The World of Scott Mindeaux

Eating Paper, Working Out and Feeling Sleepy

So I heard the funniest thing the other day. “Mommy, they made me eat paper today…” What?!? No, it’s not the beginning of some addiction show or anything like that. My sister Beth and her family started going to church a few weeks ago. My little niece, who is 4, went with them and I guess they had communion and gave her a communion wafer. She wasn’t sure what it was and ate it anyway. Later that day she was talking to my sister and told her that they made her eat paper… too funny!

Well the LA Fitness next to my house is now open (as of August 15) and I have been there a few days already this week. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I wasn’t the mecca of hot guys walking around and fit women all socializing around the treadmills. There were people there from all walks of life. I really don’t know why I thought that I would feel out of place being surrounded by hot buff guys. Not that it’s bad or anything like that, it’s great motivation to continue to lose the weight and build some muscle. As some of you know, I’m in cardiac rehab 3x a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays I’m at the gym. My regimen consists of the same routine I have at the hospital. It feels good to be able to work out on my “off” days from the hospital. On the nights where I am too tired to do a full set I at least get in 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill.

I also decided to try out a month of personal training. I signed up with a special, but won’t actually start my training sessions until I’m done at the hospital. My trainer is a guy named Tyler (who is super cute – redhead, buff, Midwest looks) and has a heart defect so he is somewhat qualified to handle my case with my heart condition. We will do an assessment in a few weeks and set my goals. My initial visit with the fitness manager at LA Fitness wanted me at 170 by the end of the year. 170?!?! Holy frak! I’m not sure I can do that, but my goal is to get to my lower 22o’s. I’m 232 now.

Lately I have been feeling very sleepy after every meal. This is just tired, like I could just close my eyes and sleep right there. I have checked to see if my blood sugars have gone up and caused me to go into “coma” but my blood sugars have been pretty consistent in the upper 90s/lower 100s. So I’m not sure what is up. I have tried to look up the side effects of all my meds, but none that have drowsiness as a symptom.

In addition to the drowsiness, I have been having consistent headaches for the last couple of weeks. Consistent that it is there most of the day and I need to take tylenol at least 2x a day. It’s not a piercing headache, its one of those “in the back of my head but annoying headaches” – I want it to stop.

Rehab, Macs and “What is a Gym”?

So for the last few weeks, I have been in Cardiac Rehab – a program designed to strengthen my heart and get my body re-adjusted to its new “world”. Mostly it consists of cardio workout along with weights and stretching. Things have been going on pretty well and if you follow me on Facebook or Foursquare, I have been posting my workouts online. My blood pressure has been climbing since late June and I think that is good. Sometimes it is too high and that has me worried. Seems when the medication isn’t active in my system, my BP isn’t managed. I might have have to have my meds adjusted to cover more of the day rather than just the hours after each medication round.

My blood sugars seem to be good. I have been hovering in the  low 100s. I see my endocrinologist in a couple of weeks and it would be nice to see my A1C numbers around 7. I’m hoping for the best. The A1C is an average of 90 days of glucose readings. The ideal target is 5-7. Let’s just say my last labs back in Q4 of 2010 was above 10 (not good).

As for the weight, I have been hovering in the 230′s for the last couple of weeks. This is down from 275 earlier this year. My goal is to get to 220′s by the end of the year and then target another 15 pounds for Q1 of 2011. I have been weighing myself on a daily basis and one of the nurses at rehab said not to do that. I will be come fixated on the numbers and it is normal for the human body to fluctuate day-to-day. She recommends weighing once a week. I have been keeping a chart of my progress and will adjust to a weekly schedule.

I have been eating much better since the heart attack. 90% of my meals are cooked from fresh ingredients. No processed foods. I go to the market every couple of days to buy ingredients for meals. I try to make each meal so I can have leftovers later in the week. So what is the other 10%. The other 10% is when I’m out with family and eating at a place that I’m not quite sure if the food is fresh or processed foods. For example, birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, I know that their pizzas (while handmade) are probably made with meats and cheeses that are processed. Processed foods are way higher in sodium content. In fact 75% of the sodium that Americans get, come from processed foods. Frozen dinners are the worse culprit of all. Sodium is a preservative. So there are times, when i can’t make an informed decision on what to eat and there will be times where I don’t want to chow down on a bowl of greens. I’ll admit it, I can’t always eat a salad every time I’m at a place that is questionable. If the “unknown” factor is down to 5-10%, I’m ok with that, but the overall goal is food made locally and with fresh ingredients. For those that don’t know I have a good blog, I have been posting some of my meals and recipes on that site. Check it out at www.foodieindisguise.com

Well recently Apple has released new MacBook Airs. I want one. I want one really bad. This new models are faster than their predecessors with an 11″ and 13″ model. Mac OS X Lion is also out. I installed in on day one and haven’t had any problems whatsoever. The new gestures and navigation need some getting used to, but if you want to you set your setting to be the old way too. I think I will buy a Magic Trackpad so that I’m just navigating thru gestures and get rid of the mouse.

