Couch to 5k – Week 1, Day 1

My weight loss had seemed to hit a plateau recently and I had been stuck bouncing up and down within the same 1/2 – 1 pound area. This led me to investigate new options to help push my weight loss to higher levels. After all, I knew that eventually the weight loss boost that I received from surgery and my resulting lack of appetite would wain as my appetite increased. I can now eat more (still less than a normal person) and as a result my exercise should increase to accommodate additional calories. The issue is that now that I am back at work, I have less time to exercise than I did post-surgery. So, I need to find ways to gain more benefit from less time (no more than 30-60 minutes)…

Here is where the story ends up at Couch to 5k. I had heard about the program before, but never seriously considered it. However, now I do want to get used to running, so I reconsidered.

It’s actually relatively simple:

• 3 days a week you exercise with an off day in between – I will likely continue to walk pretty much every day.
• The exercises take the form of a 5 minute walk warm up, 20 minutes of iterating between some amount of time walking & jogging/running, and then a 5 minute cool down walk.
• Each week, the jogging/running intervals get longer
• Over the course of doing the above for 9 weeks, you build up to running a full 5k (3.1 miles)

I started last night and while I’ve done some jogging, this really made my leg muscles burn. It was definitely more of a workout than I had been getting with just 30 minutes of walking. They recommend you don’t exercise strenuously on the off days, but I think I will continue to walk as I aim for getting exercise (even if only moderate) 6 or 7 days a week. I will generally have to play this by ear as I am hurting somewhat today…

Interestingly & typical, technology made the leap more appealing. I found a great iPhone app that helps track and guide you through the routine. It’s called obviously enough “Couch to 5k“. The app will provide voice prompts, alarms to make sure you remember to switch activities (walking to running and vice versa), visual cues (green UI when walking, red UI when jogging/running) and tracking days completed. I have Nike+ running in the background and music or a podcast also going to distract me from counting the seconds, but this app just provides the audio cues over the existing audio. I love that I can have it all kicking around at once.

I’m hoping this helps in the weight loss area as well as maybe driving me to learn to run. Maybe I’ll even learn to enjoy it