The two most dangerous points when you diet

T holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas are dangerous points when you're just beginning to diet, and the day you decide that you've lost enough weight and now it's time to maintain is another dangerous point.  (The maintenance part will be a LOT easier if you follow my program, mark you - but I"ll get into that in another post.)

But the two *most dangerous* times  in a dieter's regime is during the first four weeks of the regime, and right after those first four weeks.

During the first four weeks
You know what I'm talking about!  You've cut back on your food, you're working out 3 times a week and biking or jogging every day.

Yet every day you step on that scale and it hasn't moved..or it will be down one day and back up the next.

And you're getting madder and madder and finally you say, "To hell with it, I can't lose weight, so I'm not going to bother."

But you just need to be patient.

In order to lose weight, your body must achieve a state of caloric imbalance and then it must stay in that state.

It takes at least a week for the state to first be achieved...and if you eat too many treats on a Saturday or something such that that state is disturbed, it will delay your weight loss by a couple of days.

What you must always remember is that even if you're not losing weight during these first four weeks, you are actually getting healthier. You are losing some fat (if you're working out - with even light weights) because the fat you're losing is replaced by muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat. And once you get those muscles, the weight will start to come off quicker because muscles burn calories quicker than fat does. (Which is why when you're fit and have a toned body and are maintaining, you can eat all the foods you love in decent-sized portions, and not gain back the weight you lost.)

This is why I advise my clients not to step on the scale for the first 4 weeks of their new diet/exercise regime. It will only drive you crazy. As long as you cut back on your food - you don't have to cut out all the foods you love, you just have to cut back! - work out 3 times a week - and go for a walk or a bike ride every day, you will be losing weight. How much weight you lose will depend on how old you are, remember. If you're young you'll probably lose 2 pounds per week, if you're old or have a slow metabolism - 1 pound.

But hell - that's a loss of 52 pounds in a year.

Now, the second most dangerous point in your new diet...is when you step on that scale for the first time after those 4 weeks are up, and see that weight loss. You will be so happy.

But you'll also think - "If I can lose this weight while eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will be able to lose more weight more quickly if I skip breakfast and lunch and just have dinner."

And this is not true. It may seem to be contradictory, but you will actually take longer to lose weight if you cut out breakfast and lunch, because your body is going to go in starvation mode, and deliberately slow down weight loss.

So you must eat breakfast and lunch. Small portions. And you must eat supper. And you can have dessert of a couple of cookies after dinner, or maybe half a candy-bar. If the hunger pangs hit late at night - a banana or some piece of fruit.

But whatever you do, you must eat those three meals a day - or five small meals. Do not skip meals!

This is important during your entire diet plan, and it is also important when you're in the maintenance phase. Since you've never skipped a meal, you will be able to continue your "new lifestyle" easily, with just the addition of an extra portion of this or that...and mebbe a whole candy bar for dessert instead of half of one.

So be patient, and you will achieve your goals.

Your winter sport - bowling

I went bowling on Saturday, the first time in maybe a decade, and I really enjoyed it. So much so that I intend to make it my winter sport, once it gets too cold to bike.

You get a good workout with bowling - if you're mobile of course. (Otherwise, swimming will do.)

You have your throwing hand, but your other hand and arm gets exercise as you hold the ball preparatory to throwing it, and both your legs will get exercise - albeit the tops of your thighs more than any other muscle.

I didn't do very well, points wise, it must be said - barely broke 100 each time. But this I blame on the shoes that I had to rent from the alley. They didn't slide, so my release point was always awkward.

I ordered some $30 shoes on Ebay, and they should be here by next Friday. Until the advent of winter, I'll be playing 3 games every Saturday, and once winter comes, probably more often.

From where does the weight come off first?

Depending on how overweight you are, you won't be able to tell from where the weight is coming off as you use it.

Let's say your 100 pounds overweight. You lose 10 of those pounds (over the course of 3-4 weeks), and you really won't be able to tell where the weight came from, as it'll come from everywhere.

