That’s why you’re the expert!:):):)

I think I was thinking about it from the perspective of her non workout days…..
I kept thinking though, this is Amanda’s court:)

Thanks for your input, Amanda and Amber! You're the two I was definitely hoping would chime in. :P

I'll take your (Amber's) suggestions to heart and not worry about having too many packets, and I'll definitely take your (Amanda's) advice. I do love eating that delicious bar at the end of my workout, but I'll make sure I cut it in half and baggy it in the morning so I won't be tempted to eat the whole darn thing with my orange drink and will be able to save the rest for later.

My first 20 minute interval is tomorrow. I doubt I'll be able to make the whole thing without resting here and there, but I'll replace my orange drink with another shake to give myself more energy for it, then go back to orange for my shorter intervals.

Thank you for your advice and making me feel better! :hug:

The first 20 minute run is a mental issue, not a physical one. Your body is more than capable of running for 20 mins at this stage, but your mind will fight it as it seems a big step up. I had to give myself a severe talking to while I was running, because brain kept wanting to stop. I went through a checklist - heartrate? Doing ok. Legs? Fine, let's keep on truckin'. Breathing? No problem. Tell your brain to take a nap while the body handles it. :)

frustrated..
 

Hello all- I have been reluctant about posting because I just have a little bit of weight to lose. This is my 3rd time (a rebooter) on IP. It has worked every time (made my goal weight). Now I am close to the end (within 10 pounds) and I am so discouraged. It is so hard to believe that the scale is not budging based not the little amount of food I eat. Yesterday I had about 3 slices of avocado on my salad and a tiny bit of bacon (celebrating teacher appreciation week) and I was up a whole pound this morning. I did everything else right. Had my veggies, water, lettuce, IP packets, etc (no bars or restricted foods either). This diet is so sensitive. I am in a love/hate relationship with it. I know I should not weigh in every morning, but I do and I can't help it. My husband thinks I should exercise more if I want the scales to move faster (he is a runner). Everything I read says exercising is not recommend except for light walking. I do like to walk, but nothing else but tennis. So I have read so many posts where people have stall weeks and the last 10 pounds are so slow to come off. It just seems crazy how healthy we are eating and this weight is just so stubborn to come off (it went on so easy - ha, ha!). I miss my every-now-and-then glass of wine the most!!! I am sorry to be so negative. Everyone on this forum is so positive and it is why I read it almost daily. So I am posting this a) to vent and b) to ask if I ramped up my exercise would it make a difference? Congratulations to everyone here - you all are an inspiration.

A whole pound is easily sodium related from the bacon, Bootros! Don't give up... and above all, STAY AWAY FROM YOUR SCALE! Obviously this triggers feelings in you right now and you cannot look at it objectively. Once you lose the pounds you should try to focus on learning maintenance (technically, losing the fat is the simple part). That way you won't be having to re-do this all the time. Yes, those 10 lbs will be slow to come off! Just acknowledge it and move on to more positive thoughts, like "Good thing I am doing this now - 10 lbs up is so much easier to control than 20 or 50 or???" There is nothing wrong with working out as you do this. Take a good read through this thread and the C25K thread and you will see that although it may not necessarily 'help you lose the pounds' it will help your mental outlook and recomposition your body/tone up. Briael is a great resource for exercise related IP as is Jenny38 who is now doing half marathons and triathlons but who started before she hit maintenance.

Way to go! You are baaaaack! :cool:

Liana

I've read that the body finds it harder to reestablish loss patterns each time you return to ketosis (on the forum here, not research!) but I have no experience with that. I do know that it's much harder to lose weight now that I've only got 18 or so lbs to lose, and I am less vigilant about the odd "naughty" creeping in and far less concerned about eating out and making good choices because I feel good.

Exercise should make you feel good. If you try it and you feel good, keep doing it, ramp it up a little, vary what you do (I don't see why you couldn't do your tennis - I think a couple of our ladies are tennis players, soccer players and we have many walkers!) so your body doesn't learn "pattern" exercise and you are developing your muscles through use.

I believe that the reason IP clinics don't recommend exercise is because they can't control all the variables for each individual. They want you to lose at optimal rates so you stay on the program until you achieve target. It's in their best interest (and yours!) to keep you motivated and moving down on the scale and if you start seeing small bounces of water weight, muscle gain, it may derail you mentally. However, some of us are doing a lot of exercise and still losing - admittedly slower, but going in the right direction weight wise and health wise.

