I'm starting to question whether or not my three week plan is vigorous enough. After the first mile and 10 sprints I was breathing so hard I felt like I was going to pass out on Monday night but come Tuesday morning I felt perfectly fine, no soreness, no tension, not even a little bit of muscle fatigue. I thought for sure that the 100 push-ups and 200 crunches the following day would whoop me but I woke up the next morning feeling totally normal. Then, as I was carrying Vladdy home I thought "ok, now for sure I am going to feel this in the morning" but I felt great yesterday. Last night after the mile and 20 sprints I sat down to study for an hour and a half and everything was sore when I got up to go to bed so I completely expected to still be sore this morning but I feel fine.
Now I have a conundrum. I think that we can all agree that when it comes to building muscle and toning it is necessary to work out until you're sore because soreness means that muscle fibers have broken down and can be replaced by new, stronger muscle. But if my primary goal right now is just to shed the pounds should I be working out until I am sore every night or would it be best to stay the course so that I am never too sore to exercise on a daily basis? I just don't know but when I am doing my program I feel like I'm getting a work out and yet, the next morning I feel like maybe I've been taking it easy.
Food:
8 glasses of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 Fiber One bar
1 Healthy Choice lunch
1 serving salad w/vinegar
1 serving manicotti
2 slices garlic bread
1 fruit2o
1 drumstick
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Daily Caloric Intake: 1,111
Activity:
5 flights of stairs
100 Push-ups
200 Sit-ups
I think you should get the weight off first and include aerobic activity because it is a calorie burner. You need some light weight work for toning. Weight lifting with lighter weights and faster reps tones muscle while heavier weights at a slower pace will build muscle. You just have to find the right balance. I know you want the weight off more than anything so concentrate on that - you can do the muscle building when you get to the maintenance level. That's just my opinion of course but you should know by now that I am always right LOL.
ReplyDeleteIf you are really serious about fitness, you need to be doing some kind of resistance training at least three days a week, plus your cardio the other 2-3 days and 1-2 days of rest. I would recommend checking out the fitness forum on calorie count for ideas to get you started and please start eating more! Only eating 50% of your daily burn is considered starvation by your body and is probably part of the reason your weight loss is slow, your body is trying to conserve energy to maintain basic functions. You can't get proper nutrition on 800-1100 cals per day. Are you taking any vitamins with this lo cal diet you are on? Under eating for a prolonged period of time is also setting you up for rebound weight gain when/if you reach your goal weight and try to go back to a normal number of cals. I'm just saying this because I am concerned about your long term health.
ReplyDeletehttp://jcdfitness.com/2011/06/i-dont-want-to-get-big-and-bulky-fitness-marketing-and-its-effect-on-women/ Posting a link about fitness, hope it works :)
I have to disagree with downsizers. You can't "build" muscle on a calorie deficit and lifting heavy weights while losing lbs will allow you to maintain the muscle you already have and burn more cals. This is also presented in the article I linked for you earlier. You are probably already losing muscle mass because you are eating at an extremely low cal level right now and when the body doesn't have enough fuel, it will start to break down muscle as well as fat for energy. Also, women don't "bulk" up from lifting heavy weights. They don't have the testosterone for bulking like men do and it takes a lot of hard work and time to "build" muscle.
ReplyDeleteI'm for the sticking it out. Building muscle is fine and all, but I've been told that if you like how STRONG you are, then a lot of times you do the weights and the push-ups to keep up that strength, but you won't be as sore for the same work-out because your body has adjusted . . . even though you may be burning close to the same calories.
ReplyDeleteIf you can do more, then you are a making improvements, and so should soreness really be your guide? Maybe you're just super woman!
Anonymous #1: I would be worried about gain too IF I were intentionally eating a super low cal diet and ever had plans to go back to eating more calories but if you've been reading my blog for any length of time you would know that I am not eatin 700-900 calories a day by choice with begrudging unhappiness and stark miserable self-control. I am eating 700-900 calories a day because I've not been hungry enough to eat more and, most days, the quality of food that I am eating is higher quality, lower calorie food resulting in feeling satisfied with fewer calories. I am not on a diet, I wish I had a dollar for every time I have had to repeat that on this blog. What I am eating and doing now is a permanent, long-term, lifetime change. I'm not planning on changing back to my old ways, upping calories, or ceasing physical activity once I've reached my target weight and that is because I am all too aware of people who lose weight and then gain it back. Been there, done that.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous #2: I'm with you. I don't necessarily want to "build" muscle (well some additional upper-body strength would be good within moderation) but I do want to tone for that nice gentle ripple affect.
Ki: You're dead on. I did just that, stuck it out and I'm feeling it today. My hips are sore, the backs of my upper arms are sore and when I was doing crunches the other night my tummy felt tired really fast. That's when I realized that the routine has been working but I don't have to "kill myself" to make progress. Of course I guess the true test will be the weigh-ins over the next three Mondays.
I don't have an opinion for your conundrum, just wanted to say I'm a new reader and enjoying your blog so far!