Of course when you're 100 pounds overweight, you don't care where the weight comes off from first, you just want it to come off.

By the time you've lost 20 pounds, you'll be able to fit into a size-lower pair of jeans...

Of course, if you want to work on specific areas, and add some weight training to target that area, you can direct to some extent where weight will come off in addition to the overall weight loss.

For example, if you have "widows weeds" underarms, and target them with tricep curls, you can firm them up in a month or so.

Biking will work on your legs; situps, leg drawups and so on will work on your belly.

Don't worry about where the weight is coming off from - just be aware that it's coming off and you'll be healthier because of it.

Instructions are relative

I have to correct myself on one piece of information I've been given.

I've been telling folks that there's no need to cut out on your favorite desserts - cake, cookies, etc., or sugared drinks - Pepsi, etc., just cut down on them, add weight training and walking to your regime, and that after 2 weeks, you'll have lost a pound or so - after that caloric imbalance has been established.

And this is true....for people under 40.

But remember that once people hit 40 - well, when women hit 40, with guys it might take til 50, the metabolism, however slow or fast it was, slows down even further.

So if you're over 40, do not despair if you have gone your 2 weeks and see no measureable loss of weight - or see a weight loss in the morning, only to disappear by evening since you have drunk water and milk and coffee throughout the day.

But if you've been following a weight training regime - even with the lightest weights, you will see an improvement in your muscles - if no other proof than that you started doing 5 military presses with 20 pounds on a barbell, and after 2 weeks you're up to 8 repetitions or even 10. Your strength is increasing, your muscles are increasing - and as you continue to work out and increase those muscles - that weight will disappear.

So stay patient, stay with the regime. You will see results.

Don't try Sensa

I've long seen Sensa ads on various webpages that I visit - I had no interest in the product and I was sure most folks would realize it wouldn't work as advertised....

But then I thought...people see these ads, think, "They're spending so much money, it must work" and will try it.

Don't.

All Sensa is is "flavor enhancers" designed to make you feel fuller quicker.

Well, water will do the same thing.

So will success. There's nothing like seeing those first 5 pounds come off to make you realize that yoiu can do this, you're on the right path, no artificial drugs or unneeded operations need apply.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2RKKY12UBZTGC/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002KJ6IV4&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=#wasThisHelpful

is a link to Amazon's page selling Sensa - the reviews of the product. 5 5-star reviews? I wonder if  Sensa is paying to get the reviews they want?

Take a look at this page also. It debunks Sensa...so it can offer Saffron Extract.

Do your research on that if you need help curbing your appetite.
http://www.reinventingaging.org/diet/sensa/sensa/

Be Proud of Your Accomplishments

I have a client, a teenage girl who is a 100 pounds overweight. Lives at home. I've just started working with her. She's been biking for a couple of weeks. She lives on an incline, so she can coast down the hill to start her bike ride, but she has to bike up the hill - and biking up a hill is a helluva lot harder than coasting down it, aas I shouldn't need to tell you.

Well, yesterday, she did a 3-mile bike ride, and then, for the first time, managed to bike all the way up the hill to her house.  That is quite an accomplishment for someone who is as out of shape as this girl.

So she goes into the house, and her dad asked her how far she'd ridden, and she said, "Three miles."

And he dismissed it. "Oh, that's nothing. That doesn't accomplish anything."

And she was quite hurt. She didn't say anything to him about it, but she poured out her heart to me this morning.

I had to be very careful in my response - I felt like telling her to tell her dad to drop dead, but of course I didn't. One musn't criticize the parents when working with a teenager!

I just reaffirmed to her what she already knew - that she was getting fitter, that biking 3 miles and then non-stop up a hill was a great accomplishment - something she could not have done a couple of weeks ago. It was only going to get better from here.

