Diet/Exercise/Health/Wellness Support Thread

[MichaelNKat]

The lululemon yoga shorts are extremely comfortable too. I also find that their tech fabric sleeveless workout shirts are great for wicking and evaporating sweat when I ride indoors with a floor fan blowing on me.

[MiamiDAP]

"Actually swimming is not the best thing to do when trying to lose weight"
-Works for me all the time without any trying. Just was amazed yestrday after ton of Haloween candy, I had them till i felt sick literally, I was sure to see couple of lbs on a scale, no, went the other way, I had no idea, but was pleased. For sure, swimmers who stop, are prone to gain unless they watch. They are not used to watching food intake while swimming, this would be a new skill for them, that is for sure.

[MichaelNKat]

Interesteddad, the suspension pushups are great for core work. For chest and shoulders, I find chest presses with my hands on the handles and my body close to parrallel to the floor to be more demanding but I need to use the vest to keep the reps down to a reasonable number.

[interesteddad]

I used to do the push ups/chest presses with my hands in the straps. They are hard as heck, probably because you have to use so much shoulder/upper body (pushing the arms together) to stabilize the straps. I quit doing them a while back when Mike Boyle mentioned that it was an exercise he had walked away from with his athletes in favor of the feet in the straps variation. I'll have to try them again sometime.

I do most of my pressing with DBs and tend to use an alternating sequence most often --where I fully extend both weights, hold one extended while I do all the reps with one arm, then hold that tired arm extended while I do all the reps with the second arm. It's killer and adds a serious core challenge to bench or overhead pressing. It's not easy to hold a weight extended and stable while pressing with the other arm.

[sewhappy]

Did not walk/run this morning. Too much snow. And I noticed that I wasn't ravenous all day.

Re: swimming -- I try to swim twice a week for about an hour. I take a semi-private lesson with a friend and that wears me out a lot because the instructor makes me swim properly and focus on all kinds of aspects of my stroke that I'd otherwise ignore. I don't find swimming helps me lose weight but I do find that it makes me very, very relaxed. Water is calming.

Although swimming doesn't make me weigh less, I notice that it is great for streamlining the hips. It's a good "sculpting" exercise.

The other thing I'm doing regularly is ballet class. What really kills me is when we jump. It's been decades (literally) since I did any jumping. I feel extraordinarily clumsy when I jump. Humbling.

[Bromfield]

I quit doing them a while back when Mike Boyle mentioned that it was an exercise he had walked away from with his athletes in favor of the feet in the straps variation

That's what we do in my TRX class--we do push-ups with feet in the straps. Also do planks this way. It's tough.

M&K: does using a hand weight for TRX exercises do the same thing as a weighted vest?


Workout today: 2.25 mi. walk in 3 inches of snow early this AM. Then went to do a workout on my own at the gym: squits, lunges, dead lift, farmer's walk, core work, plank, and push-ups. Signed up for a spinning class tomorrow.

[MichaelNKat]

interesteddad, for chest, if using free weights, I generally use an olympic bar inside a lifting cage so if I blow a rep and drop the bar, the cage catches it. I also do DB benches. I know what you mean about the alternating arm/extension movements. When my daughter comes over and wants to crush me, she has me do shoulder DB exercises which are a variation of what you do. While standing, I hold one arm in the fully extended position for the exercise I am doing while the other arm does the reps and then I switch. She has me do standing horizontal presses, side raises and front raises until I cry and then she laughs at me.

Bromfield, I'm not sure what you mean about using a hand weight - how are you using it? The weight vest, obviously, is worn as a vest and has panels of pockets running around it into which you can slide cigar shaped weights. It can be filled with up to 40 pounds and adjusted for each exercise. I just got it and so far have used it for horizontal chest presses and inside grip chest presses, high and low rowing and for regular curls and elbows flared to the side curls. I did 2 sets of each exercise. I had been up to 20 reps per set and had exhausted changes in body angle to increase resistance and still needed more resistance to get a good burn. The vest with 2/3 of the weights in it just trashed me, requiring that I reduce the reps to 16 per set. Should be challenging for quite a while. Just getting in and out of it is a workout!

[Deborah T]

A stretches and weights day for me.

[interesteddad]

I generally use an olympic bar inside a lifting cage so if I blow a rep and drop the bar, the cage catches it.

