Lose Yourself: Cashing in on the rewards

LOST!

10lbs of baby weight

Fleshy, soft, covered in stretch-marked, caramel brown skin

Last seen lying low in back, thigh and abdominal area of muscular young mother

Answers to the aroma of baked goods

If found, DO NOT return to owner

**$75.00 cash reward**

It’s not uncommon to see a reward offered for the safe return of a lost item or loved one. But what about a reward offered for safely losing a not-so-loved-one? A reward for getting rid of baby weight sounds good to me!

When it comes to getting  in shape, I hardly lack motivation. I’m fired up just knowing what my body is capable of.  Every day I’m driven by the recollection of my pre-pregnancy self.  Still, I like the idea of a fun treat to mark my achievement. A little extra incentive can’t hurt, right?

My ultimate goal is to weigh 140 lbs max and fit into my size 28 jeans. That will take time.  By “expert” calculations, I shouldn’t count on sporting my old Mavis until early-mid summer. A season spent strutting  in my “skinny jeans” will be a prize in itself. Until then, there are smaller goals I can aim for along the way.

Fitness professionals suggest breaking long-term goals  into smaller chunks. They also suggest celebrating weight loss achievements with a non-food gift to yourself. Darn, scratch dinner at Chiado off the list. I would also add that the gift should be meaningful and enticing enough to keep you in pursuit.

So I’ve made a deal with myself. Upon reaching the half-way point, I will treat myself to a $75 mini shopping spree. Now I just have to determine what the half-way point is. When I started writing this, I set my target at 150 lbs (the mid-point between 160 and 140 pounds). Then I stepped on the scale at GoodLife. 166lbs. Okay, change of plans.

See, the scale doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s possible to make good progress without seeing a big change in weight. For instance, the fit of my clothes says I’ve definitely lost inches while the change room scale says I’ve gained pounds. Stupid scale. It’s muscle, I knoooww. The scale is still stupid!

Okay so here’s the new deal. It’s all about my  fitness assessment in April. I expect that assessment to reveal a few successes – lower heart rate, improved cardio, better body composition, smaller waist size, etc.  These are all important indicators of fitness level – just not the sexiest ones. Can’t say I’ve ever  faced the fitting room mirror and praised my awesome heart rate. In any case, if I hit any of the targets below, I collect on my shopping spree reward:

• 150 lbs
• 25% body fat (down from 35%)
• 32 waist circumference (down from 40)
• Comfortably and attractively fitting into my size 29 Twiggy jeans i.e. no muffin-topping and wearable waist-exposed in public

I haven’t decided how to spend my reward but there’s no shortage of options. Maternity leave has forced me to sacrifice a few fun luxuries along with my full-time salary. My esthetician or hair stylist might send a search party out to  find me any day now.

Maybe I’ll get a much needed mani & pedi. Or perhaps an update to my make-up case. A new mommy make-over would be great. I could also go for new workout wear. Oh, but lingerie might be better since I’ll probably be spending hubby’s money hee hee. Whatever I choose, it will definitely be something to look forward to.

So that’s that. More baby weight will be lost. And come April, I will find myself looking svelte, feeling accomplished, and relishing my special treat. Check out my 3-month assessment post to see how I do.

How do you reward yourself for a job well done…New shoes? Spa day? Day off?

[Via http://babiesbelliesandbarbells.wordpress.com]

Who needs the gym, when you have two feet of snow!?

It’s been a couple days since I updated, so I’ll just have to summarize the weekend.

We woke up on Saturday to two feet of snow!! It was unbelievable. Absolutely beautiful. Obviously, we couldn’t go anywhere. Roads weren’t plowed yet, a state of emergency had been called, and even if we could go anywhere nothing was open (nothing – groceries stores, drugstores, the Y, etc). All this would not have been so bad if only we had power! It went off sometime before 4am, and with such a big snowstorm, we had no idea when it was coming back on. It is really amazing how many things that I take for granted require electricity, including the foods we normally eat. No stove, oven, microwave, and I wanted to open fridge/freezer as little as possible. So all we had to eat were crackers, chips, salsa, candy, marshmallows, and high-calorie homemade sourdough bread. After eating a really early dinner on Friday, I woke up very hungry Saturday morning. Unfortunately I took this situation as license to eat basically whatever I wanted. That’s the not so good part. However, I did want to get some exercise, so I dug out one of cars – took a good 45 minutes of shoveling, worked lots of muscles, and burned some calories! Luckily our power was restored in the early afternoon!

