<p>idad
Boinnnnng! Did you hear that? That’s the sound my weight has been making lately, with some swings of 2 or 3 pounds in a day. I only announced the 110 mark when I hit it for the third time, but who knows. I also don’t know where I’ll land, ultimately. My trainer measured my BMI last week–23.8. I’d like to get into that ideal 19-23 range. Just going to keep doing what I’m doing.</p>
<p>chintzy!!! Hooray!!! Was gone this weekend and just read your posts. What an absolutely fabulous achievement! So happy and proud of you! You are truly an inspiration for all of us. Thanks for posting and helping keep me motivated! I am currently stuck at the 45 loss and struggling to get that next 5 but I keep plugging away. Your success will keep me going this week and through Thanksgiving. Thank you for sharing your success and good luck with reaching your next goal!!! Way to go!!! :)</p>
<p>chintzy that is amazing. I’m so happy for you. That is such an achievement.</p>
<p>I am having a bit of a struggle trying to keep my workouts up. As usual in life, everything happens at once, so I am a bit time challenged right now, not to mention plain old tired. Besides jury duty, I am interviewing for a promotion at work. I did my strength & core on Friday, had to work a full day on Sat so no running. Sunday was an interview & half day of work, and once I got home I just couldn’t make myself go run. Back to jury duty today, and a phone interview tonight. I decided that no matter what, I am up early today to run. I am at that point where if I don’t force myself, I will just stop altogether. Must. Keep. Going.</p>
<p>Chintzy, you are amazing!</p>
<p>Today was my long workout day after being off over the weekend. Bike, treadmill, weights, push ups, and dips. Made it through and desperately need a shower. Not so worried about my lab results after hearing that a very close friend was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. This has been a very bad year for hearing bad health news for many of our friends.</p>
<p>chinzty:</p>
<p>I hear ya on the “boing”. Until recently, I’ve not exerienced that very much because my weekly weight loss has been signficant enough that it masks day to day fluctuations and even some of the plateaus. Now that I’m losing no more than a pound a week, the fluctuations are easily seen. They don’t correspond to eating or to exercise.</p>
<p>I don’t pay any attention to the government’s BMI index. It’s a joke. That’s the one that says Barack Obama was borderline overweight at his recent physical. For me to get below the overweight classification, I would have to weigh what I did the day I graduated from college. That’s absurd. I’m nearly 57 years old. I’m not going to have the body shape of a scrawny college kid wearing skinny jeans. I don’t even **want **to look like that. I’d start drinking protein shakes and meatheat supplements and go heavy on the weights to bulk up if I were headed there. BMI says that I’m still borderline “obese”, despite the fact that I now wear the same pants I wore at age 30. I don’t think anyone would look at me today and say that I’m “borderline obese”.</p>
<p>As far as the notoriously hard to measure body fat scale, I’m currently at 23.5%, tantalizingly close (within five pounds) of dropping out of the “overweight” range (22% at my age).</p>
<p>On the more reliable Rachel Cosgrove “thermometer jeans” scale, my “latest thermometer jeans” are a pair of corduroy pants that are the tightest of the 36’s I’ve bought. Regular fit 36 inch jeans and Docker khakis fit perfectly, but these cordurorys have been a little snug in the waist and butt. They now fit. So even though the scale hasn’t been behaving as I would like, the body shape changes are still, apparently, happening. </p>
<p>There is surprisingly little information about the “end game” to this weight loss business.</p>
<p>NMINN:</p>
<p>Watch it on the dips. I was reading some chat with Mike Boyle and other trainers this weekend saying that they don’t use dips for their athletes: they don’t think it’s safe to load the shoulders when they are bent at 90 degrees like that. Too many shoulder injuries and no particular benefit over other upper body exercises. They stick with pushups and pull ups (and weight lifting). It’s interesting to see how conservative these guys are. They’ve trained thousands of athletes and the last thing they want to do is injure them while training. Boyle also does not do cruches with his clients. I do pay attention when they say they don’t like an exercise for safety reasons. If they don’t like something for a professional NHL hockey player or NFL lineman because it might hurt them, I figure it may not be a smart exercise for an ol’ fat guy like me!</p>
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<p>With me, the danger is queso or french onion.</p>
<p>missypie…you always make me laugh! :)</p>
