HI Everyone!!!!

Welcome to BFL #33!!! I went on a looooooooooooooong walk this a.m. at 6:30 just in time to come up over the hill as the sun was coming up. GORGEOUS. Because it was Sunday, no one else was around....I think even the Sunday morning regulars were experiencing football hangover. I was in the store yesterday morning and everyone had their beer and chips in the cart while I had chicken, apples and brown rice. Hello.

MrsJim: Thanks for letting me know the hussman site changed its address! I refer to it now and again and I would like to know where it is!

Congrats on starting C4!!! Can you post some menus or the way you will be following a plan for competition and typical workouts? Not that I could do this while in school but I am curious about it.
Are you following a food plan from the trainer (ala Pam B) or from Jeremy?

Hi EVERYONE!!!

Have a good week!!!
Susan

carrie.......nice to meet you.......sounds like you as well have been having great success with the BFL lifestyle.........that is why.....I am soooooo pumped about this......I have chatted on other threads......but after reading this book and reading the testimonials.....*I am some what of a skeptic*......I just have to give this a try......everyone is soooooo positive about it.......that is what drew me here.......VBS.....

meliris......yep know those areas as well.......I lived in St. Catharines for a while when I was younger I have many relatives there......which I try to visit.......since it is not soooooo far from me......only lived in DT Toronto when I was a little girl......before I moved away from the area I lived in the Mississauga area.....Hamilton is still relatively new to me.....I moved here for my job......here is hoping the body soak helped relax the muscles....


THIS PLACE IS GREAT!!!


good day all

Today I went through my closet and pulled out all my former clothes. Five years ago I was in VERY SMALL to TEENY clothes and today I went through my closet (well still going through it, I have a mound of clothes on the floor) and pulled out all my favorite clothes that don't yet fit. I'm going to hang an outfit in my office, in my bedroom and one downstairs in the bathroom for motivation. I might even put one in my car!!!

Well ladies I have yet another question.....these myoplex replacements...........can they be prepared ahead of time......as long as they are refrigerated after preparation??....

I have a very hectic work schedule during the day......so I thought if I prepared what I needed and put it in the fridge at work....this would make things easier....

thanks again for your help...

Kelster,

I believe that the protein starts to break down in a few hours, I don't remember how many. I've tried every which way to do "make ahead" MRPs and have never found anything that works well except a portable blender and plenty of ice. I hate Ready to Drink, Myoplex does NOT shake up well in a shaker (I know that other MRPs, notably Labrada does shake up better but nothing tastes "right" to me without ice), and I even tried freezing one and letting it thaw in my lunch bag (YUCK).

One thing that did work for me was to make MyoPudding. Blend up a myoplex with half the water, add sugar free/fat free instant pudding mix (just sprinkle about 1/4 of a packet, if it doesn't thicken in about 3 minutes, sprinkle in some more), put in a container and take with you. I used to do half chocolate and half vanilla. But it makes A LOT of pudding so to get your full serving of Myoplex you have to eat a lot of pudding. Not bad the first couple of times but after a while I was all pudding'd out.

Susan

Hi all! We are really rocking here with a new thread every three days or so, aren't we?

As far as the mixing Myoplex or any other MRP ahead of time, that question came up just this past week at L&S. If I recall correctly, you have like 9 hours before the protein starts breaking down or something...they do taste better when they're made fresh. Tho I do enjoy the Myo Lite Pudding (mixing cap ice with butterscotch FF/SF pudding is sooo goood). I tried using RTDs once but they are HORRID tasting (at least the Myoplex one is!). Besides, most RTDs are incredibly expensive, and loaded with sugar. I was at Safeway this morning stocking up for next week - they had the EAS AdvantEdge RTDs on sale. Picked one up and checked the nutritional info - 23g of sugar!!! Too high for me.

This is why I save my MRPs for meals #1 and #6. I especially love having a Myo Pudding at night just before bedtime - I do have a HUGE sweet tooth!

As far as my nutrition for this challenge - I'm splitting it up into three-week increments - I'm doing 'by the book' BFL eating for the next three weeks - and no flour products (bread is a killer for me so I just cut it out) except on Free Day. I think I can do most of my nutrition for myself - I've learned a lot this past year!

