Starladesiree's Journal, 04 February 2009

depending on your will power, you CAN eat anything you want. it just has to be in moderation and portion control. For example. eat that donut, just maybe next time only eat half. Split it with a coworker maybe. And the chili, have one bowl, but not two. ice cream...i cant be good support there. i wouldve been sitting right next to you with spoon in hand asking if you had any graham crackers i could crumble on top. lol but THATS why i try to (for the most part) stay away from ice cream. thats my "i have no will power" item and i will over eat it. other wise, maybe this will be gross, but hopefully the chili will make everything else you ate....come out of your body fast? =) 

Hahaha! I can hope. I can usually be good with portions but today I felt ravenous for some reason. I think I am stressing too much lately, and maybe that's why I haven't lost any weight. Grr. So frustrating.  

You're going to have to work those foods into your diet eventually anyway. I don't think anyone can realistically eat clean 100% of the time. I'll let you in on a little secret... but you can't tell anyone (except the whole interweb), alright? Alright. There is no benefit to eating more than about 90% of clean foods. None. The only hard part is making sure you're eating healthy with 90% of your meals. This is kind of dangerous knowledge. You have to realize that 10% is 2 meals per week... not a two day bender. LOL Another dirty little secret. I can't remember what the exact number is, but there is a point (30 minute mark?) when you exercise where you will not receive any more cardiovascular benefits from your workout. Anything extra only adds to the calorie burn. When I reported in my journal that I was surprised I had lost, it was because I had been eating Super Bowl leftovers for 3 days. Know what it was? Frito Chili Pie... only with vegetarian chili. Just make sure your 10% of higher calorie (no such thing as a cheat) meals don't take up 30% of your calories and you'll be fine. 

Haha. Thanks /0. Can you elaborate on the cardio benefits thing? Like, do you mean it's pointless to do cardio past that point or that the heart/lung benefits of it don't really last past the point, but you're still burning calories? 

You still get the benefit of the calorie burn. If you're moving, you're still burning just as many calories. So it's still great for losing weight, but after a certain point, and like I said I can't remember the exact time, you don't get any more heart or lung benefits from that workout. It sounds kind of counterintuitive, but apparently there is a point in your workout where the body has worry more about the stress happening to your body than improving your heart/lung function. I wish I could find the article/study, but Google is just giving me post-heart attack workout studies right now. 

After a lot of nerdy "research", I found this link http://www.sigep.org/ documents/cardio-101.pdf (I put a space in between .org/ and documents... delete it when you copy & paste). There were others, but this one is easier to read and has other helpful information. It basically says that you get the vast majority of heart/lung benefits from the first 20 minutes of your cardio, and that you should stop at 60 minutes total... up to five times per week. 

Ahh. Very cool. Thanks so much!