I also pointed out that parents didn't always mean to be mean (there are some verbally abusive parents out there, as well as neighbors, schoolmates, etc, but I think this guy didn't mean to be mean, he just wasn't thinking.  In fact, I might have a word with the mother - she's who hired me to work with her daughter - and suggest that she tell hubby to be a bit more supportive, no matter how slight he thinks his daughter's accomplishments are!)

Accomplishments are relative. Back when I lived in a town that had flat areas to ride and no damn wind, I was biking 10-15-20 miles a day no problem. To someone like that, biking 3 miles a day is a bit of a laugher. But when you consider that this girl could not even do that two weeks ago - it is a great accomplishment and I was very proud of her. 

What does 2 pounds a week come out to?

Subconsciously, when you're dieting, you may expect to step on a scale each day and see it drop by a pound each day. One morning you weight 200 pounds, for example, the next morning you expect to weigh 199 pounds but it still says 200. Yet you've eaten your small portions and had no snacks...why haven't you lost a pound?

Well, it's because you can't lose a pound a day - not healthily,anyway. What you are losing is a quarter of a pound here, a quarter of a pound there, so that by the end of seven days, you will indeed have lost 2 pounds. (AFTER your body is in the Caloric Imbalance phase which doesn't come until about two weeks after you've starting cutting back on food portion size and drink, and started exercising more.)

Patience is the bane of anyone trying to lose weight. You must be patient. You must not get discouraged - or angry - if you've "dieted" for a week and see absolutely no result. As long as you're following my program - eating smaller portions, weight training, and biking or walking or jogging - you are getting results.

First off - you're not gaining any weight, right?   (Although, during the first 2 weeks of the program, you will gain a couple of pounds. Why? Because since you're exercising, you're building muscle, which weighs more than fat. So you may be losing fat, but for the first two weeks it's replaced by muscle. But as you get to that state of caloric imbalance, the fat burns off and/or is turned into muscle (I won't go into muscle...fat and muscle are actually two different things, one doesn't turn into the other...but for the sake of what you need to know, just accept that it does! "Same difference" as the saying goes.)

So be patient. Give yourself at least 4 weeks of following my program before you step on the scale for a second time. (The first time of course would be the day you start the program. You must know your baseline.)

If you follow my program and have not lost any weight in 4 weeks, then visit your doctor to see if there's a medical issue.

Eat a Clean Diet and Aimee Raupp Says, “Yes, You Can Get Pregnant”

Wow...I never would have thought they could come up with a new reason to diet.  I share the book review below to also give a plug to the website Diets in Review.

I don't actually agree with the below diet...but heck, if you're trying to get pregnant and are having problems...

From Diets in Review:  Eat a Clean Diet and Aimee Raupp Says, “Yes, You Can Get Pregnant”

