My Shape

There are three basic body shapes from what I can tell. One is the perfect "hourglass" figure, one is the pear shape which is most common in overweight women where the hips and butt are big, the last is the apple shape where the arms and legs are normal (or in my case even smaller than they should be for my weight)and the stomach is large. The apple shape is more common in men and in diabetics. I am most definitely an apple shape. One of my doctors once told me he could tell walking down the street who is diabetic or well on their way to being there by their shape. Apples are on the road to diabetes and a lot more prone to heart disease. For as badly as some pears think they have it, they are not at greatly increased risk over non-obese people. They may not like the way they look and may find it hard to fit into jeans, but basically their shape is not a terrible one to have. I keep losing in my arms, legs, even face, but I feel like practically nothing is coming off my stomach. Who the heck besides me weighs what I do and can fit into a size 18 (1X equivalent) pair of jeans but wears a freaking 5X shirt? I hate, absolutely despise, my stomach. Low-carb reduces the insulin response which is supposed to help with belly fat. When I did LC before, what I found was that I overate on it so I never lost weight, but it really did improve my blood sugar a LOT. So this time I will have to exert some actual self-control. That's probably not a bad thing.

New Rules of Lifting - Part 2

Here is where this book really converges especially nicely with The Cardio-Free Diet. Chapter 7 is titled "The Aerobics Myth" and he basically agrees with Mr. Karas that aerobics are not really necessary. He doesn't seem to agree that it is especially detrimental, but definitely concurs that it is not needed. He also mentions that endurance training is not needed to burn fat which is, of course, precisely the point that Mr. Karas makes so well and why I am really glad I got his book. Strength training, again, fits the bill perfectly. I am feeling extremely confident at this point that removing aerobics as a centerpiece of my weight loss efforts is not only something I can do, but should do.

I think what was so profound in understanding this philosophy is that your body cannot do both endurance and strength without choosing one over the other and it will choose endurance. And that is not the ideal. Strength gives so many benefits and Schuler explains this much better than I could, but he brings up a term called the "interference effect" in which muscle growth will be compromised by allowing endurance training to interfere. So, there you have it. Not only will it risk injury and make you hungry and exhausted, cardio/endurance actually makes your strength training less effective. Mr Karas, Mr. Schuler...thank you so much for making this so clear and simple and...logical.

The rest of the book is devoted to the specifics of the lifting program and to healthy eating. Very much worth the read. My advice. Get The Cardio Free Diet and The New Rules of Lifting. That's all you need to know all you need. I feel so enlightened now. And I also feel a little bad for getting so suckered into thinking that I need to be a long-distance runner to be healthy. I hate cardio, but I suffer through it...or have suffered through it in the past...because I thought I needed it. Now, I can feel at peace with the idea of doing the strength training with maybe some pilates when I have lost more weight to tighten the flab. I can't say I will never do any cardio like my Leslie Sansone tapes because I enjoy them. But they will not be my focus any longer.

I thought the idea of not doing cardio was nuts. Not anymore. I guess sometimes it's the realization that not being mainstream is not the same as being crazy is when you realize that, as with most things in life, sometimes the road less traveled is the wiser path.

New Rules of Lifting -Schuler and Cosgrove

This is also a great book and, actually, interestingly enough, works very well in conjunction with Jim Karas's book. Schuler is the author with lots of useful professional input from Cosgrove. He gives a series of "new rules" for strength training based on information gleaned from the last several years. Let me just start by saying this is a large, thick book with so much valuable information. You just MUST buy it along with the Cardio Free Diet.

Some of the more interesting points:

1. So many strength exercises are artificial in the form they use. Focus on big muscle groups and the natural movements of the body.

2. Use compound muscle groups in each exercise rather than just isolating one muscle like, for example, the biceps.

3. You want to build size and strength, not just tone. And to do that, you work HARD a lot less frequently.

4. Don't use machines. Focus on 6 basic movements.

5. Each session should be devoted to setting some type of goal and he talks a lot about what he means by this.

6. Low Reps, heavy weights.

7. He talks a lot about periodization and this is a term I'd never heard, but the concept is essential. The book is worth it for this alone.

I am only through the first 6 chapters, but the book is already well worth the time and money.

Biggest Loser Diet - Book Review

I seem to have gotten distracted from the New Rules of Lifting Book as I got a call from the library that this book had arrived for me. We picked it up and it basically gives an overview of the diet that the program uses and some tips. I think the thing that really struck me is that they do not actually encourage use of the program as it is done on the show. For example in the book, they recommend weight X 7 as your daily calories. On the show, for faster loss, they use weight X 6. Also, from all I've read, they spend hours a day in the gym. From 4-6 hours most days, in fact. In the book, you are given a much more moderate recommendation. I think this worries me on two levels.

