<p>Great looking burpees!
Sounds like a fantastic time all around.</p>
<p>I had already started to stiffen up pretty good by the time I did those burpees. I did another set in front of the lunar lander in the Air & Space Museum yesterday, but my D hasn’t e-mailed that video yet.</p>
<p>People really think you are nuts doing burpees (which is, I guess, a fair assesment). But, it’s pretty harmless fun and it usually provokes a few smiles.</p>
<p>Idad – I love crabcakes, and made with lots of good fresh or Phillips crab (and not lots of filler breadcrumbs) they’re not a bad deal at all. I’ll pass on the fried oysters, though. (I am nostalgic for the large pieces of fried flounder we used to get on Fridays. Just not a fish that makes it West. Don’t see bluefish either.) When I was a kid, we’d take a rowboat and go around the canals and snag blue claw crabs with the boathook, and bring them home for dinner. Not much beats fresh crab.</p>
<p>LOL idad, you are officially awesome! What a great trip for you.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When I was a kid vactioning at Hilton Head, we used to tie a piece of raw chicken on a string, throw it in the ocean or a lagoon, and drag crabs out. Later, when he lived on the ocean, my dad used to anchor crab traps out and catch 'em that way. The killer is the labor to pick those little crabs and get a useful mound of crab meat. Last night was definitely fresh local Cheasapeake crab.</p>
<p>I love fried oysters. Actually, my daughter grew up eating raw oysters as a five year old at her grandpas. I learned all about fried oysters in New Orleans. I can fry up a pretty good batch of oysters (from a P. Prudhomme recipe, breading with a mix of cornmeal, cornstarch, and masa harina), but we just can get really good ones around here. These last night were as good as I’ve ever eaten. They may have been breaded with straight corn starch. And the buffalo wing hot sauce was a great idea.</p>
<p>Fried seafood is actually not horrible from a calorie standpoint. I actually measured the net four and oil the last time I fried haddock, and it was pretty minimal.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Probably depends on whether it has a light dusting of breading and pan frying versus batter dipping and deep frying. The latter probably means a lot more calories from the batter and the extra oil it absorbs.</p>
<p>Biking and some weights tonight. Knee is still iffy, but I managed to do OK. Phew. My butt is still sore from yesterday’s mall walking (I pactices using my glutes to move my legs as the trainer taught me, so my shopping trip had a dual purpose :)). </p>
<p>Idad, awesome burpees! I wonder if any people around you were thinking that you were a part of a flash mob. :)</p>
<p>idad, I thought of you when my kids were visiting last week. We were sitting by the Indian Ocean having brunch on a beautiful calm day. I glanced up the beach and there was a guy doing burpees. He was cheating a bit by not doing the jump afterwards, but he cranked out about 20 while I was watching. He looked a tad too young to have a Class of 2013er, though.</p>
<p>You can run but you can’t hide!</p>
<p>Hello all! Just found this thread and I thought I might add my story. I grew up very skinny and never had problems with weight until I hit about age 30. I am 36 now. Two years ago I lost 30 lbs and felt tremendous. I was a size 6 and was running at least 10 miles a week on the treadmill/track at my kids high school.</p>
<p>ugh. This last year I have gained all the weight back and then some. It is depressing. Overwhelmingly depressing. I have never weighed as much as I do now and even my husband came out and told me I seriously need to do something. So, I have decided to get back on track and have recently started exercising. I am so out of shape. How you can get that out of shape in 1 year is amazing. </p>
<p>My biggest problem is my diet. I love anything sweet and also eat out of boredom. I tend to have an all or nothing attitude and that sabotages me. I do amazingly well for a week and then I binge. When I binge I get frustrated and binge some more. I also think I verge on an eating disorder at times and have done things to my body that I shouldn’t do. I have never used drugs but if I could handle stimulants and they wouldn’t make me have panic attacks/tachycardia I would probably take them.</p>
<p>My goals throughout the month of December are to exercise at least 30 minutes 3 days a week. (starting off slow) I am also trying to limit my pop intake to no more than 2 cans a week and I am drinking a lot more water. I am not trying to count calories because when I did that several months ago it lasted 2 weeks and then I binged.</p>
<p>So frustrating. The worst part is my weight gain is causing social isolation. I am so ashamed of myself that I hate to go out in public. When I go to my daughters’ cheerleading events I try to limit myself from walking in front of people in the stands so that means no matter how much I have to use the restroom I just hold it until I get home! </p>
<p>This whole situation has me in tears. I hate it.</p>
<p>So there it is. My confession. I can’t believe I wrote this but I have to do something before I end up requiring the fire department to come rescue me. (ok, not that bad but in my mind it feels that way.)</p>
mspearl, you’ve come to the right place. This thread is full of inspiring people who have decided to become healthier and fitter. Although I don’t post too much, I do come here to get motivated.
You have made the first step, and you can continue making positive steps towards health. You have an advantage over most of us - you are very young!
Can you find a friend to walk with? Sometimes just getting out into the fresh air can help energize you.
Your goals for December are a great place to start. Good luck - you can do it!
