see, my body fat percentage has decreased by approximately 2% in these three weeks. I actually lost about an additional 1% in the previous couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to breaking the 20% barrier and being down in the teens once again. Ideally, I would like to be at 10%, so we’ll see how close I can get in our remaining 2 months. That is going to be tough to do given the relatively slow progress in the last month, but I guess I’d be happy to even hit 15% at this point.
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Ok folks, I’m declaring Saturday, May 16, 2009, International Health Challenge push-up day. What the heck does that mean? Well, it means a few things:

1. Everyone will have 24 hours to do, and keep track of, as many push-ups as they can muster in one day!
2. Someone is going to do the most! Hmmm… can anyone out there challenge me? I think not!
3. We’re all going to be really sore on Sunday May 17th!

So, here in Dallas, not only am I going to do push-ups all day long, but I’m going to organize some sort of a Tweetup event for all the Health Challenge folks to get together!

Maybe a local park? Hotdogs, hamburgers and pushups? Whose with me on this? Oh, and of course if you can’t join us in Dallas, that doesn’t mean you can’t organize your own local event! Just spread the word and lets get people around the globe participating all together!

Just imagine how cool it will be if we have a hundred, or a thousand people giving their updates all day long on Twitter! I swear, that… would… ROCK!
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For those of you who are keeping up with my Health Challenge, here’s my first update. I’ll try and give these updates weekly about how it’s going for me personally as well as some tips and things that might help you guys along.

Some of you know may know that I personally started the Health Challenge a few weeks before challenging the rest of you. My rationale was simple. I wanted to be able to set a good example. I wasn’t going to ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t or couldn’t do first.

Well, those of you who know me remember that I used to drink about 6 Cokes per day. And that doesn’t include all of the other candy I would eat. I was literally consuming almost a pound of sugar a day! Plus, I was eating whatever else I felt like, whenever I felt like it.
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On my Health Challenge, I asked you guys to try and cut the amount of food you are consuming by about half. Some of you probably thought I was crazy! But let me explain why this is such an important part of getting in shape.

It takes 3,500 calories worth of activity to burn one pound of fat in the human body. Now, the average person’s caloric intake should be around 2,000 calories or less per day, meaning that there are almost two day’s worth of food energy stored in a single pound of fat.

More important than simply looking at the storage, if we start talking about how much energy you actually burn in a given day, you’ll quickly see why unless you modify your eating habits, all the exercise in the world won’t help you!
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Hey folks, next week I’ve committed myself to starting a new Health Challenge. Well, technically I stole that name from Jack Finlayson, our CEO at Layered Tech. You see, every year Jack runs a Health Challenge for the folks at work. It works about like this…

• First of all, participants are all on the honor system. You can choose to participate or not, but if you are disqualified then you have to admit it and you aren’t eligible for the prizes that come at the end.
• There are some exercise requirements.
• There are some dietary requirements.
• It lasts for about 12 weeks.

At the end of the challenge, whoever has shown the most notable improvement wins! So, starting this coming Sunday, April 12, 2009, I’m going to be kicking off my own little health challenge right here for readers of my blog. Complete with glory and prizes! You’ve got the rest of this week to prepare, but then the progress begins next week!

Personally, I am starting out at 188.8 pounds and 22.5% bodyfat. My number one goal is to lose inches off my waist which is 34″. Ideally I would like to have a 31″ waist.
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You know how sometimes you’re walking through the mall or down the street and you see someone who is about 100 pounds overweight wearing Britney Spear’s clothing? And you turn to the person beside you and go, “I did not need to see that!”

Yeah, well you might as well just move along and not read this article now, because I’m gonna show you one of those things. If you continue at your own peril, don’t say you haven’t been warned!
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Ok. I saw like 5 seconds of this this clip on Cali and Neal’s GeekBrief.TV and then did a YouTube search to find the original video.

From the description:

I built the ball machine because I thought my dog Jerry, might like it and that it would be something fun for me to build. So after two years of on and off work, with many safety features such as IR proximity sensors to protect Jerry and my son from the machine, I finally complete.

Far from being a replacement for me, I was always right there with him enjoying his fun. And with all the troubles that I went through to build the ball machine, I still end up throwing more balls than that the machine could count! According to the computer, he played with the machine by himself only 3 times in his life.

I recently put this video on YouTube to keep alive my earlier memories of him and (hopefully) provide some “humorous distractions” for anyone that might drop by.

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As we all know, working out can be pretty boring. As we also know, often models are not the sharpest tools in the shed. However, as the following videos prove, there are exceptions to both of these rules!

The Ford Modeling agency has come up with a great plan to get some exposure for their models in the form of having them share some of their favorite workout tips via Web videos. I’ve chosen a few of the ones I found particularly useful. Hopefully you’ll find a few good tips too.
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I recently acquired a bad ass treadmill as part of an effort to get back in shape (more on that later), and I went searching for some USMC cadence recordings to listen to while I run on it. They were harder to find than I thought they would be, so I figured I would share them here in case anyone would like to hear them.

These work songs are sung while a platoon is running in formation and let me tell you – they are motivational. When you hear 80 sets of boots pounding the ground in unison while 80 Marines sing cadence it is a site to behold.
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The Gmap-pedometer is one of the best little Google Maps mashups I’ve seen yet.

Say you want to determine how far you’re walking or jogging on a given route. Well, just head on over to Gmap-Pedometer.com, hit the “start recording” button and double click on points along the path you follow.

The program will keep up with the distance and even give you the option of computing the calories you’ll burn as a result.