This started out as a comment in response to Emily's comment to my post a few days ago - so if you feel like you are coming in in the middle of the movie - well, you are.
I have DONE the dramatic calorie reduction thing. I was doing 1200 calories a day - with no affect for most of the time. It wasn't until I went to 900 calories or less daily (back right before the cruise) that I saw any results - and that was also only short term. It was also very hard to maintain - I was tired all the time. I then quit smoking - and that reversed any affects of weight loss from no food.
Hunger isn't my problem - I hardly EVER feel hungry - regardless of how much or little I eat. Which is why I can go all day and not eat anything - and then not be super inspired to fix a healthy meal, but stick to snacks all evening. That is what I addressed with our new way of eating last September.
As to exercise – Emily, I was going to the gym at least three times a week, if you look at my charts for Jan, Feb and after my cruise up through May – I was exercising four or five days a week. I work out on the treadmill – the bike doesn’t do enough for me – or doing fairly intense weight training, for months – and again saw too little results to make that worth the effort. Now that I have the treadmill at home – six days a week – 43 minutes a session – on a 6% incline, 3.5 miles an hour (it says I burn 400 calories) is what I do. I feel like my ab muscles are missing out… but my leg muscles look great – and still I am gaining weight.
Emily – I know I shouldn’t be offended by your comments, but I feel like you look at me and say, well maybe if you try to eat less and exercise you would lose weight. I have been trying that for YEARS – way before our blog started - and it hasn’t worked. Jenny Craig only worked the first six weeks for me, but I stuck with it for close to a year, same with this current diet. I have little faith that Atkins will work for me either. When I do the fad diet things I stick to them to the letter – and I don’t see the results that everyone else does. I have done Fat Flush several times. Katie, Kristy, and Lynne ALL lose weight on that – and if you look at their total body weight they lose a fairly decent percentage of their weight – I lose three pounds. That is a low cab, low calorie, low fat diet – that starts out for two weeks and then phases in more foods – like Atkins, or South Beach – and it doesn’t work for me.
I have to do something though, this morning I was up to 217. I should never have quit smoking. That did me absolutely NO GOOD – I gained 8 pounds the first time, and 7 pounds (so far) this time. I am never going to quit again!
I know I have been particularly bad lately. I have a “going down in flames” attitude that isn’t good. I have to redirect myself –and maybe doing Atkins is the way to do it. I wanted to do Fat Flush again – but I already KNOW that doesn’t work for me. I know too that I have to plan EVERY crumb that I eat for at least the first two weeks of Atkins, because eating no carbs will be hard for me – at least at first. After the first two weeks you reintroduce “good carbs” into your diet – but I haven’t quite figured out what that is… mostly fruits and vegetables – and nuts. I am really curious how I would respond to Atkins. I spent most of this weekend reading the book. I am worried about bad breath and constipation. You start out with 20 grams of carbs a day (very hard I think!) and then go to 40-60 grams for the bulk of the diet. Once you get to the maintenance phase you add in more carbs (5 grams a week until you start to gain again and then you back it down again...) It freaks me out though – I can’t have milk (which is OK since I can’t have cereal) but I CAN have light or heavy cream and cheese. Hummmmm. I can’t have caffine – but I can have decaf coffee – with heavy cream. Maybe I will survive after all.
6 comments:
Amy - You know I did NOT intend to offend and that I KNOW how hard you've been working -- but I think your exercise has been consistent and moderate (which for 95% of the population would be fabulous), not dramatic and intense (which is what the unfortunate 5% would require). That's the point I was trying to make about exercise. You made a specific statement some months ago about the length of a workout and how going for a certain amount of time on the bike about killed you -- and it wasn't really all that much time or all that difficult of a level by my standards at that point, which I described in my last comment. And that was during the time when we were all exercising consistently so I believe you could have done more. You just weren't used to that level or that form of exercise, and the difficulty was a mental one. So I think that's where you could make a change from moderate to intense -- increase either the speed or the time every single day, even if it's only by a little bit. And it could be months before it reaches the level your body requires to have it make a difference. Which (I agree with you) definitely sucks but may realistically be necessary.
