Epic Fitness and my road to a better health (Epic Journey #1)

So I joined a gym, but before you laugh and think this is a new years resolution you'll be wrong. You see just because I am posting this in the first couple of weeks of 2013 don't mean I just started the gym as a new years resolution what it does mean is I am still lazy in posting blogs.

I joined a new smaller, privately owned gym near work called Epic Fitness near the middle of November. My main reason to joining was to get into a better shape other than round and to also continue my fight to lower my cholesterol. You see last spring prior to beginning running I was told I had high cholesterol and being the off-spring of two families where heart disease runs rapid, having high cholesterol is not a good thing. So I began running and started watching what I was eating much more to lower my cholesterol and it worked.

So now you ask where Epic Fitness has come from? During the summer I had a goal, to run in the Sears Great Canadian Run to End Kids Cancers in October, that is now over and I have reached my goal. I was now noticing myself doing nothing again because I had no goal and fall/winter months in Ottawa are quite cold to be running in.

So I decided to visit Epic Fitness and get an overview and have some questions answered for myself:

1. How large is the gym?
2. Are the trainers there to help you or just take your money?
3. How clean is the gym?
4. How much does it cost?

1: The gym square footage wise it not as large as some of the major gym brands out there, but they also have a limited membership so they are not trying to pack the place full just to get more money. They also do not have a lot of machines that do the workout for you, what you will see is a lot of weights to help you do any exercise you may want to do.

2: This is a difficult question to answer since all trainers and gyms will want your money, its how they make their living. But what I will say is that the gym owner has called me personally before when I missed a couple of weeks to see where I was. I take this as going the extra little bit to help motivate someone to get there ass back in the door. 

3: The gym is spotless is the best and easiest answer I can give for this. It is well maintained, well lit, free of obstacles, and the members seem to keep the place clean.

4: Epic Fitness has two different options for monthly memberships depending on what time of day you would need access. For full hours access it costs $45 a month and I think a time limited access is somewhere around $30. When/if you do first sign up you need to also purchase three training sessions with a trainer to get an understanding of the gym and equipment. This actually works out to four sessions and costs somewhere around $240 for the four sessions and the first month membership fees. Visit Epic Fitness for further information.

So after you have now read this I guess its safe to assume that yes I did sign up and was lucky enough to have the owner of the gym as my trainer, Neil Frotten who was also on the Red Bull Crashed Ice. I have done all of my training sessions with him so far and I have learned a lot. At the time I could not afford to keep Neil as a personal trainer but I hope to change this in the near future. In the meantime I have been using an Android app called JE-Fit to help keep track of my progress and stats. 

In case you are wondering, below are my stats that were recorded in November. I am already down to 193lbs so I have some progress. Once I receive my initial pictures from Neil, I will also post them.

Waist @ bellybutton: 40.5"

Hips: 45"
Right Quad: 25.5"

Chest: 43.75"

Right Arm no flex: 14"

Weight: 199.6lbs

Body Fat: 25.9%

I will be posting progress reports here monthly on how my progress is going at Epic Fitness with Neil.

Christmas and New Years 2012/2013

I seem to say it every time I post a new post here that I haven't done it in a while and I will try to write more, so here I am saying it again with a new post full of a lot of information.

So where do I begin, December was a busy month with the typical work/personal Christmas parties throughout the month, I was also able to score myself a new phone the much hyped and difficult to get, Google Nexus 4. I was able to get a order placed on Google through much F5ing to get the page to work properly. I think Google will need to get their act together the next time they decide to do a product launch. After waiting two weeks after the order was placed I received my shiny new +Google phone and I must say it rocks and it is quite speedy. I hope* to do a full review of this in the near future but in the mean time do a quick Google Search to find more information on it. 

Christmas & Traveling

Santa has arrived

This Christmas we decided to do a bit of traveling and a short trip to my sisters in Bowmanville. We left on Christmas Eve after leaving work at 11 and made the short trip of three hours. We spent two nights and one day there since we had to be back for work on the 27th. Christmas day was fun to spend time not only with my own family but with my sister, her boyfriend Ken and her kids (my niece and nephew), Hope and Ryan. Christmas is so much more fun where there are kids involved and now that Paige is stating to get to the age where she was having fun opening gifts and playing with all her new toys and did she ever get a lot of toys. As for Jodi and I we mainly got clothes but we also purchased a new Kitchen Aid Mixer, which is awesome.

