<p>Decent run/walk last night. 2.65 miles. </p>
<p>Diet is back under control. Hopefully I can report 5 lb loss soon.</p>
<p>Tom1944, glad to hear the new approach is working out well for you.</p>
<p>So happy you are back PlantMom! Hugs on the “empty nest” but also kudos to you for embracing yourself and getting back into a routine!!!</p>
<p>Excited to pick up a race packet today that includes my first legit “other than a tshirt” tech shirt for the race! The race is for a local nonprofit I work with (not for) so I am happy to support them - and also happy for the tech shirt - especially since I’m not a “tshirt” person - women’s tshirt, yes; generic tshirt, no!</p>
<p>Watched the first one hour segment of the BBC documentary, iDad. I was not aware some of the shakes on the market over the years have been so cruddy for people. 
A question for anyone interested in the topic, do you think some of the ones available for sale these days are better? What would you look for on the label when choosing or would you pass on them altogether? No, I don’t drink them, but I am interested in knowing more about what’s healthy and what’s not and figure I may not be the only one who didn’t know (and still doesn’t really know) much about their history.</p>
<p>“Quite similar pacing. From what I saw, Insanity did use generally good bodyweight exercises. Just no rest. If I really did those exercises full-bore, my heart rate would hit 90%+ of my max and stay there. That’s not sustainable, and definitely not smart exercise.”</p>
<p>Interesting. The guy I just talked to mentioned that he may stop doing it because he’s concerned it could cause a heart attack. Don’t know if that’s possible, but it sounds like he thinks it’s too high intensity also.</p>
<p>Another thing that made me pause is that he mentioned that you do a lot of crunches…was it you who mentioned that crunches were bad for your back? I seem to recall that someone on here did.</p>
<p>Maybe I should just get Jillian out of the closet, if it’s really the same sort of thing. Or if I got this, perhaps Insanity would quickly join Jillian in the closet.</p>
<p>Thanks for the welcome backs, and Deborah, LOL on the pound wrestling match. </p>
<p>Today I spent 15 minutes on the treadmill, walking on an incline, and 15 minutes on the elliptical. Followed up with a trip around the weight machines. I kept the HR in a moderate zone 2 for much of the time. </p>
<p>I’m sure it won’t surprise you all to know that I feel the empty nest syndrome most at the gym, now the fit teen (S2) is not here to work out with me. We were there together almost every day of the summer. My motivator has moved on to college, wahhhh. Somehow he made the wise (imo) decision to abandon the bulk and cut strategy, and focus on cleaner eating. We’ll see how that goes at school. So, without S2, it’s back to the daily workouts on my own, and walking at night with H. </p>
<p>KMC and tom1944, keep up the good work on the diet! And Deborah, Saba, abasket, and I’m sure MoWC, CJane, idad…sounds like the running/fitness streaks continue. Great!</p>
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<p>I think the percentage of people keeling over from a heart attack during a cardiac stress test is very, very low. That’s basically a glorified treadmill or exercise bike workout specificially designed to jack the heart rate up to the max. I think that driving the heart rate up like that is OK, unless you have some underlying heart problem that probably going to get you one way or another. If anything, the ability to recover your heart rate quickly after driving it up to the max is one of the best correlations to surviving the next five years.</p>
<p>Having said that, it’s kind of self-limiting. The heart rate increases to the max in an effort to supply more oxygen to muscles that are using more than they can get. Once the heart rate is up there, that’s all you’ve got and you can’t sustain whatever you are doing for very long (a minute or two) with the muscles starving for oxygen. Legs start burning at that point and you have to back off. What I have found, in trying to do workouts like Insanity, is that I’m forced to cheat. If the workout calls for jumping jacks, I do partial jumping jacks. High knees running turns into low knees shuffling. Squats turn into pathetic little quarter squats. Watch the YouTubes people post of them doing Insanity and the exercises don’t look anything like the video!</p>
<p>I think it’s better to do good reps. When I reach the point where I’m too gassed to do good reps, it’s time to stop and recover – not keep on doing crappy reps to keep up with a video that has insufficient rest built in from some misguided effort to “feel the burn” and “burn calories”.</p>
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<p>If I recall, you aren’t the first to mention that… :)</p>
<p>I hate everything about Jillian Michael’s approach to fitness coaching. Exercising 'til you puke with someone screaming in your face is not fun. You can only do that for short time before exercise and fitness becomes something you despise thinking about. Even the guys who preach high intensity interval training only want you to do it once or twice a week. It’s just too mentally fatiguing to push like that. Not sustainable in high doses.</p>
