Tomboy Tough

Biochemical Ambition

2009-10-27T04:02:00.002-06:00

Seriously, I think it may be the single most amazing thing to me -- in a big world of things I find frankly astonishing -- how much food affects my state of mind.

I recently and finally bought a flat bench, so I can do butterflies and bench press. My existing bench is short, good for recline and sitting things only. I also bought a barbell finally, a couple of weight plates and a new (15#) set of dumbbells.

I can almost custom design how much my body will want to move, how much my muscles will want to tense repeatedly if I force sitting still, how many times I will think about working out, how creatively interested I will be (on the whole) about everything in my life, based on food.

So if I eat plenty of protein (80-120g/daily), and around 20-50 carbs, and all the rest decent fats, in whatever calories I can get down me (ketogenic diets kill appetite. I try to make 1500 calories a day), I will eventually have to start moving.

It begins with ideas. Daydreams.

It continues to more pronounced fidgeting, where I sit with my laptop computer.

It continues into intention, tense-and-hold contraction exercises dominantly of glutes and thighs, if I am still 'sitting around'.

Then it starts motivating me emotionally. Sure, I might have previously known I "should" clean the fridge, or make something yummy, or organize some household area, but now I will finally "feel like" getting off my butt and doing it.

And if that keeps up, I will gradually start feeling like doing something more proactive. It's time to paint something. Or maybe bricks and soil need work in the landscape. Rearrange the furniture. Completely restructure one room of the house. Take on one of those projects that are huge and where everything gets so much worse for awhile before it gets better.

But it's more than that. It isn't just about body-motion. It's about e-motion. E-ticket rides, you know, the internal movement of the soul or whatever you want to call it. Getting my food right makes me think about what I want to do with my life. With my day, week, month, and my goals for the next year or two. It makes me more willing to 'deal with' everything from child and family to work and friends. It gives me a sense of balance, a sense of flexibility.

It makes me feel like a human being. Again.

It's hard to believe that just the difficulty in getting food exactly right -- enough carbs not to feel too down (~50), not too many (or I'm doomed), enough protein, no grains (real old fashioned irish oats in small amounts are ok - no gluten, ever), slide the dairy in just right because too much is a trigger, taking my supplements, getting enough sleep -- this collection of habits doesn't just change my activity level.

It literally changes who I am, as a person. How ambitious I am. How creative I am. How flexible and humorous I am. How courageous I am. The list goes on. Even things like how spiritual I feel, whether I feel like making the effort to meditate, to pray, everything is affected by biochemistry.

PJ

Waking Up on the Floor

2009-07-22T02:08:00.003-06:00

I can't remember why, last March, I gradually abandoned low-carb eating. But the predictable result, four months later, is that I am heavier, slower, can barely move, and even looking back on the exercise I was doing four months ago seems staggering and impossible.

I am starting yet anew. It's a good thing I'm an optimist!

Last night 'before I went to sleep' I did one (just one) Goblin Squat ("gSquat"). I'm about ready to go find some food, then I have a few hours work and then sleep (my schedule is off), and I will do as many as I can now, but at least two. My goal is to do this daily, do more each day, and see how many I can work up to.

Or until I can do 15, at which point I will pick up a small dumbbell to add to the process.

I've been back on the lowcarb wagon for 9 days now. I'm starting to feel slightly weary and in about another day or two I will probably be craving carbs so much I fantasize about broccoli. But for now I'm ok. By day 14 my body should have shifted into a ketogenic state, I estimate. That always helps, as I have more energy, and just the "feel" of it encourages me and makes me feel like something useful is going on.

I have little to blog about right now since I am just starting yet-again. But hopefully within a couple of months I will be back to the place I'd gotten four months ago, in the last post I had here. Aside from being healthy, feeling good, and not dying, there is the issue that my landscaping still needs more work!

PJ
.

Morbid Obesity and Working Your Ass Off

2009-03-24T07:26:00.004-06:00

Have been doing landscaping work on my property for about ten days now. I've been working up to more each day. Hand weeding, raking, and hauling these oversized scallop bricks. Been using 'Goblin Squats' for this (a wide stance squat, feet 45 degree angle outward, torso upright, and any weight held high close to the chest).

Did so much brick hauling yesterday and other stuff that I can barely move today and actually feel sort of traumatized. I clearly overdid it. But I got a lot accomplished and I'm kind of proud of myself for even being ABLE to do so much leg work that (combined with the rest of my body) I could feel this way.

I'm feeling muscles that I swear I have not felt in probably 15+ years.

When you get really fat, the first problem is that oxygenating that much mass is difficult. Inability to get enough oxygen stops nearly all exercise in its tracks, as the heart and lungs go nuts trying to move enough blood through fast enough to deal with a supersized body even moving at all, let alone moving while bearing extra weight. It literally becomes impossible to do more than the mildest exercise and, given how unhappy the heart is about not having oxygen for its own needs, not real safe.

The second problem is of course the weight you have to move, which is difficult because it's so much (heavy), plus, that insufficient protein (which is ever-present in the morbidly obese IMO) tends to make one weak, plus, that feet issues kick in due to that combination plus being OFF the feet becoming a norm, which means just 'the doing it' is hard as hell, totally apart from minor things like having oxygen while doing it.

The third problem is the mobility; from lack of limberness to whatever the word is when bodyfat is literally IN THE WAY so you can't turn or bend in certain ways easily or even at all. Worse, this creates both some lack of balance and a tendency to hurt yourself easily, when an underused muscle or tendon suddenly gets way too much weight imposed on it in some twist or surprise movement.

The fourth is metabolic: if Taubes is even half right (and probably he is, at least that much if not more), the primary reason some bodies get and stay fat and others don't, even in research on the same food etc., is because the body is storing the energy from food and not giving it to you "as energy" like it's supposed to. The body stores fat every time you eat; what varies between the thin and morbidly obese appears to be that in thin people, the body freely releases the energy taken in, which is why they "feel like" going out and doing something, have the energy to exercise, or whatever. In fat people, no matter how much 'energy food' you take in (carbs of course -- one reason I think extremely fat people are carb/sugar addicts is because that is 'pure energy food'), you can't get more than a fraction of it back out, so you seldom have much "energy" to do anything.

It's like a bank account where your paycheck auto-deposits everything you earn, but you can't get more than pennies of your money out again. So if you don't want to die in the street you have to frantically go work yet MORE to make more money to survive. But the same thing happens. People think you're "hoarding" all that money and have too much of it... but whatever force is making it unavailable to you is the problem. Hormones, whatever. That's where science needs to go. If the sources funding the science weren't the same ones killing us with pseudo-food and sugars and then medicating us with drugs, that might happen one day.

Anyway, when morbidly obese, one gets slow and cautious to avoid having a fall that could be very destructive. When really large, it only takes one bad fall to screw up a knee or back that can mess with you for the rest of your life. A wrong movement could be injurious. And it's a tax on the system that brings on the equivalent of a major asthma attack, just because you worked a little too fast or hard putting the groceries in the back of the car.

Thinner people wonder why people really fat aren't out there exercising already. Because they don't have the energy (#4 above), and because of the first 3.

So what this means is that when challenged to exercise, the actual muscles, UNLESS you are weight training, doing squats or hauling brick around your garden, never really even have the CHANCE to seriously work out. It's like there are all these issues with the body that stop you long before you get to even challenging let alone really taxing, the muscle.

Your lack of oxygen, your body impedence, weakness or overburden, stops someone morbidly obese waaaaaay before the point where say, all the muscles all the way around your thigh, and above your knee, could even get to that "Ye gods, I'm alive and it hurts!" stage.

This is harder on the lower half of the body because you can do arm exercises with much less demand, more gradually, and even while sitting. Lower body work (without a gym machine, and since we're talking about the morbidly obese here, many don't have a gym, are too embarrassed to visit a gym, too poor to afford one, or can't fit in the machines) has to support the ENTIRE body weight, and often the inability to do that right off means you don't exercise it hardly at all. It's not like arms, where you can lift a little and work up to a lot.

Even something like a single squat has to instantly bear your entire body weight -- on the knees and back as well as on the glutes and thighs and calves. So if you can't go from doing 'nothing' to squatting 250-450# instantly, someone morbidly obese is in a bit of a catch-22 and usually defaults to not exercising at all because it's impractical, dangerous, and unbelievably taxing.

Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Use the legs, not momentum and leaning the weight out, to stand. I do it as often as possible. In the kitchen if I'm going to be in there awhile, I have a folding chair. I make a point to sit and stand a dozen or two times rather than just casually standing by the stove -- it's more exercise.

At the store, I fill my cart heavily with birdfood, catfood and catlitter right up front so the whole shopping trip is hauling around a lot more weight, and then I use super walmart shopping as a workout of sorts, forcing turns fast and hard so I really have to use a little torso and shoulder muscle, walking quickly where I can, not avoiding walking all the way across the store for some trivial thing.

I've also been doing some degree of isometric exercises while sitting on my bed. This is where you basically just 'tense and hold' a muscle. I've been doing that with my buttocks and thighs for some time. Trying to exercise when I can and how I can.

Basically I've been working to bring as much exercise as I can into daily life.

And trying to eat enough protein -- minimum 60g but I really feel exponentially better on more like 120g -- to keep me strong enough to do it.

I really think it's helping. I really AM feeling a whole lot of muscles that I probably haven't felt sore in 15+ years. Not until now have I been strong enough, limber enough, and oxygen adapted enough, to go do the kind of work I'm doing.

PJ

Daily Life

2009-03-21T13:30:00.003-06:00

I've been working on making everything in daily life into exercise. Shopping. Walking to the store. Making dinner. Doing much more 'sit down then stand up' in a squat-form. Doing lots more yard work. Doing Goblin-squats to pick up and move big bricks in my landscaping. Pushing a very heavy (with pet/bird food, drinks etc.) basket in the store as fast as I can around corners so it takes muscle in arms and torso. Anything I can do.

I've been eating decently the last few weeks. The prior lowcarb cycle resulted in zero nada none for weight loss and I got so demoralized and ticked I just stopped it. This time I decided that the extra carbs I was eating the last time, in stews with beans, carrots and peas, I was knocking out. This time I've lost all the water weight I should have. Dunno about anything further but as it's only been a few weeks I'm not yet pushing it.

Once in awhile I've attempted a 'slow-burn' version of exercise with my dumbbells. I have not yet evolved to doing a whole workout though.

I'm hoping to be in better shape by summer, and to use summer to get in better shape for fall, and so on.

PJ

Attention, Awareness and Attitude

2009-01-15T19:22:00.003-06:00

Attention, Awareness, and Attitude are fundamental. They're the rescue team and where the rubber meets the road. Without those three any effort is doomed -- not just to fail, but to do so by fading away into the pale oblivion of apathy.

I think to a great degree I have been not-exercising for the simple reason that I just don't think about it. I forget. I'm distracted. I'll do it later. Sit on your butt all day for work and it's hard to motivate yourself to do much of anything.

I find that I am overwhelmingly deadline and goal oriented. Probably a side effect of entrepreneurial work most of my life. So I'm great with those. But it means if I don't have those spelled out clearly for myself, and if I don't look at them constantly and keep them in-my-face, I'm a tree sloth.

