Diet/Exercise/Health/Wellness Support Thread

Parent Cafe
13721

<p>Down 8 pounds … woo hoo, go me! It’s amazing what willpower and cutting carbs (not completely, just lower than usual) can do …</p>

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<p>I think the old-school phys ed of my youth (I’m in my mid-forties) is squarely to blame for this. There was never any discussion of how to get fit on one’s own or how to enjoy physical activity for the sake of movement … it was all about team sports that required coordination and skill and are completely impractical for most adults. I love how “kids today” learn how to use workout equipment, walk / jog, do yoga, weights and other things that are much more compatible with how adults actually keep fit. When I ran my first mile (in my mid-thirties), with the help of a trainer, I actually sat and cried because I had had it beaten into it by gym teachers that I wasn’t athletic. That runs REALLY deep, IMO. Now I believe that I’m still not athletic, but I can certainly be fit - but I think for women of my age (if they aren’t MOWC), it takes a lot to get there.</p>

13722

<p>8 pound party time! Congratulations. Getting the ball rolling is the hardest part.</p>

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<p>I hear ya on the perception of adult fitness and exercise, especially with the difficulty of moving from no exercise to some exercise.</p>

13723

Cograts, Pizzagirl! 8 pounds is a major milestone. Yay!

“I think the old-school phys ed of my youth (I’m in my mid-forties) is squarely to blame for this. There was never any discussion of how to get fit on one’s own or how to enjoy physical activity for the sake of movement … it was all about team sports that required coordination and skill and are completely impractical for most adults.”

Ditto this sentiment. We had a PE program like that. To this day, I hate playing team sports. DH was puzzled why I did not want to get a volleyball net for our lawn or a basketball hoop for our driveway. :slight_smile:

13724

<p>Yay! Eight pounds has a very nice ring to it, PG. And during Thanksgiving – wow!</p>

<p>Hey, I have good news, too. Have had severe pelvic pain and somewhat scary test results showing growths on both ovaries. Started about six months ago. Went to two different gynecologists – both said could be endometriosis but to be safe have a hysterectomy. Well, I happened to see the colleague gynecologist of my regular doc back in August. This brilliant lady recommended I first try low dose birth control. The pain was completely gone a few days after I started on the pill. No pain since.</p>

<p>Follow-up ultrasound today. And absolutely no sign of any sort of growths on either ovaries. Radiologist performed it and told me everything was very “quiet” in there and no evidence whatsoever of cancer. He also said he’s had several patients of late who have had their endometriosis controlled or even resolved by the new super low dose birth control pills.</p>

<p>I’m posting this because it’s been a good lesson in how medicine is very much a field that is continually evolving in real time. No one wants a hysterectomy if they don’t really need it.</p>

13725

<p>Yay for pizzagirl’s 8 pounds and Sewhappy’s great medical news! Excellent.</p>

<p>Blandmind- google McMillan running calculator and you can plug in times for certain distances and it will help you predict what you might do at other distances and what your training paces should be. It can be pretty useful. Obviously, 5K can predict 10K a lot better than it can predict marathon! It also assumes appropriate training.</p>

13726

<p>sewhappy–great news! </p>

<p>I agree, no one wants a hysterectomy if they don’t really need it. But some surgeons like to do operations that aren’t really needed. My old ob-gyn was great at delivering babies but… When I was entering menopause, he offered to do a hysterectomy if my uterus was giving me “any trouble at all,” as if it were a minor operation. They could easily replace the hormones, of course. No prob. :eek:</p>

<p>He also showed me his certification in laser skin treatment and offered to take care of my wrinkles. I was offended, as I hadn’t gone to see him for WRINKLES. Sheesh. I earned them, and he wanted to remove them???</p>

<p>I am happy now with my younger, female ob-gyn!</p>

<p>Oh guys…it’s safe to come back in now.</p>

13727

<p>Pill beats surgery in my book anytime. Good news and good information.</p>

13728

<p>Glad to hear your great news, sewhappy.</p>

13729

Thanks – it’s a pretty good day here. Sorry to scare off the gentlemen on the thread. Also, meant to mention though that exercise is consistently found to prevent and control endometriosis. Apparently, exercise affects hormones, etc. I suspect my endometriosis set in during our relocation last year when life was so crazy I stopped exercising entirely. Not saying lack of exercise caused it, but probably contributed.