Here’s something you never knew about me. I have never set foot in a gym. The last time I was in a gym was probably my junior year of high school. Since then, I have never been in one. Almost everyone I knew in my life had a gym membership. I always was afraid to go into gyms. In my eyes, gyms were for people that were already in shape. I know, I know very silly, but that’s how I saw it. Gyms were a social activity for the fit and active, not for guys like me who need to work out. For years, I have always ga-fahed at going to a gym. Who wants to see someone like me on a recumbent bike or on the treadmill? You know what? Why should I care? For years I have put it in my head that I couldn’t go cuz I was afraid of being someone that would be ridiculed by all the good looking people at the gym.  Well fuck that. I need to live. I WANT to live and in order for me to do that, I need to keep working out, keep losing weight and start putting on some muscle mass. I’m not doing this for them, I’m doing this for ME.

There is a brand new LA Fitness Club being built 3 blocks from my house. It will be their new flagship location at over 62,000 sq. feet of exercise space along with racquetball courts, basketball, swimming pool, yoga studio, juice bar and a Kid’s Zone – to name a few. I walked into the Pre-sale office they setup here in the shopping center and went to get more information. The general manager was the one who was there and I felt like he was like a used car salesman, but I didn’t let that distract me from the reason I was there. I signed up for a membership. Yes, that’s right. For the first time in my life, I was a member of a gym. My membership is good at any LA Fitness. I can bring a guest and a couple of times a year, I can bring guests in free. He showed me a layout of the floor plans and this place is HUGE! A spin class specific area, courts, all the electronic machines had dedicated LCD monitors that you could hook up your iPhone or iPod and watch and listen to music. If you want you can just choose something to watch on them as they will have channels. The club is two levels. They are scheduled to open in less than 10 days.

Does anyone want to go with me and do my workout with me?

Well that’s it for now, I’m headed to bed. Have cardiac rehab in the morning…

Owwww…my back

Well I did something to my back. A muscle in my lower left hand back is twitching or something. I feel it when I walk and if I stand and lean forward at a particular angle, a sharp pain resonantes from down there.  I’m not sure if I pulled something during my workout on Tuesday, but I woke up on Wednesday morning with it. I took some Aleve to see if I could make the pain go away and it did for a little bit and I mosied (sp) myself into the office. Arshy told me to go home.

I got home and was on the floor for most of the afternoon. My bed was too soft and being on the floor helped a little bit. In fact, being on my side seem to be the best position – almost fetal like.

Anyway, I stayed home again on Thursday and did alot of IcyHot patches and 2 hot soaks. I had to cancel my workout tonite with my trainer. Cuz I didn’t give 24 hour notice he had to charge me for the session.:(

Feeling a bit better this evening, so will try to make it into the office tomorrow.

Workout 1.5

Today I was on-time. This was the first of our one hour sessions.  Jimmy wanted to do three laps around his complex. Our course was pretty much flat and we started off really slow. So slow in fact I kept trying to speed up. He wanted me to start slow. by the time we got to the 2nd lap we were doing a brisk walk, but not a run. Jimmy said he wanted to ramp up to a higher heartrate. He said that by starting off fast, I’ll tire quicker and my breathing would be labored.

Once we finished our three laps, we went into Super-set mode.  3 sets of 10 reps of the following:

Lying Tricep Extension “French Press
Pushdowns on Universal Machine
Alternating Standing Dumbbell Curls

Dumbbell Kickback
Standing Dumbbell Press (these really hurt)
Wide stance dumbell squat
Ball Crunch (this is the one I hate watching myself do)

I was in alot of pain after the workout. My thighes and arms hurt, but I guess that’s good.  Tonite was a test in endurance. Jimmy really pushed me tonite.

Workout 1.4

I got the days mixed upu and I was late for my 6:30pm session. I thought tonight was our 1 hour session that was supposed to start at 7.

Ooops.

Luckily, his 7pm client canceled, so I took his spot.

Tonite’s reps consisted of 10 reps per set (3 sets) in each of the following exercises:

For my chest
Standing Dumbbell Curls
Incline Dumbbell Press
Dumbbell Hammer Curls
Incline Dumbbell Flyes

For my back (Lats)
Pulldowns on the Universal Machine
Underhand Pulldowns on the Universal Machine
Dumbbell Row (What I call the lawn mower rep)

So TOMORROW is cardio starting at 7pm.

Workout 1.3

Well the Holidays came and I didn’t work out the entire week. I was sick in bed for several days. Jimmy, my trainer, was up at Lake Tahoe for the Holidays.

Today was the beginning of that huge Western winter storm that has reached Southern California. We were supposed to do cardio today and I dreaded doing cardio in the rain. Luckily Jimmy decided that we would do weights. Today was a 30 minute session.

We did the squats again today with the 15 lb weight. I look silly. Feel far apart, toes pointed out and squatting down. Watching myself in the mirror just made me laugh inside. But my thighs sure hurt.

We did more reps of some new exercises meant to target my arms and back. We used a new piece of weights that I have never seen before. It was a solid bar, but it was a weight. It was a single solid bar with no weights on the end. It weighed 24lbs.

The most important lesson I realized on my own today. When working with free weights, its the resistance on the retraction of the reps that is equally important. I found myself letting the weight of the barbell just fall, but to control the downward motion is the key.

We are moving to 2 sessions, 1 of 1 hour and the 2nd as a 30 minute session. In the 1 hour session, 30 minutes will be dedicated to cardio and the remaining on weight training.

Jimmy came out to me officially that he was gay today. I mean, he answered my ad looking for a gay or gay-friendly trainer, but I kinda couldn’t tell. I guess my gaydar decided to block his and for all intent and purposes whether he is gay or not, has no factor on my ability to train. But it was nice to hear.