<p>missypie, too funny!</p>
<p>idad, my percentage of body fat is 22.3, down from 46.6 when I started. I was half fat! I now actually squeak into the “fitness range”. Thermometer jeans are not an option while the “cracken” is still dangling around my middle. Nothing fits right.</p>
<p>Oh, and thanks everyone for the kind words and congratulations!</p>
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<p>I thought that you were probably right at the fitness range. 23% body fat is pretty lean for a female. That’s just incredible. You must do a double take every time you look in the mirror.</p>
<p>BTW, “thermometer jeans” are any jeans two sizes (women’s) smaller than when you start. That would be, I think, two inches smaller waist, so men’s thermometer jeans would be one size smaller, I guess. The idea being to use them as a measure of fat loss, i.e. when you can get them zipped but not wear them out in public, when you would wear them out in public, etc. Cosgrove also recommends your themometer jeans as a maintenance strategy – for example, wear them at least once a week over the holidays as an early-warning system to signal a need for a bit more eat less/move move. She actually does not want her clients to get on the scale at all – just use the jeans. Of course, she also sells an on-line Thermometer Jeans Challenge program (8 weeks) and a Thermometer Jeans promotion package for gym operators…</p>
<p>Here are her weekly pep talk videos for a Thermometer Jeans challenge that just ended. It’s hard to believe that this nice, sweet lady is the same monster killing me with her Spartacus workout:</p>
<p>[Rachel</a> Cosgrove’s videos on Vimeo](<a href=“http://vimeo.com/user2396845/videos/sort:newest/format:detail]Rachel”>Rachel Cosgrove’s Videos on Vimeo)</p>
<p>And the 8-week “after” photos from the Thermometer Jeans group at her gym in California:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=244141&id=124533561311[/url]”>Redirecting...;
<p>Wow. Tough workout today. Four iPod nazi supersets:</p>
<p>#1:
Split squats with opposite arm dumbbell lateral raise
Plank on the stability ball</p>
<p>Repeat for 3 sets (no rest), then 60 seconds of jogging in place</p>
<p>2 minutes rest</p>
<p>#2:
Step-ups on stairs with bicep curl & press
Side Plank with reach under (dumbell)</p>
<p>Repeat for 3 sets (no rest), then 30 seconds of burpees</p>
<p>2 minutes rest</p>
<p>#3:
Lunge walking with lateral raises (dumbbell)
Feet on Stabilty ball - pushup, then ball roll in and back out</p>
<p>Repeat for 3 sets (no rest), then 30 seconds of jumping jacks</p>
<p>2 minutes rest</p>
<p>#4:
One leg hamstring roll-ins (one foot on stability ball)
Stability ball crunches (with twist)</p>
<p>Repeat for 3 sets (no rest), then 45 seconds of mountain climbers</p>
<p>2 minutes rest</p>
<hr>
<p>Little over an hour with five minutes of Airdyne warm up and cool down plus Mike Boyles flexibility warm-up. I’m toast. I’m not sure which is harder. Spartacus is flinging around more weight, but this has some really tough core stuff.</p>
<p>Ran 3.4 miles this morning, yay. I feel better now. Got out of jury duty an hour early so I beat the rush hour traffic and am home in plenty of time to prepare for my phone interview. Life is good.</p>
<p>Two sizes down for women’s jeans would be a three inch difference.</p>
<p>Today was one of those days I’m glad I live where I live. Gorgeous, sunny, 80s. I challenged myself on a local hill-- I wanted to get up it without ever getting below 6 mph (failed, on a couple of steep places I dropped to 5.4 
) and in a total time less than half an hour (29:10 
). </p>
<p>Then on the way home I stopped to watch a coyote right by the edge of the road. Completely unfazed by my standing twenty feet away, it kept watching a hole in the ground, then suddenly jumped two feet in the air, stuck its muzzle in the hole and began frantically digging. The mouse escaped this time, I guess, since it had nothing when it came up again.</p>
<p>Last week I was riding a paved bike trail after dark when I came upon a sounder of wild pigs. This is why I exercise outside; there are no wild animals to entertain me in the gym where I do yoga.</p>
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<p>You just need to change gyms to one of those joints where NFL players pump iron… :)</p>
<p>Went to Pilates tonight. I don’t like it all that much. It’s hard and I know it’s good for my core, but it reminds me too much of the old exercises classes back in the day- leg lifts etc. Much more refined, of course. I am losing hope.</p>
<p>MOWC:</p>
<p>It’s gotta be killing you to scale back your massive endurance exercise. I’m frustrated for you, but it’s hard because I don’t have any sense of what you can and cannot do. I would think in terms of everything you could train that wasn’t covered by your running. Specifically, I’d set a six week goal of cranking out intense upper body weight training. There are dozens of upper body dumbbell lifts: bench presses, lateral lifts, flys, etc. You could get your heart rate way up there by going heavier over several weeks, plus balancing all the stuff that running didn’t address.</p>