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<p>Daily e-mail or text messages keeping each other posted on your respective workouts each day would be a great way to stay connected to a college kid! Way better than asking him to talk about classes or whatever…</p>
<p>Home workout. Cat sat perched in her current favorite Costco box across the room watching like a furry lifeguard, only at ground level instead of up in a tower.</p>
<p>Just got blood drawn (yeah, that’s always fun), so I’ll get a read on my Vitamin D dose. I’ve been taking the same amount daily for three months, so it should have stabilized by now.</p>
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<p>Stopped by the grocery store on the way home and grabbed a couple of live n’ kicking $3.99 lb lobsters for dinner. Had planned to grill flank steak, but looks like rain so I’ll just have to make do and hope that eating a little seafood doesn’t give me prostate cancer by the time I finish sopping up all the butter and lemon!</p>
<p>D gives me a report when she works out with her trainer. I have to say I would like to be a member of her gym! </p>
<p>Hoping for some cooling soon. 4.33 miles, 8:58 pace. I feel like I’m improving.</p>
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<p>My cat sat on a bar stool next to my chin up bar/Jungle Gym and watched my workout yesterday. What a hoot.</p>
<p>Better in a box/on a stool than walking under a person who is doing a plank. My cat is notorious for getting in the way when I exercise. The only thing that she would not do is run with me on the treadmill. After 4 years, she is still terrified on the treadmill in motion (although she likes to stretch her body out on the warm belt after I’m done running - lol.) :)</p>
<p>Whew. That was a blast from the past. Burpee Fusion. First time in months. What was I thinking?</p>
<p>On the minute, every minute for six minutes:</p>
<p>12 KB swings (50 lb)
6 burpees
12 KB swings
6 burpees
12 KB swings
6 burpees</p>
<p>Rest 'til heart rate falls below 60% and go again.</p>
<p>Did three sets. Got 15 seconds of rest after the first set. About 1:15 after the second set. And, 1:30 after the third set. </p>
<p>Swinging that 50 lb KB is no joke. That is definitely a workout in 18 minutes of exercise. Interestingly, I didn’t jack my heart rate up super high. A max of 83%, although I was definitely panting at the end of each set.</p>
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<p>Lobsters are halfway cooked and cooling in an ice bath. Time to go shell them and finish them off sauteed in butter and lemon juice. Yummm…</p>
<p>Abasket, last race was a women’s cut tech tee, yes! I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it already. Good luck in your race!</p>
<p>Another 1 1/2 mile day. Not a good week due to long work days and meeting meals. The streak lives on, though. 94 degrees after work doesn’t make me want to lace up the shoes, either.</p>
<p>“I hate everything about Jillian Michael’s approach to fitness coaching. Exercising 'til you puke with someone screaming in your face is not fun. You can only do that for short time before exercise and fitness becomes something you despise thinking about. Even the guys who preach high intensity interval training only want you to do it once or twice a week. It’s just too mentally fatiguing to push like that. Not sustainable in high doses.”</p>
<p>Maybe they consider that a bonus to your weight loss if you puke after exercise. I wonder you can count that as calorie burn? It does seem that even if you can stand to do that for a little while, it’s likely that before long you will hate it and never do it again. I think I’ll leave Jillian in the closet and keep working on what I like doing. Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>Lobsters sound really good. I wonder if my husband will let me sign him up for a cooking class!</p>
<p>My wife started buying me cookbooks for Christmas and birthdays. Paul Prudhomme’s [Louisiana</a> Kitchen](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Paul-Prudhommes-Louisiana-Kitchen/dp/0688028470]Louisiana”>http://www.amazon.com/Chef-Paul-Prudhommes-Louisiana-Kitchen/dp/0688028470) was the first, if I recall. I had to figure out how to cook stuff from each cookbook, so it wasn’t long before I was a decent cook. Now, I’ve got several shelves of cookbooks.</p>
<p>My lobster and broccoli tonight was to die for. I used a ton of butter in the lemon sauce. Two little lobsters, about 2.2 pounds. Not a bad serving.</p>
<p>Plantmom, I can imagine how “lonely” it feels right now going solo! As of late, I got S hooked on the RunKeeper app - we have taken to snapping a pic of our RunKeeper workout summary and sending it to each other after a workout. Alternative ways to share a workouts!!!</p>
<p>idad those kettle bell swings are hard. I do them at the end of my workout with a 35lb kettle bell. I do 20 seconds on which is about 12/13 swings and rest 40 seconds. My goal is to work to 10 rotations but so far I have done at most 5. Adding burpees would finish me.</p>
<p>Very good workout today. No rest between exercises went right from upper body push exercises to box jumps and lunges back to upper body pull exercises to step ups to combo squat, curl, press to kettle bell rotations. Finished with a 2 mile walk with elevation on the treadmill. Felt like I was really working.</p>