"You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule." -- Seth

I want to start exercising again. Even if it's barely anything, even if it's kind of stupid, I just want the effort of "paying attention" to exercise and my body, "being aware" of how my body feels and what I need to be doing for it, and "having a good attitude" by consistently working toward something that I know I need.

PJ

A New Twist on 'Mental Muscle'

2008-09-17T19:41:00.002-06:00

In the past, I've seen a number of references to research studies which showed very clearly that merely 'visualizing' something, like shooting hoops (basketball), could result in skill nearly as good, after some time, as the people actually practicing.

I'm a mind-freak so I've always found this fascinating.

So I was really intrigued by this blog article referencing research which allegedly found that you can build nearly as much muscle by visualizing building it as by actually working on it physically.

While I don't expect this to make many buff dreamers, I do think it is an intriguing consideration for existing bodybuilders when it comes to what they are doing with their minds while working out.

http://jonathanfields.com/blog/brain-buff-research-thoughts-on-strength-fitness-weight-loss/

Lifting the Weight of Emotion

2008-07-01T08:45:00.002-06:00

It's taken me a year to get around to confessing this. I confessed to my journal buddies, and to a trainer friend, and now on my blog.

Have you ever had one of those situations where you're having some feeling or experience, and it's powerful and real for you, but you feel like telling anybody about it makes you sound like some kind of lying whining goon? You just feel so stupid you don't even want to bring it up. Well that's how I feel about this.

I'll summarize it like this:

Weight lifting hard seems to be stimulating my body in a way that invokes a ton of emotion. I suspect it is stored biochemical based on past emotion. It's not positive. It is fear and rage and more, a flood of a million feelings at once, so powerful that the first time it happened, I dropped my dumbell and nearly ran from the room, and went into denial and 'forgot' about my interest in weight lifting for six months.

It's happened repeatedly now. It profoundly affects my doing it at all, or more than several minutes.

I love weight lifting. Love it. I think it's the greatest feeling, I think testosterone is the coolest natural drug ever, I think I feel so good when I am lifting that it's almost a different personality on me entirely. Much more tough and competent and physical.

So anything that interferes with that is a problem. I've never heard of anybody having their bodybuilding interfered with by an emotional problem. That's just ridiculous, it seems to me.

It made me wonder if my self-therapy about a horrible childhood, a two year period (mostly) during which I gained ~200 lbs (age 22-24), might have instead just 'insulated' me from my own body, my own emotions. It wasn't long after that I broke through the sociopathic repression of emotion, and who knows?--maybe it was the massive fat that somehow made my body feel less threatened by that; maybe all that stored biochemical of the past is there, stored under the myelin sheath of the nerves as the Biogram theory postulates, and weight lifting is stimulating, releasing it or something. I don't know. I have theories but I don't really understand it.

All I know is that weight lifting as a physical thing is awesome and I have no problem with it and am driven to do it. But the emotional overwhelm that seems to kick in some minutes in now -- it didn't used to. (?) -- has made it an incredibly difficult, challenging activity.

This is July 2008. It's basically been a year since I was doing any regular workouts. I'm down to 366#, which with an over 500# high weight is not so bad, but I've got a very long way to go. Exercise is starting to feel critical.

I'm starting to WANT to do it. I believe this isn't just because I'm lighter. I believe that my average insulin is lower over time and my body is hence able to access more of my stored fat for energy. I did a glucose test recently and my numbers were pretty good:

Fasting: 60 (I'd fasted too long, it was late afternoon)
~110+ fast-acting carbs (orange juice, & blueberry smoothie)
15 minutes later: 130
1 hour later: 107
2 hours later: 97

I'm certain my blood sugar wasn't anywhere near that healthy a couple of years ago, when eating just about anything would nearly put me into a coma a little while later, when I had huge very dark patches under my armpits from insulin resistance. My body seems to be healing somewhat, from eating well. Thank God!

So this is a new month and I feel it's time to start again.

And if what I'm lifting is less about iron and more about the weight of my emotion, so be it. If I need to play angry rock at 160 decibals and scream my head off while doing it, so be it. Maybe on some level the physical work is forcing me to experience a part of myself I wouldn't otherwise, that sitting comfortably, sedentary, never forces me to face. It's difficult. But I guess it's about time.

PJ

The Mosey

2008-05-20T10:06:00.004-06:00

Well! Good thing I wasn't in a hurry to get all fit and trim or anything, since I've not been working all that hard on it the last week! But I'm slowly shifting my stance and focus here, so I think it's going to be fine. Probably another couple weeks will slide me fully into something worth talking about.

Things I DID do:

1 - Mowed the front lawn again. Sheesh, it grows like crazy.
2 - A very minor amount of weight lifting from a rocking chair.
Geez, that sums it up.

Things I DIDN'T do:

1 - finish shoveling the soil into containers (maybe today)
2 - plant everything in the containers
3 - rake the backyard (a huge job, zillions of tiny twigs and long grass)
4 - mow the backyard

So hopefully the next few days will see me finally catching up.

Each month, at the turn of month, my kid and I have what she calls 'awesome day'. We go to the olive garden for lunch, then we spend all day in the bookstore, drinking mocha frappes and reading. Sometimes we go somewhere else and she can buy something, like a shirt or shoes or something. Sometimes if we aren't stuffed we'll go somewhere for a late dinner (like 9pm) or just dessert (like outback). The date has to match when I get my paycheck so it's seldom exactly at the first/last day of the month. This month it is this Saturday the 24th.

Hence, our "summer of lowcarb" plans have been set for the 25th, after that. Not that it isn't an always-thing, just that we really want to focus this summer. It's a set-apart time because she's out of school.

Except my body decided yesterday ... to make my start date yesterday. I didn't really want to. I had carby stuff I wanted to eat! But sometimes my body seems to have a mind of its own, and it flatly refused. So this means I'll be going off LC just as I got into ketosis, on Saturday, then back on again. Gah. That is never a good idea, it's hard to do (the going back on and staying there after eating megacarbs). But oh well... I will make it work. Even a few days not eating badly will make me feel more energetic I'm sure.

Having had about 10 carbs in the last 48 hours or so, after being at a normal carby diet (a few hundred a day) for quite awhile, I already feel like eating anything with carbs. Last night the kid asked me to make her oatmeal, but I had to admit that if I went near it, I'd eat it, so... NO. She's been on LC with me before so she knows what it entails. I'm starting to get in that mode where I think vegetables sound good. This definitely indicates approaching ketosis, since they never sound good otherwise. By the time asparagus sounds orgasmic, I'll be within 24 hours max of a hard Ketosis.

Tonight the kid has Karate which means I can't do jack 'cause I'm busy driving her to it, waiting an hour, then back, and added to getting off work and dinner and getting her ready for bed, that's my night. (Welcome to parenthood. "You will have a life again in approximately 18 years.") But I talked with Ry and we've agreed to do a more regular stint at the walking park at least a few times a week, so I don't lose the cardio fluency. I sort of dream of the day when I can rapidly walk the whole thing without it being all that hard.

Which reminds me, there is this thing I'd really like to get. It's a vest (they have male and female forms) that holds small weights, usually 1 or 2 lb rods the vest is designed for. They call it a weighted vest. You start out wearing it around empty or with a pound or so, and then you gradually increase the weight, so it gives your whole body time to adapt. I was thinking it would be kind of cool if I were able to gradually add weight as I lost weight, so instead of losing that muscle I might get to keep it. Is this a crazy idea? It seemed kind of neat to me. I would already have bought one a year ago except my concern that it might not fit me. Hopefully if I can lose another 25# or so the extra large will.

I'm planning to take measurements again -- as frightening as that is! -- and my weight the day we 'officially' begin LC again (5/25), as well as do a fresh survey of what weight I can lift and whether/how many of various exercises I can do. I don't yet have any specific goals for the summer or for the rest of the year except "better than I can do now."

That's all for this week. Hopefully next week I can say I've caught up on tons of garden stuff, shipping stuff, got a new weight training plan together, done some walking park, and been lowcarb for 8 days (minus 1). I should have all my starting numbers, weights and exercises as well.

I'm pretty excited about this summer and the rest of the year. I know it'll be a lot of work, but I'm sure I can do it. It's just a matter of focus and intent.

Alternative Exercise

2008-05-13T16:44:00.005-06:00

(I'm reviving this blog, and about time.)

OK, so lately I've been doing that very odd thing that people did before they had gyms and personal trainers: I've been exercising by doing something constructive.

I have to rake, then mow, then weed-eat, the property. That's a lot of work for me. Granted, I live in a tract home, but it's still a lot of work. I have to stop and rest on the porch bench for awhile between each part. But I'm getting better at it.

I worked (and paid my housekeeper to work) on the garage for months now and I can actually walk all the way through it to "get to" things like the lawn mower, tools, etc. -- what a concept! This is great and makes doing things a lot easier. Used to be that after DP moved in I had no idea where to find anything (and when I found it, it would invariably have been left out to rust), and the effort of even getting a couple tools to DO something was just off-putting. Now I'm starting to get my life and property organized again -- I spent over a year since he left doing almost nothing besides working, coding (though not much of that anymore), and working on cleaning out the house, yards, and garage.

I have regular watering, weeding, and just finished all the amending and planting, for my backyard garden. It's a standing garden which is great, but that also means you're doing stuff leaning over with a hand trowel, not a tiller and a shovel, and trust me, two-year weeds as thick as my wrist and three feet deep are still hard work. It was abandoned for two years and I'm just restoring it this spring. Still much work to do on the overall area but at least the beds are planted.

I spent half the day today shoveling half my potting mix -- this is a dumptruck load in my driveway of a 'soilless mix' that is spaghum peat moss, pine fines, perlite, and something else I forget -- into containers (20 - 70 qt containers) to add to the garden collection. It started raining huge drops, but the minute I finished my mad rush to cover it all--2 minutes, if that--the rain ceased.

Got distracted with work, kid, shopping etc. I'm considering trying to mow the lawn before the storm arrives since it's already too long again and I won't be able to mow for a couple days after it rains. Trying to start the lawnmower nearly injures me so it's more a matter of my courage than my energy at this point. In my attempt at procrastination, I'm blogging instead.

***

I haven't been weight lifting for a long time. I'd like to re-start that. I had a long list of issues that interfered--by which I mean, interfered with my personal priorities, because obviously, had I wanted to do it more than I didn't, I would have.

I've been walking off and on, with the kid. My city has a walking park with a 1-mile track. It's surprising how fast cardio facility increases if you just move regularly. I remember realizing this decades ago with bicycling, that it would only take several days in a row of doing it to move from so wiped out I had to stop ten times and gasp for my life, to doing vastly more, faster, with no rests, and being ok with it.

At right is a pic of the kid (11-Apr-08) at the walking park with me. She's wearing my severely oversized (for her) sweatshirt.

The cardio-facility fades fast though. If I don't move much for a couple days, it seems like I lose a whole lot and have to spend a couple days recovering facility I had previously.

