Gained some weight on my vacation and I have had a hard time getting back on track. I find once I eat one unhealthy carb I am back on the carb wagon. For me I have to avoid most refined carbs. I can’t stop at just a little.
Hoping to get back on track this week.
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<p>I think we are all like that. I know that, if I buy it, I’m gonna eat it. I might be able to make it last for a couple of days, but I’m going to eat all the calories in all the servings in package.</p>
<p>Rachel Cosgrove had a good approach to that in her book. She said that the best we can realistically hope for is 90% compliance with an eat less plan (like no refined sugar stuff). We are going to cheat from time to time and we should just accept that. Enjoy the treat, don’t beat yourself up, and get back on track. Isolated cheats really don’t derail a fitness effort. I mean, I would have to binge my way through four cans of Pringles to gain a pound. Even I can’t do that on a one-time cheat! If you go on vaction, enjoy the food for a week, guilt-free, and then get back on the plan. Any weight you gain in week can be shed pretty quickly.</p>
<p>I’ve been entertaining out-of-town inlaws. They eat processed carbs almost all the time–it’s hard to avoid eating that when it’s around the house. Like everyone else, once I start, I keep craving/eating more of it. My plan during their visit has been to try to get in more exercise. I did spinning and power (weights/core) class yesterday. When I got home, H and I took everyone on an outing to Maine to get lobsters/steamers and shop at LLBean. Lobsters and steamers were fine–both steamed and no sides. However, I ended up sharing fried clams with my sister-in-law, who’d never had clams (they’re from Ohio) and when she tried them–she decided she didn’t like clams. I had no problem eating her share.</p>
<p>Two hours of doubles today. Felt great on the court - probably all of the rest yesterday. One person asked me how much I had lost. He’s like me before losing weight. He plays tennis a few times a week and is on weight watchers but I haven’t seen any difference.</p>
<p>Another guy is way overweight but he does a ton of low-intensity cardio so he can keep up on the court and run balls down but the extra weight can cause problems with his joints. The rest of the players are thin and fit. I know that these other guys would like to drop a lot of weight but it does take effort.</p>
<p>I think that I could drop two or three pounds going with a 1,000 calorie or less diet for a week. I do that from time to time when I have very little stress in my life (not often) and I can generally keep the weight off. But I don’t see any time in my schedule to do that in the near future. In the meantime, I’m okay with being in a holding pattern on weight as my body shape is getting better - just slowly.</p>
<p>Someone should come up with a Pringles air freshener.</p>
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<p>I no longer eat clams but I did enjoy them a lot when I was in my teens. It may be the squishy sensation that turns people off to clams.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately for me, when I am under stress I pretty much stop eating. And I’ve been under a great deal of stress – new job, living with a roommate in her apartment in another state during the week, and working for a crazy man. I don’t have my own kitchen, and my roomie isn’t crazy about it when I grill lamb chops or anything else that’s tasty. So I’m microwaving a lot. I’ve lost about four pounds in four months, without trying at all. In fact, I’m now trying to make sure I eat enough every week so I don’t keep losing.</p>
<p>Oh, Very Happy, we all love weight loss stories, but not that kind. </p>
<p>I was just thinking of you today as we were zippin’ along the Merritt Parkway. I was wondering how you new job was going and what was the commute like to get home on the weekend. </p>
<p>I really hope things get better. I think I could handle a crazy boss and even the work week away from DH (I would miss him, but I would look forward to the weekends), but I would have a really tough time having a roommate. It would be difficult to just let down your guard with a roomie. What it boils down to is I know I can’t be nice for that many hours ( work+home).</p>
<p>Hope you can find a little tranquility during the week. Let’s face it, that is a huge part of health and wellness!</p>
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<p>Nail on the head, WNP2!!</p>
<p>She’s a very nice woman and I enjoy talking to her, but – I am under a great deal of stress, and sometimes I just don’t feel like being nice to her and her damn cats.</p>
<p>I have nothing against cats, or her cats. They’re nice cats.</p>
<p>Well, I’ll be quiet about this in this thread. You all have better, more encouraging things to talk about!!</p>
<p>Go, Chintzy! Go, idad! Go BCEagle! Go NMinn!! MOWC, get better!</p>
<p>Really, I’m following you all and am dazzled by your stories.</p>
<p>I reverted to lurking for the past couple of weeks. An old back problem has been bugging me for the first time in a while after traveling and way too much stress got the best of me. It’s getting better, but even walking up a big hill (while being super-attentive to my posture) bothered me last week. The nearest yoga studio has started offering restorative yoga, which really helped me 9 years ago when the back thing first happened. I took a class yesterday, and the teacher is great, so I’m going again. Meanwhile, I’m still averaging a pound-a-week weight loss (9 since 9/1). I’m happy about that. I have more to go, but it really does help to see the change. My pants are too big–not falling off like idad’s, but baggy–and sweaters and jackets feel loose. Too bad I gave away my most recent “thin clothes” last winter in a fit of despair.</p>