 Like so many women, Jan found herself in her thirties with a career, a husband, and a strong desire to get pregnant. At 33, this corporate attorney had already had one miscarriage and two unsuccessful IUIs (intrauterine insemination), and she was “very upset and unsettled,” as described in Aimee Raupp’s new book Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: The Diet That Will Improve Your Fertility Now and Into Your 40s.
Jan is a real-life client of Aimee’s, a licensed acupuncturist, herbalist, and author of Chill Out and Get Healthy, who is included as a case study in this new book. Jan is described as arriving at Aimee’s office with a diet iced tea and a story of “fertility reducing eating habits,” a nutritionally void diet of low-fat, sugar-free, processed foods. Jen is probably not unlike a lot of women visiting Aimee or fertility specialists across the country; in fact, she’s probably more like the average infertility patient than not.
Where Jan may take a left fork in the road is in the diet she now follows, as prescribed by Aimee and outlined in the Yes, You Can Get Pregnant book. Today, Aimee excitedly told me that Jan is pregnant, and she did it naturally without the invasive IVF she was prepared to do. Aimee explained that Jan cleaned up her diet, took liver pills, and did eight acupuncture treatments. Then, after two menstrual cycles, learned she was expecting.
So is another of Aimee’s clients, a 43-year-old woman pregnant with her second child. “She followed my diet to a T, better than I do sometimes,” said Aimee. “She’s 20 weeks pregnant with a clean amnio.”
So what is Aimee prescribing that’s helping these women achieve the pregnancies they so desire? Just like Jan and the 43-year-old mom, they’re laser focused on what they eat as much as what they don’t.
“Since I’ve gotten stricter with my girls’ diets, I’ve noticed they get pregnant faster than ever before in my practice,” said Aimee.
Yes, You Can Get Pregnant: The Diet is a 51-page guide and preview of a full book of the same name due out next spring. In it, Aimee outlines her research showing that how a woman eats can and does directly impact her fertility and ability to conceive, whether naturally or through medical means.
Namely, she has three “Yes” foods that every woman should she be eating: animal protein, fats, and fruits and vegetables.
“We can’t improve the quantity of eggs, but we can improve the quality,” said Aimee. “We just need one good egg!”
And eggs are actually one of Aimee’s yes foods under animal protein. She highly recommends eggs with yolk for the choline they provide. For eggs or any other meat product, Aimee says they should be pasture- or farm-raised or grass-fed animals. Not only is it something that is important to her from an ethical standpoint, but the hormones and antibiotics found in conventional animal sources “cause excessive disruption to a woman’s system,” she said.
Fats also make the list for yes foods on Aimee’s fertility-focused diet. She suggests that the amount of vegetable oils we eat actually turn what should be a 1:1 ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fats in to a 20:1 ratio. “This translates into hormone and endocrine issues like PCOS, irregular periods, and other fertility issues,” explained Aimee. Even regular butter instead of margarine is one way she recommends to get these necessary fats.
Finally, fruits and vegetables are a vital part of any diet, whether or not you’re trying to get pregnant. But for Aimee’s patients and the millions of women like them, she says these plant foods are “the best way to get antioxidants, which protect us from free radicals that age us. For pregnancies later in life, we want to hinder the age-related factor as much as impossible.”
For all of these “Yes” foods, no doubt Aimee has “No” foods, too, and the list should come as no surprise. The biggest change in diet for women following Yes, You Can Get Pregnant is the removal of these five foods: gluten, soy, added sugars, artificial sweeteners, and pesticides, which means exclusively eating organic fruits and vegetables.
Whether embarking on your quest to get pregnant for the first time, or feeling like a veteran of the infertility world, your diet should be just as important as tracking your ovulation.
One in seven couples experience some form of infertility, including Jan, Aimee’s 43-year-old client, and even myself. While I wasn’t a patient of Aimee’s, I certainly would have been open to any ideas on improving the odds that my IVF cycle would be successful. I eat a clean diet as is, and given my own experience and seeing research, including what’s included in Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, I have to believe that it was a contributing factor in my successful treatment.
Jan was this close to going through with an IVF cycle, which, speaking from experience, can be incredibly taxing on your budget, sanity, and overall physical well-being. If you’re facing thousands of dollars for treatment, weeks of painful shots, and the uncertainty that any of it will even work, consider editing your diet first and see if it doesn’t get you any closer to your dream.

Mediterranean Diet May Improve Bone Health, Study Suggests

Does a study of a whole 127 people deserve to be reported? At least they emphasized "may" in the "may improve."