Pic of snow near our house:

Sunday, I am happy that I worked out using exercise DVDs at home (Y isn’t open on Sun morning). Burned a lot of calories and had a decently intense workout. I did Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred for the first time. It really is a good 24 minute workout. And I was very sore from it today! I also did another video to get some extra cardio in. Unfortunately my resolve to make good food choices waned steadily throughout the day. By the time the superbowl party was ending, I dug into the cookies! Whoops! All told, my weekend was definitely high on the calorie side. And also very difficult to count since I ate at other people’s houses. I would guess 2500 or so calories Sat and Sun minus the exercise calories of course. So, bottom line, my calories for the week overall were probably a slight deficit, but not too much. Which brings me to the next topic:

This week’s weigh-in: -0.0, stayed exactly the same. Funny, worked out exactly as I thought it would. Unfortunately this week doesn’t look to be a stellar week calorie deficit wise. Leaving Thursday night to stay with a friend, so I won’t be able to work out Thurs, Fri, or Sat plus the food probably won’t be as healthy as if I were eating at home. However, I’m going to continue to do the best I can this week. I really would like just a slight lose, and then I can really pick up my intensity next week.

Which brings me to today. I did a killer bootcamp class at the Y. Once again, I made a fool of myself and couldn’t keep up, but I did burn some calories. And I’m liking trying all these new classes. I’m also getting a bit of weight-training which I never did on my own. I burned about 500 calories in 56 minutes. Most of the workout was cardio drills (Jump rope, jogging, sprinting, suicide drills, etc) followed by leg/arm combo moves with weights and a few stationary arm exercises. The last 10 minutes were ab work, and although my abs got a killer workout, ab work doesn’t really burn many calories. The heart rate is really low. Plus, with so much weight to lose, I won’t even be able to see muscle definition until I lose another 70-90 pounds.

Anyway, here’s todays stats:

[Via http://laurajane.wordpress.com]

How Do You Warm Up Before Exercising? This Article Will Tell You How

Nowadays it’s tough to fit exercise into our busy schedules. Some may be tempted thanks to not having a lot of time to skip warming up. This is NOT a sensible idea. Many injuries are caused by individuals pushing themselves too hard without warming up their muscles first. Without your warm up you may also be stiffer when exercising that will make it tough to exercise the subsequent day.

Warming up doesn’t have to eat up the time you allotted for exercise into your day. In reality, a good workout solely must be 5 minutes long to try and do its job. It doesn’t have to be tedious either you’ll mix up a range of great moves to make your warm up as fun as the rest of your exercising. Bear in mind that a sensible warm up gets all of your muscles moving, even if you don’t suppose that you just will be intensely working out a group of muscles on any particular day. Warming up is also vital no matter if you’re doing cardiovascular exercises or lifting weights. Essentially, any calisthenics that you propose to try and do should begin with a warm up.

The moves you are doing for a warm up shouldn’t necessarily be tough or make you break a sweat. The chief ambition of the warm up isn’t to become a part of your workout, but merely to slowly move muscles that you just haven’t really thought of all day to wake them up. Good moves, therefore, include things like jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, lunging, and jumping rope.

A sensible warm-up can also include slowly stretching your muscles in a variety of ways, although this is sometimes additionally effective for a cool-down. When you are doing stretch, make certain that you just don’t bounce into the stretch, but rather, just slowly stretch your muscles and don’t push it too hard. Also think about exercises that work on balance and form in order to prepare you for the exercises you may be doing in the workout.

If you’re extremely short on time, why not attempt warming up before you even get to the gym. Unhurriedly jog or power walk to the sports hall, park as far away as possible and lunge to the door, and take the stairs instead of the elevator. That way, when you get to the gym to workout your warm up routine is already half way done.

A sensible workout continuously varies in strength. You would like to keep your muscles working. This is the best way to lose weight and maintain your weight reduction. Begin with a warm up routine and after that get into the main exercise. Change up your exercise each few days this challenges you muscles and increases your muscle mass and helps you burn those additional calories.

Try out these blogs for up to date knowledge on healthy dieting and weight reduction: Healthy Diet Plan

and
Healthy Diet Plan

[Via http://blenheimj.wordpress.com]

The Single Most Important Nutritional Factor for Fat Loss

     Fat loss is probably the most common health and fitness goal today and there are so many different products and programs designed to make people lose fat that it is virtually impossible to keep track of them all. Having different options for achieving fat loss is important, because no single approach will work for everyone, although some fat loss strategies definitely work better than others.

