<p>I like that letsrun site and forwarded a couple of interesting discussions to H (he is of course at the gym so not home at the moment). I didn’t find much on heart rate other than seeing a lot of people have high heart rates of 200+ at times. It sounds like people are just all over the map on stuff like that.</p>
<p>On Spartacus, at first H just grabbed one set of weights (8 pounds I think) and liked not having to switch them out. But that meant the amount of weight was driven by the most difficult exercise, making some of the others too easy. Our S gave him a hard time about that, so I know he started using variable weights depending on the exercise. I have started doing squats and regular push-ups as part of my routine (with no weights and only one set!).</p>
<p>I did Spartacus on Wednesday with 20 pound dumbbells for everything except the t-pushups, pushup-position rows, and side lunges. I used 10 pounders for those three. It doesn’t matter what I use for the side lunges as I am miserable at that exercise regardless of the weight. I probably should just put the dumbbells aside on that one and focus on getting my legs to bend and stretch in that position.</p>
<p>I would say that the t-position pushup is probably the most difficult to do with any weight. It’s challenging with no dumbbells. It’s not one where you want to be straining to move the weight.</p>
<p>The tenth and final exercise, the squat-press with 2 20-pound dumbbells, is one where I just do reps until I can’t do another one instead of waiting for the 45 seconds. I got to ten reps on Wednesday, but I was shaking on #9 and #10. I’m pretty sure that’s when I hit 100% heart rate because I was over 90% when I started it.</p>
<p>I worked in the yard all day & since the new neighbor has a bad back, I spent about 40 minutes raking ( some) of his leaves when he was out ( the ones on the street- didn’t want them to clog the storm drain- but he has so many, I don’t even know if he will notice)</p>
<p>Now I am doing yoga, to try and get my back straight again.
:)</p>
<p>My trainer always tell me that it’s the other 166 hours in a week that he doesn’t see me that will have the biggest impact… or what food I’m putting in my mouth. Heck, I’ve been seeing him for almost seven months now, and he still tells me that. </p>
<p>As of Wednesday afternoon, I thought my hours at work were about to be seriously cut back, and while initially disappointed, I began to see it as an opportunity to ‘make up’ for the last two weeks of basically not doing anything. So I let my trainer know that I’d be interested in increasing from two to three times a week - the idea also perked me up as I was still in my funk from injury/illness. Then Thursday morning, I got a phone call that my work hours will basically stay the same for now, and now I’m disappointed about that. </p>
<p>Unbelievably, I have not put on any weight during these almost two weeks. I did work out in the yard very modestly yesterday for a couple of hours, thinking I just needed to move my body. However, I’m still struggling with this URI, so I did drag my butt to the acute care clinic this morning (after coughing up some obviously infected looking stuff two mornings in a row now) and was told I have bronchitis. The doc put me on Z-Pak and hopefully I’ll be on the upswing tomorrow. Tomorrow was supposed to start my three-a-weeks, and if I can muster up any energy, I’m going to keep my appointment, even if we spend it just walking around the track and doing a few very light weights. I need to move… my body is just so stiff from lying around so much. I also desperately miss my lat depressions that I use one of the machines for. There’s just nothing out there that releases the tension in my upper back like this movement does. So as long as I don’t cough up a lung, I’m determined to begin my return tomorrow.</p>
<p>Calories do count!
Back in the gym today. Must have had too much sodium this weekend as my weight jumped a few pounds in the wrong direction. I can tell before I weigh in as my ring isn’t as loose. Did an extra long workout to move things back in the right direction. Still working on the pushups. Did 4 x10 on the bar in the next to lowest position. Once I get to 50 I’m supposed to drop to the lowest position, work to 50 again and then drop to the floor.
