My Fitbit

Seeing as I keep mentioning my Fitbit and how I've been using it, I thought I'd do a bit of a write up of it, how it works and what functions I use and those that I don't.

Fitbit Alta HR

The Fitbit I have is the Alta HR. It is not as full featured as some other Fitbits but I really like it. Mine was a birthday gift from my wife and I think she chose a great model as it doesn't have too many bells and whistles that mean it needs charging all the time, but it has enough useful info on it so you can see what's what at a glance and it pairs with your phone so if you want any more in-depth information it's all their in your pocket. 
I replaced my watch with the fitbit. I have a couple of alarms set for different times throughout the week and it does that no problems. You set the alarms on your phone and at the specified time the Fitbit starts to vibrate. You don't even need to be anywhere near your phone for the alarms to work, you could leave your phone at home and the watch will still vibrate at the correct time whilst you are at work.
The fitbit tracks how many steps you take throughout the day and you can always check that on the fitbit itself at any time by tapping on it twice to wake it up and then tapping once to scroll through the different information available. You can customise what information you want displayed and in what order on the app on your phone. It also has a G sensor in it so it often detects when you've moved your wrist to a position where you would normally read the time on a watch and wakes itself up.
I have mine set up to remind me every hour between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, if I haven't taken at least 250 steps. At 10 minutes to the hour, the fitbit will vibrate and display a message telling me I need to take some more steps to reach the 250 step goal for that hour. Unfortunately you can't change the 250 hourly step goal but it is still good as sometimes I get stuck into something and I lose track of time, this reminds me to get up and away from the computer. Sometimes I just walk to the kitchen to refill my water bottle and others I need to go a little further, but you soon figure out how far 250 steps is around your workplace. Some days I seem to get a reminder every hour and others I am doing over the 250 steps each hour anyway so it leaves me alone. The Alta HR also displays your heart rate (hence the HR) in its name. I don't actually look at this very much during the day but what it means is that it can calculate roughly how many calories you've burned and how long you've stayed in the "fat burning zone".
The fitbit automatically detects different types of exercise but I haven't found it that reliable. When I mow the lawn, it detects it as "Outdoor Bicycle". If I walk around a lot at work, and go up and down several flights of stairs opening doors and such as I go it can sometimes detect it as "Sport". You can go back in and edit and delete the detected activity, so I usually update the times that I've been mowing the lawn as I figure that it is technically exercise and I delete some of the other just walking around the office entries. I'm guessing that as I'm overweight that my heart rate goes up faster than a healthier person which is why it incorrectly thinks I'm exercising instead of just going about my business.
When used with your phone, the Alta HR can GPS track your exercise and show you a map of where you went, how far you went, how long you were exercising and things like that.
In the app you can track things like what you've eaten and how much water you've drank but I found that a little too much of a chore. It is pretty clever, you can scan barcodes off food products and it will usually detect it and update the nutritional information for you, or if it doesn't recognise it, you can add it yourself. You can also put in things like Big Mac or Large Red Apple and it will know what you mean.
I'll be putting my weekly weight into the app too so I don't forget where I started and so I can see any trends developing. Writing this blog will help me with that too, but if I wasn't writing it down here, then I may forget what I weighed in the previous week.
Each week fitbit email you with your weekly stats and you can look them up at anytime on the app. 
I'm pretty happy with the results of last week, I did 68,318 steps, my previous best week as far as steps goes was back in late Jan early Feb with 67,569 steps. My three month daily average is currently 6,043 steps per day, so this should go up and by the end of October I'm hoping my daily average will be over 10,000.
I wear the fitbit in bed each night and it tracks my sleep for me, I have a goal of 8 hours sleep each night but I only ever get that on the weekends, I'm not really concerned as long as I'm not feeling too tired at work, my weekly average is usually somewhere around 7hr 30min. I try to go to bed around 9pm and my alarm goes off at 6am on weekdays, so you'd think that I'd be getting plenty of sleep. I usually read for a bit before going to sleep and the fitbit tells me that I'm usually asleep somewhere between 9:30pm and 10pm but I wake up several times each night, sometimes I'm awake for a while and other times I think I just roll over and go back to sleep almost straight away.
So that's what I use my fitbit for, I'm sure you could do more with it if you wanted to. I didn't go into some of the features I've never even played with like "Female Health". I'm not sure why this is even an option for me when my account is clearly set up as a male, but you can hide features that you don't want to see. Out of curiosity I've opened the female health option up just now and it states "Fitbit can help you track you period, fertile window and symptoms like cramps and headaches". So I'll be hiding that again right about now and I'll continue to be happy that I'm a bloke.
There are challenges that you can set with your friends and some which are just personal challenges. I don't really get into them but I'm sure they help some people stay motivated.
As far as charging it goes, I charge it once a week, usually on a Sunday night between dinner and bedtime and it lasts the week, it is usually warning of a low battery by that time too. The only time I take it off is to shower or if I need to get my hands wet, or when it might get dirty like when washing the car or cooking dinner.