     I hope this is obvious, but any good approach to long-term fat loss must involve making improvements in your nutrition and any product or program that promises fat loss without addressing nutritional issues is almost certainly a gimmick and a waste of money. The good news is there are many different fat loss programs that are effective. Interestingly, even though some of these programs involve very different eating habits, they often have some of the same fundamental strategies at their core.

     Some of the more popular nutritional strategies involve minimizing insulin level fluctuations, eating natural (unprocessed) foods, eating small meals throughout the day etc. The multitude of nutritional strategies and diets, along with the current obesity problem, has resulted in a lot of research being done to learn more about the process of fat loss. Many studies have compared various eating strategies to figure out which ones work better than others and analysis has been done to determine what nutritional factors are most strongly linked to fat loss.

     Of course, there are many factors that influence whether or not a fat loss program will be successful, but some things have been shown to be more important than others. One of the commonly studied factors is the percentage of calories consumed from fats, protein, and carbohydrates, otherwise known as the macronutrient profile. The macronutrient profile is one of the most obvious differences between nutritional programs or diets, with different programs focusing on things like minimizing carb intake, minimizing fat intake, having a balance between all three, etc.

     So many programs suggest that theirs is the best for fat loss because of the particular macronutrient profile of the foods, but it turns out this is not the most important part of a meal plan, at least from a fat loss standpoint. When it comes to weight and fat loss, the number of calories consumed is more important than what type of calories you are consuming. Of course, the type of calories you consume is very important for your overall health, but eating for health and eating for fat loss are not always the same thing.

     Even though the number of calories you consume is more important for weight and fat loss than the type of calories consumed, calorie consumption is still not the factor that is most strongly linked to fat loss. The single most important nutritional for fat loss is actually something called caloric density. Caloric density is a measure of how much a food weighs compared to how many calories are contained in that food. Simply stated, foods that weigh more and have fewer calories are better for fat loss than other foods.

     Researchers have found that the weight of the food you eat has more of an effect on how full or hungry you feel than the number of calories contained in the food. In other words, if two people with similar appetites each eat a pound of food, they should both feel equally full, even if one person ate twice as many calories as the other person. By eating foods that have fewer calories by weight, you will be able to minimize your feelings of hunger, which is one of the keys to long-term fat loss success.

     I should point out that while caloric density does not measure where the calories come from (fat, protein, carb), foods that have good caloric density scores usually have healthy characteristics. This is because many healthy components of food, such as water and fiber, have weight but do not add calories, so they will improve caloric density. On the other hand, foods that are very high in fat will have low caloric densities, because fat has more than twice the number of calories per weight than protein or carbs.

     By taking a look at the things that influence caloric density, we can see that while it does not directly measure calorie content or macronutrient profiles, the caloric density of a food is essentially a partial measure of both things. Another interesting thing is that many foods with the best caloric density scores are healthy vegetables, which are considered good foods to eat on virtually every type of nutritional program or diet.

     It is important to keep in mind that eating foods just based on their caloric density will not guarantee you will have a well balanced diet. You still need to include a certain amount of fat, particularly healthy fats (omega-3 oils), and quality protein if you want to achieve fat loss and good health. However, other things being similar, a person who eats foods with good caloric densities should lose more fat than a person who eats foods with poor caloric densities.

     Finally I want to point out that caloric density and nutrition in general is only one component to fat loss. The most successful programs always incorporate both nutrition and exercise. Following a nutrition program that focuses on eating a well-balanced combination of foods with good caloric densities should result in fat loss, but your results will be significantly better if you consistently include challenging workouts into your routine as well.

[Via http://austinpersonaltrainer.wordpress.com]

Wow! What a weekend

Wow! I can’t believe i forgot to write this whole weekend! I woke up Saturday and went straight to the gym knowing that I wouldn’t get another chance to go as I was going out Saturday night. I ate fairly healthily Saturday night but then drank copulous amounts of alcohol so that might have voided it!

Sunday I was still over the limit so couldn’t drive to the gym. I planned to do exercise at home but that didn’t happen so instead I had a lazy day. I think I missed the gym though… After going every day, I noticed not going… I also had an eat whatever I want day today and so I ate fairly unhealthily all day…

Tomorow I will make up for it though as I’m planning 2 gym visits in the day. My weight loss goal is to get down to 138kgs by Friday. Wish me luck!

