Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Lovely Bones...errr Muscles?

I've found my hip bone.

I'm sore.

What could these two facts possibly have to do with each other?  Well, technically, they have my obliques in common.  Which are currently sore.  Since I've started TurboFire, I've noticed that my core has been rather sore, and when I go to massage the soreness, I'm finding less and less fat, and more and more lean muscle.  And of course, bone!  My hip bone has started to make its presence VERY clear lately.  My cat can no longer perch on my hip whilst I am sleeping without it becoming uncomfortable!  While you can see the number slowly crawl its way down, down down, and you can also see your pant size go down down down, being able to FEEL the difference in your physique makes this journey so much more REAL.

I've felt triumph, I've felt pain, I've felt fear, worry, angst, frustration, loss, gain, any number of emotions on this journey but the past few days a new feeling has been growing within me and its really new for me.

Awe.

I'm in awe of myself and my body.  I'm achieving things I never thought I'd be close to being able to do 6 months ago.  I feel more alive, excited and yes, sore than I've ever felt in my life.  It's different from being in rowing where weight training and running were mandatory, but I never clicked with it.  I never really was conscious of what working out would do for and to my body.

I think its really important for people to be conscious of what their working out does for them.  When teaching kids about nutrition in school, I think it'd be extremely valuable for them to be taught WHY certain foods are good other than just "eat this and you'll get fat".  That's negative instruction.  Rather, why not tell them that in order for their bodies to build muscle, they need to eat x amount of this and x amount of that.  Explain to them why muscle is important, why being physical is important, why doing things like yoga, is important.  Why is flexibility important? Tell them!  And I know there will be folks out there who will say "kids won't understand or won't care".  You're underestimating them.  They're frakking smart.  And if for every 4 kids you only impact 1, that's 1 in 4 kids who will go on to influence their friends.  That's 1 in 4 kids who will avoid the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Placing blame on the food industry is easy.  Educating your children to make smart choices is not.  Sure, I believe that if its not in the house, you won't go out to get it, but everybody at some point has to go grocery shopping and it can be TOUGH to avoid those highly processed crap foods.  Willpower is a myth, really. What actually motivates your choices (and your kids choices) is knowledge.  If your kids KNOW what Mc Donalds will do to them, they'll think twice before scarfing down on a Big Mac.  Placing emphasis on health and fitness over being waif-model thin is also important.  We want to foster positivity, not negativity and self hatred and eating disorders.  Show them docs like "Food, Inc" or "Supersize Me".  Give them incontrovertible proof about how terrible fast food is.  Then teach them invaluable skills like how to cook for themselves.

Let's face it, this is not an easy problem to solve because of how much we've let the food industry get away with feeding the masses sh*t.  All for the bottom line, in the name of capitalism, profit and industry.  What the hell good is all of that (aka $$$$) when you haven't got your health?  Those top 1%, keep stepping on the downtrodden masses....who's going to be the respective cogs in your machines when they're all diseased and can't work?

Okay okay, rant over.  Back to work.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Battle of the Bathroom Scale!

So I've been plateaued for about 4 weeks at 209.
I thought I had been down to 206, because my bathroom scale and my wiiFit did not agree with each other, as my wiifit had me at 206lbs and the bathroom scale at 209.

 Eventually I just realized that I'm ridiculous and can't do simple math (the wii is in kg) but figured out that they do jive and that I hadn't lost as much weight as I had thought I did.  Follow this with about 4 weeks of 209 staring at me in the face each week and its enough to drive anyone crazy!  Well this past week I have started TurboFire AND upped my daily intake of calories and guess what was waiting for me on the scale this morning?

 205 baby!

Lesson be learned: When you're dropping weight and building muscle, eventually those muscles need more calories in order to keep themselves happy and healthy.  And when you have happy healthy muscles, they thank you by burning tons of calories!  Keep in mind though: you need to make sure you're eating the RIGHT calories.  Not junk food!  Keep the blood sugar as even as possible!

Operation Clean Eating is underway as well.