Bomber.

Video Editing

Wow, what a minefield of information there is out there about video editing and to top it off, as I want to shoot with a 360° camera but output standard 16:9 videos, this makes it more of a challenge to find the right software. There is this great youtube channel by Ben Claremont and I think he calls it something like "Life in 360". When I've been researching the different types of cameras currently available as well as the editing software required to make videos from 360° cameras, I keep coming across his videos and most of them are great. On Ben's website you are able to download sample footage from some of the different 360° cameras that he owns. He also has some tutorial videos on using some of the different video editing software out there. 
So far I think I've figured out that I want to use a GoPro Fusion to

record my footage (I'll go into detail in another post). Once I capture the footage, I then need to render that footage in the GoPro Fusion Studio software. Lots of people complain that the GoPro Fusion Studio software is hard to use and is very resource intensive on your PC. Thankfully, thanks to Ben's sample footage and the fact the GoPro software is free, I've been able to test it on my PC and it seems to work fine. Rendering a video does take a while though, it took 5 minutes to render a 30 second video. But it works well and pretty fast whilst editing the video and I can always let my PC render overnight or something. I guess the software might work slower with larger files but the largest sample I could get was only one minute long.
Once I've got what I want from the GoPro software, then ideally I open it in another piece of software that allows me to re-frame the shots, do the camera panning as well as add any text, special effects, voice over, additional audio or background music. The software that I would like to use to do all of that is Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premier Pro but at $30 a month for either of them I don't think that is viable at this time. 
The possible solution that I've found is that I first open the video in another piece of free software that is actually for a different camera. Insta360Studio will allow me to add the correct panning on the images to make it look like someone was there with me moving the camera around. After I've captured all the shots that I want I have to export them from Insta360Studio and import them into the last piece of software to do the text and audio components. There is some pretty decent software out there for free for this last part and it may just do the stuff that I need Insta360Studio to do but I can't find any definitive answer on that part yet. DaVinci Resolve seems to be the pick of the free software so I think I'll give that a go first. 
One more thing ticked off the list, I have a software solution that I'm happy with for the moment and even though it's three different pieces of software, it's all free. Shame the camera is going to be a little more expensive than I'd like.

Bomber.

Motocamping

The other day I started looking at Google maps and worked out possible locations that I could go motocamping. I figured that I'd still work off the 20 episode idea so I'd need at least 10 different locations. I started looking fairly close to home and found that there were a number of places that I'd like to try and give a go. I also looked a little further a field so I could mix it up a little. I'm thinking that I'd aim for four trips a year. Two 3 night trips and two 2 night trips. Ideally I don't really want to ride any further than two hours each day to start with, but those two hours need to have some sort of interesting views or something as who wants to watch someone ride up the Hume Highway.
After not much time at all I've now got over twenty potential locations. They range from fairly well established campsites that are a little out of the way to just trying to find a nice spot to camp in a state forest. Most state forests you can camp wherever you like as long as it is not in a designated picnic spot. The best part is that state forests are free to camp in.
My bike is capable of riding on dirt roads and I like the idea of getting off the beaten track a little. I headed off to a potential camp site a month or so ago and thought it looked like a great place to actually stay the night. I only stopped and made myself a coffee before heading off a different way. This spot was in a national park, it's a little out of the way on a dirt road so should be pretty quiet outside peak times. Camping in national parks isn't free but it's usually under $30 a night so not too bad and they are actually maintained and often have toilets and some form of water available too.
Things are starting to come together so I just hope my wife gets on board with the idea.

Bomber.

