It’s Been a Minute.

Posted on December 18, 2024 by fityak

Hey all! It’s been a minute since I have been able to successfully get into my WordPress to share with you. But somehow today with an update and a new SSL certificate, voila, back among the living like nothing was ever wrong. So weird because its been over a year and a half and so much has changed that I haven’t been able to tell you.

So what’s been happening? Everything and nothing. My kids have been kicking butt in their respective life paths. Natalie is thriving in New York following her passion for dancing. Sydney is excelling at Arizona State in their journalism program. Addison got recruited to play volleyball at Cal State University of Bakersfield and redshirted her first season. She is transferring to Ventura College to play Beach in the Spring and indoor in the ’25 season. Davis just finished off his junior year season of football with Bakersfield high School. They were the D1-AA Runner-ups in CIF Central Section. Basketball just started up, so he is fully into the Driller’s new season. So that’s it in a nutshell for the kids. My wife, Anna, has been going crazy like she always does with her job making sure that all of the kids at school are getting every opportunity to get a full high school experience. As for me? I turned 50, entered my 8th year in teaching full time, and I am no longer coach track or cross country in the hopes of having more time to spend with my kids as well as the possibility of finally getting back in shape.

Enter the problem. I never realized that reducing responsibilities actually somehow leads to being more busy. I still have not found the time, nor the energy, to get my but moving and do some workouts. I’ve developed plantar fasciitis again which does not feel good, and quite frankly can be debilitating at times. Maybe this January will be my time to get back to doing what is good for me?

Maybe?

One Step Forward…Ready for the Next Step

Posted on February 1, 2023 by fityak

Four days. I made it four days into my New Year’s workout pledge before life interrupted and I stopped. That was a month ago and I have not figured out how to get back into it.

The excuses are real:

1 – I thought that I would be able to get up early and work out, but my schedule has me going to bed too late, and not sleeping enough is almost worse than not working out.

2 – I took on more hours of work to teach night school on the nights my son doesn’t have basketball games, so there goes working out when I get home, ~~at least for a couple more weeks~~. Update: I’ll be teaching night school into May.

3 – I thought I could workout with my track runners during practice after school; but if I am working out, I cant really coach, and that’s not what I am there for.

It doesn’t look like I will get any real consistent work outs in any time soon.

So what do I have control over? The only thing that I can do to somehow change my body composition is by altering my caloric intake both in quantity and quality. For now this is what I must do and hope that at some point in the next few months I will be able to add some athletic specific activity to my already busy life.

1 – I started to drink a protein shake in the morning. I believe this is a good way to get the metabolism going in the morning.

2 – I am portioning better at mealtime and am avoiding going back for seconds.

3 – I am drinking less adult beverages during the weekdays. I don’t have much free time anyway. Sorry Lagunitas Brewery, I swear I’ll make up for it.

4 – I am drinking more water. Staying hydrated helps to curb food cravings and is just good for me all the way around.

Since I wont really be sharing about my workouts I need to figure out other things to share. Anyone have any suggestions?

Best intentions…

Posted on December 31, 2022 by fityak

We’ve all had those moments…the moments when we get these great ideas and just want to pounce on the opportunity to get going. Well I did it again. I was all excited that I had access to my blog and I really wanted to get back into it working out full ass, but full ass wasn’t in the cards. I forgot that it was the end of the year and we had no time between the end of school and Christmas. So my one workout that I got in last week we’ll call a soft opening. All it really did was get me hungry. No joke. I feel like all I did was eat and shop and eat and eat some more. Too many opportunities for yummy food. All the things.

Best intentions don’t amount to much without follow through. And as I so frequently teach my business classes, when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So my plan is so cliché but it works. I am going to start on Monday. Imagine that, a New Year’s resolution, Monday the 2nd it is! And I am going to be doing P90X3 and I’ll have to do it in the morning. Something I am not very fond of, but its the only way that I know it will get done every day. I mean it worked the first time, right?

The first time I started off with P90X. 90 minutes a day 7 days a week for 12 weeks. I had time and determination. It worked, This time I don’t have time, but I still have determination. So this has to work. I am committing to 4 weeks. I want to see that I can really do this again!

I have a question for you —if you have read this far, I’m hoping you’ll be interested in reading more about this new journey, and maybe you’ll even be encouraged to start your own journey, if you aren’t on one already — I would like to create a space here on this blog for people to interact and share ideas, if you are interested in helping to create that community, could you leave a comment? Maybe others will comment too? My one hope is that you benefit somehow from reading this blog. I am so looking forward to this next Happy New Year!

Sometimes you just need to start over

Posted on December 20, 2022 by fityak

Eleven years ago, I set out on a health and fitness journey. I was 37, fresh out of a divorce, overweight, unhealthy, unhappy, and needed a change. In January of 2012, I did what so many people try to do, I made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and take control of my life again. Well it worked, really well. So I started a blog to keep track of what was working and to share it with the world.

Fityak.com was created on May 2, 2012 (launch date May 6, 2012) with the mission of being dedicated to sharing the most up-to-date information about Health and Fitness as well as chronicle the life of a Father, Business Professional, and Sponsored Age Group Triathlete. And after 10 years, I filled that blog up with daily workouts complete with everything I ate every day for at least 3 or 4 years. Then as I decided to change careers and go into education and high school sports coaching, I slowed down on the posts. And then eventually the posts stopped, and so did any progress on my fitness. (The website even decided to stop working too, but we’ll talk about that in a bit.)

In 2020, right before the pandemic, I injured my bicep throwing a shotput during practice. As a result, I couldn’t throw the ball with my son or swim freestyle and had a hard time getting into the doctor to get it fixed. In 2021, somehow I got an abdominal hernia which took a turn for the worse and required a second and more serious surgery a couple weeks later. All good now. I finally got my bicep fixed earlier this year and I couldn’t be happier with the result! So now, as we near the end of 2022, I am feeling like this neglected body of mine needs a jumpstart before I turn 50. I have 15 months to figure all of that out.

Since my blog decided to stop letting me add any more posts, and that seemed to be the way that I remained accountable to myself for many years, sometimes you just need to start over. This time I am not waiting for everything to completely fall apart. It’s time to get back to it. Maybe you’ll join me on the journey?