First, I feel that it is deceptive to not state that it is a similar plan, but not exactly the one they use on the show. Most people would get the book wanting to know exactly how to get show results, whether that is realistic or not. Secondly, while I know it is a carefully controlled environment, I have always had the nagging feeling that the show losses are too fast, not just to keep off, but for safety. I always worry someone is going to have heat stroke or go into cardiac arrest. The pushing is just too hard, physically and mentally. I do not believe I could do that and I weight a lot less than some of them. Most of them are from 300-450 pounds when they start, it seems. At first it made me feel badly for not doing enough or being motivated enough but I must admit that I now see it as tremendous overkill, especially after several weeks of watching the trainers give them disgusted looks for "only" losing 5 pounds instead of 8-15. That just seems so excessive and sensationalized.

I will give them this: the diet seems healthy. They recommend a moderate-carb diet and a list of other diet recommendations that all seem reasonable. And they include some really good recipes. But, if it is available, my conclusion is this is a "get it from the library" book rather than a "run out and buy it" book.

G Force (retitled The Workout) - Gunnar Peterson

Well, I'm not as impressed as with Jim Karas. I will say that I love how he sets out the basic 13 exercises and then gives an almost ENDLESS number of ways you can modify and vary the moves. Do it standing, sitting, on a stability ball, etc. It's great as a reference because he shows you how to modify and then do the move with the tubing, dumbbells, barbells, etc.

So, my opinion is that it is very valuable, but still second to the Cardio Free diet. Definitely worth getting, though. Especially if you find it cheap somewhere like I picked it up as G Force for under 10 dollars at Garden Ridge. It has valuable info, but it is kind of drudgery to wade through all the Hollywood name-dropping and fitness babble. It could have been written in a better, more informative fashion. It didn't take too long to read because about 150 pages are just workout variations. It's the best part of the book, but not exactly a read-through segment.

In a week or so, I will start "The New Rules of Lifting" by Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove. It looks better than G Force, but only time will tell. I skimmed it and it definitely reads more smoothly and with a lot less annoying drivel.

The Scale is Not My Friend

My weight fluctuates so much over the course of a day, week, month. I don't know what most women range, but for me, it can be 5-7 pounds in a DAY. I am going to begin weighing once a month because it really does me a lot of emotional damage if I weigh weekly. I need to at least give this a try. I understand how easy it is to let your weight slip and that accountability is important. But, I feel monthly is best for me. I will weigh in the first day of every month. My last weigh-in was 233 on Sunday. I'd like to see 225 or less by the end of this month. It's that time of the year, though, where bad stuff abounds. I will say that I would be satisfied to maintain the next couple of months. Darn the Christmas goodies!

Leslie Sansone - 5 Day Slimdown

This is the workout I am doing most right now. I was thinking about strength training yesterday and realized that one of the reasons I like this DVD is that, of all her cardio workouts, this is the one that uses the most strength training. In the mile where she does legs, the third one, I believe, she throws in some squats and lunges and do they ever burn! So, I do appreciate Leslie incorporating that so prominently into her routine.

I am about to start a book called G Force by Gunnar Peterson. It doesn't look as interesting, but I could be wrong. It's longer and will take a while to get through, but I will talk about it as I go along. I've read the first chapter and he seems to know what he's talking about, but he definitely thinks cardio, while of lesser importance, is a very important part of a well-balanced workout.

Cardio Free Diet - Pt. 2

Yesterday, I had finished the first part of the book and part of the second half where he talks about the benefits of strength training. Today, I have finished all of it and am actually slightly more impressed even than I was yesterday. We've often made the mistake, especially women, of neglecting strength training. If you tell someone that you run on a treadmill for an hour a day, they will say, "Great! That's a good workout!" If you tell them that you spend an hour every other day with weights, the inevitable response is, "What do you do for cardio?" It's as though that is the undisputable way to better health and anything else is gravy, but that is an absolute necessity.

It is true that cardio burns fat and builds cardiovascular endurance, but where did we ever get the strange idea that building muscle is somehow less important? What Karas proposes is that by utilizing circuit training, which is essentially little to no rest between strength exercises, you can maintain a significant amount of the benefits of cardio exercise (he estimates 80 percent of the benefit) by keeping your heart rate elevated while doing strength training. You also burn nearly as many calories doing lifting exercises and, as if that isn't enough, after you do cardio, you have an afterburn of about 2-4 hours, but Karas says that the afterburn from strength is up to 36 hours! And that's not even counting the fact that muscle is a huge fat burner, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn in a resting state. This is pretty exciting to me.

Now, he does not recommend that you never do anything aerobic...if you enjoy it. Sure, go dancing or play tennis or whatever you like, but do it for fun and don't rely on it for your fitness routine. Because all it does is burn calories (and usually a lot less than you think), make you want to eat more and possibly cause injury. Strength training, though, reshapes your body rather than only making it smaller. He talks about how even thin people can have what is called "intramuscular fat" and this is why doing strength training can change the shape of the muscles, by simultaneously making the muscle stronger while eating the fat that is inside the muscles and making them leaner.