Weighing in

So it's Saturday, that means that it's been 7 days since I last weighed myself. As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm not going to weigh myself throughout the week but I think I should weigh myself weekly to help keep me on track. I've heard or read somewhere that you can reach a plateau when losing weight and it can be hard to keep the weight loss going. My plan is that if I start having a few weeks where there isn't much or any weight loss that's when I'm going to start to add some weights into my exercise routine. Nothing too much but I'd like to get some dumbbells and do a little bit of upper body work. Biceps and things like that, things I can do in the garage or in the house. Hopefully that will be enough to kick things into gear again if the time comes.
My diet has basically been the same as always for breakfast and dinner. I'm got over 10,000 steps Monday through to Friday and most days I've had a wrap with cold meat and salad for lunch. I haven't had a chocolate or can of coke all week, I did have half a glass of post-mix coke on Thursday but that was more because I wasn't thinking when I was ordering. Apart from the two biscuits on Sunday night I haven't snacked on anything between meals, well kind of.. we did have a morning tea on Tuesday and I had a couple of party size sausage rolls and some sort of sticky bun but I got a small wrap for lunch to try and compensate. Friday we also had a morning tea but I then skipped lunch entirely. No beers were drunk Sunday through Thursday and I'm finding it fairly easy so far to do all of this, which I find surprising. I've tried reducing my junk intake before and really struggled to do exactly what I'm doing now. I think writing the blog is helping me stay focused and keeping me on track.
The scales we have are just the ordinary bathroom scales, I don't know how accurate they are but they only go up to something like 125kg so I was pretty surprised when I almost made it do a full lap of the dial last weekend. I don't really care if the scales are accurate or not, as long as I use the same scales each week then I should be right.
Ok, I said I wouldn't drag it out, so here it is, I currently weigh 112kg. As far as I can remember, this is the first time in my life that I've lost weight. I don't usually weigh myself very often but I did know that I was putting on weight as my clothes were getting tighter and my tummy was getting further out in front. 2kg in a week is good result all things considered and I'm happy with it. I can't wait to see how far I can take this and if each weeks gets better, worse, or stays the same.
I've been taking one or both of the kids with me when I've been going for my walks but I think that they are getting bored with it. That's kind of sad as I enjoy the time with them but it does mean that I could walk a bit faster and a bit further if they were not with me. I hope that they still come with me occasionally.
Today didn't go exactly as planned as far as walking was concerned. I should have done something this morning. After lunch I was pretty busy with dropping my wife at work, getting the kids ready for swimming and then taking them there. I had planned on going for a walk during the swimming lesson but it was my daughters first lesson in the big pool so I decided to stick around and give some smiles and encouragement. I'm glad I did that as I enjoyed it and I think it help her get through it. It then started raining, only lightly but the kids were tired from swimming so I couldn't take them with me as my wife was still at work I was stuck at home. I then needed to pick my wife up from work and then cook dinner. I think I need to have a plan B for the weekends, maybe I don't stress about the number of steps I do and do some weights at home instead, I'll think about it some more.

Bomber. 
112kg

Sleep and getting to bed on time

On Sunday I had a bit of a hard time going to sleep. I was in bed around 9pm and reading my book. Because I have been drinking so much more water than usual I had to get up and go to the toilet around the time that I would usually put the book down and try to go to sleep. Then as I hadn't had any beer or any snacks I started to get hungry and thirsty too. It's odd, it's kind of like the more water I drink the thirstier I get, not sure what's going on there.
So at around midnight I was still awake, I got up and went to the toilet again.... I then also drank some more water. I was so hungry by then that I had to have something to eat. As I'm trying to be good I was searching the fridge and pantry for something that would take the edge off  my hunger but not be too much and also if it would be as healthy as I could find. Well, I ended up with two yoghurt topped biscuits. They were not healthy but they had raisins and yoghurt so points for trying right?
I'm not sure why I couldn't sleep, I've been getting more exercise than usual, I didn't get out of bed too late on Sunday morning, it was sometime around 8:30am. Maybe because I was thinking about work as I'd been off on leave for the previous two weeks.
My Fitbit reminds me at 9pm each night that it is time for bed and I'm trying to stick to that as I think getting enough sleep is also helping me avoid eating sugary foods and soft drink. I've haven't been feeling like I need the sugar hit to get me through the day.
The rest of the week wasn't as bad as Sunday but I was still feeling a little hungry each night when trying to go to sleep, but it's been getting better each day. I think it's odd that I can go to sleep feeling hungry but wake up and not feel hungry anymore. Although I'm still finding that I'm thirstier now than I was before I started trying to drink more water. I've heard that you can often mistake thirst for hunger and maybe that's what I've been doing, my body was telling me I'm hungry when in fact it should have been telling me that I was thirsty and now it's getting water again, it's asking for more if it.
I'm also not having as much issues with having to go to the toilet lots because of the water intake, it's like my body is adapting or something. Kind of weird and kind of cool that the body is so adaptable.
Tonight is a beer and pizza night, I think I've earned it but I guess the scales will tell the tale tomorrow morning.

