<p>Chin ups and and DB step ups - always challenging, I find, idad. Good stuff.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you are right now, plantmom, but I want to be there too.</p>
<p>I’m in the rest camp if there are signs of problems and this heart rate issue sounds like a problem. I’m not particularly competitive in anything that really matters so I don’t have anything at stake though.</p>
<p>1 mile today. Knees are definitely feeling better (they were a little off the past two weeks - nothing that would stop me from running or playing tennis but giving the body some relative rest allows a bunch of niggling things to fix themselves). Still cleaning today - wound up doing a lot of laundry early this morning as cleaning bedrooms results in cleaning a lot of linens.</p>
<p>1,130 calories (I could really use a doughnut but I know that the local Dunkins are made early in the morning and dropped off and I don’t really care for 15-hour-old doughnuts that have been sitting in the open). We don’t have any tasty carbs around (Triscuits, cake, chips, etc.). I feel full but I have a bit of a craving. Oh well.</p>
<p>53% protein, 31% fat, 16% carbs - had 12 ounces of chicken.</p>
<p>15 hour old doughuts are quite tasty when popped into the microwave for a bit. Especially if they are apple fritters.</p>
<p>As if that helps your diet!</p>
<p><a href=“mmmmm donuts - YouTube”>mmmmm donuts - YouTube;
<p>Rest day for me. No donuts either. 
That’s a treat I don’t crave too often, and if I do I’m okay with one or two absolute max.</p>
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<p>Yeah. I’ve been doing chin ups a lot lately. </p>
<p>Hadn’t done DB step ups for almost a year. Last time I did them, I was using two 30 lb dumbells, so 2 x 40 is an improvement. They are very mountain-hiking specific exercise as we get a lot of trails with 12 to 16 inch steps. Plus, with that kind of weight, it’s like vertical farmer’s walks. I’m doing six on one leg, then immediately six on the other. My heart rate is pretty high at the end of those sets - 80%+ range.</p>
<p>For hiking, I should be doing sets with a lot of reps, but these workouts are all about low reps and trying to use heavier weights after a couple months of 12 and 15 rep sets.</p>
<p>Can’t do a single unassisted chin up. Thinking about making an unassisted pull up a goal, but it seems like a lot of work. Maybe at I’ll start when I hit a lighter weight ;)</p>
<p>I read that one can get the benefits of glucosamine from eating soup made from bones & “parts.” If you’re a meat eater, make chicken or beef soup, cooked several hours until the bones are soft and the cartilage is about gone. </p>
<p>And no additives or food coloring.</p>
<p>Good one, notrichenough.</p>
<p>I don’t know about that, mommusic. Cooking the bones and parts sounds kind of gross, but I guess if you don’t think about it, that might work. I like to think that my beef comes from a package. I wonder how much glucosamine doughnuts have.</p>
<p>When I was in my 20s I could do three chin ups unassisted, but I can’t imagine doing one now. I suppose I might see how little assist I need to do one. Currently I do two sets of 10 with the pin set at 10 - which I think is about 50 pounds. Maybe I should just lose 50 pounds and try doing them? ;)</p>
<p>Thanks, all. He is using the Ativan to help with sleep but isn’t interested in the Paxil. He is resting - hasn’t trained at all this week. He hopes he can get past this cold and start to feeling Bette. We’ll see.</p>
<p>Not a good idea to try Valslides after beer tasting with 5 beers! Fun evening though with daughter after a stressful day.</p>
<p>Walked 5K with co-workers to finalize course for company 5k and then I ran the course. The steak continues.</p>
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<p>Doing a chin up was one of my two major goals. The other was a single leg squat. I spent the better part of 2011 working on chin ups, starting with the New Year, when I installed a chin up bar. I had a selection of bands, so I started with something like 80 pounds of assistance. And, doing TRX inverted rows and single arm DB rows. I just slowly worked my way down to less band assistance, 5 pounds or so at a time. If I recall, I did my first unassisted chin up on the last day of New Rules of Lifting for Abs.</p>
