Officially Lucky

I’m a casual reader of Om Malik’s blog, GigaOM and his other site WebWorkerDaily and I read in my news reader today that he had suffered a heart attack over the holiday break:

Happy New Year. As you may have noticed, my byline hasn’t been up on the site for a few days. That’s because the holidays weren’t exactly my most jolly. I had a heart attack on Dec. 28. I was able to walk into the hospital for treatment that night and have been recovering here ever since. With the support of my family and my team, I am on the road to a full recovery. I am going to be OK.

This is exactly where I don’t want to be when I’m Om’s age. My family members have never been the most healthy and I know that because of my genes I have a definite preponderance to drift toward an unhealthy lifestyle of body weight if I don’t take steps to reverse it. So I made a change in my life a few years ago, and while I’m not 100% where I’d like to be, health-wise, I feel that I’m about 10,000% better off than I was after I graduated college. I still don’t eat consistently healthy food. I’m good on breakfast and dinner (usually), but my lunch eating habits usually suffer.

As of right now, my daily activities include bike commuting 7 miles a day, which varies in intensity. I’ve not lifted in several months and while my body fat has dropped due to all the biking, my upper body muscle tone I has started to see in June is slowly fading. On the upside, my calf and thighs have seen pretty good improvements ;)

As of today I am heading back into the gym (I left my old gym when I moved and hadn’t gotten around to signing up at a new place until yesterday), and will be shooting for a workout five times a week. Yep, that even includes Fridays.

I am going to be starting back up my weight lifting routine, this time using a slightly modified 3x5 Starting Strength plan on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday, I will be doing extra cardio on the elliptical (45mins), sit ups, and hyperextensions.

I plan on being a bit more open with my progress here on my blog (fatblogging!) and elsewhere in hopes that my readers, friends, and family can motivate me and follow how I’m doing.