Post India Revelation: Great Food + No Exercise = Fat + Out of Shape

Unlike other vacations, India was not about doing things, it was about seeing people, and places, and eating along the way. The food was good up North. It was good down South. It was good home cooked. It was good in restaurants. It was good on safari. The food was quite consistently amazing, and I ate every meal like it was my last. Between bouts of sitting on my ass and/or sleeping.

Consequences? I am incredibly fucking out of shape. Strangely enough, I don't actually weigh that much more at all. I'm clocking in around 172. But I went out running today on a recovery run around the house. Normally this 4 mile run is my recovery run -- done very slow to make sure I don't get over 70% max heart rate. Its a hilly run, with approximately 600 feet climbing -- my house is the high point, so the first and last mile are steep down and steep up respectively. In late spring this year, I averaged 9:55/miles @ 138 BPM average HR. Today I averaged 10:15 @ 162 BPM. Thats right, slower pace at more apparent effort. 162-138/38 = 17% more effort to go 4% slower, to be concrete about it.  BTW I normally don't hit 162 except in long intervals and races.

As a bonus for slothing around and eating like a pig,  I've got incipient man boobs and significant love handles. Jesus. The Horror. Gentle reader, part of my motivation for getting my mojo back is pure shame at having moobs + mandles.

So, I've got a long ways to go to get back to being reasonably fit.

First thing first: diet. I've been reading about the Paleo Diet for some time, after talking to a friend who tried it and loved the way it made him feel. In the end, he loved bread more, but he goes Paleo when he starts training for events.
I'm going to eat as Paleo as I can. Given that this is the week before XMas, and Santa shaped Sugar Cookies are my Kryptonite, this will be a difficult challenge.

Second: how to measure. As shown above, weight apparently doesn't matter. Shape (literally) does. I can tell I have a (much!) bigger belly right now, so I'm going to measure it among other things to see whether I'm making progress.

• Belly: 35.5" (Good God, Man!)
• Waist: 34" (that's a whole lot of waist...)
• Chest: 45" (hard to tell how much of that is moobs)
• Bicep: 14.125" (shrunken from lack of activity)
• Quad: 23.125" (same)

I'm going to take measurements weekly, including the recovery run. Although next week is XMas at Moms house, not exactly a time and place you want to go all Spartan. The food is just too damn good! I'll bring the running shoes. If a  formerly-known-as-a-recovery-run kicks my ass this bad, doing it at 5000 feet ought to be, well, interesting.