<p>Skinny isn’t always healthy. I keep losing weight following a messed up colonoscopy back in late March. There was a perforation and basically it is just really painful to digest food. Trying to avoid a surgical fix but it is really frustrating. I wish I could pig out! But it hurts too much.</p>
<p>Appeciate the photos. Chintzy, I know you’ve posted about your surgery and I assumed that was the midsection . . . your skin tone overall (arms, for example) looks awesome. Does the body adapt better to loss in certain area, or am I just confused.</p>
<p>sewhappy - that’s awful. Losing weight because you are sick is not good.</p>
<p>Amesie, that’s the magic of the blurry cell phone picture! Actually, weight lifting really toned my arms, but there’s still a little turkey wing flap. There is surgery for that, but I’m just not motivated to spend the money (2 in college next year!) or have the long scars (armpit to elbow). The midsection was a must do. Insurance even paid for part of it!</p>
<p>Sewhappy, best wishes for a thorough, non-surgical recovery!</p>
<p>5K walk/jog on my usual scenic route through the Episcopal retreat, over the footbridge at the old mill, and around the state park on the bluffs overlooking the river. Spectacular sunny summer day. 83 degrees. Not too humid.</p>
<p>Same old, same old. Steep hills, five 2-minute jogging intervals, etc. It’s a good thing I’ve got the jogging intervals because walking up the hills doesn’t even get my heart rate up any more. The jogging intervals sure do, though! Still, I’m seeing progress on those, getting a little easier and a little faster.</p>
<p>Our former Rector used to spend a lot of time at that retreat center. Sounds like you had a good walk/run!</p>
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<p>Yeah, that damn loose skin is the only thing between me and becoming a fitness model (well, that and about 40 years!)</p>
<p>I have some on my arms, although it’s pretty well concealed by a little muscle from strength training. Quite a bit on my neck, it’s actually the only thing keeping me from fitting in all the 15 1/2 inch dress shirts I sent to goodwill last summer. I can button a 15 1/2, but the ol’ guy lose skin makes it a little tight.</p>
<p>Quite a bit on my thighs and stomach (where I lost the most fat), but I don’t plan on walking around with my shirt off or wearing short-shorts. Overall, I can’t complain. It beats 90 pounds of flab.</p>
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<p>It’s really pretty. And the nice thing is all the roads dead end at the footbridge at the old mill, so there’s zero traffic. Many days, I never see a car on my whole route (except crossing the “big” 2-lane road). I could (and sometimes do) walk right down the middle of the road.</p>
<p>One of these days, I’m going to lengthen some of the intervals. The last one will have to stay at 2 minutes, because I’m boxed in by steep uphill section and an incredibly steep downhill section. The rest probably have enough room to go 2.5 minutes by running uphill a bit more. If i really wanted to extend the running, I’d go find some flatter terrain, but I’m kind of partial to these hills.</p>
<p>I’m not in any big hurry. I’m actually pleased that my heart rate now tops out in the mid 90% range. The 99% and 100% stuff I was seeing is a bit over the top. I could push myself for a week or two, but I can’t do that as a steady thing or exercise just becomes something to dread.</p>
<p>4 mile run + weights/weight machines at the YMCA. It was a good workout day. Will finish off with some freeweights at home.</p>
<p>Okay, I think I may have found a victim willing to start NROL4A with me in the next month.</p>
<p>I have the book and the log material printed out. With the visual aids I think I get most of the exercises.</p>
<p>Following questions arose in the recruitment process:
book seems to recommend only 2-3 times a week. What is done the other days of the week? Specifically, the potential victim already has a weightlifting regimen that is more like 4-6 times a week, doesn’t want to give that schedule up. I am fine with 3 times a week, I would do cardio on the other two and have a rest day. What do I tell them about frequency, is it always just 3 days a week?</p>
<p>Also does there have to be a rest day between every workout day?</p>
<p>The first phase was deemed easy looking. Potential victim is concernced that there will be performance loss because the easier workout will be replacing the current, seemingly more rigorous and more frequent schedule. Advice?</p>
<p>Am I right in understanding the process to be the following:
Phase 1 you alternate between the A and B workouts for 6-8 times each.
