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<p>Blasphemy, I say.</p>
<p>Maybe you can get away with unsweetened tea in Connecticut for somewhere, but not in Tennessee! :)</p>
<p>Love the kitties, iDad. No sign of yours? So sad.</p>
<p>I love sweet tea, and often do half and half. I would rather eat my calories, or if I’m drinking them, they need to be alcoholic!</p>
<p>I haven’t had tea with sugar for almost a year. We have sweetened tea, zero-calorie sweetened tea and the regular old tea bags of english and herbal varieties. I drink the latter, hot.</p>
<p>Though the kids are drinking some Whole Foods stevia drinks and they are pretty good.</p>
<p>No, I’m afraid my kitty is long gone. It’s been almost two weeks. I’ve kind of pieced it together. She probably slipped out when the door blew open late afternoon. That would have been fine. She would have wondered around for a few minutes and come running. But, right after that, I left and a bunch of house lookers showed up and walked all around the house, multiple cars in the driveway, and so forth. I’m sure all the commotion freaked the cat out and she high tailed it to the woods right at nightfall. </p>
<p>Nothing I can do about it. Just one of those things. The remaining kitty is super lovable and enjoys the extra attention.</p>
<p>1.25 miles. Going to do weights in about an hour.</p>
<p>No donuts.
No sweetened tea.
Going for a glass of chilled water.</p>
Sorry about the cat, interesteddad. Did a “trainer with a group” tough interval work out last night and some squash today. Both kicked my butt.
First weight watchers meeting today. I will need to chunk my goals as was recommended above. Feeling like I have a long way to go. The program discourages under 26 point days, which is consistent with what is being said above about too low cal diets. Program looks smart from a food science and emotional support point of view.
<p>In honor of [Zuzanna[/url</a>] (she’s Irish, isn’t she?), I did Burpee Fusion this afternoon. The hard version. </p>
<p>12 swings
6 burpees
12 swings
6 burpees
12 swings
6 burpees</p>
<p>Starting every minute on the minute for six minutes. Rest til the heart rate falls to 60% and go for the next set. Three sets total.</p>
<p>Mid 50s and sunny today, so I carried stuff up from the basement and did the workout out on the deck, which was nice. Still brutal, though. Only pegged my heart rate at 90% of max, but that really doesn’t capture how tough this short little workout gets in the third set. Burpees will make an old man out of you. These two exercises are working a lot of muscles and leave me gasping for air.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/BurpeeFusion3-17-2012.jpg]the”>http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/BurpeeFusion3-17-2012.jpg]the</a> Garmin graph](<a href=“Burpees Slaughter Workout! - YouTube”>Burpees Slaughter Workout! - YouTube)</p>
![http://i218.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/BurpeeFusion3-17-2012.jpg]the](http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc14/hwc_1000/BurpeeFusion3-17-2012.jpg%5Dthe){kind=link}
<p>Supposed to be sunny and 70 tomorrow, so definitely a 5K hilly walk/jog day…</p>
<p>Zuzanna’s Irish like all the basketball players I’m watching are Irish! I think we’ll rename Vandy’s big man Festus O’Ezeli.</p>
<p>Today’s workout was a a continuation of removing things from BIL’s flooded basement. I counted the number of times I climbed the stairs – 30 – each time carrying at least 15 pounds; usually more like 35 or so. Those wet magazines and phone books are killers. Also discovered dozens of old Time Life books that got flooded as well. Luckily, BIL hadn’t looked at these things (much less even remembered that he owned them) for at least 10 years. </p>
<p>Told DH we will never do this to our children. DH promised to spend as much time cleaning out our house as we have BIL’s. :)</p>
In the Greater Boston area, everyone just wears their Celtics T-Shirt.
Got the weight workout in and I feel good afterwards. I’ll do some more stuff (video) this evening. I need to make up for last week.
