<p>I hear ya on the heat and sun. I was wiped out today, too. Maybe a little dehydration?</p>
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<p>Basement for me. Kettlebell swings and rear foot elevated split squats and TRX inverted rows and one-arm kettlebell deadlifts and one-arm overhead presses and bodyweight squats. Hard workout. Had to crank my fan up to the second speed. But, a good solid workout.</p>
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<p>It’s touted as one of the benefits of adequate vitamin D, so who knows? But, it looks like my blood pressure has taken a decided drop over the last week or two. Just measured it at 110/65 after my workout and I haven’t been seeing the high morning readings that I usually do. It could just be that I’ve been on the straight and narrow in terms of diet and exercise long enough that all the plaque in my arteries has cleared out? Watch… I’ll go for my physical, take one look at all those white lab coats, and measure a 160/100! :)</p>
<p>I’m waiting for the report. All I can say is that I sure am glad nobody has thought about marketing an inflatable, zip-in Airdyne! Although, I suppose that could be one way to make the seat more comfortable.</p>
<p>Glad to hear that your aches/pains have improved. My little nagging aches have all cleared up and I plan to continuing substituting for the exercises that I think contributed to them. Of all the exercises in the universe, I think I can put together good workouts without doing the ones that cause pain!</p>
<p>I started about two weeks ago, but I’m taking a fairly hefty dose (6000 IU per day the first week, 4000 IU per day since then) and I’ve had several days of good sun exposure during that period (hiking for four hours, etc.)</p>
<p>Dr. Hollick, the leading proponent of Vitamin D, says: </p>
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<p>So, I’m guessing that, although I probably won’t be at my peak level for another month, I’ve probably seen a significant increase in my levels.</p>
<p>Given how far north I live, I’m thinking about long term dose of 4000 IU in fall, winter, spring when I get essentially zero vitamin D from sun exposure. Probably 2000 IU in summer when I’m hiking. Hollick says that 1000 to 2000 IU a day (plus some sun exposure) seems to be pretty typical, but there’s little harm from too much until you get up closer to 10,000 IU per day. He claims that it is impossible to overdose on Vitamin D from sunlight on top of supplementation. The body just won’t make as much if the levels are already high.</p>
<p>The other possibility for my lower blood pressure is that the hiking I have been doing for the last 9 months has impacted my cardiac conditioning. From what little I have been able to glean from people who actually understand that stuff, my long uphill hikes, particularly now that I have learned to keep my heart rate down a little bit, are nearly ideal for conditioning the heart to fill more fully and pump a higher volume of blood. Whether that translates to lower blood pressure, I have no idea…</p>
<p>My blood pressure had remained steady dating back to fall of 2010, about 6 months into my fat loss and exercise kick when I got a meter and started recording it from time to time.</p>
<p>It’s also possible that I simply missed a gradual change over the last year. I didn’t check it in the second half of 2012 (the meter was packed away in a moving box).</p>
<p>Question for the crowd. Having just lost 18 pounds, I’d like to lose another 20 to be at a weight that will look fabulous for my height / build. (And I’m healthy. This is mostly vanity here, as well as approaching the big 50. I hide my weight well – people would be surprised to hear that i needed to lose 38 pounds.). I’m trying to do this right, and focus on eating clean and really integrating exercise in my life. The running, plus trying other activities (boxing, hot yoga, etc.).