Bomber.
13,000+ steps today

Audio

So I've been thinking about audio and how I'm going to record it for the videos I'm going to produce. The camera's all have built-in mics but as they are going to be a fair way from my helmet and getting the full force of the all the air rushing past the motorbike, that's not going to cut it. You can buy little mics that you can plug into your phone, they start at $1 on ebay, but I don't think I'd trust them. They go all the way up to well over $100 for just a small lapel mic and into the $1000s for better ones that attach to cameras or other audio recorders.
I'm going to have to stuff the mic in my helmet somehow, so it has to be small, but then I have to connect it to my phone. The trouble is that I like having my phone on the phone holder when I'm doing longer trips. That way I can have it plugged into the USB charger whilst I ride.
I don't like the idea of having the phone attached to the bike and a cable attached running from the phone into my helmet. I don't even like the idea of having headphones in even if the phone is in the pocket of my jacket. I have this fear that if I come off the bike that the cable will get caught on something and rip the ear-buds out of my ears and I think that would hurt, like a lot. If I come off the bike I want to minimise the amount of potential damage I do to myself. Anyway I was meant to be talking about audio, not hurting myself.
I've seen that other vloggers use dedicated audio recorders and not even their smart phones. I guess that kind of makes sense as an audio recorder is optimised for doing just that, so it would get better battery life and better audio capture. One motovlogger that I used to watch all the time had a small lapel mic that he used to hold in his hand and it was attached with a long cable to the camera he was shooting on. I guess that works, but it doesn't really look all that good and like I said previously I'm wanting to make the videos look as good as I can. 

Shark Evo One Helmet

One of the other issues I will have is that I have a flip-top or dual homogenised helmet. This means that the chin-bar flips up and over the top of the helmet, essentially making it an open face helmet. They are great for riding in all seasons but maybe a little noisy. The drama for motovlogging is that you can't put a mic in the chin-bar, well at least not that easily, as the chin-bar still has to hinge and open and I don't want to have to be continually adding and removing the mic as I ride along. The flip top presents another issue as I can't mount a 360° camera on the top of the helmet which would probably have been the ideal location. I think I have a solution for that which should be pretty good and doesn't involve buying a second helmet just for vlogging. I wouldn't want to wear another helmet anyway as I really like the helmet I've got.
I can see I'm going to have to do more research and I hope I can find something at a decent price that won't upset my wife too much. You've got to spend money to make money right? I hope so. 
I do have a cheap bluetooth headset on the helmet at the moment but I've tried recording audio from it previously and didn't have much luck. Maybe I should do a bit more research into that too and try a few more ways and different apps. I can't imagine that the sound quality will be any good but I guess I'd be a fool not to try it out first.
I was naughty today and went out for lunch with a colleague and had a burger with egg and a small side of chips, I also ordered a glass of coke but it tasted too sweet so I only had about half of it.  We often go and get a pie from the bakery for lunch on Friday so I'm not sure what I'm going to get instead, maybe a spinach and ricotta pastie or something. It's Thursday but I don't actually feel like having a beer so I think that I'll give it a miss today. That's odd enough in itself.

Bomber.

Seven Days, Seven Posts

Well it's been seven days and I've made seven posts. I guess I'm on my way to making this blogging thing a habit. I've also been walking everyday so hopefully that is going to become a habit too. I still haven't weighed myself again, I'm going to hold off until Saturday as that will be seven days since I last did and it will be like the Biggest Loser weekly weigh in or something, although I won't drag out standing on a set of scales into an hour long blog or anything.
I haven't told my wife about the blog yet and I want to hold off as she'll want to read it. It kind of helps that I feel that I'm writing this for myself and I like the thought of the anonymous people on the internet who may find this blog and decide that they want to read about my adventures in bettering myself. If I'm typing away on the keyboard I always have an ear out in case someone is coming to see what I'm up to. I don't want to have to explain it to my kids just yet and my wife would always want to know if and what I was writing about her.
I've avoided most of the bad food in the pantry at home and haven't had a beer since Saturday night, but I'll probably have a couple tomorrow night. I've also been having wraps and sandwiches instead of hot food for lunch at work. My water intake is getting better too but still needs improvement.
I need to talk to my wife some more about getting a camera and what my plans are. I don't want to scare her and make her think I'm wanting to run off camping every weekend or that I'm not going to have time to help around the house. I need to make sure that she realises that although I need a hobby to occupy my mind, I also want to try and have a serious go at making us some extra money whilst I'm at it.
I've been doing more research and I think that using Patreon may also help. I could still release videos on YouTube but put the raw 360 footage up on Patreon for a small subscription fee or something. So many ideas, but it does feel good to be writing them down instead of just thinking about them.
I'm not sure if I'll continue to post each day but for now I think I'll try to keep it up, that may change when I actually get out camping or have video to edit in my spare time. I also don't know if I'll have enough to talk about each day as more and more of my ideas are getting written down and hopefully things will start coming together.