So today I had my first session with the PT. I worked with Theresa - Dan was working with one other client. I really enjoyed the one-on-one and the fact that we weren't doing this in a regular gym with all its distractions (one of the problems I had with the trainers at my gym was when they stop in the middle of a session to chat with someone else working nearby). They gave me a body composition test this morning and registered my bodyfat a LOT higher than I calculated - 28% to be exact. I was like, whoa, I CAN'T be 28% BF - but then I started thinking...just came off of free week this morning, haven't been working out or eating very clean at all...and I just know that the number is going to drop significantly over the next few weeks...I also remembered reading Pam B's story in Energy:
Remember, four months later - in July - she entered and won her first BB contest...

Anyway, back to my session - it was really fabulous having someone there to critique my form and spot me...and to teach me to use the stability balls - I've been wanting to at the gym but didn't want to look like a klutz! After my session (which was nearly two hours long) I went to the gym and tried out some of the exercises again to kind of get the hang of them before I forget...

So starting this week, I am going to step up the cardio to 30 minutes 3x/week. Next week we're going to work on legs - I want to get in a session of each split - then my finances may force me to go to one session every two weeks but we'll see (it wouldn't be a problem if I cut out the riding lessons, but I really look forward to my riding every week - cantering is SO MUCH fun!!).

Let's all hear from you! It's POURING rain out right now...so I guess I'll try and get some housework done and then work on my workout schedule for tomorrow which is gonna be quads/hams.

Where I used to live there was a small private gym for a small number of members and their trainers. I tried to sign up (this was right after I quit smoking and noticed I was gaining weight by the hour) and the wait list was 8 months. They were open from 4:30 a.m. to midnight and was in an out of the way place but still they were always booked but the number of people in there was something like between 5-10 at a time. The people who worked out there said it was like paradise and they got a break doing personal training and using the equipment. My dream is to own a place like that someday. I did a few pt sessions at 24 hour fitness and it was so distracting. I would like a nice quiet place. My first house I buy after I pass the bar will be equipped with a place to set up a real home gym. I looked into opening a gym out here but because I don't know where I'll be living, I had to put it on hold.

Anyway, good for you MrsJim.!!!!! Thanks for sharing with us! Keep sharing with us!!! THANKS!

Susan

Adding a non-stressful walk (I try to walk vigorously without "power" walking for about 2.5 miles a day though I will walk 5-6 miles on Sat and Sun) and Callenetics (3x a week) to my routine has helped. Both are nonimpact but helping overall. I feel like they are both helping me to stretch and limber up and helping me with my weight training.

Susan

Hi everyone-

I have another session tomorrow with pt to work on putting toether UBWO. Lower body on Saturday was great, so I'm hoping this will be as well. This is in a fairly large gym, but the trainer I'm working with is the owner and kinda intimidating until you actually talk to him. So there weren't any distraction problems, his staff and other clients know to leave him alone when he is with a client. Gym was also fairly empty due to a major snowstorm occurring at the time . Unfortunately, I'll do upper body with him already sore from having shovelled my driveway twice. Hubby always seems to have a stomach virus whenever it snows....hmmm. Such an annoyance when life and mother nature get in the way of my workout schedule!

MrsJim- Glad your trainer experience turned out so well. Do you really think your BF could have risen that much from just 1 week? I'd prefer to think maybe they are not so good with whatever method or you use different methods? Or it must have been some week! I still get wildly divergent #'s using different methods. My personal favorite is the calipers, since it comes out so much lower than the tape method for me. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle for me.

Started c1W3 yesterday, so far so good. the tight pants I bought just before Xmas are now wearable, so something's happening!

mel

Well, I'm officially starting tommorow. I got the book and read it two days ago, stocked my house up full of healthy food yesterday, and today I printed out my progress/training sheets. I am so psyched! I'm keeping a scrapbook/training log with all my sheets set up for about a month. Anything to make it easier and having all my workouts organized helps. I'm not entered in the challenge but I do have my reward set up. If I go all twelve weeks I'm planning a trip to Las Vegas in October for my 21'st birthday.
For food I'm probably going to end up doing convienence real meals, I can't afford the Myoplex quite yet. Someone mentioned mixing cottage cheese with yogurt equals a carb/protien balance so that sounds like the easiest meal. Also, Stagg fat-free turkey chili looks to be a staple as well.

