Richard Ha writes:

Now that I’m no longer depending exclusively on exercising to lose weight, I’m enjoying the exercise much more. Read about my new way of eating here.

Instead of mostly aerobic exercise, now I’m combining it with weightlifting.

Four days per week, I do 10 minutes of warm-up on the elliptical trainer, followed by 10 light dumbbell warm-up reps for biceps, front and rear shoulder, side obliques and traps. In addition, I do 10 warm-up reps of cable pull downs and 25 reps of crunches. Then I do three more sets of these with a weight that I can just barely finish during the last rep.

So I end up doing 40 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and one warm-up set plus three working sets with the dumbbell. I like the idea that I do a total of 100 crunches in each session.

I’ve been doing some form of this routine for a while now. When I first started I could barely finish three sets. Now I can do four fairly routinely. I try to use a little more weight on one of the exercises each day, but not too much. It’s important not to hurt yourself by being overly enthusiastic. This is the most common reason people quit weightlifting.

I’m ready to include 30 minutes of elliptical workout on two additional days per week. This should be fairly easy to do. In a couple of weeks, I’ll train one day with heavier weights but fewer reps. My objective is to increase strength. I’ll describe that when I get into it.

I saw my friend Desmon Antone Haumea yesterday for the first time in several years, and he commented, “E Richard, you still solid, eh?” I hope to maintain that for the rest of my life.

My resting heart rate is 61 and my weight, 201. I’m going to eat a higher proportion of vegetables to meat for awhile.