ReplyDeleteI've just started my journey and I like your comment that you are not on a diet, you are making a long term change. That's so right! Have you seen the new show Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition (Monday nights on ABC at 10pm/9c) really inspiring stories about people trying to do what you are doing: long term lifetime changes! Maybe you'll like it too, so I thought I'd share: http://abc.go.com/shows/extreme-makeover-weight-loss-edition/
Anyway, good luck and thanks! Have a great week!
Hi Liv! I have seen the commercials for that show and want to see if but never seem to remember to turn it on. It really has to be a lifestyle change I think. Most of us didn't get the way we are by going on a single binge ... we developed a bad lifestyle which means the only way to solve the problem is to replace the bad lifestyle with a good one. That's something that I really like about Curtis, the chef from The Biggest Loser, I'm not a huge fan of the show overall but he emphasizes in other television programs that I've seen him on how important it is to differentiate changing from dieting. I once heard him say that alcoholics can't just quit alcohol for 28 days and then get out and go back to drinking and expect to not be alcoholics anymore. Obesity isn't any different. Anyhow, I'm preaching to someone who agrees with me and I'm told people hate it when I do that so I'll stop now. :) I do appreciate your comments though, I just get excited when someone "gets it". :) Thanks so much for commenting and for reading my blog.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with anonymous's points.
ReplyDeleteWomen don't bulk-up from weight-lifting... just look at my wife, does she look "muscle-bound" to you??? The women you see that look like andro-freaks are that way precisely because they are taking andro-supplements while lifting... ie: they are making their body-chemistry masculine, not by the weights, but by the drugs.
You should strive to build muscle while you diet -- if you don't, you are likely to lose muscle while dieting. Muscle loss equals out to a lower resting-metabolism. When you start dieting you often see big losses and at the end of a diet you are often losing little to nothing. There are many reasons for that effect, but a lowered metabolism is a primary reason and muscle-loss is a major factor of a lowered metabolism.
The notion that you should do cardio because it's a calorie-burner is out-dated thinking that can be shown to be untrue. Cardio only burns calories by elevating your metabolism *while you are doing the exercise*. Once you stop the exercise, and your heart-rate returns to normal, the benefit largely stops. So if you do 60min. of cardio, you get only about 60min. of calorie-burning effect. Lifting weights, *done properly*, can be both a resistance workout (ie: tear and rebuild muscle) *AND* a cardio workout (ie: exercise your heart) -- but instead of doing classic weight-lifting with big resting periods (which allows the heart-rate to return to normal between each exercise), one should create their routine so that they are *constantly* in motion... if you aren't lifting, you better be changing weights or altering your setup for a new exercise -- do your 6-12reps, *SLOWLY*, and then jump up, switch up your weights, get set back up and do your reps again (*SLOWLY*) -- SLOW reps, SHORT resting-periods. By doing that, you are coupling your cardio and weights into a single workout. Your heart-rate is elevated for 20-30min. due to the cardio, you saved yourself 30-40min. you can use to do LILD-cardio later on (Low-Intensity Long-Duration; ie: walking), and after your workout your metabolism will stay spiked for up to 24hours while your body is racing around trying to clear-out the cellular-waste (from the damaged muscle) and rebuild new muscle.
You don't want to feel soreness in the same muscle-group more than about once/week. But as long as it's soreness in a different muscle group every day of the week, you're fine. It takes about a week for a muscle-group to fully recover -- if you work it out to the point of soreness before it's fully-recovered, you're cutting it's rebuilding-process short.
But soreness (after you've been exercising for more than a few weeks) is no indicator of success. It's a great thing, I absolutely love that feeling, but a better indicator is whether you are able to lift larger weights and do more reps from week to week. Even tiredness isn't a good measure. Bodies adapt.
(b)
That's so true what Curtis said..I've always thought it was similar to 12 steps...lifestyle change (one day at a time), not just a diet. But that's actually why I don't like Biggest Loser so much either. It focuses on short term. That's actually why I thought you might like EM Weight Loss...it seems to be in line with your philosophy!
ReplyDeleteSet your DVR it's on tonight, or you can catch up on episodes online, that's how I just watched the episode about Dana, the swimmer.
Anyway, great job!!
Bro: Well with a 1 lb gain this morning I MUST have built some muscle. There is absolutely NO WAY that I gained 1 lb of fat last week ... we all saw what I was eating and the activity I was doing so it HAD to be muscle from the sprints, push-ups, and crunches. had to be ... right?
ReplyDeleteLiv: I wuv TiVo! :) I'm with you on the 12 step program and I think it can be applied to a LOT of things like anger management, weight loss, or even breaking an obnoxious habit (with modifications of course, clearly you're not going to run around apologizing to everyone for biting your fingernails but the concepts and principles are the same).
Probably more likely to be temporary water-gains while your body is pushing out the toxins of muscular-breakdown and gathering the nutrients it needs to build new muscle.
ReplyDeleteBuilding muscle is very hard.
Building 1lb. should take a month, at least. Not 2 weeks.
(b)
(b): Aye saw your statement on that subject in response to another post also. I've been peeing my brains out today! You were right, as always.
ReplyDelete