Getting closer to the start of fat burning and time to kick things into a higher gear!
I've decided to make changes during the next ten or so months not only to my body but also to my mind and lifestyle. How's that for an ambitious goal? I realized (yet again) that I've been spinning my wheels and idling my engine over the past year (sheesh, mix metaphors much?) If I'm going to make progress I need to make some major changes to become someone living life as healthy as possible. So here's the deal. I've identified ten bad habits I have that I want to turn into good habits. So let's call this the Bad to Good Transformation Challenge. Whatever...
Here's the bad, the good but fortunately no ugly.
1. Bad: Slacking off on the soft tissue rehab.
Good: 10 minutes of foam rolling and mobility for the most ouchy areas every morning on non-gym days.
2. Bad: Not stretching after weight training.
Good: Add 10 minutes of stretching for the tightest areas after every workout.
3. Bad: Eating too fast.
Good: Extend meals to 20 minutes by chewing more, putting fork or spoon down between bites and savoring food between bites.
4. Bad: Unrealistic goal setting.
Good: Be honest about what I want and what I can truly achieve. Be humble enough to admit my shortcomings. Set goals that are truly realistic even if it means slow progress.
5. Bad: Getting too much nervous system stimulation before bed.
Good: No computer after dinner, turn off the TV earlier. Do something else that relaxes the nervous system for bedtime.
6. Bad: Not consistently weighing and measuring food, especially meat.
Good: Weigh and measure all foods at least every other day to get better at eyeballing real portion sizes.
7. Bad: Negative self-talk.
Good: Say something positive about myself every day when looking in mirrors or looking at pictures.
8. Bad: Too much blog reading and other time wasters.
Good: Limit or eliminate blog reading in the morning and evening. Do something else like taking a walk or other healthy activity.
9. Bad: Comparing myself to others.
Good: Similar to #7, say something positive about myself when looking at other women's bodies (real women or in magazines or TV).
10. Bad: Viewing junk food as a reward.
Good: View junk food as a neutral food by only indulging in planned non-reward situations.
I will tackle each one of these for one month, starting with #1 in October. Actually, I've started doing that this week to get a head start. I'll blog about my progress as I go along and we'll see how much healthier my life is at the other end.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Finding the Edge
After reading Rog's last blog post, here, I got to thinking about what my particular edge will be to hone during my fat burning phase. It occurred to me that the biggest fear I have is hunger. It's a fear I have whether I'm dieting or not and one that often drives me to eat when I don't really need to.
You would think that maintenance should mean "not hungry". I here to say NOT SO! I have often gotten hungry during my maintenance phase, especially right after eating a meal (within 30-60 minutes usually). Does this mean I really need more food or that my body is not getting enough calories? Not if I'm planning my meals correctly. From what I've read by following Leigh Peele, this happens as part of the digestion process, especially when the meal is high in carbs (insulin response). So the response to hunger isn't always to eat.
But tell that to my mind! My mind hates discomfort in any form. Life is a series of discomforts, some of which must be borne and some that can be dealt with. Food has been something in the later category because food is always so available. No need to ever go hungry around here! This has been such a huge challenge when I'm dieting and usually is the the thing that derails my progress. In order to diet successfully, the deficit must be maintained. Which means living in a state of hunger more or less constantly. Which wears on a body after a while, especially when it disrupts sleep.
This will be the edge I will have to "lean against" and find my limit and my solutions. Hunger and I will be doing a dance over the next ten months and I have to learn how to lead. I'm not sure how I'll do it but I know that, like The Bride, I have to keep focused on the end game and not get lost in the forest.
You would think that maintenance should mean "not hungry". I here to say NOT SO! I have often gotten hungry during my maintenance phase, especially right after eating a meal (within 30-60 minutes usually). Does this mean I really need more food or that my body is not getting enough calories? Not if I'm planning my meals correctly. From what I've read by following Leigh Peele, this happens as part of the digestion process, especially when the meal is high in carbs (insulin response). So the response to hunger isn't always to eat.
But tell that to my mind! My mind hates discomfort in any form. Life is a series of discomforts, some of which must be borne and some that can be dealt with. Food has been something in the later category because food is always so available. No need to ever go hungry around here! This has been such a huge challenge when I'm dieting and usually is the the thing that derails my progress. In order to diet successfully, the deficit must be maintained. Which means living in a state of hunger more or less constantly. Which wears on a body after a while, especially when it disrupts sleep.