Then move on to the next phase, doing the same, until you complete the final phase and then…? Start over?</p>
<p>Chintzy–Wow. The new you looks wonderfully fit.
MOWC–I concur with CJ-- your before looks like my after photo! Your dog looks a lot like mine–I have a Labradoodle with a similar coat. He’s a little smaller-- only 65 pounds.
Went to spinning class today. It is a small gym and there are only six bikes. A man in his early forties came to class with his teenage daughter. As he walked to the bike, I realized that he had very, very limited movement on his right side --it was clear he was a stroke victim. I could tell the instructor was worried and she changed the ride because he had a difficult to time with the standing ride. At one point he stooped over and was resting; I thought the instructor (who is 20-something was going to panic). Guy was fine and finished the class at his own pace. Seeing folks like this guy getting out and moving, made me realize that my excuses for not exercising are pretty lame. Being on vacation is tough on diets. I find myself having red wine or eating a desert more often than I do at home. Decided today to start tracking my food again and not adding a little something. I’ve got a high school reunion (42 years–we never got it together at the 40 year mark) and I’d like to lost 15 more pounds.</p>
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<p>I did NROL4ABS on Mon, Wed, Friday. On Tues, Thurs, Saturday, I do some kind of cardio intervals. 20 minutes on the Airdyne. 20 minutes of burpees/swings, or my 5K walk. I force myself to take Sunday completely off.</p>
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<p>No offense to your buddy, but weight lifting more than 4 days a week is stupid. Muscles need recovery. The only sensible way to do 4 days a week is an upper body/lower body split. NROL4A is a total body workout. I couldn’t have done it more than three days a week.</p>
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<p>There should be. Otherwise, you start getting into soreness issues.</p>
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<p>You can make it as hard or as easy as you like depending on which core and pushup variations you chose and how much weight you pick for the strength exercises. Usually, its the “how much can you bench?” crowd that takes a look at programs like this and think it’s too easy. Those are usually the people who get clobbered by the core exercises.</p>
<p>Anyway, I can’t really relate. I found the program to be very challenging. A lot of fun, but very challenging. I still have nightmares about the front-foot elevated split squats in Phase I. My god. Three sets of 12 on each leg. I was quivering jello by the end of every set.</p>
<p>Anyway, these are essentially identical to the workouts Mike Boyle uses with his NFL draft trainees, the BU men’s hockey team, and the US Women’s Olympic hockey team. This is very much the stuff that pro athletes are doing.</p>
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<p>Yes. I did 8 times each because, honestly, it took me two or three times to get the exercises and then five or six times to ramp up the weights and get better. </p>
<p>I plan to go back and do the program start to finish again. There are so many variations that you could make it much more difficult. </p>
<p>Right now, I’m using the workouts as a template. Still doing the warmup, still doing core exercises (although I’m using a different core program to change it up, albeit a lot of the same exercises). Then, I plug in the four strength exericises: a push, a pull, a knee-dominant squat, and a hip dominant deadlift. Many of those are pulled from NROL4A. For example, this week I’m doing single leg deadlifts for the hip-dominant lift and chinups for the upper body pull. Last week I did rear foot elevated split squats from Phase III and TRX inverted rows and TRX pushups (which were two of the pull and push exercises I did in Phase I). One of the things I really liked was the exposure to most of the best exercises, often with diabolical variation – like a 1 1/4 squat with one dumbbell held at the shoulder, the other at your side. Each rep is full squat, come up partway, go back down, then stand up – while tryng to stabiize against a very uneven load.</p>
<p>chintzy, your so called arm flap is microscopic. Those arms look pretty toned to me!</p>
<p>Ran 4 miles today thinking that it would be uber hard after such a hectic day. No, running felt great tonight! I made another adjustment to my running gear: modified the right shoe by adding a heel cup, and it seemed to make a huge difference! I think my right leg might be just a hair shorter than the left one, because sometimes I would feel sore just on the right side after a longer run. This is the second shoe tweak in the past quarter. Two months ago I went to my favorite Brooks outlet to get a new pair of shoes and asked the sales guy to re-check my gait. He said that I needed a support shoe on my right foot, but the left side was just fine! I walked out with a pair of Adrenalines and some doubts if I really needed the support shoe. Now I think I do. :)</p>