From ABC News:  Mediterranean Diet May Improve Bone Health, Study Suggests

Could olive oil be the new milk? A new study suggests that this might be the case — though not all health experts are convinced yet.
The study, which looked at 127 elderly Spanish  men, found that those who ate a Mediterranean diet enriched with olive oil had higher levels of a protein called osteocalcin that plays a role in bone formation. The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
This could be an important finding since osteoporosis is the most common bone disease in the United States, affecting more than 10 million people. Osteoporosis mainly affects elderly women, but men can develop the disease too. In 2005, there were an estimated 2 million osteoporosis-related fractures, 29 percent them  in men.
Earlier studies have found that there are lower rates of osteoporosis in the Mediterranean basin, compared to the rest of Europe,  and that may have something to do with the Mediterranean diet. This diet consists of minimally processed fruits, vegetables, breads, beans, nuts and seeds. Olive oil is supposed to be the main source of fat, and there is usually limited dairy, egg, and red meat.
Past studies have suggested that the Mediterranean diet has the potential to lower cardiovascular risk, increase weight loss, lower cancer risk, improve diabetes, and reduce pain and swollen joints in rheumatoid arthritis. What if improved bone health could be added to this growing list?
“We have more evidence that what is good for health in one way, tends to be good for health overall,” says Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University Prevention Research Center. “The very same Mediterranean diet known to be good for cardiovascular health may also confer benefits on your bones.”
However, Dr. Beth Kitchin, a patient educator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Osteoporosis Clinic, cautions that osteocalcin is simply a marker of bone health — in other words, the new study doesn’t actually look at whether  the Mediterranean diet increased bone density or lowered fracture risk.
“This is very interesting data but much, much more work needs to be done before you can say if this has a true clinical impact on bone health,” says Kitchin.
On this point, Katz agrees. “This is not a study of bone density, or clinical effects; it is a short-term study of biomarkers. Interesting, but [it is] more useful for hypothesis generation than anything else.”
Nutritionists were also quick to point out that this study shouldn’t undermine the importance of calcium and vitamin D in bone health.
“It doesn’t replace calcium and vitamin D in the diet, however,” says Keith-Thomas Ayoob, a dietician and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “But including all three, and regular exercise, are showing promise as the best way to ensure good bone health.
“I was brought up on a high-olive oil [Mediterranean] diet. It’s how we ate. But not much milk or calcium-containing foods, and my elders paid a price for it.”

 

Are you ready to get serious?

The whole crux of successful weight loss is to make that loss gradual. Anyone who goes cold turkey - giving up allth eir favorite foods, etc., will succeed for perhaps a week or two, then be unable to resist it anymore and go on a binge. Then they'll think they lack willpower, and give up their attempts to lose weight alrogether.

IN my plan, that doesn't happen because you don't give up anything - you just eat smaller amounts of it.

Instead of five cookies for dessert, you have three. Instead of drinking a Pepsi after dinner, you drink half a Pepsi.  Instead of a huge hunk of meat and a ton of mashed potatoes, you eat only half the usual serving of meat and a third of the mashed potatoes...you get the idea.

And as the weeks go by you will start to lose weight. It will take TWO weeks to start with before anything happens, because you have to get your body into a state of caloric imbalance. That's another reason why dieters give up - they starve themselves for a week and step on the scale expecting to lose five pounds, only to find out that they haven't lost anything and in actual fact have gained a pound (which will happen because you're instituting weight training into your regime.)

But be patient, don't despair, after that two weeks, the weight will start to come off - gradually. A pound or two a week at the most.

And you don't want to speed that up by much - losing 2 pounds a week is generally considered the healthy way to do it.

But, you can ensure that you lose 2 pounds a week instead of 1 by deciding to implement a little willpower.

After about a month or two of an exercise regime and cutting back on your eating, you're going to look at those three cookies after dinner (which you had cut back from five) and think... "Do I really want to eat these? I've worked so hard, things are going so well...I think I won't have any dessert tonight."

And you won't feel deprived when you do this.

Similarly, if you are in the habit of working out or walking or biking, returning home and grabbing a Pepsi to reward yourself...you'll think to yourself...I just burned a few calories....I don't want to drink this... I'll have one tomorrow... and again, you wont feel deprived because you're seeing your success and you know it will continue.

What of course you do not want to do is give up on any of your three square meals a day, nor do you want to lessen them any more than you have already done. It's the desserts you're going to forego, not the necessary nutrients and ingredients you get from your food.

And once you give up those desserts for good - and are all right with that, not feeling deprived - the weight will come off faster. Still gradually, but faster.