Bomber

360° Camera

On the weekend I decided to start the conversation with my wife about buying a 360° camera for filming things on my motorcycle. I didn't go into much detail but just said that I thought I wanted one so I could maybe upload some videos to YouTube or something. I showed her some videos on my phone that people had uploaded to FaceBook and she agreed that they were cool. She didn't like the price though.
The consumer 360° cameras don't have quite the image quality I was hoping for but that may just be how some people are using them as there is some really nice looking footage by some users and others not so good even when they are supposedly using the same make and model of camera.  
I've looked at a few options and am still deciding on which one I'd like to get and just how far into this whole YouTube business I'd like to go. From what I've researched so far, just to start using Google's AdSense for monetising videos there are a few things I'd need to do before I can apply for the program.
1. I need to have 1000 subscribers.
2. I need to have 4000 viewed hours in the last 12 months.
So this is again where I think the opportunity lies. There probably won't be as many people giving it a go and starting new channels, however, those that do give it a go will need to be producing good content if they wish to succeed.
There are other ways to make money from YouTube too, they involve actually selling products, whether that is merchandise relating to your channel or through an affiliate program where you get links and if people click on those links and buy something then you get a commission. To do this at least you don't need to meet the same criteria as AdSense, but you still need people to actually watch your videos and click on the links.
I'm not a huge fan of ads and links in videos but at least I understand why lots of channels do them. I think to be successful I'll need to be smart about the way I try and make money and not shove the advertising down peoples throats.
Lots more to think about I guess.

Bomber

Getting Walking

Ok, so I know it's only been a couple of days since I set myself the target of 10,000 steps each day. I read somewhere that 10,000 steps will take an average person about 1hr and 40mins of walking and I'd have to agree with that so far. When I told my wife that I was going to try and go for a walk each day she kind of laughed and said that I didn't really look like someone who walked.
The last few days I've managed to go for a half hour walk with the kids and added roughly 3,000 steps to my daily total each day. It was the weekend and I don't do a lot in the morning. I usually sleep in a little and then get ready to go to my Dad's on Saturday, we usually get back around 2:30pm so I headed out around 3pm. On the way back we stopped at the park so the kids could have a go on the swings for a few minutes. If I didn't have the kids with me I probably would have walked a little longer and walked a little faster but it's so nice just walking with my kids and talking to them.
It's also really cold and windy at the moment being the middle of winter. When I was walking on Saturday, the BOM website claimed that it was around 10°C but with the wind-chill factor it was something like 3°C. You can't help but love the Canberra winters though. They are usually very cold but so clear and sunny, if you can rug up or keep yourself busy outdoors it's a fantastic time of year.
If I can continue to walk for 30 minutes each afternoon, on weekdays I should be easily smashing the 10,000 steps and hopefully put some extras in the bank to make up for the shortfall on the weekends.
The kids go back to swimming lessons on Saturday and I usually take them, so if the pool isn't too busy I might just jump in and do some laps myself or use the time to go for a longer walk. 
I'll keep you posted, I think I can actually say I'll literally keep you posted... that was bad, sorry.

Bomber 
Over 11,000 steps today.

So... the YouTube idea

Why do I want to make YouTube videos? Why do I think I can make money from them? Have I lost my mind?
Most evenings, once the kids are in bed, my wife likes to watch TV in the lounge room. For a while I used to watch some of the shows with her but I just couldn't stand watching some of the things she is interested in.
I started playing games on the computer most evenings instead of watching TV, however, I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos recently. I don't mean the whole funny kittens or fail type videos, at least not very often. I subscribe to a few channels that regularly do things that I'm interested in. It started out with watching reviews for different motorcycles when I was looking to buy one. It's moved now to watching other people going camping on their motorcycles or what's more commonly called motocamping. I also like watching some of the bush-craft channels too. I might put together a list in a future post.
There are a number of channels out there that do motocamping and every one of those channels that I watch say that they want to do more motocamping but, for whatever reason they have been unable to do so, so it just ends up being more vlogging and less motocamping. I also really like videos where some effort has been put into the production of the video, not just a dodgy camera strapped to the bars of a bike and terrible audio to go with it. I'd like to have a go at making some decent videos and having decent cameras, not professional cameras, but at least something with some decent stabilisation and image quality. The GoPro cameras seem to the way to go at the moment but you either need a few of them to capture different angles or do multiple takes. All of this is possible, it just adds to the complexity and the amount of kit you'd have to take with you on the bike as well as the cost.
The idea I have is to use one of the new 360° cameras that are currently available. Something like the Rylo or Insta360 One. These allow you to record video as you go, but turn the 360° image into a standard fixed image where you can pan around and get different angles. It would allow me to use it like a dash cam and then when I edit the video I can pan around to get the best views. It would also allow me to release some videos in the 360° format so if you had a VR headset you could essentially ride as my pillion and take in the sites however you liked. I think I could make money from these videos on YouTube as it appears to be a growing market and whilst there is a fair bit of content out there at the moment, there isn't a lot of new content being uploaded each week. I'm aware that there have been changes recently to how YouTube monetises content and I think that it presents an oppurtunity. Some of the smaller channels will probably lose momentum and will stop making content.
I want to have a set structure to the channel and be consistent. I want my videos to look somewhat professional, not just a ramdom collection of clips. I get the vlogger cut and why people do that, but I'd prefer to not have chopping and cutting just to get a clear point or message across, I'd like to be able to deliver that point or message clearly and concisely in the one take, even if it takes more than one take. I've been toying with the idea of having seasons of say 20 episodes where I upload a new video every week for 20 weeks and then take a break. That would give me a chance to record more footage and also take the pressure off having to go out camping all the time, this is meant to be fun after all. There are not many quality shows out there that pump out 52 episodes each year yet for some reason, this is what YouTubers try to do. I think the season break builds excitement and stops viewers from getting bored.
The videos that I like are usually two parts. Part one is riding to the camp ground, setting up and having a look around. Part two is the next day, packing up and heading home. If I did two nights camping back to back, I could essentially get four videos out of each trip, that's only 5 trips a year to get all 20 episodes, less if I do some three night trips. It sounds do-able but it will really depend on what my wife thinks and as she works most weekends, trying to find out if this thing is actually possible is one of the challenges I guess. Will I have enough battery life in the camera? Will I have enough storage space on the camera? How will I record audio? Where will I go? What will I talk about? These are all things that I need to figure out and plan for if this is to be a successful undertaking.
The first step in achieving this goal is to get my wife on board with my idea and then buy a camera. I'm not sure what her thoughts will be. A while back she did suggest that I should give it a go when I was telling her about some of these YouTubers who now make a living from their videos. To start with I'd be happy stockpiling footage prior to starting a channel, this should take some of the pressure off of me to deliver a new video once a week.
Once I have my wife on board and a camera, it'll be time to test things out and see if I'm any good at actually making videos for others to enjoy. 

