gwen529's Forum Posts

Fartlek is the closest I’ve found.

If you added it, I would use it. I don’t actually fartlek. I sprint.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / I cannot find SPRINT among cardio list..

I also think you need a second opinion. This advice makes no sense. 50lbs per exercise? So you can do 50lb bicep curls but you can not deadlift over 50 lbs? In what universe does that have a point?

This advice should be put to you in terms of reps. Like, you should never lift an amount with which you reach failure in under 5 reps. See, you could actually apply that to your routine.

Second opinion. This doctor gave you weird, impracticable advice.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / Heart Conditions and weight training

I honestly have no idea what exactly people mean when they talk about “starvation mode”. It’s generally vague and sometimes magical sounding to me.

What I understand is that,, if your body starts metabolising your lean tissue instead of available fat, you will be visibly starving.

I have read where you can change your insulin response by fasting or eating irregularly (I mean an erratic schedule and change your insulin response in a bad way). I’ve never seen anything that indicates that variable quantity will have any effect on your body’s response to food.

If you know of such studies, I’d really like to see them.

Anyhoo, that being said, the answer to your question is:

I do cheat. I don’t do cheat days. I have a few things I refuse to give up. I let myself have them once in a while. It is for psychological reasons. I don’t want to feel deprived and start obsessing about food. Know what I mean? I have to let my id feel heard once in a while or it will throw a tantrum and I’ll end up in a lot of trouble.

Clean and healthy can be very good and very tasty. It can never be a cookies and cream milkshake. Until we have that Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Minds technology, I won’t be able to forget about cookies and cream milkshakes.

Topic: Diet and Nutrition / Consensus on a "cheat day" ?

20-30 min/week is perfectly respectable for HIIT. I can be sweaty, gasping and unable to continue inside of ten minutes.

Topic: Diet and Nutrition / Hit Wall

icebox,

There is so much conflicting information about what is the best possible way to work out that it is pretty much just arbitrary.

The absolute best workouts are the ones you actually do. If you are more likely to do those exercises the way you described, then there is no contest. That’s how you should do it.

Even if there are some benefits to doing it all together, and I am NOT saying there are, they would not outweigh the benefits of your described routine feeling accessible and doable to you.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / dividing up exercises in workout

I want to make a few points.

1) Most people I know only ever do sets to failure as a gauge of where they are. So, no, you don’t need to go to failure. You need to be challenged. It needs to be difficult. Doesn’t need to be failure.

2) Push ups and pull ups are easy to make more difficult without adding weight. Push ups; you can elevate your legs, change your hand/arm position, or even try one arm. Pull ups, you can widen your grip or try one arm as well.

3) Legs, dude. Don’t be such a guy. Yeah, that T figure looks great but you should still squat once in a while ;)

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / Sets vs Reps

The fact that you say you eat the most at work makes me think you are eating to manage emotion. Nor would I go to ‘bored’ first. I’d go to ‘stress’ before anything else. Is it possible that you are wanting to eat in response to stress?

I bring it up because the inability to manage stress can cause all manner of health and emotional problems. It can literally kill you and it’s something you get so used to you don’t even know it’s there any more.

So, give it some thought.

Topic: Diet and Nutrition / appetite control/suppression

Nicotine is an appetite suppressant. Smoking keeps your blood sugar from dropping because nicotine causes your body to release its own fat and sugar stores. Smokers can skip meals like crazy, never eat breakfast, eat erratically and never see any negative effects from it.

The problem is that nothing about the way you ate as a smoker will work for you the same way as a non smoker.

If you don’t make major changes to the way you eat, you will experience deep drops in blood sugar. That will make you crave sweet, sugary stuff. It will make you want to gorge.

You have literally changed your body’s chemistry. It is going to take time for you to figure out how to maintain you body with its new chemical make up.

So, give yourself some time. Wait until you feel comfortable as a non-smoker before you try to lose weight. You have time. Trying to do it all at the same time, you’re making it harder than it has to be. And you’re lowering your chances of success. You can easily become despondent and want to take up smoking again.

Seriously, I want you to go a year without smoking before your biggest health concern is anything other than relapsing.

Topic: General Health / Smoking Cessation And Weight Loss

I want to say you’re talking about Food, Inc,, thundercatsarego.

Topic: Diet and Nutrition / Keep your hands off my nuts!

Some of these people are tools. The woman who said, “Oh my” was a complete tool. But I guarantee you some, if not most, are good people.

I just want to give you the context I put this stuff into that makes me relatively unaffected by these behaviors in others.

First, consider that the onus of starting any romantic relationship is, for the most part, on men. Sometimes they do it in inappropriate ways, sometimes in ways that make us uncomfortable. But, on the flip side, we don’t have to do that, ever. All we have to do is take reasonably good care of our looks then sit back and rifle through the offers. The men come to us. It’s an enviable position to be in.