Then, after you've reached the weight that you wanted to achieve, you can add those desserts back in. Not the full fledged desserts you used to have, but the one or two cookies a day, the one or two Pepsis, no more than that. And you body will be able to process those desserts and not trigger a desire to binge...

You will get there.

60 is the new 40

On August 10, 2012, the Cheyenne chapter of the AARP hosted a seminar called Gray Matters - which was free and provided a free lunch - unfortunately fish and cheesecake, blech - from 4 to 6 was a reception for all travelers who had come in for the AARP National Spelling Bee to be held on the 11th.

I attended that and it was a lot of fun. The emcee introduced a few folks, we talked about words, there was a "mock" spelling bee (which only consisted of about 20 people getting up and being questioned on one word...) and so on. And there were finger foods there - Chinese food to be precise. Don't know where they got it from or if they cooked it on site (Little America is a hotel and resort where people come to play golf among other things) but it was delish.

The spelling bee started at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (Well...8:30 is not so ungodly but I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to get there in time for registration, etc.) It started with 4 rounds of 25 words each - which was a Written Test.

The first 25 words were extremely easy. They asked words like "Greetings" and "Navel" and "Mince." I suppose a few might have been considered difficult... "Animus" and "Lacuna."


The second 25 words were equally easy, but I did miss MUGWUMP.


I assume they did this just to help everyone settle the nerves and get new people used to what was going on. People had trouble hearing some of the words (hey, they were all over 50 and most over 60) and the Pronouncer  would come down and tell them the word face to face and have them say it back, etc. Indeed, the Pronouncer did an excellent job.


Third round was where they started asking the difficult words.


I missed:
QUESTIONARY INERCALATE
TUATARA
SKOSH
VIRIDITY
WIMBLE

The fourth round was the real killer. I only got 12 out of 25 right. I missed:

FELICIFIC
DOVEKIE
FLYTING
NAPERY
COTYLEDONARY
WELTSCHMERRZ
OPPUGNER
AECIOSPORE
SYNCYTIAL
KNUR
IRIDIUM
TUYERE
HYOSCYAMINE

I then stayed for the Oral rounds and was joined by one of my friends from my Scrabble Club. (I think an audience could have assembled for the Written rounds, too. There were chairs there and family were in them...but I think most people only wanted to come see the Oral rounds where you actually saw the speller's faces as opposed to their backs, etc.)

Two of the people I met last night at the reception made it to the Orals. One of them it was his first trip to the Bee and he was successful his first time out. Made it through about 10 rounds. (In the Orals, you miss two words and you're out.) Another one was an elderly woman from Minnesota who also got through about 10 rounds before being knocked out.

There were three sisters and a brother who had come as a sort of family reunion. The eldest sister made it to the Oral rounds but was bounced after only two rounds. This was too bad and it was because she was a bit unlucky - she got two 6-syllable words in a row while some of the others were getting much easier ones (but still, not ones I could have spelled). But she was disqualified along with several other people in the same round, so hopefully she didn't feel too bad.

The words in the Oral Rounds were extremely difficult. Several times more difficult than the toughest words in the final round of the Written.


But, had I studied for a year, I think I could have handled them.


And it is my intention to study for a year and  get into the Orals next year.


So, why is the title of this blog entry 60 is thenew 40?


Because it is.


People are living longer. You don't want to outlive your money and more importantly you don't want to outlive your sense of enjoyment of life. And learning new things every day is enjoyment and keeps the mind active.


The AARP Spelling Bee is held every year, and it gives you an excellent reason to travel to Cheyenne and see The Cowboy State. You'll meet lots of interesting people.


You do have to study.


I studied very desultorily for about a month...combine all the time I studied and it was about 10 hours. Not nearly enough, but then, I'm a good speller so the Written Rounds were relatively easy - except for that killer last round.


Why learn words that you'll never, ever say in real life?Well, because they're interesting. And the concepts of what you'll learn, you can apply in other areas. So it's a win win.