Hey…where is BCEagle???</p>
<p>Yeah. I hope BC Eagle is OK. He may be off at some tennis tournament!</p>
<p>The one flaw in the professor’s twinkie diet is that he has not taken advantage of the diet period to teach himself sustainably healthy eating habits. Without learning those habits, he may have lost weight short-term, but he’s at risk of simply ballooning back up.</p>
<p>I do think that much of what is pitched as “healthy” eating by goverment agencies and the media is actually a contributing factor to obesity. For example, today’s conventional wisdom has people scared to death to eat fat and protein when those foods are a key to feeling nutritionally satisfied and building lean body mass. The fact that marketers can plaster “LOW FAT” in big letters across a bag of red licorice and even one person on earth believes that red licorice is an element in a healthy diet is insane, especially because they are also bombarded with messages that say things like eggs are “bad for you”.</p>
<p>Survived my first workout in two weeks! Also felt a bit better today, I think the antibiotics kicked in. It was far from a strenuous workout, but I moved my body and already my upper body feels better.</p>
<p>I forgot to add, that while I’ve been taking it easy this last week with the bronchitis, I had sort of holed up in my bedroom because I could control the humidity better by keeping the doors mostly closed, allowing the portable humidifier a chance to keep the room air moist. Sitting in bed that long wrecked havoc on the wonderful posture I had developed over the last several months. It really made doing my upper body work today feel that much more productive. Heart rate climbed pretty good, though, with any lower body stuff, but the ankle seems to have healed.</p>
<p>I know I’m still recovering, though, because I set my alarm this morning just in case my body decided to sleep beyond when I needed to get up, and the alarm did indeed wake me up at 9:45 AM! Which to my body, still feels like 10:45AM! Need that sleep.</p>
<p>Got really deep on the [goblet</a> squats](<a href=“Dumbbell goblet squat - YouTube”>Dumbbell goblet squat - YouTube), deep enough that my elbows were hitting my knees. That’s incredible from where I started, afraid to even bend my knees. On the [t-pushups[/url</a>], did 8 reps in the first set, 6 reps in the second with 10 pound dumbbells. I decided to back the truck up and do the [url=<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube]side</a> lunges](<a href=“- YouTube”>- YouTube) without dumbbells. I’ve been struggling to get any kind of depth and it was good to just focus on that. Side lunges work all kinds of new muscles. I can now do the full 45 seconds of split jumps (jumping from a left foot forward lunge to a right foot forward). And, I did ten reps with 2 20-pound dumbbells on the push presses (squat position, push up with the legs and press the dumbells overhead).</p>
<p>And, sometimes the bear gets you…</p>
<p>For my little extra, I figured that I would throw in four all-out 15 second sprints on the Airdyne, with 60 seconds rest. Did the first one at 100 rpms and knew I was in trouble. Did the second one for 15 seconds at 95 rpms and felt like I was about to hurl. Heart rate of 100%. That was enough of that. Five minutes of very easy cool down and call it a day. Oh, well, at least I tried.</p>
<p>Fifty minutes start to finish. Average heart rate 79%. Peak heart rate 100%.</p>
<p>No snow. I sounded like it probably sleeted bit in the middle of the night, but the air temps were up in the high 30s, so just a cold miserable rain. Gets dark now at 4:30, so I’ll be breaking out the reflective gear for walks, but not in the rain… I’m not that desperate.</p>
<p>Inspired by the low-carb thread: How do you figure your nutrition goals? I had been using LiveStrong plate but now I am using a different app on my ipod and the numbers are slightly different. For example, LiveStrong says protein goal is 35 g and ipod says 48 g. Also, the LiveStrong program doesn’t track calcium but the ipod program does, which I think is good, but I really don’t know what the target is (it just tracks percent . . .).</p>
<p>The LiveStrong targets are ridiculously low for protein, IMO. An 8-ounce portion of the salmon I had for dinner would have been more than my protein “target” for the entire day. I don’t know, but I think a 185 pound guy lifting weights and doing a Spartacus workout probably needs to eat a little more protein in a day than one piece of salmon. I am **always **way over their protein targets, way over their fat targets, and way under their carb targets.</p>
<p>This is Mike Boyle’s nutrition advice, which is similar to that offered by Rachel Cosgrove in her book on fat loss and fitness for women:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unwittingly, I stumbled into a diet that more or less follows their recommendations, albeit without the protein powder and fish oil supplements and I eat two large meals a day rather than smaller meals throughout the day. I think they are probably right in their advice, but if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it! I have no complaints about weight loss on this diet and can honestly say that I have not really felt “hungry”.</p>
<p>My weight loss really kicked in to high gear when I started adding more protein to my daily meals. I really love the chocolate whey protein shake that I have in between meals when I am hungry. I am WAY over on protein goals set by livestrong as recommended by the nutritionist and trainers that I met with. Has really worked for me.</p>
<p>I’m a 125-lb middle aged woman with a moderately active lifestyle, but I will not be able to survive on 35 g of protein a day. A breakfast of 2 eggs and a cup of greek yougurt, some lean meat for lunch (chicken salad, e.g.) and another cup of yogurt, then a reasonable portion of fish with veggies on the side for dinner - that’s what I typically eat (cheese and fruit for snacks), and I bet this puts me over 35 g.</p>
<p>My weekend was filled with the types of exercise that I do not do often. My DH liked our Halloween dancing so much that we went dancing again, then on Sunday afternoon I raked leaves for a few hours… I simply did not have any time for running or my weights, but I have sore muscles! Okay, it is time to play with my 15-lb toys. :D</p>
<p>I don’t usually pay attention to the nutritional break down on livestrong, so I just looked to see what my protein allotment is and it’s 45 g. I guess that’s about right, since looking at my protein history, that’s about what I have been eating each day. </p>
<p>I have to show up for jury duty today. This is putting a serious crimp in my running plan. Damn civic duty :)</p>
<p>I don’t pay attention to the nutritional breakdown at livestrong - except to keep an eye on sodium. I usually go a little over on protein and fat and way under on carbs. 35 g of protein? That’s one ounce! No way that’s enough! I usually have 60-80 grams at least. Gardening can be good exercise! I’ve been doing a lot of weeding.</p>