Eating crappy food takes me down fast, since it not only adds oxygen problems (gluten foods give me asthma which worsens sleep apnea so I'm O2 deprived), and some asthma, but all the water-bloating that goes with eating a lot of carbs too, which affects how limber I am, how stressed my heart is from bending over, etc. My "fitness level" can change radically in two days for better or worse just depending on whether I'm eating steak and eggs vs. pasta and tacos.

I have cooking goals this week, like roasting a whole chicken and using the carcass for a soup; whipping egg whites stiff for a variety of experimental, vaguely breadish recipes; making more cocoa coconut oil/cream bites; and I got a few different "Black Angus" burgers and steaks at Super Walmart frozen section I want us to try. Tonight we must do stir fry and use our broccoli and colored bells before they go bad, with chicken and some gluten-free soy sauce.

My eating goals are mostly to refocus. All in all, my eating has sucked off and on for the last -- well actually, for about the last 17 months to be honest -- but fortunately that means it is "ok" about half the time, I haven't gained any weight back. I still weigh 375 on LC (390 if I fall off--I hold about 15lbs of water weight for carbs if I'm not LC) which is sort of miraculous given how much crappy eating and lack of exercise I've had a lot of the time.

My exercise goals for the moment are still centered on the reality around me:

Get all the soilless mix into all my containers, which means shoveling and wheelbarrowing.
Get all the containers with drainage holes in them (not on the bottom but on the side near the bottom) which means a lotta time with the drill. (Yes. Smart people do that part FIRST. That is simply not how the timeline worked out.)
Get all the weeds that 'recovered' in the garden totally out of there.
Get the front lawn mowed and edged again. It's a weekly job in Spring. This will be two weeks if I wait till next Saturday but it will be forest by then so I can't wait that long.
Get the back yard raked and the bazillion twigs (from arm-thick and 10' long to zillions of finger-size twigs, from the old ice storm) outta there so I can finally mow and weed-eat back there, before the grass is taller than me.

There is a big long list of OTHER stuff I ALSO need to do -- but not this week.

I've been reading about lectin/protein intolerances and I really want to make a bigger effort to get totally off gluten. Although I'm not giving up cheese at this point, I'd like to reduce the amount of dairy I intake as the protein, caseine, I react with craving to which tells me I have some allergenic reaction to it. (It doesn't escape me, the irony that I spent my whole life eating two primary foods that I am probably literally intolerant to. It's no surprise I'm huge but it's rather amazing I'm not dead already.)

I also need to get back to my note-taking on the Gary Taubes book 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' as well since even looking at the book as I walk past tends to inspire me back to eating meat/eggs/veggies. Boy that book was convincing. If I were on the jury, some people would already be hung! The man may be the first person who can make even my tendency for "overkill" look pitiful and weak. It's only for really good readers who don't mind really dense material, but it's awesome for those.

And... I want to do another beginning of weight lifting. I slightly injured myself the last time, plus my back room kept getting one of the 8 cats into it (two know how to open the doorknob!) and using it as a litterbox, so even when cleaned up you just couldn't be in it due to the smell, which killed my enthusiasm frankly. The cats are going 100% outside as soon as this storm cycle is over so the horrendous flea situation we had last summer will not be repeated. Too many cats act like a wild pride--I am still waiting for DP to come get his so I only have my 4. (As usual, even long after I get rid of him again, still in some way he is managing to muck up some portion of my life! Oh well. I do love the cats, of course.) Anyway so within a week max I should have my "weight lifting room" restored.

The TV/VCR/DVD is there now. I got rid of the whole media tower, center, TV, and all our VCR tapes (many hundreds) not long ago on freecycle. We have DVDs only now, in a couple fat zipper books, and what visual stuff we have is in the back room, as it hasn't been used for much else.

A coworker sent me a Christian "walking" exercise DVD, something to do indoors if it's raining or something. That was nice of her. Also low-fat cookbooks. Apparently she either did not understand lowcarb that I mentioned repeatedly, or she is hoping to convert me, heh. It still surprises me that people think lowcarb is nothing but bacon and butter; several lowcarbers I know all but live on chicken and fish and broccoli and asparagus and things like that.

... that would not be me.

Anyway, I'm going to start posting on this blog hopefully weekly and talking about what exercise I have done, planning, and any subject matter that relates to exercise or my experience in that area. I think I've waxed on enough now...

... I have to go mow the lawn.

PJ

Periodization

2007-06-16T03:03:00.000-06:00

No, it's not a form of punctuation.

"Periodization" refers to planned variation: you make a Grand Plan for your weight lifting, your goals, and you break a given timeframe into periods, and using some simple calculations only geeks get into, you figure out how much weight and how many reps and sets you should be doing during each period (quarter, month, week, day, whatever).

There's more to this and further complexities but this is what I'm starting with for now. Why? Well here is Mistress Krista's take on it, though note her page caveats that this isn't all there can be to it of course:

For workouts to be consistently successful, intensity and volume should be varied over time. Working with a high intensity and/or high volume consistently results in insufficient recovery, and will eventually lead to overtraining, while working with intensity and volume that is too low will not be challenging enough to stimulate growth.

She's my web-hero, a former overweight married marshmallow sort who metamorphed into a seriously buff, funny, smart, over-educated Canadian with a great website.

***

OK. Usually this process has a 'variation' programmed in, increasing weight or reps differently. The goal is to ensure that at the end of the overall period of time set forth, you will have increased your 1RPM* weight by the desired amount.

*1RPM stands for 'one repetition maximum'. Generally, it means the most weight you could lift but only once. A person generally works out at some percentage of this. The lower the percentage of the weight, the higher the number of repetitions, and vice-versa.

Asleep yet?

There is a calculation you can use to determine your 1RPM, which if you're setting up your periodization based on this number (so it becomes part of the calculation), will affect what you lift and where you end up. For example on the Arnold Press, if my newbie barbie-arms can lift 10# about 9 times before actual pain kicks in enough to prevent much more, the formula would look like this:

weight(#) * (1 + ( {intensity multiplier} * reps) )

The {intensity multiplier} can range from .02 to about .09 depending on how ~~insane~~ intense you are about it and what seems possible for your muscles. The higher the number, the more you'd better either be a beginner (which I am) (which tends to see larger gains than most), or probably doing something unusual and potentially chemically illegal. .03 to .06 is what some consider a 'normal' and 'moderate' range to aim for, and .033 is the number used to calculate a starting 1RM.

I decided to use .060 since I'm a beginner and my starting weight is very low, so my increase should be decent.

On the Arnold Press, using the .060 multiplier, my 10# weight times 9Reps max where I feel I'm starting from, comes out to 15.4# as my 1RPM. That's where I start.

The 12 week periodization spreadsheet I got at Krista's site thanks to Lisa (scroll to bottom to see link), if I follow this training regimen, varies my workout from 8 to 13 lbs, reps from 6 to 12, and sets from 3 to 5, depending on the week. At the finish of the 12 weeks, if I keep it up, allegedly I will be up to 16.94# as my 1RM for that exercise.

Genius readers will observe that this is a mere 1.54 lbs 1RPM increase. I noticed this too. I thought at first maybe the math didn't well apply to the pitifully small weights I'm starting with, but I think it's normal. That number isn't really what you're lifting, it's a beautiful on-paper number. It's low because there's only a low repetition reached at that point.

I will be starting with lifts at 10# and ending with lifting 15#, which is a 50% increase over the course of 12 weeks, which actually isn't bad at all. Once I can do the 15# for more than 6Reps (that's why the 1RPM number is small, is because the 15# is only at 6Reps, a low number), my 1RPM will be a higher number. Then I could start again.

I'm not really sure of all the logic of this. I mean... well I'm just going to do it and see how it works out.

***

I have a chronic insecurity about having no idea what the hell I'm doing, combined with an understanding that if anybody can hurt themselves overdoing things it's me, full owner of the 'Anything worth doing is worth overdoing' motto.

Finding an outline that lets me put in what I'm doing and calculates stuff for me, for an allegedly safe and gradual and varied workout, a methodical approach to an increase in capacity, sounds good to me. It's still 'my' workout; where I am now, the exercises I choose, etc. And I can vary the details like the intensity of the plan if it seems necessary.

So far I've had two weeks of workouts and each week has morphed into something new before it came around, but it's worked out ok. I think I found this periodization stuff at a good time to pick a good starting place for the next 12 weeks.

***

Either that or I just want someone else to tell me what to do.

Sleeping Beauty

2007-06-16T01:25:00.001-06:00

Well there's been quite a few studies so far that have made it clear that not getting enough sleep can reduce your cognitive function (read: your BRAIN, man!), decrease the strength of your immune system, impair performance on a myriad of skills tested, score higher correlation with all kinds of diseases mental and physical, and contribute to making you fat.

Since sleep deprivation's been the cornerstone of my life for the last 18 years or so, I find all this very interesting. My little shoulder angel says, Imagine how different your life might have been if you'd slept more so your brain had worked even better, if you'd had more energy, less fat, and been healthier! My little shoulder devil responds, Yeah, and you wouldn't have got a friggin thing done, either.

So recently, Cheri Mah of Stanford U authored a paper on a study done on six basketball players at Stanford, healthy student males. To make a long story short, they measured these guys for sprinting times and free throw accuracy on their normal sleep schedule, and then on one that included "as much extra sleep as they could get." The abstract is totally unhelpful about how much this is. 15 minutes more? 3 hours? 6 hours? Well anyway... "more." Perhaps the full paper has how much more.

When getting "more" sleep, sprint times were faster, and free throws were more often accurate. The players also said they had increased energy, better mood during playing, and less fatigue.

Wow. Beautiful! Sleep's the best drug since sleep.

I've seen this referenced on a few blogs and websites, including Krista's. I decided to make a note of it here because the last week my body has been demanding a FULL night of sleep. If I don't get it, I have very little warning before my body will just crash in the day, and I end up sleeping on my lunch hour and after work, totally screwing up my schedule and, of course, resulting in my not getting stuff done I had planned.

I understand that at 41 -- I'll be 42 in September -- I'm not a spring chicken, and sleep deprivation and all-nighters and things like that get way more difficult as most people age. But my body's utter DEMAND -- and taking it whether I'm agreeing or not -- for SLEEP accompanies my beginning to work out. And I'm not even working out all that hard! I realize timing can be coincidental. But I don't think it is. I think my body is basically knocking me out flat before I have a chance to stuff sufficient caffeine down my throat to keep us both awake -- me and my body ;-) -- all night so I can "do stuff".

So I'm not getting much done. But I'm sure getting more sleep!

Walking: Starting from Zero

2007-06-15T09:29:00.001-06:00

Well, there you have it.

I finally, after two or more weeks of afternoon rain, found a day that wasn't raining (until night) and went to the 'walking park' my city built. I took the kid after karate on Wednesday. I wasn't actually prepared; I wasn't wearing socks, or underwear, or the overshirt I'd have chosen. But it was a realized chance to visit there after so long, so I took it.

The park's route is one mile even. The 4' blacktop sidewalk winds through a square block area like Silly String, to make up that amount. I set off in one direction.