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<p>Yes, this is the current regimen. There was a strong desire to split the workouts up with higher frequency and less time spent per workout, i.e. resistance to the full body workout, would prefer the workouts to be shorter and more frequent, I gather.</p>
<p>In any case, let the record show that I have NO concerns at all about any of it being too easy!!!</p>
<p>Thanks for the info, idad, and apologies to everyone else for highjacking the thread.</p>
<p>Ah-h-h, falling behind on this thread! Skimmed the last several pages to catch up and I’m glad I did. LOVED all the photos! Amazing transformations, especially idad and chintzy. Kudos, congratulations, high 5s, etc, etc.</p>
<p>My exercise routine is anything but routine these past couple weeks. We’re constantly going from 1 location to the other, and next week we’re out of town. Can I whine here about how much I H-A-T-E moving/packing? Thanks. Took a carload of stuff to Cambridge yesterday, The condo really came out lovely – but I’m pretty concerned about how much furniture H thinks will fit in. Even when we measure everything out and it’s clear stuff won’t fit where he says it will, he keeps saying, “It will go somewhere.” But, the movers are pretty smart – day 1 they wrap/pack/truck stuff going into storage. Day 2 they pack the truck for Cambridge. Day 3 they drive to Cambridge and unpack. Anything that doesn’t fit in the condo goes back on the truck to storage. H doesn’t want to overpay for storage, which I get, but I don’t want the condo to look like a furniture warehouse until we rebuild our beach/retirement home. OK, end of rant.</p>
<p>Have been reading about the Galloway running method. Sounds like just the thing for me to try.</p>
<p>BB- You might want to try Brooks Ravenna. It’s light support. Sounds like the heel cup will help you, though.</p>
<p>Chintzy - those pictures are truly amazing - and as for the so called flapping, as long as you learn to do the “queen on a float wave” nobody will ever notice your !</p>
<p>I am so bummed out. I had started back to doing some speedwork and as some you will appreciate, I was a little overzealous and am now paying the price. My left ankle is killing me. I have tried a little ice, a little ibuprofen, but it is not getting better. I took the day off yesterday, and hope this morning it would be good, but after four miles I am back to ice and the ibuprofen wasn’t enough. I know I overdid the speedwork on the track, the two many days in a week. Idiot. </p>
<p>So now I am going to try to convince myself that a couple of days now will prevent a longer layoff. </p>
<p>Oh well, I can still do the weights.</p>
<p>MOfWC, thanks! I will look into that shoe.</p>
<p>wnp, you are smart to let it rest. You do not want to develop any tendinitis or something along those lines.</p>
<p>It looks like the weather did some of my garden chores last night by naturally watering the plants, so my dumbbells will get some action.</p>
<p>I’ve had two sprained ankles and both took at least 6 weeks to heal.</p>
<p>I’ve had sore ankles from tennis when I was a lot heavier. Those usually were better after three days. You might consider compression (either a bandage or a velcro-wrap).</p>
<p>wnp- Sorry you are fighting the ankle. Common mistake we all make- if some is good, too much must be better! </p>
<p>Yesterday on my morning run I got bitten/stung by a gnat or something AGAIN (2nd time in 2 weeks) under my left eye (same place). It continued to swell through the day until it looked like I had a tennis ball on my cheek. Truly horrible. Tried topical benadryl and then at night (can’t do oral benad. during the day) oral benadryl. Still terrible. Had to go to the walk-in clinic this morning. He gave me a steroid pack, which means I won’t sleep for about 5 days, but he said it should help the swelling quickly. This is ridiculous- hundreds of people walk, run, walk dogs etc and I get bitten TWICE by small, black flying things? I didn’t even know they even could bite! Glad it isn’t family photo weekend!</p>
<p>Running is stupid. So-I didn’t take my swollen face out this morning for my easy 2 mile day (plus, it was raining and I melt). Will need to do a couple VERY easy miles after work (tomorrow is a longer run) since I’m in a streak right now (and we all know how well the long streak worked for me in 2009!). Maybe it’s runnERS that are stupid!</p>