Ahh Wednesday

Amazing how long the day can seem when you are keeping track of everything that into your mouth. I did get a lot done yesterday though. My upper back felt the effects of those overhead presses Monday, and last night was just weird, tossing and turning somehow hot and cold at the same time, but not sick. Maybe it's a central nervous system thing? Trying to find information or experiences of women my age who start training with relatively heavy weights and barbells is difficult. The women my age who do this all seem to have been training for years which is completely different. I want to learn about recovery times and rates of progression. Maybe this blog will help the next woman in my shoes, a former cardio addict finally getting around to training with weights and wanting to do it the most efficient way. After the discomfort of last night I am going to take this week off from lifting more seriously as suggested in The New Rules of Lifting, but with the calorie counting I am still doing cardio. Took the 6am Spin class this morning and may hit the gym again tonight. Hiking through the mountains in less then a month- I can't wait!

Cutting the fat.

Well, one could say I've got the exercise part of this down. Spinning and interval running are my cardio and I have documented a ton about lifting. Three months ago I started using this blog to share my experiences with various popular and not so popular forms of training and I have found methods that work and built in physically demanding vacations to stave off boredom; including a soon to come week of hiking in the mountains and two weeks of skiing (SKIING!!) early next year. So, great, I'm 20% of the way there. Here comes the challenging part: diet. I want the best of both worlds, lots of lean body mass burning away calories and a lot less fluff which means I just want to lose fat. This complicates things. Being a good little reader and researcher I checked to see how to do this and approximately how long it will take.

Are you ready? A woman who is close to her optimal BMI can burn one to one-half pound of fat a week, as long as she consumes enough protein and continues lifting challenging weights. (Don't feel like looking for the citation at the moment) So, here we go, I plan to lose 20 pounds of fat in 20 weeks. If it turns out I don't need to lose that much I will reassess at the time. Good thing I don't have a beauty contest coming up in the next month or so!

First, I had to figure out how much I was eating, so Sunday I wrote down everything and put it in the Fitday chart. It was a basic day, fairly healthy foods with a couple of treats thrown in. The treats were 3/4 a cup of ice cream- yes I eat it out of the measuring cup, and half of a large-ish chocolate chip cookie. 2600 calories! Yikes, and that was a no wine, no crazy filet mignon type of day. Okee-dokee. So for the next two weeks I'm dropping that down to 2000 or less (keep in mind I work-out a lot and am 5'7") and at least 100 grams or protein a day. This worked out ok yesterday.

Speaking of yesterday, this was supposed to be the start of my deload or no lifting week but after lounging around all weekend and the shock of my eating habits, towards 5pm I started getting antsy. I decided to take a Spin class, easy, cardio and Pam teaches it, she is always entertaining. However, like I said, it was just after 5 and her class doesn't start until 7:15 and I was already climbing the walls bored. There is a 6pm class but it is ridiculous (the instructor does a lot of hopping up and down on the bike, weird tricep/ pushup thingys- yes while riding the bike, and some bizarre butt off the seat- thrust into the handlebars then move the butt back again while hovering over the seat move I wish I could videotape for this. No one on The Tour behaves that way!) Which meant I arrived at the gym with just enough time to train with barbells before taking Pam's class. I'm an addict.

Fitness, anyone?

Here is a little secret about me. I don't like Summer. Yes I realize that makes me practically inhuman but cool weather and wind make me feel alive in every cell. Hot humid days do the opposite. That said, it's deep in the summer now and I needed a project. When the shorts I pulled out of the bedroom drawer were a good three inches from meeting at the waist the project was clear. It is time to get in shape. I get the magazines and pay attention to the latest fitness news, for example, the recent news that middle-aged women need to exercise for an hour a day to prevent obesity. Simple enough right?

Nope, browse through some more fitness websites and they say that much steady exercise will just leave you at a minimal level of fitness and bursts of high-intensity cardio and strength-training make a person fit. One thing most agreed on is that one cannot effectively burn fat and build muscle at the same time. Exactly what I want to do. Bummer!

Here is the program. Two weeks focusing on cardio, sometimes two sessions a day including high-intensity interval training and bodyweight exercises in order to blast as much fat during the exercise sessions as possible. Also, some research indicates that high-intensity interval training causes the body to continue burning fat after the workout. Probably while you are sitting quietly after the shower trying to get back to feelin normal in my experience. Then two weeks focusing on strength-training and including at least three cardio sessions weekly in order to build more muscle to boost the metabolism and stay as vital as possible. I plan to be one of those active old people.

It is the end of the first two cardio weeks and I am so glad! Who would have thought I would be itching to pick up something heavy and actually a little over the Spin room? Now I just have to decide when to start lifting, over the weekend or wait until Monday. Also- the shorts button, not totally comfortably yet but three pounds later gives me hope. After cycling through twice, two months, it will be time to re-evaluate and possibly tweak the program. Now, what is your Summer project?