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Friday, February 22, 2008

A Schedule

O.K. I at least have a schedule now.

BUT . . .

IF I am not successful this time getting things done on my own (which I feel I SHOULD be able to do), I may have to swallow my pride and hire a personal trainer already!!

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, my name's Matt :-).

You may or may not have noticed me around before, but I just happened to find you through someone elses blog, and I wanted to reply and start by congratulating you, on trying to keep the lifestyle going, and find a way to make your progress happen.

I stopped by and read what you have to say about your frustrating dieting issues, and you can tell me to go take a running jump if you wish, that's fine, but for what it's worth if you want to read them, here are some impartial insights into what might be the problem :-).

1. Weight fluctuations. One possible reason is the weighing time. Weighing should be done on an empty stomach first thing, and preferably after a comfort break, so there is no left over food or waste products affecting the readings.

You may have already been aware of this, if so, no worries :-).

2. Measuring. A common mistake may be when someone measures. People should avoid measuring everywhere on one day, as some areas after a workout can give a "pumped" measurement, not a "cold measurement"

I.E. If you train Legs, best not to measure them until about 24 hours after workouts, so there's no chance of any residual muscle pumps affecting measurements.

Unless you do full body stuff in which case it should fine, to do measure perhaps within an hour or two, of the next session 2 days later.

Again you may have been aware of that if so no worries :-).

With Diet itself, the biggest misconception people get is, healthy food means small portions.

As an example, this was posted on a site I use, and it highlights what the misconception is.

Breakfast, 1 piece of Wholegrain Bread with Marmite.

Snack Piece of Fruit

Lunch, some kind of Chickeny Salad affair, worked out at about 150 calories roughly.

Snack piece of Fruit.

Dinner Salmon, Potatos and Veggies

So Dinner for this woman was fine, but overall about 600-700 calories a day.

If this kind of planning looks in any way similar to yours, this will be a major problem in your diet arsenal, as you can cause a starvation mode where the body hangs onto Fat, and low Protein could rob precious muscle, having a similar effect, even for people taking 1,000 cals a day.

Possibly One of the worst offenders might be Salads.

Some people make Chicken Salads for example, but forget 1 Large Tomato has about 8g Carbs, which is 32 Cals, and 4 Lettuce leaves are 1 cal, as examples, and many other Salad type foods oftne Veffie sourcs, yield low Carb content, so coupled with 30g Chicken Carbs, a Salad can struggle to potentially reach 200 calories, when it could and should be 250 and more like 300.

Such things might be better though with some kind of Nut in, like a Waldorf style salad, for example, ot slightly bolster helthy Fats.

If that Salad analogy looks familiar to you, then that could be a culprit too.

Also Low protein intake. Some people eat Oatmeal Breakfasts, but neglect Protein, and then have Fruit. Not too bad, but Protein can be compromisd, and combining Fruit with something like Oatmeal, can cause inadequate Fruit digestion, same with most Foods, with the exception of Tomato, Fruit doesn't digest too well combined with other foods, and people may not feel any side effects, or discomfort, but Fruit benefit may be partly wasted, because Fruit hasn't been given at least 10-15 minutes before Breakfast, to get a head start.

If this looks familiar, some Breakfast cals from Protein and Carbs could be lost here.

So there may be simply issues resulting from your diet being healthy, but portion control being too strict, cutting your Cals.

As an active person you should be aiming in my estimation for about 1,500 a day, possibly nearer to 1,800 / 2,000, which could be from 6 meals.

As for training,it could also be your schedule that's a bit problematic.

Training longer and harder may not necessarily be the way forward, if you sacrifice more muscle, which without the right cals could be the case.

20 minutes of Cardio could be fine, if you train quite intensely, I.E. things like Interval or Sprint stuff.

Or potentially some kind of home circuit thing, including stuff like Burpees, Jacks, Spotty Dogs, Squat Thrusts, etc etc, so longer doesn't automatically mean better, (though it could be in moderation), and unless you use about 3-4 differing types of electronic calorie measuring devices, knowing for sure the one you use is accurate, is hard to ascertain, so those could be throwing peoples supposed needs out of kilter.

I'd say for training as a suggestion you could try a basic setup like this, if you don't already.

Day 1 Weights

Day 2 Cardio (Interval or Sprints 30 mins max).

Day 3 Weights

Day 4 Day off

Day 5 Weights

Day 6 Cardio (Interval or Sprints 30 mins max).

Day 7 Day off

This could work if you do something like a total body workout 3x a week, with mostly compund exercises like Deadlifts, Bent over Barbell Rows, DB Bench Pressing etc etc as examples, to keep workouts more consice.

I'm not going to go into exact things like reps, sets, rep length etc etc, incase things get too long here, but that's a potential way of looking at things.

With a schedule kind of like that though, having the two off days split in that way, allows you not to train for more than 3 days straight, as one mistake people can make is having a 5 day exercise schedule with 2 straight days off, usually at weekends.

All that will do is give someone lowered metabolic responses for two days, and probably promote small Fat gains, so splitting the off days in the way I suggested, makes more sense.

You could also be affecting muscle mass by the type of Cardio you do, if you do any after weights sessions.

I.E. doing Rowing Machine work after any kind upper body training. Better to do something like Exercise Bike or Treadmill there, where upper body doesn't need to be used, so it promotes better recovery of those muscles.

Same with Legs, Bike is better as it stops you pounding on the feet, like on Treadmills, and stops you loadbearing upper body weight onto them like Treadmills, Elipticals and Steppers can do.

So those are some potential points to think of, if you do.

Like I say tell me to take a running jump if you wish, I won't mind, but if you need anything else, or feel there's anything you'd like to ask me about your situation, I will try to help where I can, or alternatively, my blog has a link to my messageboard, there's a few good people there like me, who will be able to give you practical advise on what might / might not work.

I also have some simple calorie calculation tools I made myself, which require registration to use, but no posting, if you feel you'd rather do that, that's okay too :-).

I will finish before this gets epically long, but I offer you my best wishes, lots of luck, and say I saw that pic of you, and you certainly don't look 38, (that's just an honest comment, not a forward one), so you must be doing something right :-).

Whatever happens take care, and have a great day.

:-) :-).

Matt