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heathervandermolen's Journal

 
showing entries 1 to 4 of 4

22 July 2016

I don't come on here as regularly as I should. Regardless, knowing that I have resources I can use on this site and a supportive community motivates me to keep going and for that I'm truly grateful. Lately, I've discovered that resting days are extremely important; just as important as the workouts themselves. I find that when I have a balanced days of rest and workouts in a week, I tend to lose weight. If I rest for too long (example last week I had a 2 hour leg workout on Monday and rested the rest of the week), I don't gain or lose any weight, or the fluctuation is marginal. If I workout too many days in the week, my weight remains more or less the same.

Why is that though? While every body reacts differently to workouts and diets, the basic foundation remains the same. In the last few months on my journey to lose weight (recall I was in fact 164lbs but when I started with fatsecret.com I was 150lbs which is why the first stage of my diet struggles are missing here), I also had the opportunity to educate myself on healthy eating, healthy workouts, healthy living, and most importantly, I got to learn about my body. It's no secret that our bodies work 24/7 for us and to keep us living. Even when we're sick and take a sick day from work, our body is working away 24 hours, 7 days a week to help fight the illness. So it's no wonder when we workout and put our body through stress, it's going to want to rest for a day or two. So if you're going to workout, make sure you give your body a time to relax, otherwise it won't be able to lose weight (or whatever magic it does to help us lose weight).

Speaking of workouts, I used to think I needed to workout 3-3.5 hours during each workout. I would literally hit every machine I could and do every free weight workout I could think of. For example, if it was a leg day, I would do squats with the bar, deadlifts, leg presses, walking lunges with weights, leg extensions, hip abduction and the other hip thingie; then I'd move on to my burn-out which was jumping squats, mountain climbers and so on; I'd finish off with ab workouts which I did everyday without acception because I thought if I left my abs alone for one day, they'd betray me and allow that doughy midsection to fester. The reality is, if you're muscle training in order to increase your metabolism (and not for a competition or anything, just for yourself), you really don't need more than 1.5 hours at the gym. Even an hour is fine. And if you're having a crappy day and you only feel like doing half an hour, that's ok. Because (and I read this somewhere) "A sh*tty workout is better than no workout."

If you're not looking to increase muscle mass, and only go for cardio, than you shouldn't be doing more than an hour. And change it up a bit to shock your body a little, for example sprint intervals for 20 minutes instead of a half hour jog. Sprint intervals (jog for 1 min, sprint for 30 sec, jog for 1 min, sprint for 30 sec, etc.) are much more effective at helping your body lose fat than a half hour constant jog, and your body will continue to break down fat even after you've long left the treadmill. Sprint intervals aren't the only effective cardio workouts; any kind of interval workout will do whether it's the elliptical, stair-master, the bike, or even a series of freelance workouts (jumping squats, mountain climbers, the ropes, jumping jacks, rope skipping, etc.).

So why is it that we don't need to workout as much as we thought? Why is working out too much counterproductive to our goals of weight loss? Because what those good looking trainers have been telling us for years is true; losing weight is only 20% workout and 80% diet. Yea, yea, I used to cringe when I heard those words too. I mean seriously, who has the time and money to buy healthy food (a little perspective, I can make pasta five times with one bag for $1.99 and tomato sauce ($.99 for the canned sauce), vs $5-10 to make a healthy and good looking salad here in Toronto), and worse, prep meals for the week? My trainer used to beg me to eat better. On Thursdays before we started our training, she'd ask me what I had for lunch, and I'd say, "Oh Gabs, you know today's Shawarma Thursdays at work," and she would shake her head at me, rightfully so. The most important thing we can do to help our bodies lose weight, is eat as clean as possible. Depending on what your goals are, you may want to increase the protein and reduce the carb intake, or increase the (healthy) fats and reduce the carbs, or even increase the (complex) carbs (eg. greens), and reduce the fats, etc... In my case, I first started on a strict high-protein, low-carb diet. I got rid of anything sugar and saturated fats. Sure, it seemed expensive at first because I was transitioning from junk eating to healthy eating, but I was committed and it was soo worth it.

But we have to be careful with diets. I strongly believe that we can't allow our bodies to get accustomed to diets, especially the strict diets. I posted my meal plans on here about a couple of months or so ago, and it hasn't changed much, but I do have the occasional ice cream, and blooming onion at RibFest! Diets are a good starting point, but if there's anything I learned, routine isn't what will help us lose weight; keeping our body on its toes and shocking it every now and then to break the routine is what will help us.
Weigh-in: 140.2 lb lost so far: 9.8 lb still to go: 10.2 lb Diet followed reasonably well
   add comment losing 1.1 lb a week

24 June 2016

Wow, thank you everyone for the support! I'm still new on this site, and terrible at journal entries. I didn't expect to hear from anyone else, I thought this was only for me to keep track.

I should probably give a little more background. I started working out intensely in April and lost 17lbs up until my first week of June. I weigh myself once every two weeks, and so when I started this I ball parked it at 150lbs. Then for this whole month I just fluctuated from 150 to 147 and that's why I thought I had hit a plateau.

I realized however, that I had been too hard on my body. Working out 5-6 days a week for up to 3 hours is too much stress on the body, and I hadn't been allowing myself to rest which is when the "magic" happens. I weighed myself today after taking my workouts down to 3 times a week for 2 hours, and I was 144.6lbs.

To conclude, I discovered that I have not hit a plateau just like some of you had commented in my previous entry. I may be losing weight too quickly because of my strict diet, so my goal will now be to educate myself on healthy eating so that the weight stays off for good!

Thank you for all the encouragement. Weight struggle has been a part of my life since I was a child and I've had a terrible relationship with food. But I'm going to find a balance and try and live a healthy life! I also need to keep up with FatSecret. Keeping track of my food, workouts and entries will definitely help me see my accomplishments.
Weigh-in: 144.6 lb lost so far: 5.4 lb still to go: 14.6 lb Diet followed reasonably well
   add comment losing 4.9 lb a week

20 June 2016

Weigh-in: 147.4 lb lost so far: 2.6 lb still to go: 17.4 lb Diet followed reasonably well
   (5 comments) losing 0.9 lb a week

31 May 2016

Weigh-in: 150.0 lb lost so far: 0 lb still to go: 20.0 lb Diet followed N/A

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