About the 1200 -- I thought you had told me you were going for about a 1500 calorie level, which is why I picked the 1200. It was arbitrary. I just meant you would need to cut back to a level that sounds horrible to meet what your doctor suggested.
I do NOT look at you and think you're just lazy or fooling yourself about calories. I've read every post you've put on the blog for the last year and I've heard you discuss it for years longer, so I know this is a genuine issue. All I meant is that if you really wanted to you COULD do more, even though that's more than the rest of us would have to do to achieve the same results. Almost anyone *could* do more if they had to, and that's what your doctor said you might have to do, so I was giving my input on how that might be managed!
I have a question about the treadmill -- and this isn't a criticism in any way whatsoever, and I'm asking it of everyone, not just you. Does changing the slope of the treadmill really give a more intense workout? Because when I do it I find I just shorten my stride and it doesn't really feel any more difficult. It does make shin splints better for me (or used to when I had shin splint problems) if I have a slight slope, but it never feels like I'm running uphill or getting the same workout as a hill would give. A real hill leaves me absolutely dead -- a 6% incline would be almost impossible. I don't know if it's me doing the slope wrong or if this is typical on treadmills. Just wondering.
I had the same issue with stair climbers -- it was like bicycling without the seat, not like climbing stairs. Maybe I'm missing something.
What killed me on the bike was not the intesity - it was the pain in my ass - literally. My butt cheeks fell asleep and I got friction burns. I got UP from the bike and went to the cross trainer and finished my workout on that. That was the first and last time I did the bike at the gym.
What I CAN'T do is the rowing machine. I don't know why - maybe it is my big belly that gets in the way - but I get light headed after two minutes. Also - the last time I did the rowing machine was immediately following a very intense resistance workout with my trainer. So - It may have been misleading.
I sweat a lot more when I am on an incline. Also - if you are working on an incline, lower it and you will see how much easier it is that way, or raise it and you will see it get harder. I can't go above 6% - yet anyway - because I wears me out very quickly. Like you though - my shin splints are considerably less on an incline. But then, I also get less tired when I am walking faster (kind of like running up the hill at Pennsic is less painful than walking up it...).
Increasing the incline on a treadmill makes a big difference for me, although I prefer to increase the speed--I get the same calorie burn and same increase in heart rate as increasing the incline, but it just feels easier to me to move fast. A 1% or 2% incline doesn't make much difference, but once you get it up to 5% to 7% you can really feel it. I can't run with inclines like that--I have to walk. So I stick pretty much to no incline and faster speeds.
I must be doing the treadmill slope wrong. Though I couldn't tell you what slopes I've tried in the last few years -- I just take what the auto-program gives me. So maybe it's not that much of an incline.
Regular bike makes my butt go numb, too -- that's why I have to use a recumbent. I never used the upright bikes successfully when our gym in GA had only those, but the recumbents give me an awesome workout. And I can read while I do it, so I like it better than the treadmill.
And I hate, hate, HATE the rowing machine! Makes me feel like I'm going to throw up after about two strokes. So you have my sympathy there!
You guys are a bunch of wusses. The rowing machine is awesome and gives you a better workout than any other machine in the gym! I just wish we had one! The last time I used one was on the cruise and it was just like I remembered--really hard, but you had to concentrate on your form so much that you didn't think too much about what a workout you're getting.
I think that's why I prefer the treadmill to the bicycle (we're down to just recumbents at the gym, btw)--it forces me to work on my own form and adjust my stride, position my upper body, etc. so that I get a better workout. On the bicycle you pretty much just sit there and go around and around. Boring.
I used to do 10-15 minutes on the rowing machine back when I belonged to the Y in Littlestown - followed by a 45 minute walk on the track. My shoulders and back were the best they had ever been. I would LOVE to be able to get BACK to doing the rowing machine. My problem then and now is that it is REALLY hard work (compared to walking or biking), too repetative to be interesting, but too dramatic to be able to disctract yourself with a book or TV.
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