So start planning to live a long, healthy, active, intellectual life, and do it now, however old you might be!

No posts today

I'm participating in the AARP Spelling Bee held in Cheyenne on Saturday, Aug 11. Today, Friday, there's a day-long "orientation," talk about keeping active, and mock spelling bee, and I want to attend it.

Will let you know on Sunday how I did...I'm not expecting to win but I do hope to get out of the writtens into the orals. There are 60 participants which must be whittled down to 15 - done so by 4 rounds of 25 written words each. I should be able to beat out 45 people to get on to that platform for the oral round, even if I lose on the first question!

Well, we'll see.

Pot belly or six pack?

If you watch women's beach volleyball, you see all these tall women... I'm sure they've got to be at least 5- 7 and probably taller than that, probably six footers, they all have these little pot bellies above their teeny tiny bikini bottoms.

Whereas if you look at the female track athletes, their stomachs are as flat as pancakes above their painted-on bikini shorts. Indeed, they have "six packs."

Why the difference?

Well, physically, it's because the track runners must do situps with weights, and various stomach crunches, et al, to remove all fat (not excess fat, just fat) from their bodies, which gives the six pack, whereas the volleyballers are perfectly fine with their muscular and toned bodies, rather than sculpted ones.

The first place fat goes on a woman is the breasts and stomach, followed by the thighs. And this fat is needed - it's what gives a woman - or a man - energy! Reserves to draw on!

Right now I'm watching women's water polo - USA vs Australia, and there are some big women on each side... you'd never see them in the diving competitions where the esthetic values of the judges and perhaps even the spectators is that you have to be skinny (although, more likely, I admit, you have to be short, so you can do all the acrobatic stuff before hitting the pool).

Just remember - your goal is to be fit, not to remove all fat from your body. There's "excess" fat, and then there's the fat you need.

Fat? We are fit. Get over it, say women athletes

From Yahoo News:  Fat? We are fit. Get over it, say women athletes

LONDON (Reuters) - American weightlifter Holley Mangold tips the scales at 346 pounds (157 kilograms) and she is proud of being the heaviest woman at the London Olympics.
Mangold, 22, who competed in the women's 75 kilogram-plus division, is one of growing number of women athletes speaking out at their frustration with the public scrutiny of their body size and image rather than their fitness and skills.
At the 2012 Olympics, a list of top female athletes have hit back at critics who have called them fat including British heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis, Australian swimmer Liesel Jones, and the Brazilian women's soccer team.
For Mangold, her weight is a something to be proud of.
"Between my team mate (Sarah Robles) and I, I think we both showed you can be athletic at any size," said Mangold whose Twitter profile has the tagline "Loving life and living big!"
"I'm not saying everyone is an athlete but I am saying an athlete can come in any size."
Mangold, who suffered a wrist injury three weeks ago, came 10th in a field of 14 on Sunday, watched by her NFL-playing brother Nick, centre for the New York Jets. Robles came seventh.

The 2012 Olympics have been hailed as the 'Women's Games' for including women in all sports and from all national teams with campaigners hoping this will lead to more role models in sport and increase female participation in physical activity.
Holley Mangold of the U.S. competes in the women's +75kg group A snatch weightlifting competition at the ExCel …
The Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), a UK charity aiming to get more women into sport to build self-esteem and confidence, said only 12 percent of British girls at age 14 were doing enough exercise to meet recommended guidelines.
WSFF Chief Executive Sue Tibballs said their research found negative body image was consistently cited as a barrier for girls participating in exercise as popular culture gave out the message it was more important to be thin than fit.
She said this negative attitude over body image was also applied to women athletes at the Olympics who are in peak physical condition with healthy body images but still come under fire for being fat.
EATING DISORDERS RIFE
"Women athletes will regularly get comments about their appearance although men won't," said Tibballs.
"This really adds to the pressure on women athletes, many of whom already have a disordered attitude towards foods because they are in a controlled routine where weight is a key issue."
British triathlete Hollie Avil, who competed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, quit high-level sports in May for the sake of her health after the recurrence of an eating disorder brought on by a coach telling her she was too fat.
Tibballs said it was hard to believe that Ennis, poster girl of the London Games with a rippling washboard stomach, was called fat and accused of carrying too much weight by a high-ranking UK athletics official ahead of the Games.
Ennis, 26, won gold for Britain on Saturday.