The men are the ones who have to really put themselves out there and they can get a little weird about it. It’s understandable. When a total goddess runs by, they can lose control a bit. You’re a goddess. Recognize.

They never think, “If she liked me, she’d come talk to me.” No, no, no, no.

They might see a beautiful woman and think, “If anything happens I have to make it happen. And she’s running. Shell be gone soon. Quick! Do something NOW!”

Or they think, “I bet if I offer her some advice, she’ll see how smart and knowledgeable I am and will totally let me buy her dinner.”

I’m saying this to you because I know how easy it is to feel completely objectified and victimized by this sort of treatment. While I do think that it is meant that way at times, for the most part, I don’t think that is the intention or the impetus.

You see, there is no way to do this to a man. There is nothing you can yell at a man about his sexiness or the sexiness of any body part of his that will cause him anything but pride, really. I think most men know intellectually that we don’t like it but they just don’t have the lifetime of experiences to understand how it can make us feel so naked and powerless.

Once, I was at an apartment pool. I was walking to the apartment to grab some more beers or something. The area was full and somebody made a really loud comment about breasts. I looked around and didn’t see who it was. I didn’t know if it was about me but I’ve got huge ones and I was on display at that moment. I just crumpled and covered them with my arms. When I returned, I sat down and, about five minutes later a guy came to me and apologized profusely. My reaction way completely unexpected to him and made him feel horrible.

I’m not saying that this behavior is okay. I just don’t think guys understand how crushing it can feel for us.

It helps me to remind myself of that.

Topic: Motivation and Support / How do deal with unsolicited advice and comments?

For a woman, if you wanted to gain 1 lb of muscle a weeks, you would need to live in the gym and you probably want to get some anabolic steroids. 3.3lbs/week just isn’t going to happen.

Similarly, 10 lbs of fat in three weeks seems odd to me. It’s doable but that is a lot of fat in a short period of time. It seems like you’d notice that much eating if you were doing it. Even if you were in denial you would still have enough of a sense that you were gorging yourself.

To put on that much fat in that short a period of time and not know why is inconceivable to me.

So, I wouldn’t say you put on 10 lbs. Not right now with the information given. I just don’t trust that number. I want you to do a few extra things for me that will give us, or just you depending on how you want this, a better sense of what is happening here.

I definitely think you should weigh yourself more often. I weigh myself almost every day (sometime twice a day). My weight fluctuates a lot (2 lbs in three hours. I kid not). You being female, yours will too. That can be frustrating which is why we are always told to weigh once a week at most.

If you aren’t graphing the data, that is decent advice. When you do graph the data, you can see how those fluctuations are constant and observe the overall trend, down or up. Also, when you weigh yourself every day, you know what your peaks are and what your troughs are.

You want to always weight yourself on the same scale. The more scales you use, the less precise your measuring system is. Pick one scale and use it exclusively. If you see huge fluctuations all the time, get a better scale and see if that continues.

Finally, DO record your food. You don’t have to make it public. You can go to your profile and stop anybody from seeing what you are eating. I suggest you do that, at least for now. If it is public you might feel embarrassed about certain things you ate or…whatever. It’ll just make it harder than it needs to be for now.

Just get used to logging everything you eat honestly and without self-judgement. Just collect the data so you can look at it and see what is really going on with your diet. Your own estimation of how much you are eating is probably way off. Verify that.

Topic: General Discussion / Normal or not

People who do their sets right in front of the weight rack.

Topic: Just For Fun / My Fitness Pet Peeves

The honeymoon stage of a relationship can have a huge effect on a person’s overall sense of well-being and self control. It is not uncommon for alcoholics to severely cut down or even stop drinking during this stage of a relationship.

It doesn’t last.

Even if these women did stay long term, your exercising, zest and motivation probably wouldn’t.

Mids, I actually think you might have depression. Even your avatar reflects the troubled mind you describe in your post. Are you in a position to seek the help of a professional? Because it doesn’t have to be this bad. I think, if you get help, you’ll be shocked at just how much better it can be.

Depression can be very much like sitting in an unlit room while the sun sets. It gets dark so slowly, you don’t realize just how dark it has gotten until somebody else comes in and turns on the light. Then you’re like, “Wow! This is MUCH better.”

Topic: Motivation and Support / Doing it for myself! need motivation!

Thanks!

I don’t even want to think about considering the possibility of trying to figure out what the calorie expenditure is. I just use what my heart rate monitor says because I feel like, well, it can’t have been less than that.

Sprinting just ain’t for calorie counters.

Topic: Fitness and Exercise / I cannot find SPRINT among cardio list..

Best memory – Scuba diving in the Red Sea with my dad.

Biggest accomplishment this summer – I just recently found out that I could, and should, squat ass to grass. This allowed me to start squatting again and I got up to 80 in a day. Couldn’t be more chuffed.

Congrats on getting under 200. You should reward yourself. A new pair of shoes or a new car. You know, whatever the budget allows. ;)

Topic: Just For Fun / Fun in the Summer Sun