<p>New Rules of Lifting for Abs today. First time since last Wednesday. Tues. is not my usual day, but I needed to lift something heavy after nearly a week. It kicked my butt, but in a good way.</p>
<p>Three sets of unassisted chinups – 5, 4, and 4 pretty good ones.</p>
<p>Oops, meant to include the link in case you’re interested:
[The</a> Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) - YouTube](<a href=“The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) - YouTube”>The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) - YouTube)</p>
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<p>Probably at first, just as an interesting piece of data and to start to see how your heart rate responds to various speeds, hills, etc. Once you have a bit of a baseline feel for it, you can use the heart rate to adjust your workouts, to make them more or less intense.</p>
<p>That Stanford lecture is so good. I’ve watched it several times, too. I think the single most important bit is in one of his answers at the end. People who are not insulin resistant do more or less as well losing weight on any of the diets. People who are insulin resistant do much better losing weight on the low carb diets.</p>
Well, I had no pop today. I would love to have a coke, cherry coke, pepsi, Barqs rootbeer. yum. But I won’t.
I am in a war.
Exercised for 20 minutes - all I had time for but at least I was sweating. Going to weight watchers meeting with my Aunt on Thursday and thinking I will join for 1 month. The thought of being accountable on the scale every week is a huge motivation for me along with the fact I am very competitive. (I know the competitive part isn’t that great but it gets me going.)
I feel like if I could lose a solid 10 lbs I would be golden. Right now my engine is sputtering but I will get weighed, like a cow, on Thursday. I have not weighed myself in about 1 month and am terrified. The scale is a demon.
<p>mspearl, I’ve lost 31 and have a long way to go. I want to be able to climb Masada this spring without keeling over. That weight I figure I need to be for that is about 75% of my goal. Am not looking for skinny; am looking for healthy. My mom had a catastrophic femur fracture at 64 and combined with diabetes, osteoporosis, congestive heart failure and a clotting disorder, has been totally bedridden for seven years. I would like to change my odds. </p>
<p>First thing I did was quit going through the drive-throughs. Cold turkey. Haven’t eliminated the diet soda completely, but I do try for 3-4 glasses of water per day.</p>
<p>I knew evenings were my big problem – I’d leave work, be starving and stop off for an Extra Calories Meal on the way home at 4-5 pm. DH would get home much later and we’d have dinner together at 10 pm or later. I had to have a substantial meal before taking the chemo regimen I was on, and I did that at night so as to sleep through the worst of my side effects. Essentially, I was having four meals per day. Writing it in a food journal made the problem extremely clear.</p>
<p>Hardest part for me is the carbs – I am a carb addict. Have been trying to have some regularly so I don’t start craving them and go on a binge. Mainly, I have been eating more fruits and veggies and being very mindful of what I eat. It’s probably not a lot less than what I was eating before, but it IS better food.</p>
<p>Now that I am getting some of the load off my joints, I want to start exercising. Am going to have to be very careful, as my meds do a number on my joints and connective tissue, and I have had ongoing ortho issues for the past several years.</p>
<p>DH is seriously overweight and has no interest in changing his behavior. Sigh. This process can be pretty lonely.</p>
<p>mathmom, S1 has largely quit the caffeinated stuff, too, which I found surprising. S2 has never cared for it.</p>
<p>mspearl, I like your attitude! Me thinks you will get where you want to get soon. And you have a support group - your Aunt and your virtual buddies in this thread.</p>
<p>mspearl, I think even 20 minutes is better than nothing. At least for me it seems to get the metabolism going. I actually end up less hungry and it burns some small amount of calories.</p>
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<p>You can always report your weight here. Various people report various
things here and on the other thread. I think that we used to report
weight progress a lot more here but you tend to do it less as you
approach your target.</p>
<p>I’m a competitive person too and I think that a lot of other posters
here are that way. It may lurk below the surface but some amount of
competitiveness may help with motivation. I like to do a little more
distance or go a little faster long-term.</p>
<p>I think Weight Watchers can be very good. I lost 25 pounds on WW (we had an at work group that I only joined to support my staff…
). My sister lost 30 pounds this past year. I think it requires a little tweaking for each individual (in my case, a lot of tweaking since I am a competitive runner), but our group was outstanding and supportive. WW does advocate a lifestyle change and not a “diet”, which is good. They also give you great ideas for food choices and recipes. My H liked the program when I was doing it and we never felt deprived (well, maybe the first 2 weeks…).</p>
<p>COUTNING DOWN:</p>
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<p>Lonely isn’t the worst possibility. Especially if you have overweight friends or family, you may find that they actually try to undermine your efforts. They view your success as threatening.</p>
