am I hippie or a bodybuilder: HEALTH + FITNESS

[peacocks]

lol who gives a shit. People who do aren't my friends.

[Em]

Glad I don't have to think about calories in alcohol, not being a drinker. My friends are just totally used to me ordering a water or a diet soda.

I lost like 15 pounds, but I don't really know how. Still watching the calories pretty closely, still on the same psych meds, still working out the same amount ... 'tis a mystery. A good mystery.

[Bernard]

Congratulations! You're my role model! Did you have to change much in your eating habits? What do you do for breakfast and lunch when you are really busy?

I got the mypal fitness app for my phone and was doing it for about 2 weeks and then stopped because it was everyone's birthday and there was beer and cake and I felt shitty for going over my calorie assignment. It said I should be eating 1200 calories a day and it is hard to eat just the right amount without starving myself or beating myself for going 60 calories over. I never knew beer and wine could be so calorie-ific. I haven't exercised at all. I know that would help.

You know, I spent a long time not so much counting calories as trying to eat 'clean' -- just whole, fresh stuff. And I did lose weight and feel better, but it was very incremental. Then when I got stressed out I just had no appetite. I was taking in a cup of coffee and an apple, period, for a few days. Not healthy, not recommended, and I hope/expect to gain back a little weight when finals are over and I can work out/eat well again.

I would say don't sweat the 60 calories or feel shitty. It's a process. If you lose it very slowly over a longer period of time, the word on the street is, it represents more of a long-term change in your body and less of a blip that gets corrected back up to a higher weight.

When I'm busy I grab apples, have some yogurt, have some of those little trader joe's packets of seeds/nuts/dried fruit with omega-3. I get the roasted one, the raw one is kind of stale tasting. I also try to eat before I get hungry. If I have a lot of little snacks like that and it's nutrient-dense stuff, I never really feel hunger, but that does take some advance planning, to have stuff on hand.

[peacocks]

That sounds like a good plan. I do try to have nuts around at the office and things. I love yogurt too! Fruit totally helped me when I was doing cleanses. Like you said about fast changes, the cleanses didn't seem sustainable and the weight came back after a few months.

We don't have trader joe's down here but I'll keep a look out for a similar product. I have to be careful not to eat the whole container at once. I'm the opposite of you when it comes to stress and tend to "eat my feelings." It's like, ugh today really suuucks I think I'll have a donut. That sounds disgusting. I'm not the girl who eats 2 pizzas and 15 cookies, I swear.

[clare]

It sounds daggy, but I eat a lot more carrots now than I used to. I cut them into sticks and keep them in a tub of water in the fridge, so they're always there when I'm hungry. Surprisingly (to me, at least) they really hit the spot. Also fresh dates. Man, if I'm having a cup of coffee and craving a chocolate biscuit, a couple of dates really sub in nicely. The other thing I learned (from weight watchers) is to have a bit of what I really really like (but not when I'm really craving it, as I'll tend to blow out) and to eat plenty of fruit in the morning, which seems to help with sugar cravings later in the day...I also eat heaps of the sweet vegetables, carrot and pumpkin in particular.

[peacocks]

Dates are really tasty, I never thought of just buying them for myself and eating them by themselves.

[Good Intentions]

Clare, what you describe sounds like the habits I dropped into on my own - I was thinking about a curried roasted-carrot soup tonight, for instance, and dates are a mainstay around here.

[nonotyet]

a 4.4 ounce Hershey bar that your coworker gave you to make up for piling a ton of work on your desk is the same thing as dates or carrots, right?
I do not want to eat all of this right now but I am so hungry, and it is in my desk going nonotyet I am your favorite candy bar ever please love me

[peacocks]

Just two squares, nny. Then put it in an unmarked bag in your freezer labeled "NONOTYET" so no dumb co-workers can have any.

[cold before sunrise]

lol who gives a shit. People who do aren't my friends.

i've got all sorts of friends and would never stop rolling with somebody important to me just because they're drinkers or do bumps of coke sometimes but it makes it challenging when i tell a person i can't drink at all because i'm on a cleanse and he responds by offering to take me for dinner and drinks to celebrate when i've finished. i mean, the guy's heart is in the right place and i know i'm not going to be able to get away with no partying at all with it being the holiday season but i want to start treating myself better.  

edit: today i called can-fit pro about getting fitness instructor specialist certification, so i can start teaching classes.

[peacocks]

good for you!

[clare]

Just two squares, nny. Then put it in an unmarked bag in your freezer labeled "NONOTYET" so no dumb co-workers can have any.

This. Putting it in the freezer is an 'out of sight, out of mind' trick that mostly works for me...also when you get it out to eat it, you have to either wait for it to thaw out, or eat it slowly cos it's frozen.

[peacocks]

maybe freezer is too harsh. Refrigerator. Cold, hard, chocolate is so yummy. And yeah, you eat it slower! I went on a kick where I would buy a bar of super dark chocolate, like 70%, with seasalt in it and it would last about a week- which is pretty good! Definitely out of sight, out of mind.

I guess marking an unmarked bag "NONOTYET" would make it marked. But you know what I mean.

[G.C.R]

I'm going to mark my bags of chocolate 'NONOTYET' and put them in the freezer as well, it does sound a good way to not eat them too fast.

[clare]

  and 

[peacocks]

just plain ol' 

[cold before sunrise]

i'm registered! there's a world fitness training seminar on the 10th and then my instructor certification exam is the 22nd, so as long as i pass that and get my cpr sometime this month i will be teaching classes in the new year.