For women, part of the fear is that we will get large or bulky, but we only have 10 percent of the testosterone men do and even they can have a hard time bulking up. We should train just as they do with no fear of getting large. It just won't happen. We will see a curvy aspect to our arms, legs, etc. This is muscle growth, but huge vein-popping muscles just aren't a possibility for us. I think that plays a large role, that fear, in keeping us firmly on the cardio side of the gym while men tend to lean toward the weight room. Ladies, we need to be in the weight room!

This is a great book with an excellent workout routine in it. He gives two alternatives. One uses stretch bands and something called lex loops, which I am unfamiliar with. The other uses dumbbells, which I love. They are just an alternate. One can be a travel routine and the other a home one. One can be the primary, but every now and then switch to keep your body guessing, etc. It just looks like a great program. For now, I have a few other books to read, but I will be seriously considering refocusing on strength training because I feel these points are very valid.

Cardio Free Diet

I am currently reading a book by Jim Karas called the Cardio-Free Diet and will be reviewing it as I go along. It is a really interesting concept and I want, throughout my journey to lose, to always be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. At first I thought, okay the guy is a kook, but after I started reading, I felt the premise is actually not terrible.

First of all, he isn't saying that one should never engage in any type of aerobic activity or that cardiovascular exercise is totally worthless. What he said is that it doesn't change your body the way you think it will and that it can make you hungrier so that you overeat more than you would if you didn't do it, thereby erasing the benefits. He also points out that it is hard on your joints and can cause injury. Those are points I can't disagree with. I do feel as though I am starving after I do cardio and exhausted on top of it. I want to eat, then sleep for an hour. Strength training does not make me feel the same way. He also made the point that you don't burn as many calories as you think and as the machines estimate and that, even if you do, all it does is reduce the overall size of the body after hours and hours of grueling work, but it doesn't reshape the body. As he puts it, if you are a pear shape and you do cardio for a long time and really intensely, you will be a smaller pear shape. It is a very valid point. And tomorrow, I am going to blog about his views on strength training and how it is better for you.

I think we often want a "way" to do things, one book to follow for our "diet" and one book to tell us how to exercise or one system that just works perfectly. The reality is that every author, every fitness professional, every dieter has some wisdom to impart if we will listen. Sometimes we find the best way to grow is to change our plan all the time, for variety and as we learn more. This way, we take the best from both worlds, learn from everyone out there who has something good to say. Sometimes we try something and love it and it fits in our lives. Sometimes we try something and think this is great, but really doesn't work for us. We are often so afraid to change and reconsider deeply held beliefs. So, what I really want to do is to read all I can get my hands on and be committed to growing, not only throughout the process of losing weight, but maintaining it later. I don't want to be bound to conventional wisdom if it ever stops making sense. One example of this is the changing views on carbohydrates, but I will talk about that another day.

Walking Away the Pounds

I just adore Leslie Sansone! I have about a dozen of her DVD's and recently sent two of my older ones to a friend and I hope she loves them, too. One was somewhat emotional, my Walk Away the Pounds Express 4 Mile Super Challenge. It was, you see, my first Leslie Sansone DVD. I worked out to it back in 2003 and 2004 a lot. But, her newer DVD's are much better and I enjoy them more. It was time to pass it on to someone else who needs it and will really enjoy it until they are ready to advance to her newer workouts.

I love Leslie and I always will. I spend a lot of time wishing she'd come out with a couple more of her great 5-Mile DVD's like the 5 Day Slimdown. I don't know why it matters since most days I do only 3 miles of it. I can do 5 miles and some days I decide to push myself and do it, but I feel incredibly tired when I do that and I'm not sure my body quite wants to do 5 miles every day. Maybe I shouldn't care much what my body wants, but I hate that exhausted feeling when I push too hard.

I remember at 280-300 pounds, struggling like crazy to get through a mile and now I can pretty easily do 3 miles and, with some effort, do 4 or 5 miles and I realize how far I've come. A lot of it is because I am slimmer, but recently I was feeling like I had a stomach virus and went to the doctor and my blood pressure was 118/76 and that was huge for me! Normally, it was running 140/100 or even higher. So, while the weight loss has helped, I really believe that working out with Leslie consistently the last couple of months has really been my turning point.

I think my exercise 5 days a week is really great for me in ways that have nothing to do with weight loss. In fact, the last few months, I have not lost a pound, but I do feel that my clothes are looser, so I know it has a toning effect. I also breathe better and feel my pulse rate is slightly lower. My blood pressure has decreased and, while I haven't checked it, there's a good chance it has impacted my cholesterol positively. There are things that are less measurable, too. I feel less stressed, more confident and more lively. I'm still waiting for that energy boost that a lot of people claim happens. I do believe it will, but my body is taking a while to adjust. So, I'm giving it what it needs and waiting for it to catch up.

I think what's really important here is that I have faith in the process. I know that, whatever the scale shows, exercise is good for me. It makes me look and feel better, but I've hit my body with a lot of change in the last 5 months or so and it needs a chance to adjust and I'm surprisingly at peace with that because I know eventually it will begin to come off again. I just have to keep the faith.