Your day should look like this:  work/school, burning calories, family time, sleep, everything else.  Of course, you don’t really need to burn extra calories outside of work if you’re a construction worker, roofer, or have some other labor intensive job, but you probably have a comfy office chair to greet you every morning.

More than likely, if you’re anything like I was at 344 pounds, you burn minimal calories at work, then go home, snack, watch a little television, hang out with family, go out to dinner with friends once or twice a week, head to the movies, etc.

Even as you start your weight loss journey or try to keep it going, you’ll find it hard to “squeeze” the gym into your schedule.  That’s the wrong way to look at it.  What you need to do is squeeze everything else around the gym.

Up above, when I listed daily tasks in order of priority, I put burning calories in front of family time.  That’s not saying I would skip my daughter’s soccer game or a friend’s birthday party to go do an elliptical workout at the gym, but what it means is that I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, while my wife and daughter are still asleep, and go to the gym.  And that’s what I do, every day, Monday through Friday.

I get back to the house just as as they’re waking up for the day.

Everyone has time to burn calories.   You may not have the means or the time to go to the gym to bur calories, but you have the money (free!) and the time (5 minutes) to find a place in your house to do as many jumping jacks as you can.  You have the time and the ability to stand up in your living room during commercials of American Idol and dance with your kids.  I dance with my daughter all the time.

She’s a terrible dancer though, but she’s two, so I cut her slack.

Make burning calories something you day every day without fail before anything else outside of work and/or school is done.  Even if you have to leave your family and friends for 30 minutes a day to go to the gym, it’s worth it, especially if you were as overweight as I was.  By going to the gym and missing out on a little bit of family time (when I went to the gym at night), I added countless years to my life.  I’m going to see my daughter get married, something that wasn’t likely just two years ago.

I guess if you think of it that way, I actually made my family the priority instead.

I love the gym, but sometimes you just need a break.

I normally try to make it to the gym over the weekend (Sunday afternoons) for at least a 30-minute session of cardio, but there wasn’t really much of a need this weekend.  I also had other things to do.

On Saturday, the wife and I took our daughter to the park for about two hours.  My daughter, being almost two, loves going down the slide over and over again.  I love going with her.  To get back on the slide, though, you have to run all the way to the other end of the platform (the size of a large house). I burned a lot of calories and tuckered my daughter out well before I was.  It’s easy to tell when she’s tired and ready to leave because she just starts walking toward the car.

When she did, we followed her and went out to lunch.

On Sunday, the father/brother-in law and I went to watch USC (South Carolina, not Southern California) play baseball.  It was about 85 degrees and breezy.  We had to walk about a mile to get to the park from our car, so again, it was another great way to burn calories without having to step onto the elliptical like I normally do on Sundays.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my elliptical workouts, but walking to go watch baseball when it’s 85-degrees outside is pretty fun too.

The more sleep I get, the better my workouts are in the morning.

Specifically, the more sleep I get, the more I’m able to lift with good form and the more intense my elliptical workouts are following my weight lifting. This is a trend I’ve been closely been watching over the last several months and I’ve concluded:

5 hours of sleep = a walking zombie
6 hours of sleep = a decent workout
7 hours of sleep = a great workout

It’s no surprise that less sleep equals less focus and drive at the gym. However, I was and am surprised that sleeping eight hours (or more) really doesn’t do much more for me at the gym than sleeping six and a half or even seven. I don’t get too many nights I can sleep eight hours though, so granted that sampling pool is a little small.

The last thing I noticed was how quickly I could “make up” for sleep. If on one night for example I slept for five hours and had a horrible workout the morning afterward, then on that night managed to get seven hours of sleep, I’d have a great workout that following morning. That’s why I stay up a little bit later to get things done on Tuesday nights, just because Wednesday is cardio day and a lack of sleep affects me less at the gym.

I’ve got stuff to do, after all. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

My current cardio workout routine consists of running.  And some climbing on the StairMaster.  Occasionally, I go for a nice bike ride for a few miles.  When feeling nostalgic, I work a nice 20-minute elliptical workout into the mix.

I still love the elliptical.

Sometimes I step onto a few pieces of cardio equipment every day, while some days I only step onto one.  Not always, but sometimes, the length of my gym visit depends on how “well” (few calories) I ate during the day.  If I ate well, I might stay at the gym only 20 minutes.  On the other hand, if I made poor choices throughout the day my cardio workout might last nearly an hour.