Bomber.

What I put in.

If you believe what you see on TV, 80% of weight-loss is based on your diet. So what is my diet really like. For the last few years my diet has consisted of:

Weekday Breakfast: Bowl of cereal with light milk
Weekend Breakfast: 4 crumpets with butter and honey or, 4 slices of toast with peanut butter.
Weekday Morning: Medium flat white coffee with full cream milk and one sugar.
Weekend Morning: Large mug of coffee from one of those coffee pod machines with light milk and one sugar.
Weekday Lunch: Something from the cafe at work, usually with a cup of hot chips. This could be a sausage roll, battered fish, chicken schnitzel or kiev, chicken or beef burger, you get the drift. I also have a can of Coke with lunch most days.
Saturday Lunch: We have lunch at my Dad's nearly every Saturday and he makes pizza. Dad makes the bases and them tops them with olives, pepperoni, tomato and dried herbs. They are delicious and the kids love them.
Sunday Lunch: Is toasted sandwiches or something like that depending on what's in the fridge.
Weekday Afternoon: If there is something in the cupboard like donuts, muffins or scones I'll usually have some of them.
Weekend Afternoon: I'll often graze on what ever is in the cupboard or fridge. Right now there are party lollies in the pantry and snack size chocolate bars as well as a block of chocolate in the fridge. It's not good and I know it. In my defence, I don't do the shopping and if there isn't junk in the pantry I won't go and buy any. But in reality no one is forcing me to eat it.
All Dinners: We eat a lot of pasta based meals and a lot of easy to prepare meals using packets of powders or sauces and taco kits. Those sorts of things. I'll cook a roast or lasagne or something on the BBQ at least once a week. We also get home delivered dinner usually once a week, not usually pizza as we have that every Saturday with Dad but often we'll have Red Rooster or Chinese. If we get Red Rooster we won't get the roast chicken with peas, we'll get burgers or rolls with chips and a drink. I'll often have a beer with dinner too.
Every Evening: Another beer or two (if I have any left for the fortnight) and more often than not a couple of snack size chocolate bars from the pantry.

So, not the best diet really, writing this all down has kind of made me hungry but also made me realise just how unhealthy I've been eating.

What am I going to do about it? Well let's start with the easy things first. No more hot chips at lunch, I'm going to get a wrap or sandwich from the cafe at work instead of hot food. I'm going to swap the can of coke for water. At home I'm going to drink more water instead of the junk and as I stated in my first post, I'm going to cut back on the amount of beer I drink each week.

I'm hoping that with these small changes, when combined with the walking, I will start to see some weight coming off. I don't think that I'll start a food diary or anything, fitbit already email me each week with how many steps I take and I can record my weight in the fitbit app too. I think that maybe once a week I'll update this blog on how my weight loss it going. I don't think I want to weigh myself daily as that could potentially demotivate me when it doesn't move much.

