Tracking my food and exercise. The best way I’ve found to make sure I stay on track is to keep track of what I am eating, and how often I exercise. The key is to track both honestly. If you miss a workout or eat that Snickers bar you thought no one knew about (I saw what you did!), log that. That gap in your log or the extra calories at your end-of-day tally may be just what you need to push you. Plus, sometimes we have bad eating habits we don’t even think about, and they only become obvious when we see the pattern on the page. Currently I am using the website myfitnesspal.com (thanks to my friend Devin, @Doctor_Teeth on Twitter) to track both my meals and my workouts. After some initial questions it is a very easy site to use, doing all the math for you; all you have to do is enter the info. I highly recommend.

A combination of Weight and Interval Training. I have used weight training to great effect before, so I am planning to stay with it. Since I have a set of free weights here at home, it is sort of a no-brainer. Not only do I remove the excuse “I don’t have time to go to the gym” because my gym is right here, weight training also gives me a tangible way to increase my workout progress. After all, it doesn’t get much simpler than, “Last week I lifted x. This week I am lifting x+5lbs”. Interval training is essentially compressed cardio: after a warm-up period you do your cardio as hard as you can for a set but short period of time, usually 1-2 minutes. Then you drop to about half-effort for another period, or interval (get it, interval training? Eh? Eh?) equal to or shorter than the full effort interval. Repeat for about 15-20 minutes, then warm down. It is perfect for me, because if I’m not playing a game or sport of some kind, I can not stand extended cardio work. So it allows me to focus on maximum effort in a short period of time.

Dropping the junk food. As a gamer this is probably the hardest step. After all, what is a game table without delicious, crunchy nachos, Hawkin’s Cheezies, or those delicious two-bite brownies that you can scarf down in one bite…sorry, had to wipe some drool off the keyboard. But it is probably the most necessary step; junk food, and the processed food industry in general, are bad on many levels (and I’ll have a blog post just about junk food at a later date). So to keep the crunch I like when I game, I am switching over to snap peas and carrots. For the sweet, a handful or two of raisins or an piece of fruit. I have been switched over to diet sodas for a while, so no calories there. But there are good reasons to get off even the diet stuff, so I’ll work on that as well. Story short, it is all about exchanging the bad habits for good ones. If it were done when ’tis done, ’twere best it were done quickly. (Thanks, Shakespeare!)