<p>Tired: thank you! It feels good just to admit I need help. Like an addict, which I am in a way, to food. And I have been in denial until I saw a picture of myself a friend took on her cell phone of me a week ago. Ick.</p>
<p>I was going to wait until January to start but I thought, why? I need to do this now. No point in putting it off. My mind is ready.</p>
<p>What a way to start my morning- iDad and the burpees! AWESOME!!! I’m surprised you didn’t draw a big crowd, but you were probably finished before they figured out what was going on. That, and the fact that people probably do other odd things around those memorials! I’m sure Abe is proud and smiling.</p>
<p>Good form on the pushups too.</p>
<p>For mspearl, you might consider one of the online calorie trackers to track what and how much you are eating so that you can see what’s happening with intake and calorie burn. You could then work on a diet and nutrition plan to get the weight down without feeling deprived. Exercise helps but diet has a bigger effect.</p>
mspearl, welcome!
I think you are right to not count calories. You shouldn’t feel like you are on a “diet” or denying yourself. It has to be a positive lifestyle change. Just eat GOOD foods and stop thinking of anything with sugar, Crisco, or white flour in it as food. We all are like lab rats, unthinkingly eating what is put in front of us. Remember the lab rat experiment where one is fed donuts and soda and dies an untimely death? We are smarter than lab rats, right?
So–don’t go hungry. Eat all you want of good, interesting vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, cheese, eggs, meat, & whole grains. Scale way back on the carbs. Treat yourself to berries & a little chocolate for dessert. 
You’ll feel better and feel more like being active. It’s a reinforcing cycle in the RIGHT direction. And don’t even buy chips, granola bars, or any kind of sweet snack or dessert. Just don’t have them in the house.
And at parties? Someday you will be able to look at the dessert buffet dispassionately and just choose one thing.
<p>Welcome mspearl! This thread is a great place for motivation. I think idad will have a lot of information that would be helpful to you on the diet front.</p>
I’m used to doing pushups and burpees on a nice cushy exercise mat, not a cold granite step with an air temp in the upper 40s. I felt like a frozen statue starting those burpees!
No crowd, but one ol guy did walk up and said, “That was kinda cool” just as my daughter stopped the video.
<p>Welcome, mspearl. Stick with us, and we’ll have you doing burpees and running 5Ks in no time! (only kidding) Seriously- the real key (as iDad will attest) is to figure out a system where you will not feel deprived. That is the real deal-breaker for “diets”. Figure out a good list of foods that are healthy and that you really enjoy. If plates of lettuce with zero fat dressing are NOT your thing, don’t despair! Steamed veggies, a little brown rice, a nice piece of fish or chicken with a tasty low-fat sauce…no one food needs to be totally off limits unless you feel it triggers you to eat it non-stop. It takes some trial and error (we’ve all been through the error part…). </p>
<p>Don’t be intimidated if some of us seem very hardcore. Everyone started someplace and we are all coming from different levels of athletic ability, body type, and background. We all started someplace, though, and this forum is very supportive of all accomplishments and understanding of failure.</p>
<p>mspearl:</p>
<p>Good for you! I agree with the others who have said not to make it feel like a big diet “sacrifice”. Better, I think, to make a few changes (starting to exercise, dropping some junk from the diet), see what happens, and then make more changes if necessary.</p>
<p>I was in exactly the same place you are, only probably much heavier. It had reached the point where the clothes sizes I had to buy were just disgusting. And, it was really taking a toll on everyday things. For example, trying to walk from the car to a concert. Or huff and puff around campus the weekend of my daughter’s graduation. I had become the big 'ol fat guy who had to stop and catch his breath walking up a hill.</p>
<p>There are many hormonal changes as we get older that conspire against staying skinny. But, a very likely culprit for any of us who have been drinking soda or juice or sweet tea our whole lives is “insulin resistance”. Our bodies become desensitized to the insulin that is released to clear out a load of sugar like that, so our pancreas releases more and more insulin when we eat or drink carbs. Insulin works, primarily, by forcing the body to store fat. In other words, we are swimming against a strong current trying to lose weight when our bodies are actually signalling to store fat instead of burning it.</p>
<p>The key, then, for “easy” sustainable weight loss is to break this cycle and do things that tend to lower our insulin levels and signal our bodies to burn fat instead of storing it. Then, our bodies will be working to help us lose weight. The more insulin resistant we have become (it varies from person to person), the more this kind of approach will work.</p>
<p>Dr. Robert Lustig (an endicrinologist and leading expert on juvenile obesity) has a very simple diet at the University of California Medical School:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>For me, I believe that Step 1 has to be the starting point. And, I know myself well enough that I can’t have a Coke or a glass of lemonaid or a sweet tea every once in a while because “every once in a while” will eventually become “a little more often”. When that happens, I’m drinking a 16 ounce glass a couple of times a day and I’m finished. I’ve just had to do as Lustig advices and stop drinking sugar. Period. I’ve found that, if it’s simply not an option, I really don’t crave it and it’s no big deal. I don’t drink diet substitutes, I just get water or unsweetened tea or unsweetend coffee. So, I could have a meal like at Bobby’s Flay’s burger place the other night – a burger and a shared order of onion rings – and not turn a cheat meal into a disaster with a fountain Coke and probably a refill. I’ve not had a sip of a sugar drink since February 2010 and, after a month or so of adjustment, I haven’t missed it at all. It’s not a bad sacrifice. I’d rather give up 2-liter bottles of Pepsi than Maryland crab cakes! :)</p>
<p>Hah. I should skip my workouts, drink martinis, and eat like a horse more often. I stepped on the scale this morning for the first time since Friday and have lost 1.6 pounds. I did do a lot of walking.</p>
<p>It was the martinis, Idad. The Rat Pack was all thin guys!</p>