All I can say is try it on for size. If it works for you and the scale budges keep going. If you see minor gains of water weight but your body fat percentage is down keep going. Clinic scales know the difference between a healthy loss (which includes muscle gain and water weight despite an underlying fat loss) and a weight gain. :)

Hi Bootros - welcome back -
"what she said":) meaning I echo all that Amanda and Liana wrote and don't have much to add other than how incredible that you have stayed on track for so long. As I have heard Liana say, the problem is not rebooting, but the failure to reboot.
I think for me just really focusing on Maintenance as much if not more than I focused on P1 is really the key so far, and to keep myself in a positive mindset about it, as Liana wrote, you are only 10 lbs, not 50.

---
Overall my exercise is good, I feel like a broken record but I just really like Pilates right now. There is so much focus on the core and overall muscle strength, and I'm working muscles that have rarely gotten much true strength. I force myself to do weight training and because I don't like it I go through long periods of avoiding it, so finding resistance training that I genuinely enjoy is great.
The reps are so slow and so intense, I love that slow controlled burn.
I'm glad to have classes because I would never work that hard on my own when it comes to muscle work, so it's good to have other people there really pushing also.
I'll push myself on my own with cardio but not with muscles - at least not consistently.
Good at age 47 to start to know my patterns.

Liana, Amber and Amanda-
Thank you so much for your responses. I think I just might print them and put them around the house! I am going to slowly increase my exercise and see how I feel. I am going to do my best and stay away from the scale (only once a week). I am also going to stay positive and focused. And I can't remember which one of you said it, but goodness.... I have got to work on maintenance. Usually after I have lost the weight I do really well on Phase 3 (love phase 3 breakfast!) but then I slowly go back to bad eating habits (snacking, eating out, etc.). So this time around I am going to stay on track. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the posts!!!

Just bumping up this thread since several people were mentioning exercise in the Daily Chat….

I’m doing well but crazy schedule the last two weeks, plus tons of rain so couldn’t do my walks during work breaks, and then sick/hormone issues… so MUCH less exercise than usual. Me no likey.

I get to go to hot yoga both Friday and also this weekend so yayyyyyyyy.

Finally got a 2 mile walk in yesterday and am planning the same today.

Have started thinking ahead, and as I am coach-less, will have to determine for myself what I want to do. There is a big difference between losing a bunch of weight at 26 y/o vs 38...and at 26 when I did it, I was running - but I was also eating VLC and know I did some damage :( but I was losing fast and firming up...
This time, I am losing the weight but am starting to notice hanging skin - especially in my belly & arms. I've begun contemplating doing the Insanity workout program again when I get into the 160's, but that would require phasing off before goal...so for now, I continue to walk and need to make time to do some planks / upper body resistance training - even if its only 5 minutes a day.

Your walks sound good, hysteria! I am off to do an Aquacize class today, then running around town with a friend hunting for a 20's costume idea from stuff cobbled together from thrift stores. I may whip up a pair of plus-fours for DH that he can wear with his argyle sweatervest and a flat newsboy/golfer style cap. If I can find a tall pair of argyle socks somewhere that would be awesome with his brogues. An old pair of second hand dress pants with the legs cut off below the knee and some elastic and I'm done. I have until the 6th to get it together for the family grad party.

Looking forward to this!

Good luck with those outfits Liana!

Beth your plan sounds good. I had to cut back on exercise at the end of P1 just to get the last bits pf weight off (which took ages and I think I had my goal a little too low), and then within a few days of P3 starting I had tons of energy and started my workouts again, and within a few weeks was ready to incorporate higher intensity muscle building.

I went into P3 in March, so it's been a few months, and I have noticed a little extra toning. I'm also still kind of catching up physically as I was on P1 for a year, so the first month or two of P4 was a little tricky, my digestive enzymes and BMs needed some time to get over the constipation and learn to digest the newer foods, etc.
I am definitely much stronger and I'm happy about that.
It's a trial and error thing for all of us it seems - how to maintain and yet build muscle (as muscle can appear like a few lbs extra weight)....also figuring out what our body wants our goal weight to be, and not our minds and good intentions.

I'm still working it, but I'm giving myself this year to sort it all out and get to know this new body and what it wants and needs and what it doesn't like.

Just saw this article online and thought I would share - about body image... here it the link to the whole article
https://www.yahoo.com/style/playing-...844954597.html
but below are the few paragraphs that struck me the most....