PS: I know many out there will do the "but you shouldn't worry about the # on the scale.  Quite frankly, at my weight, that's bollocks.  The number *IS* important because at my height and age, being over 200lbs is NOT healthy....I mean unless its all pure muscle, but that's kinda not the look I"m going for!  Once I get closer to my goal weight, I'll be able to care less and less about the number on the scale (though will be checking in to make sure I"m maintaining appropriately once my body weight levels off).  I'm already getting to a place where I can appreciate more how I feel in comparison to 6 months ago, but again that number is still very important.

Monday, October 22, 2012

TurboFired UP!!!!

So I'm about a week into my new TurboFire system and phewf! I never worked this hard on Jillian Michaels Body Rev.  My heart rate monitor shows me working out well into my anaerobic zone (@ 80-90% of your max heart rate...I'd be lying if I said I never went above 90%) and man oh man its crazy!  I can't work out that high intensity forever, its just impossible for the body to be able to do that, so I do have to take quick breaks, but I always jump back in when I've caught my breath and managed my heart rate a bit (10seconds max).  Chalene KILLS your abs while just jacking up your cardio intensity.  Even if I did everything low low impact, I'd still get a killer workout!  Tomorrow's a Core class, which I haven't done yet so I'm looking forward to and yet slightly dreading the pain....
....wait wait, what's that?

"Pain is just fear leaving the body!"


...Thanks Jillian, you'll always have a place in my workout schedule ;-)

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

TURBO's ON FIRE!!!!

For those of you who know me well, and maybe even not so well, know that my nickname is Turbo.  Fitting then, that I should try TurboFire as my next exercise system.  Distributed by Beachbody, the same folks who bring you P90x and TurboJam, its headed up by Chalene Johnson, trainer to the stars.  She's energetic, she's supportive, she's blonde.

She's kind of the complete opposite to Jillian in that she's motivating with a chipper attitude and "feels the endorphins" and loves feeling the burn, etc.  Jillians Body Revolution was fantastic to start out with.  It's half an hour a day, which is totally awesome, and you are always able to mod up and down (as you are, admittedly with Chalene's system too) to your fitness level.  Jillians strength lies in being able to motivate someone (me) to keep going and push themselves after an extended amount of time of relative inactivity (i.e. years! Although I had been biking quite a bit, actual "working out" hadn't been done since highschool).

Her little phrases

"It's only 30 minutes a day, you can do ANYthing for 30 minutes"
"When you have a WHY, you can tolerate ANY HOW"
"Nobody likes working out, the only good thing about working out is the skinny jeans at the end!"

It was the "I totally hate to work out, I feel ya, but let's just bang this out real quick I swear you'll see changes, I'm only asking for half an hour a day, you can TOTALLY do this and change your life!" attitude that kept me going with her.  After doing the Body Revolution for the full 90 days and then another half way through, I was feeling a bit bored.  It wasn't that the system was no longer challenging, as I said you can always mod up, I just felt like doing something different.  I had been following someone's fitness page on Facebook (Hard Work & Dedication) and she had started doing a system called TurboFire.  I checked it out, and liked what I saw....a bunch of really sweaty folks having FUN while pushing their bodies to their cardio limits!

I dug a little deeper and was pleased to find out that TurboFire is based on an incredibly effective mode of exercise called HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training.  By boosting your cardio and mixing it with strength training, your body creates something called an AfterBurn effect (both Jillian and Chalene swear by it) whereby it burns 9x more calories for HOURS afterwards.  Usually using plyometrics (can be a bit painful if you're a plantar fasciitis sufferer like me, but if you take care of your feet by stretching throughout the day, and icing, the results are so worth it!) and bursts of high intensity followed by a lighter recovery period.  Its hardcore, and the results speak for themselves.

So TurboFire it is, and my first experience with the class was challenging, mainly because of the choreography.  I'm not very coordinated so it was a huge challenge for me, and I look forward to getting better.  I'll go through my impressions on TurboFire and how it measures up to Body Revolution after my first week on the program!

Also, to come, skinny jean pics!!!