Paige excited opening her gifts

Boxing day we arose early to hit the road back to Ottawa early. A storm was coming and we didn't want to get stuck or to be driving through it on the 401. We got on the road at about 10 am hoping to make a stop in Trenton and Sterling to visit friends and family. After making the first stop in Trenton and getting back on the 401 we decided to truck on through since the traffic was getting heavy. We made it back to Ottawa safe and sound at 3 pm.

New Years and Resolutions

Now its that time of year again, you know, day 365 the end of our calendar year, time to reflect on what we have all done in 2012 and what we would like to achieve and accomplish in 2013. Every so often at work we will watch a few different Ted Talks and a multitude to topics which are often very interesting and informative. The one below I watched in December and got me thinking about something that I do all too often, but that will change this year, take a look at the video, its only 3-4 minuets long and it may change your outlook on resolutions.


Oh and its also time to party and celebrate with friends and family to enjoy all we have and love around us. It is different this year for us, we have yet to make plans due to the lack of a babysitter and wanting to spend time with the family, so this year may be a quiet one where we will sit home order in some Chinese or Indian, and watch a few movies together.

Since I have been slow in actually finishing up this post, New Years has now passed and we managed to get out for a few hours and to see some friends, Paige was all dressed up for the occasion and here she is below ready to party.

New Years day was spent relaxing and taking down the Christmas decoration and preparing a Turkey with all the fixings and having a few friends over for a nice supper. After taking down the tree and seeing a neat idea on the internet, I have decided to start a new tradition for us. To cut a small 1 cm piece from the bottom of our tree each year and make an ornament for the tree the following year with the date burned into it. I'll post pictures in another blog when this is done.

QSSDJMRME

My Christmas Rant

So this will kind of be my re-released version of the Rick Mercer Rant, about Christmas. Every year rolls around to the Christmas time and I'm always feeling discussed about the same few things each year. Now don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and I'm sure I will always, maybe its the way I was raised, the time period I was raised in, the location or some other outside factor. But there are three main things each and every year lately (last 5 to 10 years) that annoys me, read them below and let me know if you feel the same way:

1. Politically correctness during Christmas: Its Christmas people, not the festive season, the holidays or anything else. This time of year was made a holiday for a reason...... that reason is its Jesus's Birthday, its Christmas. Don't be giving me a "Happy Holidays" Mr. Wal-Mart greeter, say Merry Christmas. I don't want to see a winter scene on my Tim Horton's mug, I want to see a jolly ol' Saint Nick kissing mommy under a Christmas Tree. More and more we are giving in to all things to make them politically correct, but guess what Christmas should not be one of those times. So I think I am only going to shop at stores that support Christmas for what it is. Unfortunately for my wife the only store I have seen so far this Christmas that says Merry Christmas in their ad's and in store is Canadian Tire.
   
2. Kids want it all: Now this just may be me, but Christmas is a time for spending time with family, friends and loved ones. Yes, a gift is nice to receive and I love giving them more than I love receiving them. I donate to the food bank each year and also give toys to needy families so they have something. I hear some kids asking for more and more each year, costing hundreds and even thousands of dollars, and I shake my head, than shake it more when their parents give in. Teach your kids about how many more unfortunate people are out there with nothing, teach them the meaning of Christmas, spend time with family and friends and the people you love. These are this things that matter the most in life, not the material things. To this day I do not know of one Christmas where I have wanted something and was mad that I did not get it or ask for so many things that would make Mackey Cram poor (I think that was his name. Some rich old fart I heard dad talk about many times), and I'm sure my parents would agree with me on this one and so would my wife since my answer each year to that question of "What do you want for Christmas?" my answer is simply nothing. I have all I need.
   
3. Christmas ad's running earlier and earlier: Each and every year the TV ad's, Sears Wish book, and decorations in the stores come out earlier. It seems every year you now see decorations popping up before Halloween is even over. Why can't retailers wait until at least mid-November before bomb-barding us with everything. By the time Christmas day actually arrives your sick of it all. We received our Sears Wish Book this year in August, yes, August, five months before Christmas and just seven month after the last. When I was I kid that thing would not arrive till the end of November unless my parents were hiding it away from me.

Please feel free to add comments below or add to the list of stores that will still say Merry Christmas during this time of year and think about all of this and do some reflection, or soon Christmas will be forgotten for what its meant to be. I know, I for one, will not forget and I will have a happy and joyful Christmas as always. So Merry Christmas to all!