<p>But, those were all out effort, ugly chin ups. Now, I feel like I’m doing real chin ups, from a full hang (not quite straight arms), up to the bar with totally dead legs. So, I’m seeing qualitative gains for sure, but I’m stuck at 4. It’s the only exercise I do with an effective weight too heavy to do at least 6 reps. I never do less than 6 reps with DBs because it’s just asking for horrible form and injury. I’m not complaining though. I’m just happy to be able to do a chin up. It’s demanding strength to weight ratio challenge for geezers.</p>
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<p>Go to pin 9 or 8 or wherever you can just barely do 6. Build back up to 10, rinse, and repeat.</p>
<p>The challenge (among other things) is figuring out how to get the lats across the back of the shoulders involved. You have to be crazy strong to muscle up using just the biceps and arm muscles. The problem is that lats are like glutes. It’s not that easy to get them fully participating!</p>
<p>Spouse and I have been watching the monologue from an old late night talk show. Plenty of silliness, and it has gotten some belly laughs from the both of us. We should do this more often.</p>
<p>MOWC, is wild son’s inhaler ventolin? And how often does he use it each day? My x has asthma and had this problem plus high bp. Back then, I could almost tell if he used it more than twice a day. At any rate, sendin ya hugs!</p>
<p>As much as I enjoy this daily snowshoe trek, I’ve had quite enough already of this lingering winter! I’m ready to move on to aqua jogging ;)</p>
<p>My loss rate seems to have slowed this week (eg 12 oz) so I suspect my body is “onto me” and I’ll have to try some ninja approach to shake things up. It’s like said body has said “Okay, we’ve got her number…she’s going to feed us about 1300 calories and huff and puff up that hill, belly fat, hold on! We’ll save you!”</p>
<p>I keep saying its time to kick it up, and then I keep working late each night because we’re so busy. I can’t seem to manage both ;)</p>
<p>I think that’s very normal, KMC. I’ll have weeks where my weight loss completely stalls out or may even be up a bit; then the next week I’ll see a big drop. Varying exercise does seems to help me. Sounds like you have a scale like mine when we’re obsessing over ounces! :)</p>
<p>^its the evil geek-tech-toy scale that mch bought in my case, my goal was simply to “drift down this year” with the idea that I had to manage myself to simply loose something, even an ounce, each week – or in other words, tweak/adjust my intake/output weekly in order to a) habituate to the consciousness of it Long term and b) at the end of the year look back and go wow, if I just manage my budget weekly, I can manage my weight/health/fitness.</p>
<p>So on one hand, I’m content with 12 oz, because that’s actually more like what I EXPECTED with the “low, slow goal.” But because I lost much faster for the first 20, you get that andrenalin kick from the fast progress (which of course, is the cycle I was trying to trick myself out of.)</p>
<p>So, mch was back at the doc for follow up, and admitted when congratulated on his weight loss that he hadn’t personally been “working hard” at it – that in truth he’d just been “fed lean.” I was there, and couldn’t help but giggle when he abashedly admitted that when our air dyne arrives Saturday, he will work harder on getting some exercise in I just wish there was a way to hook it up to the tv so that you could only power same to watch a program when pedaling!</p>
<p>My evil plan is to get us head sets so that we can actually hear a program while doing a mandatory pedal each night. If nothing else, the machine will be a visual reminder of the choices that <em>could</em> be made at any given time, so it seemed a worthy investment however the plan turns out. (I suspect it may drive mch out to the treadmill in the poolhouse, which will be a comparative piece of cake.)</p>
<p>When the doc asked mch what would motivate him to get on the bike every night, mch said “a gal from hooters standing in front with a mug full of stout.” Doc said sadly that was not something he could prescribe ;)</p>
There’s a lot of media attention to the recent salt study (1 in 10 die from too much salt). I have problems when I don’t get enough salt (from cramps). We don’t eat much restaurant food but I do like to add salt to some foods. My wife generally doesn’t use much salt by default.
Do most people get too much or not enough here as I’d guess folks here need more than the average person.
<p>Kmc, sounds like you’ve been making great progress on your goals. I could see that Airdyne with the pedaling for the program: “I can’t stop now because I have to see how the episode ends!”</p>