Unless you've talked to me about it, it was not obvious what my routine has been so far. I wanted to lay out what I have been doing during a given week since starting this journey.

Gym days

To start, I purchased a gym membership at a Fitness 19 location near where I live. This routine has been pretty straightforward. Not only did I get the membership in general, but I also signed up for personal trainer time. To start out, I went with a total of 12 sessions. This upcoming week will be my 12th session. I do not feel like I'm ready to move towards being in charge of my own routine though. At first I thought I would take good notes of what and how much was done each session, but that never came to fruition. Instead, I decided to buy more sessions and continue with a personal trainer. They also have a deal going right now that equals out to 24 sessions for $20 each. I am happy with the trainer I am working with and he never shies away from a challenge to make me sore for the weekend.

The routines are pretty standard for any gym/trainer. We rotate between arm day, leg day, and abs day. At first, I definitely felt like a merry-go-round of soreness. Since then though, I'm happy to say it is never as bad as those first 4 sessions that sent my body into shock.

Walking/Jogging

I have known for years what the effects of walking can do for someone, from how much I did at the end of college. That said, I have resumed a routine for walking and spurts of jogging. For the time being, I am keeping it it limited to 30-35 minutes at a time. When weather permits, I use the sidewalk around my apartment complex. It equals out to roughly .60 miles per lap. I started with just power walking the whole time. As time goes on and things improve, I plan increase to all jogging. At the moment, I switch to jogging for the 10-15 minute and 20-25 minute stretches. This gives me a nice 5 minute breather between to recover. Once ready, I will begin jogging for either the 5-10 minute stretch or start out jogging. This would allow the entire timeframe to have an even stagger.

In famous words, winter is coming. Once it finally hits South Dakota, I will move all my walking/jogging indoors at Fitness 19. The only major "huh?" I have about treadmills vs distance tracked outside is that they are not matching. It has me confused about which is more accurate, and if perhaps my phone's GPS is that off-base.

On top of the 30 minute trainer time days, I often show up a little early or stay a little longer and do some treadmill time. My reasoning is make use of it while there, instead of returning home just to get back out of the car and do laps there.

Apps and Hardware

I am a small sucker for stats and tracking things. I first tried a walking routine back in the summer of 2014, but that petered out after only a couple weeks. I kept the RunKeeper account and now make much better use of it for activity and distance tracking. I set a goal to walk 60 miles by the end of the year in my RunKeeper account, and by all indications, I will hit that goal early. Chances are I will increase that distance as I get closer to finishing.

On top of RunKeeper, I have also started tracking my daily food intake via MyFitnessPal. I am not sure how I am doing compared to others. It definitely does have me looking closer a what is in the food I eat and is controlling how much of what I eat. I find it unbelievable how much sodium is in how many things.

Leading a healthier life in modern society is an investment, as backwards as that may be. I made the decision to make an investment in FitBit. I purchased a FitBit Flex, which is not the most high end product they have, but it is doing what I need it to thus far. I also purchased a FitBit Aria "smart scale". It will record my weight, attempt to estimate my Body Mass Index, and sync the data to FitBit. For the most part, I just wanted something that was easy to read reported values of, and was pretty accurate. The syncing and whatnot are bonuses that I was willing to spend some money on.

All three accounts, FitBit, RunKeeper, and MyFitness Pal, are currently connected. They share data the best they can to give me a pretty accurate picture of how I am doing.