6 weeks progress

(I've actually been on my workout routine for 8 full weeks but between the first measurement and the last measurement was about 6 weeks; 6/30 to 8/13.)

Here they are with changes:

Weight: 132.1 lbs --> 128.8 lbs (3.3 lbs lost)
Height: 5'3"
BMI: 23.9 --> 22.8
BMR: 1311 kCal  --> 1314 kCal
Body Fat: 27.3% --> 25.2%
Waist: 26.5 in --> 25.7in
Chest: 31.5 in --> (forgot to measure)
Hips: 37.5 in --> (forgot to measure)
Thigh: 24 in  --> (ditto)
Calf: 15 in --> (yep)
Bicep: 11 in --> (ugh.)

So, while I have been feeling sort of bummed and unsure of my progress because my measurements haven't really changed much every time I do it, it appears that I am in fact making strides! My trainer friend said it was "amazing" and I "should be really proud of myself." So I am. He said it takes most people 3-4 months to drop 2% body fat but I find that hard to believe. But then again, I am relentless tracking calories and working out 6 days a week, but I always feel like I could work out more or harder and do better. I did lose 3.7lbs of fat and gained back 0.2lb of muscle. 

I think the ECA stack was helpful and I loved how focused I felt on it, but I haven't noticed that much difference in my performance so the effects must have been metabolic. I'm back on hydroxycut for another few days and then ECA round 2 will start. 

I'm up to a full mile of non-stop running at 10min/mile. It's slow, but I can do the second mile in about 11min too, not totally running. Dealing with shin splints sucks but I am getting used to them - trying to find remedies but I keep hearing that they just happen to everyone. Trainer friend mentioned something funny about girls who run on treadmills too much having "cardio bunny bubble butt" where their butt and hips are stuck out; apparently this is due to the particular muscles used in treadmill running which are not used when running on the road. He was very anti-treadmill and mentioned that it's inefficient and unnatural; we use stabilizing muscles to match the pace of the band and stay in place rather than propelling ourselves forward and upwards in real motion. It was interesting... need to read up on that.

Anyway, if it took me 6 weeks to drop 2%, that means I can't expect to meet my 18% body fat goal any earlier than December. I'm losing around 1/2 lb per week which seems slow but it also seems totally sustainable. I DO look different and feel different, and I feel good about what I eat--not "dieting"--and how much I work out--thank you, endorphins--so I'm trying my best to remember that patience is a virtue and I should enjoy the ride of becoming stronger and fitter at every stage :)

gallery of goals

Here are some visual versions of what I am aiming for in terms of my ultimate fitness goals, after I have lost the body fat and increased muscle mass. I'll probably add to this gallery as time goes on, and make notes about those I actually achieve. The poses themselves, for me, are really just a marker of strength and flexibility... at this point, my intentions are not to do yoga for yoga's sake (though I've been there before) but really just to know that my body is capable of responding to my demands that it contort into crazy shapes.

I am starting now with handstands for balance and upper body strength. And working on my splits.

None of these images are attributed appropriately; I got them all off Google images and swear I'm not trying to make money using them.

working out... at work? yes, please.

One of the most frustrating things about life for me right now are the dozens of hours I spend sitting at my work desk. I find that when I am home, even just the house work and aimless milling around I do helps keep me feeling active and motivated. This weekend I worked out once every couple of hours, I think. (But let's be honest, I'm chalking that up to early-stage excitement... we'll call it fitness infatuation.)

On good days, when it's less than 100 degrees and/or 90% humidity, I bike to work; 7 miles one way, in fact. But it's summer now and the aforementioned criteria do not often apply. I also take the stairs most of the time--I'm lucky enough to be on the 3rd floor where I have that option--and working at a university seems automatically to mean that I am always walking someplace. Even so, I'm very conscious of the amount of time I spend sitting, and while my fingers and mind are highly active at the computer, my sad little muscles get jealous.

So I did some digging and found this fun article on 33 Ways to Deskercise! and I totally want one of these under-desk portable elliptical machines. Hello wishlist...

diet and nutrition

When I first planned out this fitness endeavor, I was fussing a lot over nutrition. Should I go raw? Vegetarian? Do some crazy fast? Eat a ton of protein? There are so many variations on the right way to eat and I spent a lot of time trying to be perfect about my plan.

(Background: I was vegan for about 8 years and have done raw periodically, so "what to eat" is always kind of a topic in my world. For the past 4 years I've basically eaten a cleaner version of the SAD. I don't do fast food and I don't really do junk, but I'm not super health-conscious with my foods.)

What I learned through a couple of convergent avenues was sort of shocking: it doesn't matter what you eat while you lose weight, it only matters how many calories of it you eat. Remember the fun fact about fat loss resulting from caloric deficit, period? Both my personal trainer friend and several bona fide  studies and real-world experiments confirmed this for me. Some people got skinny eating only Twinkies. For real.

Having said that--which by the way I found sort of an empowering fact--I can eat cookies?!--it is undeniably easier to stay within a caloric deficit when one consumes things like vegetables and lean proteins rather than pizza and/or chinese food. Given that my caloric allowance is around 1300 calories per day, I need to be smart about where I am getting them from, otherwise one meal can knock out my whole day!

Another thing that I was worried about is this "starvation mode" idea. Notwithstanding the fact that logic must be thrown right out the window in order to consider it possible (mass hysteria, anyone?), I was concerned that if I DIDN'T meet my minimum basal metabolic energy requirements for a given day, my body would instantly begin to sabotage me by holding on to calories, and thus, fat. Actually maybe even creating weight gain just to spite me.*

Think about this for 10 seconds and it should be obvious why it doesn't work. People who are starving are not magically getting fatter just because they have a meal. If you don't eat enough to maintain your body composition, your metabolism will begin to use its available resources in the form of muscle and/or fat. That means weight loss. So... caloric deficit=losing weight.