<p>That’s the best idea I can come up with.</p>
<p>I went looking for some pilates videos. I turned off the first one when they said you don’t want to bulk up, so stick to 3 pound hand weights. That is such stupid advice. If people could “bulk up” by lifting dumbbells, there wouldn’t be a big market in anabolic steroids!</p>
<p>MOWC:</p>
<p>I think of your sore sit bone now during my warmup. I do a little sequence of three squats: a split squat, then a lateral squat, then a “rotational” squat. The second two involve doing a squat in what is essentially a “split” position with the legs split wide to the sides. I’m horrible at it, but trying to develop the flexibility and leg strength to do it (which is why I’m doing it every day). Every once in a while, I get a little “twinge” of stretching one of those big muscles connected to the hip bone just a little too far. I’ve now been sore in all those muscles for about five days (in a good way, I think).</p>
<p>Thanks. I am doing a lot more upper body work than I usually do. My problem is that I need the sustained cardio work for my sanity- besides for my conditioning. I’ve been through this before, but usually with an injury that had a better prognosis. It is better to have a stress fracture than this injury, because this is so difficult to fix. I went to spin class this morning, which is a great workout but not exactly fun. I feel good afterwards, which is the only thing that gets me out of bed on a cold rainy morning.<br>
Planks and side planks are good for me, and I’m doing well with the ball hamstring curls, but there is no way I can do one leg. </p>
<p>This week is a little difficult because it is Flying Monkey Marathon week (another race I donated an entry fee to that I’m not able to run). I’m working the finish line and will get to see a lot of my internet running friends in person, since this is sort of a “cult” running event and limited to about 230 runners who are insane enough to undertake perhaps the hardest road marathon in the US (at least top 3 in difficulty). I did really well last year in my first Monkey and it was one of the highlights of my running career. Part of me is relieved not to be dealing with races, since my anxiety level had gotten stupidly out of hand. In fact, I love not having that part. So I get to watch everyone else put it on the line and still enjoy the social aspects. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. I just need to not eat like I’m running the race!</p>
<p>My main goal is to stay fit and not let my weight creep up. I’m up about 3 pounds over perfect weight, but everything still fits and that isn’t bad for this time of year and for not running. As we all know, though, it is easy for that needle on the scale to creep in the wrong direction. My downfall- eggnog. I just discovered pumpkin eggnog at the store. It is fabulous. I take a SMALL glass (in the old, younger days it would be a huge tumbler) and do about 3/4 eggnog and 1/4 lowfat milk. </p>
<p>The limitations on what I can and can’t do in the gym are a moving target. The injury site itself needs to be protected, but there is also the fact that the left leg still has some weakness and doesn’t let me do the sorts of things I see others doing. I am working on the strength and balance, but can’t do a lot of step-ups, one leg side lunges or anything like that. I’m still mastering how to be comfortable at my desk!</p>
<p>You all are a great support group and really an inspiration. I tell people how far you (iDad and NMinn especially) have come in the almost-year that we’ve had this thread!</p>
<p>I don’t even want to think about egg nog. My wife used to buy that stuff. That’s no longer something that would fit on my eat less/move more plan, I’m afraid.</p>
<p>On the one-leg hamstring roll-ins, believe me, I can’t do them either. I mean, I get through 30 to 45 seconds on each leg, but it is not pretty and I’m on the verge of a hamstring cramp the whole time. The interim step is to do a two-legged roll-in and while the ball is rolled in, take one leg off the ball, keeping the thigh in line with the other leg, and pointing the foot up towards the ceiling. Hold that for a second, put the foot back on the ball, and do another 2-legged roll-in.</p>
<p>Split squats and lunges are killing me right now. I have gotten to the point where I can do a split squat (like a stationary forward lunge) all the way down to the back knee touching the floor. The problem is that I now do them (and lunge walking) deeper. Add some weight and the thighs start burning big time. These lunges with a lateral arm raise are brutal.</p>