It’s safe to say my workout routine varies.

While I don’t have a routine per se, I do have a couple of guidelines.  The guidelines that I’ve set forth for my gym workout routines are as follows:

• 4 days a week
• At least 20 minutes

That’s it.  That doesn’t mean I go 4 days a week for 20 minutes like some might perceive, that simply means that on some rainy random Tuesday when I have a migraine, miss my daughter, and simply want to to call it a night I can put in my 20 minutes and leave.  If I want to go out that Friday night with friends, I can skip the gym and meet my 4-day a week requirement.

Some random facts my current cardio workout routine:

• Half the time I stick with just one machine, the treadmill
• Half the time I stick with two machines, other being the bike
• Lazy days I might just walk briskly (4 mph) for 20 minutes
• StairMaster workouts are reserved for days when I’m pumped
• I do lift weights, but they don’t take time away from cardio

Variety — it’s the spice of life.  I’m not a patient person (ask my wife) and I get bored easily, so it’s important to me not to go to the gym every night with a list and set of instructions.  While I know a lot of (not all) people have been asking for my gym cardio workout routine lately so they can copy it and make it their own, I simply don’t have one you can print out and take with you.

If there is any advice I can give you about cardio, it’d be this:

Sweat.

What does your current cardio workout “routine” look like?

I went through with the most recent workout pledge on Friday night.

Due to recent media attention this was the biggest workout pledge by far.  I was forced to stay on both the treadmill and elliptical for 93 minutes (plus two for cool down) — putting me in the gym for 3 hours and 10 minutes Friday night.

This was the first workout pledge I tweeted while I worked out.  It was a new experience, a positive experience I’d do again;  the support I received kept me going for the last hour when my legs started failing.

A few Twitter followers that provided support Friday night:

30Days2ANewLife
JackedDragon
JeffSarris
lsuaimzgurl
willwalters
theantijared
emilytate512

Recap of Friday night’s workouts

I started out on the treadmill machine a little after 7 PM Friday.  I maintained a speed varying from 3.4 (when I took pictures) to 4.0.  Incline levels varied as well, ranging from 1.1 to 5.1.  It was a brisk walk with some hills thrown in.

The 95 minutes on the treadmill were easy compared to the 95 that were soon to follow on the elliptical.  While I was on the treadmill daydreaming, fighting boredom, I realized I needed to make a bigger workout playlist for pledges.  Other than realizing I need to bring a book for “next time” and needing to urinate for the last 30 minutes, I had a smooth workout.

I burned nearly 1,000 calories and walked over 5.5 miles in 95 minutes on the treadmill.  Other than stiffness in the legs, I finished the workout unscathed.

It wasn’t until I stopped stretching and went to the rest room did the scary reality sink in:  I’m about to start the hard part.  I had only done 95 minutes on the elliptical before once (when I did 99), but that wasn’t following 95 minutes on the treadmill.  I was sore, tired, and wanted to go home.

The only place I was going, though, was on the elliptical.

I started my workout on the elliptical machine after a short break used to go to the restroom and fill up my water bottle.  After typing in level 20 (out of 20) into the machine it turned on and I immediately knew I was in trouble.  I got onto twitter for some support and found Lethal Weapon 2 on television (the one with Joe Pesci), settling in for a long, painful workout.

Looking back, I have no idea how I managed to keep going.

Around the halfway mark on the elliptical, about two and a half hours after my current cardio session started, my legs began to buckle.  I had to lean against the machine’s console so I wouldn’t fall down.  This was the moment I wanted most to quit and say “no thanks” to the remaining 45 minutes, but I didn’t.

I got back on twitter and looked for support — I found it and kept going.

With about 20 minutes left my water ran out and my cell phone battery was dying, which meaned no more twitter updates.  I turned off the music application on my phone (G1) to conserve the battery and simply ignored my water problem — I wasn’t about to quit now. Luckily, the battery in my phone lasted long enough to snap a final picture and I was able to wipe the machine down, stretch, guzzle down 20 ounces of water, and walk out of the gym alive.

It was easy to fall asleep once I got home.  My legs were sore and stiff, but I could walk.  I was a little sore Saturday and only did some light cleaning, but hit the gym Sunday hard and did 30 minutes on both the treadmill and elliptical.

I’ll be back at the gym tonight fully charged.

Hopefully, in a couple of days, I’ll be reminded why I do these workout pledges and why I felt the need to workout for 190 minutes Friday night.

I want the 230s.