This will be the edge I will have to "lean against" and find my limit and my solutions. Hunger and I will be doing a dance over the next ten months and I have to learn how to lead. I'm not sure how I'll do it but I know that, like The Bride, I have to keep focused on the end game and not get lost in the forest.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Revisiting an Old Friend
The bad news....only one workout last week because I didn't have a car from Wednesday to Friday. The car was in the shop getting fixed so it would pass the air quality test the state requires to get the license plate renewed. Unfortunately, it still didn't pass so back to the shop this week. I'm hoping it will get fixed in one day and not impact my getting to the gym.
The good news...I'm revisitng yoga class. Before I got back into strength training a few years ago, I was doing yoga once a week at the gym. Obviously being 60 lbs heavier than I am now, it was a struggle and not terribly useful to get fit. But as an addition to my fitness routine now it's great. I definitely need more work with stretching and joint mobility (and stress relief is a plus). So I went to a beginner's level class on Saturday. It felt great...until the next day when I woke up with a sore lower back. Certainly not as bad as when I injured it deadlifting but sore nonetheless. I just dealt with it by sitting when it got too painful. It didn't prevent me from taking Cappy to the dog park for our Sunday walk. And I spent a bit more time this morning with the foam rolling and mobility. It's feeling pretty good right now so I think it was just doing moves I wasn't used to doing.
I'm chugging along with preparations for next week's switch to fat burning. This week I'll be cooking up some crockpot meals that are lowfat lunch staples and finishing up the higher carb foods in the fridge. I've also been mulling an additional challenge for my ten-month effort that I'll talk about in my next post. It will be awesome, I promise!
The good news...I'm revisitng yoga class. Before I got back into strength training a few years ago, I was doing yoga once a week at the gym. Obviously being 60 lbs heavier than I am now, it was a struggle and not terribly useful to get fit. But as an addition to my fitness routine now it's great. I definitely need more work with stretching and joint mobility (and stress relief is a plus). So I went to a beginner's level class on Saturday. It felt great...until the next day when I woke up with a sore lower back. Certainly not as bad as when I injured it deadlifting but sore nonetheless. I just dealt with it by sitting when it got too painful. It didn't prevent me from taking Cappy to the dog park for our Sunday walk. And I spent a bit more time this morning with the foam rolling and mobility. It's feeling pretty good right now so I think it was just doing moves I wasn't used to doing.
I'm chugging along with preparations for next week's switch to fat burning. This week I'll be cooking up some crockpot meals that are lowfat lunch staples and finishing up the higher carb foods in the fridge. I've also been mulling an additional challenge for my ten-month effort that I'll talk about in my next post. It will be awesome, I promise!
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Committments
I know I've been remiss with postings lately but that's going to change. As I move into my next fat burning phase, I will be posting a minimum of three times a week just to keep me honest, on track and talking through all the ups and downs that is fat burning.
Roger and I talked about the plan that will start on October 1. Here it is in a nutshell (walnut, I believe).
1. Current weight 225. Goal weight 194 (5 lbs less than where I'll settle once I move back to maintenance). I'll start by dropping 100 calories each week (Monday through Friday) from my top end 2500 until I've got a 500 calorie daily deficit 5 days a week. Weekends will stay at 2500 calories. This will give me an eventual 1500 calorie a week deficit or around 3 lbs a week. Given my goal, I should achieve that sometime next June.
2. Right now I'm not doing much exercise other than weight training 3 times a week and walking the dog. I'll bring back the extra walks, starting at 15 minutes 3 times a week and increasing to 30 minutes 3 times a week over time. After I get back from my trip to Cali I'll add bike sprints once a week like I was doing before this whole maintenance gig.
3. Finally I wanted to add a performance goal so that I have something other than weight loss to focus on and something that would be FUN! (remember that?) and would improve my overall performance. To that end, I've decided that would be kettlebell swings. I'm setting a goal of 10,000 swings from October to June. Very doable I think. Roger will add swings to my weight routine to hit them from the heavy angle (for strength and power) and I'll add them on the other days for metabolic conditioning. A one-two punch.
I think this is a very sound plan and one that I can live with for the length of time it will take to achieve the goals.
Roger and I talked about the plan that will start on October 1. Here it is in a nutshell (walnut, I believe).