And I didn't get far before I just had to stop and walk to the car. If I got even 1/8 of a mile it'd be a miracle. I didn't have my pedometer with me.

I wondered why I could walk the equivalent of 2 miles in super walmart, but then realized I have a basket to lean on there, which is what I felt like I really wanted on the walking path; something for my back, something to support the lower portion of my torso.

I stood at my car and looked back at the path. I had barely even covered a tiny piece of the overall park before getting so tired, mostly my back, that I felt I should rest. I know that my hips and spine are misaligned due to fat, and that walking is not remotely as easy for me as folks seems to assume it is for everyone. Still, I had hoped for more accomplishment than the tiny section I managed.

I told myself to enjoy the moment. That someday, I would know this park so well it would be a second home. That someday, I would only be able to shake my head in wonder over that past day when I could barely even begin on it before I had to stop. I imagined myself briskly walking through it with weights. I imagined 'regulars' there getting to know me and watching me shrink and eventually being very friendly.

Then I took another sad look at the pitiful little section I'd managed to cover, and got in my car and drove away.

Another day, another few steps on the road to somewhere more fit. I'm hoping for another visit early this evening after my kids' karate class. Hopefully, it can only get better. I tell myself I can do at least that plus 10 steps. Ten more steps. That isn't much right? If I can do at least that plus ten steps, I'll have improved. Eventually they'll add up.

Feel like I'm starting from zero here... just like with everywhere else. My exercise world's biggest challenge is surviving enough of it to someday be able to say I actually DO it.

Updated 5/13/2008: I can walk a mile now without resting.

Feng Shui Closet

2007-06-13T07:02:00.000-06:00

I didn't have much workout planned for last night after I got off work, and I went and rocked my abs slightly on the Bean and considered The Closet of my weights room. I'd wanted to assemble a new desk, but wasn't sure I had all my tools, which are in the closet, hopefully, somewhere. The closet has been the catch-all for too many things over time, no matter that I tried to keep its scope limited. As opening the closet displayed, it looked more like something out of a comedy movie, where anybody smart would close the door immediately before 500 items came crashing out upon them.

A couple weeks ago, or especially prior, I would never have considered tackling this, or even beginning. When you don't have the energy to make it more than 30% through any project, never mind its cleanup, you learn to just avoid projects altogether. Everything gets worse before it gets better of course, so that'd just leave you with having made things much worse. But last night I had the feeling that it was time to start on it. One area at a time; whatever I could do. My goal being to get through one region of the closet, and get everything cleaned up and my weights room returned to its normal clean spacious self, by the time the night was over.

Half a dozen big porcelain dolls of the kid went to live on her bed. Wrapping paper in the tubes, after I tried to store it in a variety of ways, got tossed in frustration. All gift bags and folded wrapping paper got condensed into a single big bag. Then I had an entire top shelf, one wall to the other, of binders and envelopes. I realized that these were put there in spring of 2000 when I moved here. Binders filled with stuff I created or collected for interests I had -- guitar, songwriting, handwriting analysis, some other things. The envelopes held tons of stories I wrote around age 18-20 and typed laboriously on my little manual. Four yearbooks from the dark ages... and tons of photos.

I spent most the night putting photos in the many big binders I had for them, to organize them. I couldn't have sat on the floor so long or done this previously, and it felt so novel that I was actually accomplishing something. But it was rather sad to look at the last ten years of photos, from my kids' life, and hate every photo that had me in it. When I looked at photos of times when I wasn't huge, I was happy to have them; it was a pleasant reminder. Everything else, I just grimaced and wish that I didn't have to keep it at all, which I only do because my parents rightfully insist that someday my kid or grandkid might want to have pictures of me when I'm gone. Yearbooks from a teenagehood of utter misery. And pictures of my stepmother 'doing things' with my kid that I haven't been able to. It ended up being a rather emotional night.

But that part got done. The closet still has a lot to be worked on, another night. I figure, this is one corner of the house, I will just gradually work my way through the house. If I work on something almost every night, it shouldn't take more than a few months before I'm through even the garage (a nightmare of epic proportions).

My body still has that bizarre insistence on heavy sleep. I had nightmares last nights, as did my little girl (who got lucky with my good mood last night so was sleeping beside me), and we even frightened in bizarrely parallel ways in our dreams last night, as if the same elements played out in different ways for each. I'm probably just venting stored biochemical (repressed emotion). I haven't been eating enough, as usual, but it's not just preventing my losing weight; at this point I am 8 lbs. heavier than I was ten days ago. Go figure!

I'm trying not to get freaky about it but it's kind of difficult. I'm surely not working out enough to gain significant muscle yet, and although I have a slight bloat it's no more it seems than it was a week ago yet my weight is like 4 lbs higher than then. So I just have no idea what's going on. I'm telling myself to not be hysterical and just keep on, don't go off the eating plan (whatever plan it might be, at this point eating period is enough of an accomplishment), keep working out, and trust that things will get better somehow. I have a measure point this coming Sunday. I better have lost some kind of size or I'm definitely going to be upset!

Body Changes; Workout Frequency

2007-06-12T07:30:00.000-06:00

Last night I noticed an occasional phenomenon. I wonder if this is because I am so new to the weight lifting thing.

In one case, I was doing this set and it wasn't hard at all until I'd done like 6 reps, then the last two were very hard. I barely finished 8 reps each of three sets. Then after resting a bit more I decided to try more. A rocking song was on. And suddenly, it was like it had lost half its weight. I still had the muscle scream around rep 6.5 on each set, but as I was lifting the weight, it just seemed so... well, just so NOT heavy the way it had been the first three sets. It made me wonder if there is such a thing as a 'second wind' in weight lifting like in running.

Last week I did a couple kinds of rear deltoid raises and this week, oddly, I couldn't really do any at the 10# weight. I finally dumped the weights, worried I would hurt myself, and I could not for the life o' me keep decent form, and just practiced doing nothing but my arms, muscles tense, decently far back (I couldn't get them far enough back with the weights), and I really felt it bigtime, this with no weights at all. Which is odd. I don't think it's possible to get weaker is it. Anyway, no big deal, moving on.

One thing about working out at this size is that a lot of exercises that are isolation exercises (working one muscle group) become accidentally compound exercises (working multiple muscle groups). Anything with a knee bend becomes compound for me because holding my body up with a bent knee is easier said than done. And one done lying on the ground on my side becomes compound as it takes both my legs scissored a bit to maintain balance against the lift. Some are just plain hard, like the seated rear deltoid raise requires scrunching over and putting the dumbells behind your legs; my body proportions are just in the way.

My weight continues to stay the same or rise slightly, despite that I couldn't be more lowcarb (or more low calorie for that matter) short of fasting. I am slightly bloated, I have a couple areas where I can totally tell how much fluid I am carrying; my fault, not drinking enough water. But I could swear my stomach seems smaller. Maybe I'm imagining it. Well, I measure again at the end of next week, so we'll see.

My goal for today is to get the big desk with sewing machine and boxes out of my room, and into the living room, and then get this slant-desk/table I bought for myself like a year ago, out of the box and assembled fully and put in my room. Now that I finally almost feel up to kneeling, squatting, getting on and off the floor, etc. the number of things that need doing around my house are suddenly starting to pop into visibility!

Every exercise I do seems to hit my back or obliques in some way. They are chronically exhausted muscle-wise. They don't hurt like being in pain or anything; I'm not worried that I am injuring myself, and I'm being pretty nice to them. It's just that even walking to the kitchen or opening the refrigerator uses them. I have been so insanely inactive for years that any movement is more than they are used to. Now I am not only working them out with weights, targeted no less, but everything else I do that moves me around more, affects them as well. My entire torso from under the shoulders to over the hips constantly is telling me, "Let's just go lie down or something" even when the rest of my body feels fine.

But my body is demanding sleep. I've operated on basically 2-5 hours sleep most nights for most of my adult life. I have permanent black circles under my eyes, and that doesn't even start on sleep apnea and being oxygen deprived. Well normally, I work on the computer, I can sit motionless nearly from the time I awake till the time I go to sleep. Lack of sleep sucks, but I make do, because it's the life of a single mom: you don't have time for stuff you need to do let alone want to do. But now, I can't seem to do that anymore. Since I started working out, it's like my body demands 8 hours of sleep. If I don't get it, I will be so utterly wiped out that I literally have to go back to bed, spend my lunch hour sleeping, etc. I've overslept twice for work, and took part of a day off once and slept on my lunch hour twice, just for sheer must-have-sleep in the last 7 days of work! This has never happened to me before, so although the timing could be coincidence, it happening just after I finally started working out with weights makes me think it is somehow related.

I have a really good dehydrator. Not the $30 round kind at walmart, but the $170 kind that is square. I'm thinking maybe if I made some of that homemade jerky I would always have something to munch on; maybe that would improve metabolic rate a bit, since I'm still working on -- and not yet fully succeeding in -- eating as often during the day as I need to. It just seems like there's probably a lot of carbs in any jerky mix that tastes decently. If anybody knows of a good recipe I'd be glad to hear it.

Lastly for today, I have a question. I was going to ask one person but couldn't find her email. I asked another but apparently didn't phrase it well enough to make sense. Maybe if I try again here I will eventually get more than one response and different perspectives are always good. The question is this:

Is there any reason why I can't work out more than one time a day on the same muscles, if I give that muscle group a full week to rest? In other words, if I do torso exercises on Wednesdays, can I do a workout in the morning, and early afternoon, and evening, same exercises, if I then am not working out that body part till next Wednesday? This week I am trying all my exercise with at least 10# (I went through 3, 5, 8, sometimes 10, last week when I began). Next week, unless there is some compelling reason why not, I intend to do my work out 2 or 3 times a day. Since I can't work a lot of weight or a lot of reps right now, doing the overall workout more times in a day is about the only way I can get more use of that muscle group in. There seem to be many opinions on how many days between working a given muscle set, a person should rest. But I haven't heard much about the idea of working out more than once in a day.

Building A Mystery

2007-06-11T07:46:00.000-06:00

After waking up for days so aching I could barely move, and not getting a whole lot done, yesterday turned out more constructive than usual. Once I finished arm-wrestling my new CD/DVD writer into actually writing all my "uptempo" songs to a playable MP3 disk (which took hours of experimentation, 4 kinds of media, 2 software programs...) I took it into my weights room and turned it on, sat on my recline bench to the music and thought about the room a little more.

Big dolls and some stuffed animals belonging to the kid were stuffed in the corner and on the floor along the wall. There was various 'stuff and junk' stashed here and there; the room's been "the extra room" for awhile after all. A rickety wire shelf held the DVD and VCR that attached to the TV up on the wall swing-arm, and all the wires looked kinda messy. The weight cage still sat in a dozen pieces in the corner, its bag of hardware forlornly dropped by it. I thought of all my daydreaming about the room.

After sitting there for awhile, I suddenly had the realization -- I know this sounds stupidly obvious -- that not one damn thing is going to get done in my life unless I do it. I've spent so long paying someone to help me with my house, because I wasn't physically able to do much, that I think I've kind of forgotten that I am not helpless. Or rather, I am considerably less helpless right now than I was even a week ago, let alone a year ago.