[Via http://mynewhealthylife.wordpress.com]

Seven Weight Loss Tips For Beginners

Read on for seven weight loss tips you need to know

1. Set Goals

You need to have a reason to keep pushing when temptation arises or you simply don’t feel like doing it anymore. The goal/s need to be both physical and emotional. For example your physical goal may be to lose 20kg (44lbs)  but this isn’t strong enough to motivate you when you don’t feel like continuing. An emotional goal such as ‘to be able to play with the kids’ or ‘to enjoy life to its fullest’ will ensure you keep focused to achieve your ultimate weightloss goals.

2. Start Exercising

If you are a complete beginner, start with something light like 30 minute walks, 4 times/week and build from there. Don’t rush into exercising to quickly. Build up gradually to allow your body to recover and grow stronger.

3. Include Resistance Training

Resistance training is becoming increasingly popular among the general population and for good reason. It increases muscle mass which means your body burns more calories while at rest. It also improves insulin sensitivity which means less insulin is released by the body, resulting in less fat storage. Another benefit is its nutrient partitioning effects – put simply it means the foods you eat get put to use as energy for muscles rather than being stored as fat.

Benefits not limited to weightloss include reducing elevated blood pressure, preventing osteoporosis, strengthening the immune system and improving posture.

4. Take Control Of Your Diet

Nutrition can be very complex and the ‘ideal’ diet for each individual varies greatly due to differences in size, preferences, goals, age, activity levels and a host of other factors. Having said that there are a few key factors that are universal for all people who want to lose weight. The first is that you must burn more calories than you consume either through diet and/or exercise. Next you need to make sure that what you do eat covers all your nutritional requirements. This can normally be achieved by eating a variety of foods but in some cases supplements may be necessary. Finally, your diet needs to be enjoyable! Associating the words ‘diet’ and ‘enjoyable’ may seem odd but an enjoyable diet translates to a sustainable diet. And sustainability will mean you not only lose weight but keep it off.

5. Include Variety

This goes for your exercise and nutrition. Variety will prevent boredom and means you will continue on your quest to lose weight.

Adding variety to your exercise program is easy. You can change the exercises, rep ranges or even the type of exercising. Instead of running you could swim. You could replace cycling with a boxing class. Or start a sporting team with friends.

Including variety in your nutrition is a little more difficult. When replacing one food with another you need to make sure it still fits into your calorie and macronutrient goals. You also need to control the portion size. However, doing so will make sure your ‘diet’ doesn’t feel like a diet at all.

6. Continue to Learn

If you are reading this article then you are already putting this important step into action. It is can be very handy to continue learning about different ways to exercise and eat in order to lose weight. You don’t have to hit the books but simply talking to others in the gym who have achieved what you want to achieve may help.

(Note: I emphasise may help. There is a great deal of myths and mumbo jumbo out there so be careful when taking advice from someone who got their information from ‘a friend of a friend.’)

7. Consistency Is Key

Put the first 6 steps into action and then be consistent. The only way to continue to lose weight is to consistently do what needs to be done. For some of you there may be a fairly large amount of weight that you need to lose before you reach your goal. To do so you will need to be consistent. Don’t fall into the trap of TV and magazine commercials offering instant success with the latest ‘AB-pro’ or ‘jiggle machine.’ These types of advertisements are simply trying to take advantage of your deep desire to lose weight. Instead, find out what needs to be done and do it consistently. If you do I guarantee you will lose the weight.

Feel lost, disheartened and discouraged on your weight loss journey? Need help, guidance and motivation from a professional? Then check out www.slimdownshapeup.com for online personal training. Or if you live in the Hills District, Sydney enquire about mobile personal training today.

[Via http://slimdownshapeup.wordpress.com]

Law of Thermodynamics: Keep it Simple

I wanted my first post to be about obesity, because it was my personal struggle. I wanted to keep this very simple and short because there is no magic pill for weight loss. All diets, nutrition plans, trips to McDonald’s and Subway sandwiches apply to the Law of Thermodynamics.

Law of Thermodynamics: Weight reduction can only take place when there is more energy burned than consumed.

You will not lose weight if consume more calories than you burn. There are a number of ways to increase the “energy burned” that I will discuss in later posts. All of them require that you eat healthy foods and exercise. Women should never consume less than 1200 calories and men should never consume less than 1600 calories. Your body has to have these calories to function properly. There is no reason to buy supplements, diet pills, etc. God has created EVERYTHING you need in nature. Do not over complicate the process. Drink a minimum of 96 ounces/3 Quarts of Water and consume fewer calories than you burn to lose weight. Through God’s love he has provided everything you need to stay healthy. Are you willing to embrace it?

[Via http://christianathlete.wordpress.com]