<p>Hi oregonianmom! I’m a WW dropout, for the time being. It did work extremely well for me in the past, though, and I learned a lot about portion control and my own eating habits.</p>
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<p>That’s fantastic! A pound a week is some serious weight loss.</p>
<p>One of the things that really jumped out at me reading Rachel Cosgrove’s book the other night was that she advises her fat loss clients to forget the scale if they are going to allow it to be a negative motivation if it doesn’t go down every week. That’s not been an issue for me (knock on wood), but I think women are much more likely to see up and down fluctuations in weight. Cosgrove, instead, runs “thermometer jeans” challenges in her gym and on-line. She wants women to pick out a pair of jeans as a goal, maybe two sizes too small at the start. Then, instead of weekly weigh-ins, she has her clients try on their thermometer jeans. She also uses the thermometer jeans as a tool on the other end, after the weight loss and during maintenence. If those jeans ever start getting tight, it’s an early warning system to crank it back up and eat less/move more.</p>
<p>Here’s a recent rant from her on, of all things, scales built into running shoes:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.rachelcosgrove.com/2010/10/seriously/]Seriously?!?!?[/url”>http://www.rachelcosgrove.com/2010/10/seriously/]Seriously?!?!?[/url</a>]</p>
<p>My sister-in-law served us cream puffs with azuki bean cream for breakfast. I ate half a one. <a href=“http://myediblememories.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2007/04/6a00c225259fe3604a00d09e667ec2be2b.jpg[/url]”>http://myediblememories.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2007/04/6a00c225259fe3604a00d09e667ec2be2b.jpg</a> And then I ate the other half. The eggs scrambled with smoked salmon and dill were awfully good too!</p>
![http://myediblememories.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2007/04/6a00c225259fe3604a00d09e667ec2be2b.jpg[/url]](http://myediblememories.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/6a00c225259fe3604a00d09e667ec2be2b.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>The good news is that last week, I seemed to be losing weight again.</p>
<p>My trainer and I had an interesting conversation about the need to have your exercise efforts be on the same level as your eating efforts, meaning, cutting your calorie intake down to subminimal amounts while overdoing the exercising can have the opposite effects that you wish it to. I remember reading this somewhere else, too, several years ago (maybe when I was doing Contours Express). If you spend two hours a day exercising and don’t compensate with proper food, your body will respond as if you are starving it, and retain fat. Of course, this is all a very fine line… you have to find the right combination of exercise and nutrition that allows your body to feel as if it’s being properly nourished, yet ingest just under the needed calories you need to lose weight. If you try to starve yourself, your body will respond as if it’s being starved.</p>
<p>I’ve actually heard several people confirm this with their own anecdotal evidence… they work like a horse on their exercising, and think if they minimize their caloric intake, they will drop the weight. It might work for a couple of days, but eventually your body will stop losing, and can even gain weight on this kind of program. On the other hand, if they decrease their exercise (again, I’m talking about people who are doing many, many hours a week) and adjust their food intake to eat more healthy, clean foods, they lose weight. </p>
<p>It really is a fine line and can explain how some people, despite upping their activity level without adjusting their nutrition to match it, can gain weight and be totally puzzled. The longer I’m doing this program, the more I’m realizing how important recovery time is. Your body cannot build new muscle when it’s overtaxed as it is when you’re exercising. Your muscles do most of their recovery and building when you’re sleeping (which is another reason many fitness experts will recommend a very light, but high protein snack right before bedtime). It also explains why people who are able to get their body’s needed amount of sleep (this differs for everyone) often have better outcomes with exercise programs. If you’re sleep deprived, your body can’t recover as easily.</p>
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<p>If you are exercising two hours a day and not losing body fat (assuming a calorie deficit), you are not exercising for fat loss! That’s a crazy amount of workout time. One of the most interesting stories in the Rachel Cosgrove book is how she trained for Ironman triathalons in 2007. She averaged 12 to 15 hours of training per week for seven months, tracked her calories, and lost a total of five pounds, while she lost her muscle definition and grew noticeably soft. Her body had adapted to long distance biking, swimming, and running by slowing down its metabolism and fat burning. After completing an Ironman event, she went back to circuit training and intervals (just 3 to 5 hours per week), purposely avoiding all running and biking because her body was so accilimated to it, and immediately lost 15 pounds.</p>
<p>It’s interesting to me that, somewhat by accident, I’ve followed her approach to fat loss. On diet, I’ve eaten high protein, plenty of fat, but moderately low carb (not Atkins low) by cutting out almost all processed sugar and processed carb foods. My exercise has been circuit training and intervals (counting my hill walks which were reasonably intense intervals relative to my fitness level for most of the spring and summer) - three to five hours per week.</p>