[nonotyet]

I weighed myself at the gym for the first time in several months last night, and it says that I am a good fifteen pounds heavier than I thought I was/than I was two years ago, when I started going to the fucking gym. I weighed myself in the scale in the ladies' bathroom at work this morning, and it says that I am approximately where I was at two years ago. I weighed myself on the scale we use for patients, and it says I have gained two pounds on top of the gym weight since last night.

Coldforge I am trying to not be all Cathy about this. It's just that this is really upsetting and puzzling, and I don't know which scale to believe but since two out of three are approximately in the same neighborhood I should probably believe that weight, right?

I mean. I have spent so much (SO MUCH) time over the years hating my body, and I had just begun to learn to love it for what it is and what it can do, but this weight that I am is unacceptable, and I need to start turning this shit around NOW.
I just don't know what the fuck to do about it, besides starting to weigh everything that I eat and count every calorie, and I swore I was never gonna do that. This last sentence is obviously an exaggeration, but this whole situation is just so defeating.    

Ediy: I am going to be editing this pretty hard because I don't know what to think about it or what I  want to or should be saying about it. I have to acvcept that I was dealth a certain genetic hand and maybe this is what happens to my body when I get older, but it's heavier than I've ever been, and I can't figure out why I was comfortable with myself until I saw a number on a scale. Like, why I let it bother me so much. You know?

[Bernard]

Scales can vary widely, as can what you're wearing, etc. I always weigh myself on the same scale, in the same clothes, at the same time of day, because when I go from home to gym I magically gain eight pounds which is a fricking lot on me. Even by using the exact same routine, today I weigh 129.8 and yesterday I weighed 132.4. Who knows why? Water weight?

If you feel good, you're eating good food, and you have other measures of fitness (lifting heavier weights, doing more reps, doing more challenging versions of bodyweight exercises, can ride/walk/run farther and faster without getting winded) then the weight is not really important, because the 'composition' of your body is changing.

I really strongly suggest looking more at stuff like weights because unless you have an injury, you are almost never going to work out for a year and be able to lift less than when you started.

[nonotyet]

I can lift between 5-10 pounds more now on each machine that I use than I could when I started and do so routinely, so there's that.
And I know that electronic scales are usually off and I don't have a scale at home and definitely don't weigh myself at the same time every day, but what happened last night was I thought "I have just chugged a liter of water and I know this reading is going to be off, but I will not freak out unless it is above X number" and then it was. My rational brain knows that numbers on a scale is not important, but it also knows that there are some eating habits that I have that I very much need to change, and may have contributed to whatever weight gain may or may not have happened I do not even know anymore. But my irrational brain is going "you are five feet tall why do you weigh this much" and I don't know how to turn it off.     

[Greg Nog]

Have you considered using free-weights rather than machines?

[Bernard]

5-10 pounds is a great improvement! What usually works for you if you're stuck on something? Can you make a plan/checklist and focus on ticking things off? Sounds like you'd like to see some changes in the type of food you eat -- could you buy some veggies and look up some recipes that would fit better with how you want to be eating? For me, taking some kind of action/checking stuff off a list helps me redirect and get less bummed out.

Also, I definitely agree with Greg -- my guru (and all gurus) tell you that machines are most useful when you're starting working out, but after a while you'll want the extra challenge of free weights.

[nonotyet]

My motto at the grocery store is going to be: fewer chips, more carrots, and when you make pasta don't make a goddamn half a box.
I think I just grew complacent--I did the thing where I thought that because I go to the gym I can eat whatever I want, which: no. I am not very good at cooking and have fallen into patterns that mostly involve pasta. I can change that too.
Free weights have always been a challenge for me. I have no wrist strength in my right wrist because of cerebral palsy, and ain't no amount of weight training going to make it exactly the same as the strength in my left wrist. Like, I can barely hold weights in my right hand and I can barely turn my palm to face up, it's a concerted effort--the few times I have the results have been pathetic. I can hold kettlebells, though. For some reason when my hands are next to each other and not gripping an individual freefloating thing it's easier. Are those considered freeweights? Should I just suck it up and get two differently...um, weighted weights? Am I going to have ONE GIANT ARM and one tiny T-Rex arm?  

[Greg Nog]

How are you with gripping a longer free-weight bar, such as for a bench press?

The main reason I would say free-weights are better than machines is that you're forced to use a lot more stabilizing muscles all over your body, so you're doing more work with fewer exercises.  The big ones that are usually suggested for this kind of thing are squats, deadlifts, bench presses, and powercleans, which all rely on one long bar rather than two hand-held weights.

[Bernard]

And for what it's worth, it's taken me months to get to the point where I even need added weight for squats at all. When I started off, I was so weak I had to hold onto something, and I'm just now at the point where I've started adding a weighted bar. You can do a lot before you need any kind of weights at all.

I forget exactly where it is but this site has a link to a video that showed me what I was doing with squats that made my knee hurt (I wasn't sticking my butt far enough back): http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/12/09/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/

If grip strength is an issue, could you use some kind of stretchy exercise band that you can strap around your wrist with velcro? Then you're not using hand strength at all. I bought a set that comes with a dvd for $15 or something at Sport Chalet. When I'm editing I get up every so often and do a few exercises to straighten my back out. Feels a million times better.