Bomber.
114kg

Exercise and Me

Where do I begin with trying to get myself to exercise. I lie in bed at night and regularly wish that I was more motivated to exercise. I've done this for probably 20 years.

Image courtesy of bicyclecanberra.blogspot.com

When I was child, up until I got my first car, I rode my pushbike everywhere. It started in primary school just riding to and from school. It was one footpath with no roads to cross and only took maybe five minutes. I didn't go up and down mountains just for fun, I didn't go out seeking BMX tracks or anything like that, at least not very often. I had a BMX and then a mountain bike and I stuck to the bike paths wherever I could. Growing up in Canberra there were plenty of decent bike paths that could get you almost anywhere. Some weren't the most direct route but they were safe, usually well maintained and not really busy. They weren't just painted on the side of the road either, they were their own entity.

From around the age of 12 I'd look at a map, a paper street directory usually from the phone book (sounds so funny saying that now). I'd plot out a route to a friends house and then hop on the bike. My limit was somewhere around an hours ride as none of my close friends lived any further away than that. If I could find a bike path that went near where I was going, that was all I needed. All through high school and college I rode my pushbike everywhere but I always had a little bit of a pot belly, not much, just a little.I used to push myself and see how fast I could ride to a friends house or just around the lake and back home.

When I was 17 or 18 I had a gym membership for 6 months. I used to go to the gym around twice a week with a friend of mine, I never saw any results so I gave up going. Shortly after this I started working the graveyard shift in a supermarket three to four nights a week. I'd start at 10pm and work through to 7am, mainly packing shelves but also serving customers. This was quite physical and we'd work hard each night to get things done. Working the graveyard shifts meant that my diet wasn't very good as I was drinking two or three energy drinks a night, eating chips and chocolate bars instead of proper food and then I'd go home and eat a fairly large meal and hop straight into bed.

After several years of doing the supermarket graveyard shifts I moved to working in hospitality. I was managing a small pub, working six days a week, ten to twelve hours each day. Then I'd usually have a couple of drinks after work before going home and doing it all again. On the one day of the week that the pub was closed, I'd still often go down there and do some cleaning. I remember this one time where I fell asleep on the floor behind the jukebox that I was trying to fix, I was just that exhausted. Dinner was usually something from the deep fryer at the pub or pizza from across the street. Fun times.

Now with wife and kids I have a regular office job. A few years ago I started trying to go the the pool for a swim on the way to work twice a week, it was great the first few times, however it turns out that I was just lucky and had started doing this during school holidays. When school went back, the pool became super busy in the morning and there were often three to four people trying to share the one lane swimming laps. As it was busy the change rooms were also a mess and all the benches would be wet and you'd sometimes have to wait to have a shower. Not the end of the world but not pleasant either. I stopped going at this time.

For my 40th birthday my wife bought me a Fitbit. I don't think she was trying to say anything but now I have this device on my wrist that tracks my every movement. It lets me see how well I've been sleeping and just how much sitting around doing nothing I do. For the first week or so I tried tracking what I was eating on the Fitbit app but that was starting to feel like a chore. I was also just trying to record how much water I was drinking and trying to drink more water. Usually I'd be lucky to drink 600ml of water each day.

As time has gone on and I've been thinking more and more about losing weight I started looking at getting an elliptical trainer or a home gym. My wife and I hired an elliptical trainer prior to getting married. I really quite enjoyed it, but after a while we both stopped using it. To buy a decent elliptical or even hire one again is possible, however we don't have room for it in the house so it would have to go in the garage and it's not a nice garage and there isn't a heap of room. I can see it getting in the way and ending up not being used as it would be too cold in Winter and too hot in Summer.

I was riding my motorcycle home from work last week and saw a couple just out for a walk and thought to myself, why don't I just do that, why don't I just get out and go for a walk each afternoon. It's free and if I quit walking (like I seem to do with everything else) then at least it hasn't cost me anything. So that's it, I'm now a walker, although I haven't started yet. Sometimes I swear I procrastinate about procrastinating.

Since I have a Fitbit, I now have a way of tracking what I'm doing. The Fitbit is set up with a default target of 10,000 steps each day. A little bit of research shows that 10,000 steps is a good target, it is meant to be enough that you'll do 7,000 - 8,000 steps in the course of a normal day and the extra 2,000 is from additional exercise. I'm no expert and I may have misread or misinterpreted what I read but that's what I'm aiming for, 10,000 steps each and everyday. Starting today! Maybe after lunch if the kids want to come with me or if they don't, I'll have to wait until my wife gets home from work. To start with I'm not going to push myself or carry weights or anything, just walk normally.

Bomber.