<p>I’m starting to think that the whole media fixation on “bad foods” – carbs are bad, fat is bad, dairy is bad, eggs are bad, meat is bad, everything has to be low this and low that – is actually resulting in poor nutrition and contributing to obesity. It’s clear that a diet cannot be like serving time in a Russian gulag if it is to be sustainable. The low-everything diets that people feel they are supposed to eat are both unsatisfying and not conducive to high metabolism and fat burning – a perfect recipe for the ol’ yo-yo effect.</p>
<p>It turns out that my farmer grandparents (butcher a pig, collect eggs from the chickens, milk the cows, and grow veggies in the garden) actually had a pretty good diet, even though it was high fat.</p>
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<p>Exactly. I believe it. I think I mentioned several months ago how Hilary Swank trained for Million Dollar Baby. She was doing so much weight training everyday that they’d have to wake her up during the night for a protein drink so she could get enough calories in so her body would build muscle. </p>
<p>I understand that many people ‘exercise’ for many hours a day because they participate in an activity for reasons other than weight loss, whether that be running, speed walking, tennis, basketball, etc. And that’s great… they just shouldn’t expect weight loss at rates that we might expect.</p>
<p>My trainer tells me every time I see him when I leave, to be sure to add in 200-300 extra calories that day of clean foods. Man, if only he’d leave out the clean part, I’d be thrilled.</p>
<p>teriwtt, what are “clean foods”?</p>
<p>Went to the New Balance Factory Outlet yesterday and picked up a tech tee (long sleeves) off the clearance rack for $10. In general, the summer stuff is on sale and there’s a lot of winter stuff but it’s not on sale. Also picked up two pairs of running shoes - I decided that the trail runners are not for me (at least for running).</p>
<p>Son has started doing the military press with the barbell at 60 pounds (we always leave it there). He makes it look pretty easy. 60 pounds is my stress point for the shoulder press - any more and my arm acts up. I can do more weight on the machine because the motion is a little different.</p>
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<p>I had pretty fast weight loss this past summer with my variety of exercises mainly built on cardio and I’m actually pretty happy with where I am right now. I’m getting thinner, slowly but my weight is static. I’m also adding strength slowly too. The stamina from running is wonderful in tennis because it gives you the option of wearing the other guy out if his fitness isn’t as good as yours.</p>
<p>If you look at tennis players historically, you had the Australians trained by Harry Hopman for strength and some of these guys were pretty strong. Then you had an era of players like Connors, McEnroe, etc. that were very, very fit and light. McEnroe in particular was very thin - I think that he was about 5/10 in the 140s. He didn’t hit the ball very hard but was an artist. He played a lot of soccer in his teens which gave him his agility and speed.</p>
<p>In this decade, we had a lot more of the muscle players. Serena Williams, Nadal, Roddick and many others. But as this decade closed, we saw the best players retreating from heavy muscles. Nadal slimmed down. I’ve read that Serena slimmed down along with a few other players. The extra weight took its toll on players’ joints resulting in injuries. Serena Williams could have been the best woman player in tennis history were it not for her injuries.</p>
<p>Weight loss is a goal for me but I also want to enjoy the process. Like eating, doing something that you don’t like or that you like less than something enjoyable is a good way to avoid success. I happen to love tennis and running. I like weightlifting but I like the other things more. I particularly like the mental challenges in tactics and strategy of tennis (I used to be an amateur chess player and find a lot of similarities between chess and tennis).</p>
<p>So weight loss is a goal but I think that it’s important to have fun along the way.</p>
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<p>I’m wearing the long-sleeve tech shirt under my dress shirt today. The temperature is all over the place in the office in the fall and the tech shirt is doing a nice job of thermal management.</p>
<p>Thanks blankmind! My glutes are still sore from the walk! 
Good idea about idad’s book! </p>
<p>Welcome back geezermom and congrats on the continued weight loss!!</p>
<p>Mathmom…yum!! Glad the scale is moving in the right direction again!</p>
<p>veryhappy… sending good thoughts for calm and relaxation! Don’t know that I could live with a roomie at this stage of my life! H took last Friday off but never let me know so I had my regular day planned. He was a little miffed that I didn’t change my plans to be around with him…meaning fix his lunch and help with yard work! I just laughed. Told him not to expect me to be around much when he retires. ;)</p>
<p>Back to the regular routine. I do at least 90 minutes of cardio/weights per day, usually 70 minutes on the recumbent and 20 either on the treadmill loosening up from the bike or lifting weights 3 times a week. I do lots of time because I can’t increase resistance much without pain in my knee. I aim for 1200 calories a day but rarely meet that except for weekends. I have been losing about 1.5 lbs a week. My diet is heavy on the protein side even though I don’t eat any red meat. I feel better if I have low carbs but I don’t try to totally erase them from my diet.</p>
<p>I called the endocrinologist’s office this morning and am going in for blood work this afternoon. With increased hives and coldness, I’ve got to believe that this starve myself and gain a pound nonsense has to be thyroid related. If not, well then, I’m just getting old!</p>