But what about that muscle?

Yes, if you don't eat enough to maintain your current body mass you take energy (aka mass, thanks Einstein!) from both muscles and fat. But if you want to lose mostly fat and either spare or build your muscles, you have to tell your body that's what you're after. You have to work out hard enough to encourage muscle growth IN ADDITION to burning calories... because if muscles hear the call to growth and calories are too low to accommodate the demand, your body turns to burning fat instead.  Bingo!

Anyway, I hope those fun facts are helpful. I mentioned I'm using MyFitnessPal to track what I eat and how much I work out, and it's a real lifesaver. The key for me is putting in EVERYTHING I eat, because it's easy to miss 20 calories here and 50 there, and suddenly find myself over the limit. So despite all the talk about how junk food is fine as long as you only eat within your caloric allotment, I'm eating "clean" because I feel good that way. And when it comes to hunger, I would rather eat 4 cups of sauteed kale than a half a cookie.

I'm doing a healthy protein shake (see below) in the morning, chicken or fish and veggies at lunch, and basically the same in the evening. I'm staying away from starches for the most part (based solely on personal preference) and have dramatically reduced my beer-with-dinner indulgence from about 4x per week to <1. I'm also experimenting, somewhat ashamedly, with Hydroxycut for the first few weeks. We'll see whether I keep that up; I can say I'm down to 1/2 - 1 cup of coffee from about 8 normally, because the powdered drink mixes have enough caffeine to cover my whole day! I have a lot of energy, I'm less hungry, and I'm sweating a bit more (that's the thermogenic aspect), so something must be happening.

Healthy Protein Breakfast
high calories to start the day (~300-320)

0.5c Almond Milk (original)
1 container (5.3oz) 0% Greek Yogurt, vanilla
2 tsp ground flax seeds
2 tsp coconut oil
half a banana

Blend until happy...and I take some fish/borage oil pills to go with it, included in breakfast calories above.

So, to recap what we learned:

• calories in < calories out = losing weight indiscriminately 
• (calories in < calories out) + muscle activity = losing FAT
• watch out for mass hysteria in the fitness world
• twinkies can be diet food if you want them to be

My current mantra is "all flab must die!" in a nice way, by turning into sexy lean muscle :)

*in fact, the body does slow down metabolism a tiny little bit during caloric deficits but it's just part of the game. Another reason why working out is important... to keep the metabolism higher than any compensation it may be doing relative to available calories.

starting point

I'm keeping this blog to journal my progress from "flab to fab" as they say (or at least I hope that's where I will end up). Accountability is important to me, and so is the ability to look back and say HA! when my goals are achieved. *fingers crossed*

There are tons of women just like me out there. After a couple of kids my body sort of settled into a comfort zone much "softer" than I had ever been before, and then came 30. And back to work full-time. I eat healthy 90% of the time but my life is relatively sedentary and that last 10-15lbs just hangs around all the places I don't want it to be... couple that with zero time for the gym, and bam! Welcome to mommy body.

But I'm over it, and it's time to take care of business. I'm pushing 33 and now that the kids are approaching school-age, the lack-of-time excuse is faltering. I have realized that if I don't develop solid fitness habits now, it's only going to get harder anyway!

I met with a friend who happens to be a personal trainer at a big gym in my town, and he ran me through a body analysis machine so that I could have a baseline from which to measure my progress over time. The results were horrifying but not altogether unexpected:

Weight: 132lbs
Height: 5'3"
BMI: 23.9
BMR: 1311 kCal
Body Fat: 27.3%
Waist: 26.5 in
Chest: 31.5 in
Hips: 37.5 in
Thigh: 24 in
Calf: 15 in
Bicep: 11 in

Boy, writing those in a public setting is painful. I never expected 27% body fat!!

INITIAL GOALS: Drop 10% body fat (~13lbs). Run 3 miles non-stop. Do 5 good pull-ups. Hold a handstand steady for 30 seconds or more.

In short, I really want to be near-athlete body composition, strong, and have high endurance...more on the handstand thing later.

I have a 14-week workout schedule planned and right now I'm 2 weeks into it. I basically alternate between upper body, lower body, and core training throughout the week with cardio almost every day - for burning extra calories and building endurance.  Weeks 7 and 14 are "breaks" focused around cardio and yoga.

Fitness FYI: if you want to lose fat, you have to create a calorie deficit. Period.

For a lot of average folks, simply dropping their typical calorie intake by 500/day will lead to fat reduction on the order of 1-2 lbs/week; unfortunately for me, my calorie intake is typically at my BMR already, so I can't/shouldn't really go any lower through food alone. Which means I HAVE TO WORK OUT. Basically every day.

Key tools that I depend on for my journey:

• MyFitnessPal (app on the smartphone)
• tracks calories in vs. out and helps you set goals
• Fitness Blender workouts (hooray for YouTube)
• they have hundreds of workouts ranging from 5min to 1.5 hours, all free
• Runtastic (app on the smartphone) 
• uses GPS to track distance, speed, and estimates calories burned; I use it for running and biking
• Dumbbells - I have 5lbs and 3lbs so far but I know I will need a heavier set soon. However, you can do a lot with bodyweight alone.
• Jump rope - Picked it up the other day and I think it will be very handy for at-home cardio.

I've decided not to measure more than every other week to track my progress. My frame is very small so even 0.5lb or 0.25" actually makes a difference, but those things are difficult to track and I don't want to get frustrated.

I'll talk about nutrition, and what I've learned about fat loss, next.