Walk/run with the neighbors today. They really sprint! Former high school athletes. I am keeping up with the pack but afterwards have to lie down for awhile. Then eat a big bowl of oatmeal.

13730

<p>sewhappy, that is excellent news!</p>

13731

<p>Good to hear that everything is resolved, sewhappy! These hormones are crazy things. PCOS in young women is totally connected to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome</p>

13732

<p>Congrats PG, and a big heaping of jealousy over here at your 8 lb. loss – took me MONTHS to achieve that!</p>

<p>Cardio dance workout today, got the HR up, fun, no complaints.</p>

<p>Doctor apt. today after over 5 years of putting this off. Everything looks good, BP 100/70.
Talked about the stubborn weight loss, lowering carbs etc. etc. Apparently, the low fat diet is no longer the standard recommendation, since she could have been quoting Taubes in our discussion. So, I am doing everything right in her eyes, seem to be as a healthy as horse, and she has no solutions, as expected. She did order a bunch of tests, so I will be getting the full cholestrol, triglyceride panels, and will do a fasting glucose test, as well as thyroid, but neither she (nor I ) expect to see anything significant. We shall see, I will go in and get this done, as well probably get a flu shot or spray. Am up to date on tetanus, anything else I should do while they are poking me? I am game for almost anything ;)</p>

13733

Boy, I’ll say it looks good. That’s a great blood pressure number!

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Interesting that your doc didn’t give you the standard low-fat diet recommendation. I do think the tide on the lipid hypothesis is turning. The disasterous results of the massive $750 million Women’s Health Initiative study (the low-fat group didn’t lose more weight and didn’t have lower cardiac risk) was a turning point.

I don’t know what my doctor thinks about diet, fat loss, and exercise. It would take more than monosyllabic grunts to find out. :slight_smile: Probably just as well, because I doubt I would change what i’m doing regardless.

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NROL4A for me this evening. Punched the clock for the most part. I’m doing hang cleans with two 35 lb DBs, allternating with medicine ball slams (8 lb ball). That combo will get your blood flowing for sure.

Tri tip steak, grilled outside, and fresh green beans sauteed in a litle olive oil and garlic for dinner.

13734

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<p>She’s just one data point, but she is a gp at a HMO-like entity, so hardly a cutting edge specialist. She referenced the “faulty” advice starting in the 70s. vis a vis heart disease and low fat diets, talked about how low fat ends up being high carb by default, etc.</p>

<p>If your doc just grunts mono syllables, maybe time for a switch?</p>

13735

<p>To his credit, something made him run the thyroid test, although he couldn’t articulate why. And, I appreciated that he was perfectly content to sit tight on high LDL cholesterol numbers until the thyroid medicine was dialed in and my weight loss stabiized.</p>

13736

<p>This was a good post on my running forum by one of the top local runners who ran in college. I wanted to share it because I know it is hard for non-runners to understand why I keep slogging away day after day instead of varying my routine, which is, as iDad points out, a better way to achieve overall fitness.</p>

<p>"Weekly mileage is hugely important. It’s probably THE most important variable in running success. It’s the day-in-day-out runs that transform your body into the body of a runner. They are the runs that make the changes in your heart, your capillaries, your nerves, your muscles, and your mind.</p>

<p>…: the most specific thing to do in training for the marathon would be to run 26.2 miles every day at marathon pace. </p>

<p>But why don’t we do that? Because it would break us down. So, in training, we have to take smaller pieces and put them together over a long time, build capacities slower. We have to break the marathon down into its components: the pace, the distance, the strength, the fueling, the resistance to pounding, etc. We work on these individually in pieces through the week. Instead of running 26.2 miles at marathon pace every day, we get to the point where in the course of a week we can run 50 miles or 60 miles or even 100 miles, with perhaps 20% of that faster than or at marathon pace. We never run the marathon distance at marathon pace, but we end up training the body to do this by breaking up the different demands of the marathon over the week and keeping these aspects stimulated in a way that we can absorb and profit from.</p>