<p>Had a nice long walk today with H & son…almost 5 miles in lovely weather. Well, we stopped midway for liquid refreshments–iced tea for us & a beer for H. :)</p>
<p>I actually like the previous Weight Watcher system better.</p>
<p>I understand that the logic behind zero-point fruit is to try to encourage people to make smarter choices, but too many people see “zero-point fruit” as “I can eat all the fruit I want”, and then wonder why they aren’t losing weight.</p>
<p>I think the accountability factor may be the most important - when you have to step on that scale every week, it provides a lot of incentive to stick with it.</p>
<p>interesteddad- I’m sorry about your cat, that’s a bummer.</p>
<p>We lost a cat to coyotes, all of our others were indoor cars. Even when then got outside, they didn’t wonder far.</p>
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<p>I think think there are a few different issues in this discussion about intensity of exercise. First, are there health benefits to non-intense exercise (“floating down the pool” as MoWC said)? For me, even a leisurely walk helps with stress reduction and related benefits like sleeping better. But I don’t think (and here I could be wrong) that non-intense exercise is going to help me lose weight. Of course, for someone who is seriously overweight, any exercise is likely to be intense. And finally, there is the question of the connection between weight and health/fitness. The assumption seems to be that being overweight is unhealthy, and that could be true, but it could also be true that for some people at least, being overweight is not unhealthy. And of course being thin does not necessarily mean being healthy. I just read an interesting book called “Sugar Nation” by Jeff O’Connell, which talks not only about the evils of sugar generally but also about his own experiences as a non-overweight person diagnosed with prediabetes.</p>
<p>Yes, for people who are very unfit (whether or not they are fat), even a slow walk may be intense exercise.</p>
<p>Similarly, what is an all out sprint on a bicycle for most people may be a leisurely pace for a Tour de France champion.</p>
<p>I’m not going to argue this. There are clearly benefits-mental and physical- to non-intense exercise. I never advocate that anyone who isn’t trying to run competitively do what I do. You would have to understand the context of MiamiDAP’s statements to understand my problem with her claiming that barely moving in the pool is a path to fitness and health. That’s like saying floating in a tube on a lazy river ride at a water park is exercise. It isn’t. It’s fun and relaxing, but don’t log it in your Weight Watcher’s booklet as an hour of “moderate” exercise.</p>
Hah. I’d like to see Lance Armstrong on the Airdyne! 
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One of the really great things about dirt cheap heart rate monitors is that it is so easy to track the exact intensity of your exact exercise for your exact level of fitness today and notice when it changes next month so you can adjust accordingly.
Or, even simpler, if a workout isn’t resulting in several times where you are breathing too hard to carry on a conversation, then it’s time to crank up the intensity – pick up the pace, find some hills, shorten the rest breaks, or whatever. The saving grace with intensity is that you don’t have to exercise for hours and hours at a time.
The advantage of higher intensity is that it is more time-efficient. Probably a lot more time-efficient. The thing is that many may enjoy lower-intensity stuff for long periods of time - they might be reading a book or magazine on the elliptical (I don’t know how people do that with their head going up and down) or enjoy a stroll with conversation (on a mobile phone or with someone else). I like running - I wouldn’t call it low-intensity and sometimes it’s 100% intensity (running 9+ MPH) for me but most of the time it’s around 70% to 85% intensity and I can run like that for a long time. It also provides a linear calorie burn making calorie computations relatively simple.
I was at my sisters last week and she looked different. She was wearing a piece of clothing that I’d never seen her wear (fleece jacket) so that might have been it but she told me that she lost some weight. She joined a gym as did her daughter so they are starting out. Daughter is doing low-intensity cardio but she has heart issues so the doctors probably told her to take it slow. The problem is her husband - he looks like idad when he started. I told my sister that nobody can get someone else to lose weight - they have to want to do it badly enough to initiate a plan. His family has a history of heart disease and males not living that old - I imagine that modern drugs can help but it’s kind of tough to see him the way he is without offering advice. Of course I never do that - good way to get into an argument and that’s not what I need with relatives.
<p>Ah, MoWC, an hour on a lazy river may not be able to be logged in as anything on a WW or any other graph/scale/record…but it may just hit the spot. </p>
<p>ya gotta mix up your lazy rivers with your marathons, you know? - well, a lesson I am trying to learn, at least.</p>
In honor of St.Paddy’s day, I went the traditional route and had…
sushi. Well, the wasabi is plenty green, t’isn’t it? Also, two cocktails (not green).
Needless to say, it was an off the charts carby day, which I didn’t even bother to log.
I did, however, keep the calorie and carb count very low for the day leading up to the dinner, so the damage was done all in the one meal.
Out of town guests, rare out on the town outing, certainly some rationalizing, but, hey, a girl’s gotta live a little sometimes, right?