A quick question about the wieght training. My dumbbells don't go up very high in weight. They are 5 lbs-20 lbs. Can I overcome this by upping my reps to reach my high point? Or should I just invest in some new dumbbells?

Hope y'all have a great night.

Parakeet - sounds like you're all set to begin!! Great! The 5-20 lb dumbbells should be fine for now...you might want to think of investing in some PowerBlocks (If I had the room here, I would have some - they really don't take up much room but our place is so tiny). If you start to 'outgrow' your DB's, instead of adding more reps, try focusing on your form, getting it strict as possible, and work slowly, really concentrate on each movement you make. Again, INTENSITY is the name of the game here!

Cottage cheese with yogurt is really great - just try and get some variety in - for me, milk and yogurt aren't really ideal carbs, mostly because they don't satisfy me (no fiber) as long as, say, a piece of fruit or some barley or brown rice can, so I try to keep the yogurt down to like one meal a day at most. But that's just me Do check out some of the recipes at L&S's Cooking Library - I try and do one new recipe every two weeks or so. My first two Challenges I would tend to get into a 'rut' of eating the same thing every day...not really a good idea in the long run!

Mel - I was thinking about that myself. I know I was bloated - we ate a lot of salty stuff yesterday and that could have had an effect. I'm not gonna stress about it. She did two measurements - the Bodystat impedience test (with the electrodes) and calipers - using three sites (tricep, abdomen and thigh) where I just measure one site, the sac...abdomen I mean. I think hers MIGHT have been riding high - she didn't get a chance to add up all the numbers from the calipers to get the BF% from that method. BTW, when she used the calipers she took three readings from each site. She did tell me that I don't have that much 'pooch fat' - most of the 'pooch' now is skin. I'm hopeful that with enough training that skin will 'tighten up' without surgery the way Pam B's did! (I'm NOT going under the knife, no way...)

Susan - it's been so cold here this weekend! Haven't gotten much 'leisure' exercise in with the exception of my riding. I cannot WAIT until the warm weather comes in. I am SO ready for summer!!!

Hi there! I am new to this site and saw that there were other fellow bflers and just wanted to say HI!! I'm in my fourth week of BFL(first challenge)and I have finally found my way out of that yo-yo, guilt infested diet world I was trapped in for years!! This is the BEST program out there and it is a hard program but that makes it that much more satisfying when you do it and you do it well...well, just floating around checking out what everyone has to say...A

Well......I never imagined.........how hard it would be to eat 6 meals.........dang...........I felt like I ate the day away.......and not once have I felt hungry........this is great.........VBS.......

I do have another question.......now with this portion size stuff......I get the fist/palm stuff........is there a place I can go......that would tell me about oatmeal........rice........corn........servings... .....stuff like that.......that is what confuses me.........I have gone back in the past..........threads.......and they have been a great help......BS.....

I do know........that the first Challenge.........is a learning experience........I am keeping that in mind........

Well I hope everyone else has had a wonderful Monday.......my Mondays are brutal.......too many deadlines........but I survived......and this morning.......after my work out I felt soooooo pumped.........

I love coming here and just posting.......you ladies are soooooo helpful.......and I have a very very supportive b/f..........I CAN DO THIS!!!!

bflchubmom...........nice to meet you.....just started on this thread last week.......it is wonderful......the ladies here are of great help...........I am on my first week..........I have done sooooo much reading to prepare.........and alot of writing.......and what I hear and see.......sounds like the lifestyle for me.....and it is nice to see a fellow Canuck......

well I am off to bed......night all.....

So wonderful to see all the newbies...

Kelster - with some things palm/fist can be kind of difficult. What you can do to determine the size of your 'fist' is get a four cup measuring cup, fill it to the 2-cup level, and stick your clenched fist in. The amount it raises minus the 2-cups is your fist portion size. There are some foods that doesn't work with - so what I do is figure that each meal I will need to get in somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 grams of protein and carbs each time. You can figure out how big your 'serving size' should be by looking at the nutritional info on the side of the box of oatmeal or rice or whatever - or by going to Fitday.com if it's something like a potato, squash, etc.

After I got back from PT and a little time at the gym, it's been mostly a lazy day with hubby and kitty, rained off and on here. Wish Jim's back wasn't bothering him - it has been all weekend - otherwise we could have gone out and had fun...oh well...