I've never used my olympic bar for bench presses. With no spotter and no rack, it's a pretty dangerous exercise. Plus, I'm pretty sure that I'll never max out on the DBs. It's a harder exercise (i.e. less weight) than barbell chest presses because you've got to stabilize each weight in three planes. At least with the DBs, if I get into trouble, I can always just throw them off to the side.

I stopped doing the front raises and lateral raises. I'm not sure they really add much to the fitness equation that you don't get from pushing and pulling. More of a body-builder exercise ... and one that causes major soreness. I'm lucky that I can do overhead presses with no shoulder issues. A lot of geezers can't do them without shoulder pain.

The most miserable exercise I've ever done was walking lunges with lateral DB raises on every step. Funny, I haven't put that back in my workouts in a long time! I do walking lunges across the parking lot as part of my warm up now. It amazing how much hip/glute stability is required to do those well.

[interesteddad]

More Christmas in November. Received an Amazon package today with some cold weather hiking clothes!

The insulated baseball cap is beyond all expectation. Rip stop 100% waterproof outside. Inside is a soft polyester wicking fabric -- the entire cap is lined. Earmuffs cover the ears. And an elastic draw cord lets you cinch it down tight, essential when it's windy. This thing is going to be my go to hat for the winter, no question. It'll even fit over a light fleece balaclava. I haven't seen anything else like this. I'm sure that it doesn't breath very well, but when the temperatures are below 40, that's not a big problem. Now, if they would just make it in blaze orange!

Then, I got two superlight windshirts. These are among Marmot's most popular products. Ultralight rip stop nylon, but with a very thin soft wicking liner. Like the material inside the collar of a lot of running jackets, but the entire jacket is lined. So it's like a combo windshell/tech wicking shirt. Super soft and comfortable. The ripstop shell material is like the inside lining of high end down sleeping bags.

They are sized like shirts, so they fit trim. Can be worn as a top layer over a short sleeve or long sleeve shirt or light fleece on a cool day. Or as a wicking, windproof shirt under a jacket. They weigh something like 8 ounces and stuff into a zip pocket, so easy to throw into a backpack, always available for another layer. They are windproof, but with vented mesh under the arms. Water resistant for a little snow or a little misty rain.

I got a gray one without a hood. This one is covered in silver reflective bits.

Then, to give me a little piece of mind hiking during hunting season, I went with a retina-burning orange hoodie. Yikes.

I'm going to give this stuff a whirl sometime in the next few days, I hope.

[Dad II]

Finally hit the big 50 lb mark. Guess I will be doing mostly maintainance from here on. Quite a few people including my Mom have asked me to stop losing weight.

[mommusic]

IDad--I may get one of those hats for my H who is in NYC frequently! I remember the wind just howling down the skyscraper canyons even on not-very-windy days.

sewhappy--just be careful of your knees in ballet class. Both the jumping and the attempts at "turnout" can be hard on knees that haven't seen such use in decades. I guess it depends on the teacher and if the class is aimed at "older" adults.

[MomofWildChild]

We need to have a fashion show!

Congrats, DadII. That's really excellent weight loss. Moms always want to fatten us up!

10 mile "race" in the morning- instead of t-shirts we get hooded sweatshirts! I will try for an easy effort as my last long run before Monkey. There is supposedly 1 really bad hill and then an uphill finish. Hope to win the age group. I mainly entered for the sweatshirt.

[Deborah T]

10 mile "race" in the morning- instead of t-shirts we get hooded sweatshirts!

Nice! There's another 5K I've been mulling over entering much for the same reason, and also because, again, I really like the cause it benefits.

Have a great morning, MOWC!

[interesteddad]

Finally hit the big 50 lb mark.

Now that's party time! Congratulations, DadII... You've done something very few people ever manage to do.

I think everyone who has ever lost a lot of weight has gotten the "you should stop losing weight, you're so skinny" spiel from friends and family. I certainly got it and I am, by no means, skinny. I think it's just jarring for people who are used to seeing you heavy. From their perspective, you probably do look skinny, particularly when you lose enough weight that your facial features change. In my experience, eating the same way that resulted in the fat loss will eventually lead to a permanent plateau. So unless you are crazy thin for your height and build, the weight loss will automatically stop. At least for guys.