I'm suddenly realizing how much of my surroundings I've been chronically unhappy with because changing them meant paying someone money to help me, and most stuff is time consuming. I'm always daydreaming of the time when something won't be a disaster or all cluttered and stacked, but there never comes a time when all that is done, because there's just too much; more grows while I'm paying for the first thing. If I wasn't decently employed my house would probably be a danger. I want to do more now. I want to get stuff DONE and make my world like I want it to be.

So with all this awesome pounding fast music, from the early 70's to the present, from hard rock to disco to alternative rock to driving country to latin beats (I love the Gypsy Kings!), I got inspired. FIRST, I had to put together my weight cage. Whoever did it last time, I think my ex, actually did it wrong, and left 'some' pieces together, which made figuring it out easier said than done, and in the end I literally got part of it upside down, as it could not have been done any other way based on the pieces still connected, but by that time I wasn't going to change it -- it works fine. It took me a couple solid hours and I was sweating hard with all the squatting and manually bolting and moving the whole thing around. It felt good. I felt like a mechanic, cranking bolts everywhere.

My kid walked in and said, "I can smell your sweat from over here!" I said, "Good! That means it's doing something for me!" I felt like I was 'cheating' by getting a workout in, on a day scheduled for no workout. Imagine that. When a happy cheat is working your ass off and sweating, and I felt like I was getting away with something great.

Once I got it done and moved and stood up where it's to go, I tightened all the bottom bolts. I have to do the top today once I get my ladder from the garage. I didn't want to go out there in the dark... and I need the ladder to replace the light in the garage as well. I'm afraid to try and stand on the chair. I have a nice medium-height heavy-duty sturdy ladder my dad got me.

I got everything that wasn't exercise equipment OUT of the room. I moved the mini fridge over in front of the window, it is just above the bottom sill, and put the water dispenser on top of it. I turned the TV swing arm so it puts the TV in front of the window and happily, the slight bend doesn't show when it's this way, so it no longer looks stupid. My kid got into the spirit with me and cleaned off one of the 72" black wall units in the living room (5-shelf), and I dragged it in and put it next to the window, making one shelf big enough to hold the DVD, VCR, and my MP3 boombox on top of that. I'll put books on the middle shelf and exercise DVDs/VCRs etc. on the top shelf (time to search eBay!) and who knows about the bottom two. It actually looks rather nice, and I have remotes for all the equipment I think I can hang off my exercise bike if I want to watch something while on it.

(The bike is partly disassembled still, awaiting tech support help.)

I had to clean everything in the room, it was like some combination of dust, dirt, fingerprints, and kid-spills maybe?, had just made everything pretty yucky. So that took awhile. I got all the tons of media out that my kid had in there from watching the TV, I put my weights along the wall and my plate tree in the corner, moved the bike a little, and then vacuumed the room probably better than it has been in years. It has a dark red carpet (not MY choice as you might imagine) which highlights every piece of lint, so the difference is dramatic.

It actually looks like a room that someone serious about working out would have. There is still a lot of open floor space in the middle so aerobics with the TV is plenty workable.

I was so delighted with it that I didn't want to leave it. It's unfinished in planning, but feels great aesthetically.

***

This morning I got up at 6:10. I can't remember what I was doing, some wrassling with the covers, but I actually bent my knee and lifted up my leg and moved them and then realized, leg still in the air, that I have not been able to do that for like 10 years. I mean a real 'leg lift' like that. The muscle is just suddenly there. Not that it was super easy, but the fact it was humanly possible at all astounded me.

I got up, drank a high-protein low-carb slimfast and then went into the weights room, and hit the pause button to continue my MP3s... there's 151 songs on there and I haven't worked through them yet. I left the light off, and opened the curtain to the window on the south side... it just faces the non-window'd side of my neighbor's house, no direct light, but it was enough. I wasn't sure what I was going to do.

Thinking about the leg lift in bed, I discovered if I stand facing the cage and hold the the vertical posts with each hand, I can lift each leg up, like pull the knee up so the thigh is nearly horizontal, and then kick it back and up in the air behind me. The fact I could do this once is really incredible. I was able to do ten, granted imperfectly and with momentum helping, but still. I just couldn't believe it. I did it with the other leg. Then I had to sit down on my bench and just ponder how amazing that was for awhile. My legs are HEAVY. That's a big deal!

I got out my bean and did a variety of stretching, and some mild exercise I've been doing I call "froggy-holds" that I suspect is behind the new strength in my abductors (hip muscles). I was able to throw my leg over the bean for the first time (it is extra wide and I was always afraid to try before) and did all the kinds of stretching I could come up with while on it.

I got on the floor (the floor is VERY HARD when you carry a few HUNDRED extra pounds, lemme tell ya!) and managed to do typical side leg lifts, 10 on one side and 8 on the other, before I max'd out. Still. I could not do ONE of these when I tried last January, and that was when I was the same weight as I am now. It's hard as hell getting OFF the floor, but never mind.

I sat on my knees in front of my recline bench and held the seat and did an odd form of nearly-push-up off it till I couldn't anymore. Then I danced around the room like an idiot for awhile just to MOVE. I just honestly felt like I needed to MOVE.

***

I went into the kitchen and made breakfast (3 scrambled eggs and 2 oz soyrizo with a bunch of red pepper flakes) and a diet mountain dew. (I know, I know. WATER!)

I wondered, while mixing it all up, why it is that when I'm drinking slimfast I don't seem to lose weight. Is it too few calories per day? The sodium isn't really that high in them. I know I'm probably sensitive to casein and it has a massive dose of that, that is its source of protein, but it feels like I'm doing ok. I had this gut feeling, not a voice in my head but darn near, "There is no reward for poisoning yourself. Eat real food." I thought gee whiz... my subconscious has a guilt complex about slimfast.

I thought about my workday. I sit on my bed with my laptop computer. This is not quite as unreasonably slothful as it may sound; at my weight, nearly any seat cuts off circulation which is horribly dangerous (my father can't eat anything green ever again, due to his medication for a blood clot, and he is not even overweight), and that bizarre displaced condensed fat-lump in my right inner thigh (which by the way is like 10% the size it was a month ago, yay!) was caused by sitting all this weight on the wrong thing for too long. I finally ended up just sitting up against the wall on my bed, since it's soft, which allows me to happily sit for 4, 8, 12 hours without moving a muscle, I'm so focused, if something doesn't disturb me I don't even realize I need to pee. My kid makes fun of me. "Mom, you're bouncing -- go pee!" then I snap out of it. I move and it sounds like my body is cracking all over.

Needless to say, that is not overly healthy either.

I had this weird desire to STAND and MOVE AROUND today. While working.

I went and redeemed the wire shelf from the living room and put it back in the exercise room, but this against the wall by the door. I put my own laptop on one shelf, my biz laptop on the next shelf, and my external hard drive and DVD/CD drive on the bottom shelf. I can sit in a folder chair and work on the middle shelf.

Or, I can stand, like I'm doing now, and type on the laptop on the top shelf. I plugged them in from the outside so it takes all of 10 seconds to switch which shelf they are on.

Yes, various toes/feet fall asleep if I stand too long, too much weight not to be otherwise, but I can walk around, shift around, and sit when I need to. The chair is not comfortable. GOOD! It makes me stand up and MOVE more.

Today is shoulder day on the weights. That's later.

So I'm not just building muscle. I'm building my room, and seem to be even building new ideas and new behaviors. It's a mystery what I'll be in the end, but I like it already.

Looking for Icons

2007-06-09T22:36:00.000-06:00

I was looking for inspirational posters. I can't afford the few I find, but even those are severely limited.

I'm something of a Marilyn Monroe fan. I wasn't until I found some really old b&w photos of her in a thrift store like 25 years ago, sans makeup. She was so beautiful and photogenic that for the first time I truly understood what photographers saw in her. I had never been fond of her overcommercialized publicity stuff, but these b&w pics (on a beach in a sweater) genuinely had that "inner beauty shining through" quality, and I was in awe at the Woman As A Work Of Art. Alas I had no money at the time, and by the time I went back to the store, the prints were gone.

While looking for bodybuilding pics, I came across this one. Neat pic don't you think. Not like she was remotely a bodybuilder, but it's not like her average photo.

Meanwhile, I wasn't able to find any particularly inspiring female good-body photos, aside from overmuscled masculine looking women in bikinis, and non-muscled women in posters that look like porn flick outtakes. Aside from not actually wanting to be quite that buff, I mean ever, plus my lack of interest in the T&A of the meatmarket silicone chicks, I also would like a room that doesn't make every visitor think I'm a lesbian or something. I'll never get laid if I frighten any man I bring home.

I could find only little things here and there. A couple worthy of my attitude. If it were combined with a good pic it'd be an awesome poster.

Meanwhile back at the ~~ranch~~ tract home in nowhere Oklahoma, I've been feeling like a total sloth, since I'm not working out.

My exercise bike is in pieces waiting to be fixed. Dad and I couldn't find the problem but we ruled out the brake/pulley/flywheel part. I'm suspecting it is something to do with the thing that talks to the control panel and runs the pulley belt through it. You can spin the flywheel with ease, but if you try to push the pedals it's hard as hell. He took pics, hopefully tech support can help.

My weight lifting is on hiatus until Monday when my new plan starts. Now that I went through all the options to see what I could do, I have removed the duplicate target exercises, so there's just one for each specific muscle, and broken it up into a different body part(s) each day, with each body part only being worked once a week. That way I can work it to failure... maybe a couple workout points in that one day.

I'm really not sure what is best on this. I read the internet and I swear every imaginable possible combination of lifting vs. resting is stated as the best or most ideal. It's got nearly as many different interpretations as the bible. Lift on a muscle more than once a week and you overtrain, oh, doom! Don't do it and you undertrain, you pansies aren't serious! Work out twice a day, many 'serious' bodybuilders do.

But wait, there's more. You need carbs. Protein. Creatine. Nair. (No, wait, that wasn't in there.) You gotta eat 5 times. Six times. Six and wake up twice a night to supplement. It's gotta be fast-absorbing whey protein. No, long-absorbing caseine protein. No, "real food" protein and lean like white meat chicken. No, instant after a workout. No, before the workout! No, it really should be in the middle of it if it's more than 20 minutes. No, you don't need carbs for an insulin response, just protein. Yes, you absolutely need carbs right after lifting. No. Yes! Maybe. Where's my Nair?

You get the idea.

Update: OK, this at above/left is a pretty beautiful pic, not quite what I had in mind, but deserves mention. Martha Laber is her name. Unnamed (as usual) at right is another nice pic-poster, of a man.

The last couple days I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I can make my weights room into something that is really cool, cool to be in and work in. Something that'll make that corner of my house, feng shui = 'wealth', really rock.

Maybe a few floor length cheap wal-mart mirrors put side by side across the wall. A few cool posters, I hope. I want an alternative softer light in there. You get the idea. A real sanctuary of sorts.

So far it's the cleanest room of the house regularly, which with a kid is a big deal of course, and that alone makes it nice to be in.

