AaronGleeman.com

The elliptical machine wasn't delivered until around four p.m., but I still did 3.5 miles on it last night. I worked out on an elliptical quite a bit a few years ago, when my uncle and I would go to his health club to play basketball a couple times per week, and it was a rude awakening to see just how much harder it is for me now. I used to be able to do 20 minutes on it without much problem, sometimes after playing basketball, and now it becomes a strain at around the five-minute mark.

I suppose it's not all that surprising, but I wasn't in great shape back then either. I guess that shows how many of levels of "not in great shape" there are. In addition to doing about 30-35 minutes in three stints on the machine last night, I also managed to cut back on food intake. My plan is to simply cut down on what has been a typical amount of eating for me, rather than try to eat what might be a lesser amount for dieters in general.

Rather than drink milk or Sprite, I struck strictly to water yesterday. And rather than some sort of smorgasbord of fast food for dinner, I ate two relatively small meals. For the first meal I had a small bowl of pasta with marinara sauce, along with sliced turkey and cheese on a plain bagel. Later I ate one hot dog with ketchup on a plain bun. The grand total for the day was 1,330 calories.

That's probably more food than the Olsen twins eat in a given week, but for me it represents a major change. Not to sound like someone in Alcoholics Anonymous or anything, but if I could just report something similar each day from here on out in regard to both my working out and my eating, I'd definitely be on the right track. (Don't worry, I won't be reporting anything, good or bad, each day.)

After one day I can already see what the two biggest challenges are going to be. One is that I need to get into good enough shape so that doing 10 minutes on the machine isn't a taxing thing. I realize how pathetic that sounds, but if I was worried about sounding pathetic I probably wouldn't be talking about being a fatass here. The other thing to work on is eating small meals throughout the day, rather than waiting for a big meal at dinner time.

For as long as I can remember I've skipped breakfast completely, occasionally eaten lunch, and always gorged myself on a gigantic dinner. That can't continue, obviously. On that note, if any of you have good suggestions for reasonably healthy food that I might actually enjoy eating, please post them in the comments section. I'm not talking about tofu burgers or anything like that, just stuff that isn't too bad for you and tastes good.

I'll try to avoid writing about this topic much more after today, since it's even more self-absorbed than the entries here usually are (if you can believe that) and probably bores the hell out of most of you. For the minority of you who are interested, I'll try to update the "Fat-O-Meter" on the left-hand sidebar every few days.

Today at The Hardball Times:
- How Do You Like Your Data? (by Dave Studeman)
- Run Estimation for the Masses (by Dan Fox)
- Daily Graphing: Sammy Sosa (by David Appelman)