A work friend who has a similar height / build to me lost a similar amount of weight the right way, and did a program called Chalean Extreme --similar to P90x or Insanity. She loved it, but said that weight loss really does stall since you’re building so much muscle (basically weight lifting to exhaustion) so she recommended I wait til I’m maybe another 10-15 pounds down and then start. </p>
<p>I am doing circuit training w a trainer now and I am the kind to pretty rapidly see definition. Oh, and I want Michelle Obama arms at one point :-). Thoughts?</p>
<p>Cjane, cute suit…maybe in another summer I’ll be wanting one :)</p>
<p>Idad, I take 4000 of the D year round and pretty much beat SAD that way. No real downside. A nurse-practitioner pal of mine takes 5,000 and hasn’t aged a day in 10 years I swear Because she worked in research for a long time I tend to trust her judgement on these things as much as any doc :)</p>
<p>Pizza girl, I’m a weight-hider too and I guess the question is do you care about the scales or the outcome? If its the latter, go for it, and measure your success with a tape measure. In my case, since I have a particular weight goal I’ve now adjusted and because I’d let myself go so far, I’m kind of planning to drop the rest of the weight, then possibly intensify the shaping of what’s left. But that may be a cop out on my part – I’m scared of intense resistance style routines due to a back condition and past injury. So I’ve babied myself a little with short Nordic uphill walks, airdyne intervals and more recently, tentative forrays into jogging. Basically, I have to get fit enough to pursue the more extreme forms of fitness, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>In your case, if you’re doing hot yoga, I suspect you’re at a place where you could kick it up a notch and eschew the scale. Muscle does weigh more, and when worked to exhaustion, holds water, so your gf is probably right about the results not looking linear ;)</p>
<p>Out of town visiting D1 and celebrating D2 's 16 th bday- lots of walking yesterday and a couple miles on the hotel treadmill this morning - hopefully will help cancel out the delicious food we are eating ! At least my girls like sharing - so we shared ice cream and a decadent slice of chocolate almond cake last night !!!</p>
<p>I’ve been in a similar place but I’ve also had a running goal which tends to push out the strength-training. So I’m losing weight but some of it is muscle and I have to do at least maintenance strength-training to not lose it. At the moment, I’m leaning more towards losing it because I have running goals for the year but I do want to really beef up the strength work when the goals are met. I should have more time for working out this summer too - though I did have a bunch of hobbies that I wanted to start up again.</p>
<p>It’s hard to balance the things we want to do with the things that we have to do. One thing that I’m going to work on is working one day a week at home to give me more time in my schedule. This gives me back an hour for the week. I wouldn’t have considered this in the past but there are many days now where the office is a ghost town because so many people work many days from home now. I’m also trying to optimize errands like trips to the gas station and grocery store. I found a route to our weekly grocery store that takes half the time and probable is 40% of the distance.</p>
<p>Keep going! The last thing any of us need to worry about as we approach (or sail past) 50 years old is having TOO much muscle. At that age, the average loss is estimated at 1% to 2% of muscle mass PER YEAR. So, just to stay even, you’d have to be doing some serious strength training. </p>
<p>Double down on all of that for women as they hit menopause because the hormone changes are like a train wreck for muscle. That’s a real double-whammy. Lose muscle, burn fewer calories 24/7 as a result, and you have a recipe for storing fat. The single best thing to do is to work hard to preserve as much muscle as you can.</p>
<p>It is so hard to build even a pound or two muscle, after an initial response to starting from scratch, that it is unlikely any of us could ever exercise hard enough to get bulky. I would guess that I have put on maybe 5 pounds of muscle over the last two years.</p>
<p>Is it theoretically possible for a woman to “bulk up” from strength training? Sure, but it takes pretty extreme effort. I mean, it’s pretty hard to imagine training harder than Neghar Fonooni (late 20s, 5’2", 123lbs). I know I’m certainly not going to be deadlifting 245 lbs anytime soon. She’s definitely muscular and ripped, but hardly “bulky”. It seems to me that the bigger risk for women who train that hard, just from an aesthetic standpoint, is getting too lean – bodyfat too low. There again, a problem that most of us don’t have to worry about!</p>
<p>But, the good news is that if you ever start to see yourself getting too muscular, it’s pretty easy to back off the training. Muscles will go quickly. In the meantime, doing as much strength training as you can will probably be the fastest way to lose the fat you want to drop.</p>
<p>Charity walk is OVER! 60 miles–3 days in brutual MA heat (mostly low 90s). I lost 5 pounds yesterday and will probably put it back on because I’m having Blue Moon beer at the walker picnic later on today. Can’t believe what a big difference the heat makes. I can easily do 5-6 mile walks at a 14-15 minute per mile pace, but with the heat I was doing 20-22 min. per mile. Also noticed that my heart rate–started climbing higher as it got hotter during the day.</p>
<p>Back to working with my trainer tomorrow. Decided to support my husband (joining him in following the paleo-diet program) who’s already lost 40 pounds on it and wants to start again. I felt like my strength training workouts paid off in terms of having the stamina to go the distance. Also raised $5K for breast cancer stuff.</p>
<p>OMG, I forgot your walk was this weekend. Man, you really drew the short straw on New England weather, huh? You must be fried, toasted, baked, sauteed, and broiled!</p>
<p>Yay, Deb. I just got to a number that started w/2 last week. Did it three times in a row and then this morning’s run time # started w/ 3 again…bleh. </p>
<p>Thurs… ran 3.1
Fri… walked 6 w/ dh
Sat… hiked 5 (rocky terrain) w/ dh
Sun… ran 3.75 then walked 4.5…finished up w/ push-ups/ladder climb/squats/ resistance band stuff/plank/wall sit </p>
<p>Did I lose any weight fr. that? 4 ounces…ugh!</p>
Because she worked in research for a long time I tend to trust her judgement on these things as much as any doc :)</p>