I'll leave you with one of my heroes, who considering his race and need for speed was built pretty darn well:

Bruce Lee

In the Dark of Night

2007-06-07T21:43:00.001-06:00

Last night when I found myself lying in bed unable to sleep, the clock said it was 2am. The house was dark and quiet. My little girl, who'd watched something scary then begged her way into my bed, slept peacefully beside me, taking up far more than her fair share of the bed. I shifted positions. My muscles were hurting a little. Nothing serious. I was calm but wide awake and motivated, despite needing sleep, as if extra testosterone had snuck in through the dark. I slipped out of bed and went quietly into the weights room, the extra bedroom in our little house that I have commandeered for exercise.

I stood in the doorway for a minute. I wished I had a soft light, a dim light, maybe a colored light, instead of the bright overhead. For that moment, my weights room seemed as much a place of peace and spirit as a place of sweat.

I sat down on my incline bench and slowly looked around. I considered every item in the room, every weight, dumbell, my exercise cycle and mini-fridge, everything. I realized that somehow, the space where I lift weights has become the temple of my future. A suburban back-room shrine to the glory I can be. This is the place where I shape the big blob of clay I call my body into something formed and healthy and powerful.

I wanted to work out. Right then. Even with my aching muscles. I wanted to do Arnold Presses until I couldn't lift another inch, do bent-over rows until my whole leg trembled and my arm refused to move. But I can read the internet as well as any other single-mom overweight self-training wanna-be: I knew if I did that, I would have interrupted my recovery time. I would be putting off the time when I could go back into full-on building again on those muscles. The temptation was strong, but I told myself that rest is part of the discipline, too. I really want to do this right.

After awhile I decided to do something constructive. I opened a box that had my fractional plates, took the packaging off, put them back in their neat little cloth pockets. I went and found the shipping box with a weight plate-tree, opened it up and put it together. I made plans for other changes in that room. I'm going to add a shelf and put exercise books on it. Maybe encourage myself to get some videos. I wonder who I can convince to buy me that awesome Schwartzenegger bodybuilding book for Christmas. Maybe I can find the move that I 'made up' in it, and see what it's really called.

I had a protein drink and realized I'm half on a liquid diet lately. I'd rather eat real food, obviously. But I'm new to this, and if it helps me keep down carbs, keep up protein, not be hungry, is vitamin fortified, and beats my not eating at all, then I'm not going to complain. "Do the best you can, where you are, with what you have, and live another day to do better."

I laid back on 'the Bean' cushion and did some long, slow, very gentle rocking with my obliques and abs. It was strange... more like a meditation than an exercise. Like I just felt like 'communing' with my body. For some reason I remembered an old account I read from George Harrison (of the Beatles), talking about being in a rowboat on the sea and starting to sing 'My Sweet Lord' and getting so into the zone with it. I felt like I could do that all night.

I realized that if there were a soft light and comfortable place, I would have curled up in there to sleep instead of going back to my bed. It was a sudden warmth for everything: for the whole room, for my equipment, for my body working on it, and for the spirit that finally, thank God, truly moves me to do so. I wanted to curl up and drift off in the feeling of rightness I felt blooming inside me.

I did a lot of imagining during the night. Imagining myself getting thinner, getting stronger, getting 'cooler'. Imagining the room itself reflecting my ambition. Imagined putting tons of those mirrored squares on the main wall, and maybe some pics of great body-built bodies on another, and gradually building up my equipment so I can do more than free weights, too.

Somehow when I'm in that room, working hard, I feel like for that moment, I am taking my life back. Really doing something powerful. Man, it's sure long past about time. That reminds me of my favorite quote about this. It's from Charlie Moody, on misc.fitness.weights as quoted by Mistress Krista over at Stumptuous. As one of those people who has spent most of my life not having a life because I was doing what I thought I "should" do, it just really hits home with me.

I look in the mirror: if I see any trace of the sad, exhausted, pale, weak, fat, whipped wage-slave desk-jockey I used to be, I'm ready to lift some weight. I'm reminded of my sister (nothing personal), who's spent her life doing all the stuff other people want her to do, and all the stuff she figures she should do. A couple of weeks ago, she asked me with tears in her eyes when would it be her turn to have a life and do what she wants? All I could tell her was, "It'll be your turn when you get off the hamster wheel and take a fucking turn." It's up to you. No one else. You'll find the time to work out when you DECIDE you're gonna work out. You'll eat and rest and take care of yourself because you decide you deserve it, you need it, you want it, and NO ONE is going to keep you from it. Not even you. I'm a beginner, too, and no-one's gonna watch what I eat for me, no-one's gonna lift an ounce of my weight. I can make up any story I want about it, but stories are bullshit: I can be a warrior, or I can be a victim. For the warrior, no excuses; for the victim, only excuses.

Yeah. What he said.

When I'm lifting weight, I feel like I'm the boot-wearing, butt-kicking soldier of my own fortune. The feel of heavy metal in my hands, of sweat dripping off me, makes me feel like the kind of person I always wanted to be, but until now wasn't sure I could be. Someone who takes their destiny into their own hands and rocks a hard press until they've shaped themselves, and their lives, into whatever they choose.

For me it's not just pumping iron; it's pumping life into my body and my future with every rep. I'm not just building my muscle here, I'm building my character. An "iron will" -- yes. Damn right!

Weight lifting rocks.

.

All Circuits Connected

2007-06-06T23:21:00.001-06:00

Well I did it. Six days in a row I did a planned weights workout, starting at only 3# and working up with the dumbbells I have to 10#. Some days didn't seem hard, and some seemed overwhelming. I split each body-part up into two pieces: shoulders the 1st and 4th day, torso the 2nd and 5th day, arms the 3rd and 6th days. Lower body was supposed to go with arms but since they are all knee-bending exercises I can't do, for now I am just working on a sort of 1/3-kneebend "hold" isometric-style exercise as often as I can remember to do it. I learned what I needed to: what kind of weight is right for me, what I can do and can't, etc.

Next week I'm revising the approach. I'm doing all of one body part on a given day and then not working that body part again for a week. So I'll be working out 3 days instead of 6. The tiptoe/abdomen/kneebend "holds" and the exercise bike should be daily I hope.

I made up an exercise today. It was just messing around but it was so hard -- instantly made me notice the effort, similar to compound exercise 'impact', that I decided to add it. I've no clue what to call it. I call it the butterfly because my arms bent with elbows out feel like wings sorta. You take a single barbell, place it vertically right in front of your heart, with both arms holding it palms facing outward, one hand above the other, arm-elbows level. Actually you hold it just like you do a Flag if you're marching in a parade or something. I tried it lying down, in my bench's recline, and sitting vertically on the edge of a flat bench. You push the bell out forward, or, you raise it straight up -- two diff exercises. Depending on the body position it seems to hit diff muscles. It really got me with 10# so I'll be doing that from now on. Eventually I'll figure out exactly what muscle that hits. I actually suspect it might hit more than one. Either that or I was just tired out from all the previous stuff.

Somewhere there is probably an encyclopedia of weight lifting forms that has that. I'd like to know the real names of both forms (pushing out and up), I just don't know how to find them.

Today I finally used the 'Bean' in the way the ad sold me on it: lie on your back on it, legs bent at knee and feet on floor off the end (mine a bit spaced out), and then just 'rock' slowly forward toward your feet (like sitting up) and back (pushing up with your toes). If you hold your stomach in tightly during this, you can feel the muscles as you go through the rocking motion, that start from the groin-area obliques (part of the stomach muscles) and grow all the way up to the abdomen and a tiny bit of back. It can be done to fit whatever the person can do... it does work those muscles, but only as hard as you can hold it, push it, push the duration, etc. That was the example that caused me to dish out three $25 payments for that blow-up sucker! (Course my version holds up to 800# and has handles and is extra-wide -- the regular size is not that much.)

Then today, I was frustrated. I was not dripping sweat, I was not in pain, and I really felt like I must not have done anything at all, and I'd have done something else but it would have screwed up my recovery times no matter what other exercise I chose, so I decided to kick back. It was hard though. I really want to 'feel the burn' and the sweat and so on, haha!

My cage (a Weider pro 400, which is not that good of one, but I'm a girl-beginner so I'm unlikely to out-use it) sits unassembled in the corner. My housekeeper told me she couldn't do it because she didn't have a manual, but then said because she couldn't find the hardware. I found the hardware. Tomorrow I hope I can figure out how to put the thing together. It took both of us last time, years ago. I bought it for the sole purpose of having something to hang onto on both sides while doing kneebends, which I won't do quite yet, but it has a chin-up bar on the front, and I'd like to partly-hang from that, plus it's messing up how cool my room looks with that mess in the corner! I'd like to get a barbell so I can do a few recline moves with it and I'd like to have the safety of the cage in that case. Not like I'm doing massive weight but still. I think it would FEEL cool. Priorities! ;-)

Hot damn. I think I like this working out stuff. I still consider cardio a curse, but I LOVE THE WEIGHTS!

Music for the day: STYX Greatest Hits. Renegade and blue-collar man rock!

Moving Right Along

2007-06-05T16:33:00.001-06:00

Today was Torso Group #2 (pullover, bent over row, straight leg deadlift, and side bend). And as always, ab-holds, kneebend-holds, and tiptoe-holds. I thought the deadlifts would be harder. By 4th set I was up to 10# and it was still not hard to do, although it made me breathe hard -- when I crunch over it's hard to breathe and my heart is not happy about things real heavy on extended forward bending.

I didn't go near the cycle, aka The Monster. Maybe later. I contacted Vision Fitness today. That exercise bike still retails for $2000, so it's worth worrying about, but I swear it just canNOT be normal that 30 seconds trying to do 60RPM is nearly killing me. I told them, I swear level 1 feels like level 12, at least! I remember when I got it. Level 1 had almost zero resistance. It's killing me. It sat in the garage for 6 years, do you think this would matter? Heh.

The rep is probably telling her coworker what an idiot I am as I type. She said YES, heat, cold, humidity, dust, are major issues. Take a crank puller and pull off the casing, clean it, and look at the brake, it sounds like it needs adjusting, the heat and cold can definitely change its tightness, even in a retail gym environ, never mind a midwest sweltering summer and subfreezing winters!.

So I asked my dad what the heck a crank puller is and could he please bring me one so I can play fix-it man. And as an added bonus, crawling around the floor to clean and fix the thing will be a workout all on its own, I suppose!...

So the workout went pretty well today. On the pullover, I forgot to start at 3# and work up through 5 and 8 -- I started on 10#, and then realized it, and decided to just go with it. I was having a problem with the muscle in my left upper arm until I realized the problem was I was letting my elbows go too wide. When I pulled them in I had no more problem. I've been trying to be careful and not hurt myself because I want to be able to keep doing this stuff and get more intense with it.

I felt much, much tougher today than I did yesterday. Tomboy tough! Was cool.

I didn't have any carbs to eat after. I didn't really schedule them in this menu. Not like I've done well on the menu so far. I ate a stallone pudding (20g protein) and a lowcarb highprotein slimfast (20g protein) right after though. At least I got protein.