1. Current weight 225. Goal weight 194 (5 lbs less than where I'll settle once I move back to maintenance). I'll start by dropping 100 calories each week (Monday through Friday) from my top end 2500 until I've got a 500 calorie daily deficit 5 days a week. Weekends will stay at 2500 calories. This will give me an eventual 1500 calorie a week deficit or around 3 lbs a week. Given my goal, I should achieve that sometime next June.
2. Right now I'm not doing much exercise other than weight training 3 times a week and walking the dog. I'll bring back the extra walks, starting at 15 minutes 3 times a week and increasing to 30 minutes 3 times a week over time. After I get back from my trip to Cali I'll add bike sprints once a week like I was doing before this whole maintenance gig.
3. Finally I wanted to add a performance goal so that I have something other than weight loss to focus on and something that would be FUN! (remember that?) and would improve my overall performance. To that end, I've decided that would be kettlebell swings. I'm setting a goal of 10,000 swings from October to June. Very doable I think. Roger will add swings to my weight routine to hit them from the heavy angle (for strength and power) and I'll add them on the other days for metabolic conditioning. A one-two punch.
I think this is a very sound plan and one that I can live with for the length of time it will take to achieve the goals.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
I'm Back, Baby!
Not quite sure why I couldn't get into my blog last week but it seems to be fine now.
Not a lot to update right now. I'm still on maintenance and plan to be here for two more weeks. So far, so good. The workouts are going well. I'm adding at least 3-4 reps a workout and increasing weight once I'm comfortably 5 reps over the target. My weight is down this morning (221 1/2 lbs.), probably due to getting rid of the food baby from last Friday's pizza and ice cream fest. Yes, I know, TMI. That's another thing I'm getting used to, among many things, is the weight going up and down one or two pounds. It's not the end of the world! It doesn't really mean anything. As long as it's not going up and up, then I'm ok and don't need to sweat it. Speaking of sweat, I've completely eliminated all extra exercise, except for dog walking and my usual activities. I decided to hold off on any extra walking, bike sprints or other non-life-essential activity until the fat burning phase so I can take full advantage of the additional calorie burn along with the deficit. Pretty clever, yes?
The plan is to start fat burning on October 1. I found out I'll be traveling to Seattle for work the following week (10-8 through 10-11). I think I'll deal with it, since my plan is to drop slowly into my deficit, so I shouldn't be greatly stressed that week. If I up my activity level it should be enough of a deficit to have some effect. My goal is to get down to 194 lb., with the thought that going into maintenance after that will up the weight to around 199 lb. All I want right now is to get and stay under 200 lb. before going into the final push to my ultimate goal of 170 lb. I'm figuring 3 lb a month should put me at my intermediate goal by the beginning of June next year. That seems like a long time but I'd rather take my time than continue going up and down with no progress, so if it's takes 10 months to lose 30 lbs, it takes 10 months.
Not a lot to update right now. I'm still on maintenance and plan to be here for two more weeks. So far, so good. The workouts are going well. I'm adding at least 3-4 reps a workout and increasing weight once I'm comfortably 5 reps over the target. My weight is down this morning (221 1/2 lbs.), probably due to getting rid of the food baby from last Friday's pizza and ice cream fest. Yes, I know, TMI. That's another thing I'm getting used to, among many things, is the weight going up and down one or two pounds. It's not the end of the world! It doesn't really mean anything. As long as it's not going up and up, then I'm ok and don't need to sweat it. Speaking of sweat, I've completely eliminated all extra exercise, except for dog walking and my usual activities. I decided to hold off on any extra walking, bike sprints or other non-life-essential activity until the fat burning phase so I can take full advantage of the additional calorie burn along with the deficit. Pretty clever, yes?
The plan is to start fat burning on October 1. I found out I'll be traveling to Seattle for work the following week (10-8 through 10-11). I think I'll deal with it, since my plan is to drop slowly into my deficit, so I shouldn't be greatly stressed that week. If I up my activity level it should be enough of a deficit to have some effect. My goal is to get down to 194 lb., with the thought that going into maintenance after that will up the weight to around 199 lb. All I want right now is to get and stay under 200 lb. before going into the final push to my ultimate goal of 170 lb. I'm figuring 3 lb a month should put me at my intermediate goal by the beginning of June next year. That seems like a long time but I'd rather take my time than continue going up and down with no progress, so if it's takes 10 months to lose 30 lbs, it takes 10 months.
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