<p>Some group of support, whether online like here or in the real world like an exercise group or Weight Watchers is so helpful. Just to be able to share whatever you are doing – a diet choice or some exercise – each day provides a positive reinforcement to keep doing it.</p>
<p>MSPEARL:</p>
<p>Fantastic on the soda. Robert Lustig’s infamous YouTube lecture was the final straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I had already cut out soda because I knew, over the years, that I had to do that to lose weight. But, he really helped me focus on sugar in general. 1.8 million YouTube views for a 90 minute science lecture:</p>
<p>[Sugar:</a> The Bitter Truth - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM]Sugar:”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)</p>
<p>Audio and Video downloads for iPods can also be gotten at the University of California site:</p>
<p>[Sugar:</a> The Bitter Truth - UCTV - University of California Television](<a href=“UCTV, University of California Television”>VIDEO: Sugar: The Bitter Truth - UCTV - University of California Television)</p>
<p>And a terrific podcast interview with Lustig:</p>
<p>[378:</a> Dr. Robert Lustig From ‘Sugar: The Bitter Truth’ | The Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show](<a href=“http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/2112/dr-robert-lustig-episode/]378:”>http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/2112/dr-robert-lustig-episode/)</p>
<p>5 miles, 9:09 pace. I guess that I was somewhat tired from yesterday’s run as it felt like I had to work a lot harder today.</p>
Pull ups with extra weight on feet:
[Pullup</a> Practice - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L_rThbrWiDY]Pullup”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L_rThbrWiDY)
Ah, to be young. It used to be so easy:
[11</a> Year Old Girl Does 21 Pull-Ups straight - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA0_yfKPPw8]11”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA0_yfKPPw8)
<p>First day of cross country skiing this season. 10k not particularly fast, because I am still getting back into the technique. Beautiful sunshine, snow a little thin still in spots, but quite good overall. Am loving my new boots, huge improvement over last year’s rentals. Oh, and all of my ski clothes are too big, so definite changes there over last year.</p>
CJANE: Better fitting boots and clothes that fit too big = a good thing!
<hr>
Nasty wet rainy day in New England, so it was back on the Airdyne bike for me. My latest torture protocol, 3-minute intervals.
I kicked it up a notch and went for four of them today, with a full heart rate recovery in between of 2:00 to 2:45. I’ve adjusted my max heart rate to reflect what I’ve actually seen over the last year (170 bpm, up from the 165 I’ve been using as my max), so my percentages are down a bit, but I was above 90% on all four intervals. Three minutes is pretty tough. Legs burning, panting like a dog. The guys who specialize in coaching these lenght intervals say that you want to slowly build up to around the anaerobic threshold (85% to 95% of max heart rate) in maybe 1:30 to 2:00 and then try to maintain that. That’s about what I was doing on the final three intervals. I’d like to push a little harder, but three minutes still feels like an eternity.
[The</a> Graph](<a href=“http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/AirdyneIntervals180x4.jpg]The”>http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/AirdyneIntervals180x4.jpg)
<p>We had rain too. Went to the gym at least since dh is out of town (Palm Beach without me!), I didn’t have to worry that it was dinner time. I’ve stalled out in terms of weight. I gain and lose the same two or three pounds! Had a couple of weeks of not enough exercise, but I hope that all my really crazy clients have gotten past the stage where they need me and will celebrate the holidays instead!</p>
<p>I did two sets of 10 pull-ups, but the assist was set at 13 - I forget how many pounds that is, but quite a few.</p>
^^^
Ten pull-ups is a hard thing to do, regardless of how much assistance!
Sometimes this weight loss thing just requires patience, especially if you know you are eating well and exercising. Just when you think you’ve hit the end of the line, you might start losing weight again. Go figure…
I’ve been losing and gaining the same 3 pounds for a while now. I have no earthly idea what makes it go up a little or down a little.
Doing pullups like that, you are almost certainly converting any extra calories into muscle, which is a good thing even if the scale isn’t dropping.
<p>For what it is worth, the USMC’s physical fitness standards for men include a minimum of 3 pullups, with additional points on the physical fitness score up to 20 pullups:
[United</a> States Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps_Physical_Fitness_Test]United”>United States Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I guess it was a about a year ago that I bolted up my WalMart chin up bar in the basement and began a very long slow process of being able to do one. People talk about doing pullups every day, but when I tried that, I just ended up really sore.</p>
<p>I can’t do even one but my guess is that tennis has something to do with that. In general, I’m better with pullups when I don’t play tennis for a few weeks which almost never happens. I need less assistance with them.</p>
<p>I used to do them in my 20s but that would be 25 pounds lighter than where I am today. I’m just content with the assist.</p>
![http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/AirdyneIntervals180x4.jpg]The](http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/AirdyneIntervals180x4.jpg%5DThe){kind=link}