Yay! I need to get bigger barbells. The 10# is too small for the deadlifts and the bent over row and probably a couple others. I want to use all the little plates I have for my -- are you ready? -- KETTLESTACK! That sounds like fun. Gotta try that.

I might mention that my "Bean" -- a heavy-duty inflateable thing -- made it possible for me to do the pullover. My bench isn't nearly long enough for me to have done that and I can't hold myself up on it sideways (with only my back on it). So it has turned out to be a useful investment for a few things. I do a funky "frog-squat" thing as I get gradually up off it, holding in various positions as I stand up. I think it'll be even more useful as I get a little more limber, but even now it's pretty cool.

Music for the day: Leann Rimes, Greatest Hits (then I snuck in a whole bunch of New Jack Swing, like My Prerogative, Reversal of the Dog, and then a little music from The Clash, to wash out the insipid pop and wannabe-country. (Not that this low opinion of it kept me from singing my head off to it, mind you. Should I admit I know all the words to the old Debbie Boone song 'You Light Up My Life'? ;-))

Glass Half Full Psychology

2007-06-05T09:34:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was shoulders group #2 (modified overhead press, lateral raise, rear lateral raise, front raise).

I was unusually tired for some reason. I don't mean sleepy. I don't mean sore. I mean when I really was at the point of having to work on the exercises, my body just felt like, "If I used batteries, my power is out." I wondered if I hadn't waited long enough (it's 3 days since I touched that body part), or if being ketogenic and not hardly eating at the same time you want to work out is just so stupid even I should know better than wonder why I have no energy in that case.

I only wanted 40 seconds on the kneebend holds... made 35. Barely. I only wanted 30-30 (30 seconds at 30pm, 30 seconds at 60rpm) on the bike... made like 12 seconds on 60 and then failed to be able to keep it at that rate at all. Sheesh. On the bright side, I took off one of the pedal guards that strap your feet in which makes getting my second foot on WAY easier, and changed how I get off it, so it's no longer such a ridiculous and embarrassing bother. So it's easier to get on and off now, but it frightens me more by the day, haha.

You know I seriously wonder if that bike sitting in the garage for 6 years means it needs cleaning. My sister used to manage a Holiday Spa and I would do a lot of time on the cycles, this around age 20. I recall level 1 as being like, no resistance all. But my level 1 is sorta hard to push the pedals around, and I do not mean it's hard because I'm out of shape, I mean it is just hard, period, for anybody -- there is a LOT of resistance. I'm thinking maybe I'm killing myself and really there is something that needs lubing or cleaning or whatever that would vastly change how this is working.

o0o

I made a cheat-sheet of my exercises, those animated gifs, with their info, plus another pic for each, of the muscle group they work. I'm going to rearrange my workouts somewhat, I've decided, after doing them. Make some standing or incline that weren't, dropping a couple in favor of other near identical ones, rearranging how they are fitting together to reduce work on so much of the same thing that I haven't the strength for whatever exercise comes second.

I made a workout tracking sheet I call "remedial" that is just the "holds" I'm doing to try and build enough muscle to be able to do "real" exercises. On one hand, I'm such a type A overachiever type, that finally applying this to my fitness is an ego-killing frustrating experience; remedial, bosh! I thought I was good at everything I bothered doing, last time I looked. Apparently not at this. But then I tell myself, "....YET." If I can do this, maybe someday, someone will find this blog and realize that if I could, they could, and give it a try.

I feel very optimistic now though, this morning, though last night I was grouchy. Even when the exercises seem too hard for me, even though I've had to pull back my hair in a pony and wear a handtowel around my neck because I literally drip sweat like crazy while doing this stuff it's so tough, even when I'm just really mad when I'm done at what I "can't" do (yet), still it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something.

No matter how pitiful my weights or times, the workout itself is kinda fun, and things can only get better, right? I figure it's important, in any area where I tend to be a bit demoralized, that I take that "glass half full" psychology. "Do the best you can with where you are and live another day to do better." That is what I say about eating lowcarb. I guess I should apply it to exercise, too.
.

You get what you ask for

2007-06-04T11:08:00.000-06:00

I was thinking this morning that I must not have worked out as hard as I thought yesterday, because I really didn't feel sore. Maybe the slightest "awareness" here and there but no actual soreness. I figured my masochism would have to wait for another day. Then I actually got up to make breakfast for me and the kid. Oh my god! My lower back hurts like hell! Well, it was ME asking for pain, I guess. :-)

I totally forgot to record or mention that yesterday, in my snit about not being able to do the lunge squat, I laid on the Bean and did the closest thing to situps that I could. Which is to say, it's about 1/10 situps, held as long as I can before laying back down. That thing really does help I think, gives a lot more support to the body, and allows me to better do things like 1/10 of a situp than the floor does. (And it's certainly easier to get up off than the floor.) I could feel it bigtime while doing it, all through my lower back, and all through the muscles across my pelvis. Funny enough, I think situps mainly hit the higher abdominal muscles, but that's once you get 'up' far enough for those to kick in. I'm still working on being able to get there to begin with. So the muscles I'm working when barely lifting are a little different I guess.

I've concluded the muscles that are most problematic and need work for me are the ad/ab-ductors and the glutes. Those are the ones that seem dominantly responsible for actually picking up an insanely heavy leg and throwing it over an exercise bicycle. And without some real development in these, throwing this weight around for exercise is not gonna be easy, to understate it.

Today is shoulders group #2 day. Though I want to do some more kneebend holds, tiptoe holds, and tummy holds (as I call my not-remotely-a-situp). Surely if I do those every day the muscles will develop for them. More on the exercise bike too, even though I have already begun to think of it as the monster of my destruction.

Music for today: The Fifth Element, Soundtrack

David Meets Goliath

2007-06-03T21:18:00.000-06:00

There must have been a moment when David was standing there with his slingshot, facing the giant, where he suddenly thought, Oh man! What the bleep am I doing?! Am I CRAZY?!

I felt like that today.

I'm here to tell you that at my weight -- 380 as of today -- tying your shoes and walking to the car is not easy, never mind anything officially called "exercise". Today it hit home for me what a monumental task I have undertaken, with this determination to exercise and get in shape. My gosh. I mean... huge. I suspect people who have to learn to walk all over again after an accident might feel a bit like this, though I imagine even worse.

It's not like Rocky the little guy coming from behind as the underdog and you know he's gonna make it because he's determined. It's more like Jabba the Hutt taking on Chuck Norris. It might be fun for Chuck but there'd be nothing of 'ol Jabba but a bunch of jiggly flesh to mop up when it was over. I was wondering if that is what would become of me before my workout was over today.

To start, today was the arms group #1 (incline curl, kickback, hammer curl, wrist curl). I forgot the wrist curls altogether in my distracted exhaustion, whoops. This was a harder workout. I don't think the kickback is the target muscles planned, because anything that has to go around the side of my body means I have to hold my arm farther out than someone normal-sized would.

Then was the legs group #1 (split squat, calf raise). Alas. I couldn't do either of them. I mean... I just don't have the muscle. And in the case of the squat, it actually invokes fear. Like my knees tell my heart, "Don't go there, man! Don't dare!" and I could hardly even get myself to try.

I was kind of demoralized by that. That I couldn't even do half of one. Finally I decided I would have to do something else instead. On my legs, I stood, bent my knees so I was about 1/3 down, which was hard for me to hold. Then I held it as long as I could before the muscles were giving out, which was 30 seconds. I know. Pitiful. I had one hand on the top of my weight bench (in sitting incline position so it's tall) for that. A couple times my left knee and right hip twinged but I just held it, and that went away instantly. I'm calling them "kneebend holds" so I have some label to reference in my workout log.

For my lower legs, I sat down on my Bean, which is low (below my knee level), and then hold my feet up on their toes, supporting as much of my full legs' weight as possible, and hold it as long as I could. Which was about 30 seconds. I'm calling those "tiptoe holds".

I was feeling just ridiculous by then. I did another set on a couple of the arm exercises using the next dumbell poundage up, just to reassure myself that I was truly a man. I mean, hu-man. Like, worthy of my skin.

The power plug for my exercise bicycle was found today, so I decided I would do what biking I could. (The one shown at left and on their website is not exactly like my version of that model that I bought years ago. The bottom is all solid on mine, the bottom of the control panel is a bit diff, and I think mine is wider.)

On the bright side, I was able to hoist my left leg up, and onto the middle of the bike, so I could slide onto it, and carefully slide my foot from the middle across and into a pedal. Couldn't do that last time I tried. My right leg didn't fare so well. I got it onto the pedal but couldn't hold it up far enough or long enough to get the pedal turned around so my foot was in it. Finally, trying not to sob a little in frustration at how my mind was TELLING my body to do something it couldn't, I had to grab my leg above the knee with both hands and physically pull it to the middle of the bike, adjust the pedal, help get my foot into it, and then finally I was ready to go.

I set it for level 1 (of course). I decided I'd ride for 30 seconds at 30+RPM, and then another 30 seconds at 60+ RPM, and then another 30 seconds at 90+RPM, and then rest a bit.

Famous last words. I couldn't even make 30 seconds on the 60RPM! I made 20 seconds. Thought I might have a heart attack from the effort, at that, and I had to rest for like three whole minutes.

Then I decided I would do it again: 30 at 30, then 30 at 60. This time, I only made 10 seconds at 60. And I put my head against the bike's front readout panel and gasped for breath, hearing it seem to echo all around me, wondering what insanity prompted me to think I was up to this.

Most spinning is 90+RPM for 20+ minutes. I can't even do 60RPM for 30 seconds. Man!

So I got my feet out of the pedals, and stood on the floor straddling the middle of the bike. But then... I couldn't get my left leg up on the middle again. I repeatedly tried to use momentum and lift it up enough that I could get off the darn bike. Huyeauuaaaugh! ...None of my ridiculous sound effects from the strain helped. In the end, nearly crying in my exasperation, I had to reach over and grab my stupid leg above the knee with both hands and help HEAVE it over the damned bike's middle.

I was hoping to feel better after my workout. Not sure I did, after that. Physically maybe. Emotionally, not!

I'm glad I did it, but it was such a shocking reminder of the real state of things with my body. I need to get in shape, in order to get in shape for getting in shape. I was drenched with sweat, felt exhausted and kinda spaghetti-weak, and this before I got to the bike, let alone after. My legs weigh so much, damn! I had been kind of hoping for some halfway decent number I could write down about my progress, and set as a goal.

But maybe I should be more realistic. Maybe my first goal should be "being able to get on and off the damn exercise bicycle." Maybe my next goal should be, "able to do even one, count them ONE, lunge squat." Maybe I was an idiot to think I could really make any goals whatsoever besides,

"Survive to try another day."

MUSIC for the day: Eli & The 13th Confession -- by Laura Nyro

Stats (end week 3 of 12) 6/3/2007

2007-06-03T16:00:00.000-06:00

Age 41
Height 5' 5 3/4"
Weight 380.5

Neck 16.62"
Upper Arms 20.0"
Forearms 11.75"
Bust 55.75"
Under Breasts 45.0"
Waist 53.62"
Widest hip/tummy 71"
Hips 64.50"
Widest upper thigh 40.0"
Upper calf 24.87"
Normal lower calf 19.85"
Wrist 7.25"

Using healthcentral's online body fat test based on measurements (though they do not allow fractions in weight or hips for some reason):

You have 58.1% body fat. You have 220.6 Pounds of fat and 159.4 Pounds of lean (muscle, bone, body water).