The first of a few firsts

Welcome and thanks for finding my blog. I've never had a blog before and this is my first post in that blog. So why now, why have I decided to write a blog? Hopefully I'll be able to explain some of that below.

I'm a 40 year old bloke who must be having some sort of a mid-life crisis or something. I've got a gorgeous wife, two awesome kids who are currently nine and six, a cat and a mortgage. I think I'm reasonably happy in most aspects of my life. I like the work I do and am not looking to change jobs or anything, I just think that I could do more with myself. I'm overweight but I don't like exercising. I make alright money but I'd like to make more. I want to go camping more often, with my family, with friends and by myself. I would love to have a block of land somewhere that I could go camping on and maybe one day build a house on it. I want to be a better parent and husband, not that I think I'm that bad, but I feel that I don't do enough for my wife and I don't spend enough quality time with my kids. I want a second bathroom, whether that is by extending our house or buying a new one. I want, I want, I want and I don't think that is a good way to be.

The purpose of this blog is to be a sort of diary of the journey I intend to take, a journey of bettering myself if I can. I also want to use it to record ideas and thoughts so I can look back on them and see where I've been and keep me on track. I want to be in a position where I'm healthier and also earning more money by generating a second income by doing something that I love. I am a firm believer that I can do almost anything I put my mind to, the only caveat that I would put on that is that I think I have to want to do something before I'll really give it a go. If it interests me then I'll want to learn more about it and/or get better at it. I also believe that by writing something down and setting goals then I have a greater chance of achieving them, rather than just wishing or thinking about the shoulda coulda woulda scenarios. If I have a purpose or hobby that I enjoy then I also think that I may just stop wanting so much and be happier with what I have.

A few years ago I purchased a motorcycle. The aim was ultimately to save money and that is how I sold the idea to my wife, yes we saved money and continue to do so, but the more I thought about it, the more I just wanted a motorcycle and the savings were just the icing on the cake. We were a two car family, my wife drives an SUV and I had a hatchback. The hatchback was only ever driven to and from work, on the weekends we would use the SUV if we went anywhere as a family. Once or twice a year I'd go camping and take the SUV and leave the hatchback with my wife. By getting a motorcycle and selling the hatchback we were saving money on parking costs, fuel, rego and insurance. We are saving enough that we can afford to hire a small car for the weekend if I ever want to take my son camping, however, so far we haven't hired a car even once.

Having a motorcycle opened my eyes to what I'd been missing out on. I thoroughly enjoy riding and have been slowly purchasing lightweight camping kit that I can actually take on the bike with me. I've been camping three times in the last 18 months and each time has been on the bike. When I've headed off I've had a mate come along with me but they took their car. The first time I put my tent in their car but then I purchased a smaller tent so I could fit everything on the bike. I'm now at the stage where I think I have everything I need to be self sufficient on the motorcycle. I want to turn my love of camping on my motorcycle into an income stream and the only way I can think of doing it is by trying to make a YouTube channel about it. I don't think that I'll make a lot of money but I think just the excuse to get out and ride to different camp grounds, the planning and the post production work that will go into it will keep my mind occupied and give me some purpose other than just going to work. I'll go into more detail in a future post.

So what's the getting healthier plan? Well, I want to start exercising more and doing some weights to increase the amount of muscle I have. If I start trying to keep accurate records and setting myself goals, I'm hoping to be able to make some sort of a difference. Changing what I have for dinner is probably not going to happen, I'll eat whatever the rest of the family is eating. I'm not going to count calories or anything like that, I'm just going to try and avoid chocolate, sweets and other junk food. I also want to reduce my intake of beer. I don't think that I drink too much or anything, I'd like to think that I drink about the same as an average bloke my age in a similar situation. I get a box of beer once a fortnight on pay day and it doesn't usually last until the next pay day, in fact I don't think it has ever lasted the whole fortnight. I usually have two a night during the week and three or four on Friday and Saturday. That means I have a couple of days without beer before the next box. I'd like to try and have no beer Sunday thru Wednesday, in other words, only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This isn't a hard and fast rule as I'm sure that there will be times where we go out for dinner or something where I might like a beer, this is just a general goal. I'd like to get to pay day and still have a full six pack in the fridge from the last box. This will also help with saving money.

Well, I don't want to drag on too much in my first post. I've got more detail that I'd like to go into on both the motorcycle camping and getting healthy but I think this is a good start to my first blog and I don't want to ramble on too much.

I haven't really decided if I want to name myself in this blog or not so I think I'll just sign off as Bomber for now which is a play on Bettering Of Me as I don't think I like just Bom.

So thanks again for reading my first ever post in my first ever blog, please leave a comment and ask any questions. I guess if you are reading this in the distant future maybe just make sure that I'm still posting fairly regularly if you are wanting a response from me! 😉

Bomber.