"Then there was the process of pulling off the skintight look that was prominent during Hollywood’s early era when Monroe’s personal costume designer, William Travilla, used to actually sew the actress into her gowns. “Gersha kept things really, really tight,” says Garner, who mentions that her body didn’t always cooperate on set. “When you shoot over a course of two months, as a woman your body fluctuates. And sometimes Gersha would take something in so tight and be like, This would be great for Friday, and it would be Wednesday. Then come Friday, I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t get anywhere in it,” she says. “It was just a dance of, is it gonna fit? Is it gonna zip up? Are we going to have to only shoot it from the front?”

Though she faced her share of pressure associated with portraying Monroe, one thing Garner was relaxed about was getting her body into shape prior to shooting. “I didn’t diet for Marilyn,” she says. “I was afraid to be too skinny, because they were filming for that kind of 1940s/’50s figure. I was trying to stay soft to get that body type.” As a result of the experience, Garner found that portraying Monroe armed her with a new outlook on her own body image. “I would see Marilyn in a little bathing suit or jeans, and she would be laughing and she’d have a full belly coming over her jeans, which is so beautiful,” she says. “If that is something that happened to me, Kelli, I’d be mortified. With our standards of beauty now, it’s like, ‘Oh you can’t have those rolls there.’ But I think Marilyn is one of the most stunning women who has every been around, and she was never in perfect shape.” One of the things that really drove this home for Garner was discovering an advertisement for weight enhancement pills while flipping through 1950s magazines that were lying around the set. “These ads said, ‘Are your legs too skinny? Are you not filling out that dress?” she says. “Beauty was such a different and more natural thing back then. I was shocked. Like, wow — they are actually selling pills to women if they want to have a little more volume,” says Garner.

Garner’s post-Monroe self is now angered by the stick-thin models that grace mainstream advertisements. “I just want girls to love food and love eating and be OK with who they are. Playing Marilyn taught me that as well. Superskinny is not attractive,” she says. The recent revelation has inspired Garner to shed light on magazine images of actresses. “So much of the glamour is smoke and mirrors," she explains. “I see a photo of me in a magazine, and they’ve changed the shape of my nose a little bit to be more straight or changed the shape of my teeth so they could all be aligned better. On one hand, you’re happy with the photograph because you’re like, well it’s a beautiful photograph because you sat for two hours in hair and makeup and it’s the right lighting and the perfect clothes and the perfect color on your complexion, and it’s airbrushed and you’ve got hair extensions in. It’s like this thing where it’s so beautiful, but I think I fight myself about that whole process because it’s kind of a lie that we tell ourselves as women,” says Garner, who admits that the glitz goes away after she steps off of a movie set. “When I peel my eyelashes off and wash my face, I don’t look anything like that.” And though becoming her most glamorous self comes with the territory of making it in her entertainment-based career, Garner is prepared to take a stance one day against the façade of beauty. “If I get a little more momentum, maybe I can subtly make a stand, and maybe that’ll be seen,” she says. For now, though, Garner strives to make a point of flaunting her “normal” looks and pledges to refrain from letting the industry force her to become overly skeletal. “Let me know if I get too skinny!” she demands."

.... will also post on daily chat but thought it might be helpful and inspirational to folks here ongoingly.... body dysmorphia, cultural expectations, etc.

It helped me in a weird way to start posting on this thread again, it put the exercise back in the forefront of my mind. It was sunny during lunch and I got to hop out for a 1/2 hour walk in the sun (before we got drenched again for hours:) ) and then a 90 minute hot yoga class after work, which is the first 90 min. one I’ve done in two years - during P1 60 minute hot was better. It was awesome! The endorphins are addicting, and my body and mind really,really needed it. I have to remember when I start to struggle and haven’t exercised intensely for over a week that likely that will be the issue. It’s a studio near my new house and I’m happy to have discovered one that is so close, and can get into a routing there along with the Pilates. It’s a good combo and both give me something different, equally important.

Very interesting article Grateful! One thing not mentioned that most don't notice was that women were expected to look a certain way in every decade, Heavy girdles were a big thing in those days to make the waist tinier, and firm up the derriere. I have tried on lots of vintage clothing and find that although my bust & hips fit ok, the shoulders were very narrow and the waists were absolutely tiny. Although I have quite a difference in measurements between my waist and my bust/hips (11 or 12 inches most of the time) I had trouble zipping dresses up at the waistline and ribcage/bra band. Now that I'm looking for 20's costumes, the look was very different - straight up & down without defined waists and many women actually bound their breasts to appear flatter. This was so they could look boyish & sporty.

I think also of the Rubenesque body shapes (1600's) that were all about tummy rolls, full bottoms and cellulite. Most women fit that look today, but of course, it's not in fashion now. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ogle_Earth.jpg

Liana