So my goal is to work that body fat percentage down. That means more to me than my weight.

I was surprised that every measurement was down from where it was in January, despite my off-plan gain and re-loss and despite that I'm now the same weight I was then. It's 2.89% bodyfat loss.

My Descent into Masochism

2007-06-03T12:09:00.000-06:00

Although I "felt" the incline shoulder raise well yesterday, and although the bent over row made me stop and rest and breathe kinda hard and sweat a little, I only had a tiny bit of "feel-this-soreness", about 12 hours afterward. Then none. Today I feel fine.

I'm disappointed. I want to feel some pain. I want to feel like I really worked it. I want to feel like I have definitely pushed the boundary of what my muscles are used to doing. I want to feel like when I heal from that I'll be stronger.

More pain! More pain!

Maybe I'm getting twisted and sick. I've been weightlifting for two whole days, and barely at that, and I'm already getting masochistic. Some would suggest that I must have already been pretty twisted before this came along.

Shhhhhhh.

First Steps on the Road to Somewhere

2007-06-02T12:16:00.001-06:00

Finally! I can finally (again) say "I lost 100 lbs!"

I can't find my bleeping sewing tape measure to take my measurements. Probably some kid stole it to play with it. Hmmn, I wonder which of my only child that could be, since she will insist it's not her if I ask. ;-) I want to get a body fat measurement (using the measurement method linked on the sidebar) as of now so I can use that as one of my main "measures of change" (as opposed to weight).

Yesterday I did the shoulders #1 group (upright row, seated rear lateral raise, arnold press, front lateral raise). I think 8# is enough to start. I'm so embarrassed. I mean really, that's just pitiful! But what the hell. You gotta start somewhere. The Seated Rear Lateral Raise was kinda hard, my body gets in the way, I can 'sort of' do it. I'm just going to keep doing it. I suppose eventually it'll get more elegant. For the moment I feel kinda like I'm doing some bizarre variant of the bomb drill where kids crunch up under their desks.

Today I did the torso #1 group (bent-over row, fly, side bend, incline shoulder raise). That was harder than the arms. Actually I thought the bent-over row was going to do more for my leg muscle than the ones I was supposed to be working (as in, it wasn't the weight, it was the time taken to lift it that was a problem for it!). Nice, though. By the time I was finished with the group, I was breathing kinda hard and sweating a little, and I had to rest between the row sets. And this was with the first two (3 and 5 #) being way too easy, and probably 8 as well, next week I'll start at 10# for all the torso group and see what the true max should be.

Gods I love free weights. I had kind of forgotten how much. I used to love just working so hard and sweating and feeling the muscles so clearly. I was so young then it seems like a million years ago. Which I guess about 22 years nearly is, in a lifespan.

I can see I need to get a couple more dumbells of >10 lbs. I do have dumbells you can put plates on, and at higher weights I'm sure that's good, but it's sure a lot easier to just pick up what you need. I gotta be sure and get the metal kind from now on, not the coated kind I got for 10#, because I have fractional weights that'll magnetically stick to the ends if I need between-weights.

Besides. Those coated dumbells make me feel like some dumb chick in "shape" magazine who would talk about toning... in designer pink spandex. Puhleeze.

Well my food has sucked, though today is looking to be slightly better. For a few days I just barely ate, didn't feel like it, and then yesterday, my first day to really make an effort, I was so totally swamped at work I didn't even have time for a potty break let alone food. If it wasn't for the high-protein/low-carb slimfast, I would be seriously up a creek for ingesting anything at all. I know it's imperfect, it's processed, it's not food, but it beats not eating. Do the best you can with where you are, and live to do better another day.

I came up with a menu for next week though, and a shopping list for it, which I wouldn't be able to afford if I didn't already have chicken and hamburger in my freezer. I'm going to see how I do actually eating 6x per day. 2 are slimfast, 1 is a big cobb salad for dinner, so only 3 are actually something to make -- and the food is the same the whole week. It's a lot cheaper that way, a lot easier to prep all or partly ahead of time. We'll see. So far, aside from the SF and cobb salad, the three meals for the first week are red mexi-chicken mix, burger with blue cheese mixed in it (quick on the foreman grill), and 3eggs/2oz Soyrizo in the late morning. I have other options but I'll try those week after next.

If I can keep that menu up for the week, the nutrition count numbers are just awesome for me, the protein is very high which I really want, and all of them can be at least partly pre-made, so it's superfast to grab 'em. I even have enough room in my numbers that I could have a chocolate protein muffincake, plus a mocha (get this: 100% Kona coffee, made in a french press, with some 24% butterfat cocoa, and some half&half... sound good? :-)), and still have my numbers be fine. Yay.

Is it fair to get chocolate and coffee and STILL lose weight? I say yes. Getting insanely fat on starvation response is like getting poorer the harder you work. It's just profoundly unfair. So I figure I deserve to be able to eat really WELL and lose weight. In some bizarre way, this seems like a proper balance.

Tomorrow is arms and legs on the weights. Wish me luck on the legs. Right now just my body weight is generally too much for lower body work without a machine. But I'll work it out... eventually I will be there. I have faith in myself.

Start Where You Are

2007-05-29T14:47:00.000-06:00

Although I no longer weigh 482 pounds, at 390 for the moment I am still not exactly a perky little penguin. I'm still in the blue whale category. It's easy to beach me; getting up off the floor is easier said than done. Getting ON my exercise bicycle is a workout all its own. I can't do even one situp, even one pushup, not even one regular leg lift. If I did jumping jacks my entire house would shake and my breasts would probably put out an eye on the rebound.

I can, however, bitch and moan well enough to prove I'm fully alive, and since I'm alive, there's no excuse for not getting off my butt and starting to exercise some. I've lost enough weight that I can at least MOVE and BREATHE finally. Thank God for an eating plan that bears zero resemblance to the food pyramid that half kills me every time I put a 'whole grain' in my mouth.

To make sure I knew what I was doing (Virgo x4 don'tcha know), I set out to investigate basic weight lifting forms. What are they, how could they be combined properly, etc.

I made a simple spreadsheet that lists the group of basic free-weight exercises that I am starting with. It names them officially, describes them briefly (my own words), gives an official explanation, tells you what muscles it works, and what kind of exercise it's considered, and even gives you a hyperlink to a visual demo of someone doing that exercise so you can see exact form!

It's free. Click on the image below to download it. (Which I had to turn sideways so you could see a sample of a part of it.) It's in Excel format. Excel or Open Office (which is free on the internet and works for all computer platforms) can open this.

OK, I'll be honest: up until now, I've had a problem getting my act together for a decent workout. There's no excuse. I have a few free weights. I have a weight bench. I have a room that I deliberately made into an exercise room. I have a radio, TV, and DVD to entertain me, in case 15 minutes of ripping muscle fibers were not fascinating enough. I even have a ridiculously expensive exercise bicycle there.

So in my exasperation with myself, I have decided to create a simple little plan that starts out insanely easy. Dainty, even. For fragile flowers with parasols, if you will. The kind of plan that I could not possibly find even one small reason to complain about the hardship of. The kind of plan that works even if the only weights I had were soup cans. And gradually builds up.

While it may seem like a waste of time to start deliberately small, what I am actually working to accomplish here is the HABIT of doing something. And remembering what it is I'm supposed to do.

I'm going to officially start this June 1, simply because the reptilian part of my brain loves matching things, marching bands and starting stuff on Mondays or at the beginning of a new month.

o0o

I'm supposed to be on a carb-cycling plan, which I'll be detailing on my other blog, The Divine Low Carb, as soon as the back of my brain finishes working it out and I hear the little DING! that says it's done.

Lately my eating has sucked and been the usual: barely any eating at all. Yes, ultra low carb and low everything because I'm not hardly eating. It's so hard for me to make myself eat, mostly because I'm too freakin lazy to feel like getting up and preparing/cooking which you just HAVE to do on a good eating plan. I need to be eating many times a day, 3 hours apart. Not only is this what is most conducive to weight loss, but I need so much protein for my body mass that I pretty much have to operate that way (since I don't want to go over about 38g of protein at any one time). I'm hoping the eating plan and the exercise plan gradually come together in a truly useful, healthy behavior pattern.

June 1 goals:
A: 30 seconds at 30 RPM on Level 1 of the lifecycle, twice.
B: 3# weight, 8 reps, 2 sets, GROUP 1 exercises from the worksheet.

Group 1 are: upright row, seated rear lateral raise, arnold press, front lateral raise, counter pushups (likely to be 'counter leans' to start with!)

Now if I can do this stuff at 390 pounds and being brand new to much moving at all, surely anybody else out there who does not already have a workout plan could manage this. Use no weights if it's that new, or soup cans or anything else if you don't have any.

If any others are interested, I will make a shared google spreadsheet others can share with me, with a row for each of us and each of the exercises across the top, so you can enter your daily (or weekly) workout weight/reps. Would it help encourage you to do it if others were doing it with you? Surely if I can do it, anybody can!

Send me email at theDivineLowCarb@gmail.com if you want to join me. I need some kind of email address in order to tell google to give permission to share the spreadsheet. If you want a free google mail address, let me know and I'll invite you to one.

o0o

No matter where I am today, I have to start where I am. A month from now, a year from now, I will be in a different place. I'm going to be a month, a year older anyway, right? The only question is, do I choose to keep getting older while wishing I was healthier, or do I do "a little something each day" so that when I am a year older, I'm a whole lot healthier?

PJ
.

Starting Anew!

2007-05-13T02:41:00.000-06:00

I'm starting a new cycle (cycle 4) in my fitness efforts, as of yesterday.

Cycle 1: From 1/1/2005 to 6/30/2005: I started at 482 and ended at 411. My life changed greatly then, as my ex moved in, sponsored by my mercy for useless animals phase.

Cycle 2: From 9/18/2006 to 1/1/2007: I started at 467 and ended at 380. I loved it but it was all very low carb (VLC) and I worried my body was adapting to VLC.

Cycle 3: From 1/1/07 onward: I started a 'carb cycling' 'moderate carb' eating plan but promptly dropped off any plan at all, alas. Ended 5/12 at 414.

Cycle 4: From 5/12/2007 to 8/6/2007 is my next cycle. Starting at 414, but I expect some of this is water weight so I'm not too concerned about the seeming gain. Starting with VLC to kick in a ketogenic mode, but intend to cycle carbs after that.

I was originally going to do Venuto's BFFM plan, but I've decided to just do what I want, record it, and see what happens. If it doesn't work, I'll do something else. This approach has worked better for me than any pre-written plan has so far, so why not.

I'll be putting my workouts, pitiful as they may be, on this blog. Who knows, someday someone starting around where I am may find it useful. I hope it will encourage me to DO them so I don't look like a failure on my own blog. ;-)
.