<p>Now, coming to your question about long runs: long runs are not great training tools because the stress is too high. The body doesn’t respond well to the stimulus. The long run breaks you down more than it builds you up, especially if you haven’t been running much. So, we need to prepare the body to be able to benefit from the long run. That’s the role of weekly mileage–to prepare the body of the runner to be able to benefit maximally from the specific training of the long runs in the final phase of training and then eventually for the demands of the race itself.</p>

<p>What benefit do you get from running more weekly mileage? A stronger heart, more developed capillaries, better fuel delivery, stronger muscles and tendons, a nervous system more attuned to the demands of running. These are the SPECIFIC things you will need to run well at the marathon distance. And you get them all from that daily hour run, done in a way that stimulates these capacities but in a way that you can grow from them…"</p>

13737

<p>MOWC,</p>

<p>What sort of weekly mileage should a beginner runner shoot for? I don’t even know my mileage. Does one wear some sort of mileage tracker? </p>

<p>The focus on weekly mileage makes intuitive sense for me.</p>

13738

<p>Yesterday I just ran a half a mile at an 8:06 pace. I was going to run
a mile but I didn’t have enough fuel in the tank (didn’t have
breakfast). I did get the Smith Machine and Abs Dolly Plus in but it
was a very busy day at work and I was generally pressed for time. I’m
chowing down on four pieces of bread right now for my run an about 90
minutes (no time to make a decent breakfast).</p>

<p>I’ve been working on improving my time for several weeks moving from
around a 10:10 - 10:20 pace to about a 9:30 - 9:20 pace and then adding
a quarter mile per week. It’s actually been pretty hard bumping up a
quarter of a mile per week - could be a cold that I have or it could be
that it really is just plain hard to do. I’m pretty sure that I could
drop down to a 10:30 pace and run 6 or 7 miles but I’m trying to stay
within a pace range.</p>

<p>What was really surprising was in playing tennis on Tuesday night. I
felt faster and less tired playing with someone that really moves me
around. I attribute that to the move up in pace in my running. Maybe
the weekly mileage too.</p>

<p>Your post is helpful - I’d like to up my mileage but it’s more of a
self-competitive thing - same thing on improving my pace. I would
actually like to find a place with good running threads or see a bit
more running stuff here. I don’t want a place where there will be too
much running information but would like to see more specialized stuff.</p>

13739

<p>Thanks for that post MOWC.</p>

13740

<p>Sewhappy- It really depends. If your goal is fitness, it is really smart to do weights, stretching (yoga-ish stuff) and balance activities, too. This, of course, means your running mileage goes down since you don’t have 25 hours a day to devote to all this! I think for someone aiming to run 5K (not even necessarily in a competitive situation) 12-15 miles is a great goal. 20 is really a significant amount for someone not wanting to compete or wanting to compete no longer than 10K. My view is distorted since I “hang out” with marathoners and ultra-runners. Frankly, I find that I can’t tolerate as high a mileage as I get older. For one thing, it takes more time since I’m slower and I just flat get tired. In 2009 when I raced so well (and too much) I was running 42-53 miles a week, depending on whether there was a 20 mile run in the week. It was too much for me, although at the time I did OK. </p>

<p>BCEagle- Check out runningahead dot com. The General Forums (the snobby elitists call that part the GSP, or Great Scary Place) have LOTS of information and all levels of runners. Some good info and advice. The sub-forums (by mileage levels, interest groups, residence etc) are more specialized. I’m in one called the LLR (Ladies Locker Room) which is ONLY for women and provides a safe place for all issues. The serious group (and very snobby) is the 2000 mile a year group, known as the Swamp because it can get pretty nasty. The Runnersworld forums aren’t bad, either, but runningahead is better.</p>