Australia's three-times gold medalist swimmer Leisel Jones's figure was questioned by some Australian media before London, who suggested she did not look as fit as at Beijing in 2008.
This sparked an angry reaction from team mates and an online uproar about body image and what constitutes fit or fat.
"I'm embarrassed by the Aussie media having a go at Leisel, one of Australia's greatest Olympians. Support athletes don't drag them down," fellow swimmer Melanie Schlanger tweeted.
"U can't judge fitness from looks anyway and how about we don't criticize at all."
Jones helped Australia win a silver medal in the medley relay in London.
Britain's Rebecca Adlington waves after the women's 800m freestyle final during the London 2012 Olympic Games at …British swimmer Rebecca Adlington, who won two bronze medals at London, told reporters she was going to avoid reading Twitter comments during the Olympics because so many were insults about her appearance.
The Brazilian women's soccer team were called "a bit heavy" by the coach of the Cameroon team after the South Americans won their game against the African nation 5-0.
British weightlifter Zoe Smith won fans when she hit back at attacks on Twitter saying she looked like a "lesbian" and a "bloke", addressing her critics as "chauvinistic, pigheaded blokes who feel emasculated (as) we .. are stronger than them".
"We don't lift weights in order to look hot," said 18-year-old Smith, who set at new British record at London where she came 12th in the women's 58kg class.
"We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren't weak and feeble."

 

Craigs List Great For FInding Weights

A new client of mine told me an interesting story...

She'd bought 2 25-pound weights at Walmart for $40 a couple of days ago.

Then she looked on Craig's list, and found someone offering 2 barbells and 150 pounds worth of weights...for $40.

Now, he lived 40 miles away, but she's got a car that gets good gas mileage, and said it cost her only $10 in gas to get there and back.

So for $50, she got about $300 worth of equipment.

(Fortunately she'd kept the receipt, so she got cash back from Walmart, and used that to buy the weights from this guy.)

Now that she has these weights, I expect her weight loss speed to double..

Watch the Olympics

I'm actually writing this three days in advance. I'm currently watching the US gymastic team working on the pommel horse.

My they've got some nice biceps!

Earlier I watched a very few minutes of women's beach volleyball. US vs Australia. Both sets of women were wearing the skimpiest bikini bottoms you could ever imagine, so much that their butt-cheeks were exposed...but something I'd never seen before - both sets were also wearing long sleeved shirts. (Although for some reason the Australian women seemed to have their sports bras on over their white shirts.)

Well, it's England...I thought there was a heat wave going on there but maybe it's cool out there in beach vollyball land...

I suppose I'm going against the tide with women wearing skimpy bikinis..after all I don't think it's possible for a woman these days to buy anything except a bikini... I have a one-piece and have had it for many years... course I admit I'm a wee bit paranoid....I swim in a public pool and if some punk-ass kid wants to have some fun by pulling down my panties...well, he can't do it because with a one-piece there are no panties.

Much, much earlier today I was watching women's fencing - which shocked me because I don't ever recall women's fencing being shown on TV before - albeit on one of the minor channels covering the Olympics, not the major ones which had women's basketball or soccer or something of that nature...

Anyway...you want to get fit? Try fencing, or "chess on legs" as its called.

----Wow...The Chinese are really screwing up in all their team gymnastic events. I don't think I've ever seen them do that before.  A couple of 'em have fallen off the pommel horse and one just fell off the rings.

Anyway...fencing. Fencing is a great sport and will improve your cardio no end.

Give it a try.