Hmm...another challenge???

Well I'll just join ya gals, because I'm actually in the midst of my own 'challenge' that ends the first week of August...I am so motivated...the summer does that to me, and YES Summer is here at last!! :D Supposed to be 80 degrees today, yee haw! (of course I'm in the office most of the day but I DO get a lunch break and you can bet your sweet bippie that I'll be outside catchin' some rays :) )

A picture challenge, eh? How totally terrifying. My daughter and I are ending our challenge on August 3, officially, and I took before shots when we started, so... I guess I'm kind of in on this one. The only question remaining is whether I chicken out on posting them or not. ;)

Well I'm not sure that I would POST them either... unless of course there is like a major turn around... then MAYBE and only MAYBE..:lol: It's more of a personal challenge...

Well, Jim took photos of me 2 weeks ago, but then he accidentally deleted them :( and we've NEVER gotten 'round to taking replacements...and it ain't happening tonight 'cos he's got a gig in Marin...rrr...

Yup I know we could have done them this weekend but it was SOOO NICE OUT!!!

My original 20 pounds ago before pictures got fried on the memory card before we got them transferred to the hard drive. I was really disappointed with that, so I can sympathize with the disappearing pics problem. I still have so much weight to lose though... it's not the end of the world. But it would have been neat to have those very first ones to compare.

'lo all!

Well I had a good UBWO today, starting to superset :D and definately feeling the burn. I will have to put chest higher on the list as I did chest last today and my arms were already noodles :p

Also found out I was having way less protien than I thought *Sigh* as I misread the label on my PP. Fixed that today tho.

My knee is acting up so i will have to take it easy with the squats if it doesnt improve :/ but I'll be able to buy some braces soon so I can deal until then I hope :)

Hope you are all having good days!
Tidey

I am in!!!
 

I am in for a challenge, my first BFL challenge ends on July 19, take a week off and we have the start of a second challenge.... great motivation!!!

Today is my second last day at this job yippppeeeee!!!! I start the new one right away, no huge amount of time off for this girl :(

I am going to take photos this weekend for the 4 week stage.... just to see if there is any difference!! Other than the evil tape measure and the most evil, the scale!!!

Well... I should get to work :(

Have a good day ladies!!
Nola.

The Challenge
 

Hey- I really didn't mean to start an official 3FC Challenge , but trying to kick myself and Ilene in the butt and light a :flame: ! But if everyone wants a challenge, OK, lets do it!

Ate totally clean today, lots of water, did some cardio. Was thinking about going to the gym, then remembered it's rest week :lol:

mel

WOOHOO!!! I guess that's what we needed as a KICK in the Buttimus Maximus...:lol:...a New and Improved CHALLENGE!!

So when do we start after this week Mel?? Actually a week off weights would do me good too! .... Just doing some light biking maybe? Just food for thought, I'm really just talking to myself girls, so you don't have to answer the last question...:lol:

I had a good day food wise, but dang it's difficult to stay under 1600 calories...1623 today... Tomorrow I'll try 1550... I'll keep the protein to 4oz only/meal....

Hello Ladies,

Well...DH and I have been running around like crazy here this past week -- trying to get the house ready for 2 children. Dh is making our daughter's bed (son already has one) and I have been making the bedding and such. Plus there is childproofing etc. Then Dh had a rock climbing trip this past weekend and so was not here. Oye.

Good to read all your posts today, though. Interesting the discussion of bulking. No matter how much I hear otherwise, there still a tiny part of me that continues to worry about that -- silly, I know.

Anyway, Dh bought me a weight bench and set yesterday -- all from Target for 100.00 total. I have to tell you that I feel like such a stud using the cool weights now and not the neoprine (spelling??) ones I was using. Now that I have the bench (which also has a leg thing) and barbells and dunbbells, I have to figure out a whole new workout. Today I did upper body and I fear I overdid it. We shall see. Does anyone have any good websites that might offer workouts for the home gym?

Ilene: I just love to bike as well!! I too wonder what will happen when winter comes and I can no longer bike. Cross-country skiing, perhaps?? Dh and I are going up to Door County, WI this weekend for our final pre-child fling and plan to get in a lot of biking. Should be beautiful.

When I hear that we don't need to do cardio all that long, I cringe because I just LOVE to go out and bike! It is so much fun and really a spiritual experience for me.

re: scale -- I too fall into that trap, but since I no longer have any clothing that fits me and had to beg a friend to lend me some things to wear, I think I am getting over the whole scale thing now.

Peace,
Paula

Hi All -

Oooo...another LWL Challenge! Any names for it yet? Mel? Ilene?

Mrs. Jim, how come BFL isn't mentioned on the Diet Reviews?? We'd be smokin'...have you seen some of the #$%#^ programs they have listed? Let's get a program listed that actually works!

Things are going okay here...not as motivated as C1, but that's okay. I can relate to the 4-day Free Day concept...sounds like my whole long weekend. Didn't work out but moved about a ton of dirt and lawn doing landscaping so figure it all evened out. Back in the gym this week.

I've really noticed I'm hitting some great PB's bests on my weights...my body really seems to respond to a day or two off in the gym and can power up the weights when I get back to it. Anyone else have that experience?

Hope everyone is having a great week.

BethO

Paula- I think long bike rides fall into the "fun exercise" category. Something we get in shape to be able to do. So Don't worry about it as being long cardio unless you are going all out sprinting up mountains for hours at a time. I know Door County has some big hills, but you're probably not doing the Tour de France! I used to do a lot of climbing and caving in Door county back in my wild youth.... Sounds like you are very busy getting ready to become instant parents. Congratulations! When do your children arrive or are you traveling somewhere exotic to go through the process? I have friends who've adopted from Chili, China, Ukraine, Russia and they've all had quite the stories to tell. Also my step-mom is an adoption counselor, very rewarding, but very difficult career. I'm sure once winter comes, you can substitue chasing children (and if you live in Wisconsin) stuffing them into snowsuits and shoveling snow for your bike rides!

Ilene- I started Monday, even tho I'm off from the gym. Really nowthing new except my mindset. I will not binge, which has been my undoing for the last month

OK, why have I been alternatly binging and starving, with a few OP days thrown in for the last month? I think it was moving away from a more or less balanced diet because I was seeing no more "progress". I went through a variety or pre-comp and comp diets which I just could not stick to. I have no intention of competing, and at 48 must face the fact that I will not look like a 25 year old fitness model. I have a history of anorexia and bulemia, and I think for someone who has faced eating disorders, they never truely go away. Comp diets, which are truely deprivation diets even if you do get to eat more chicken and yams than you ever wanted to see, are invitation to disaster for those of us who need to learn how to eat healthily. I'd class anyone who has been severely obese in the eating disorder category as well. IMHO, we should run screaming from these plans, for although they may work in the short run, they can undo years of progress towards a more healthy psyche, as well as body.

This doesn't mean to abandon hope and settle for fat- quite the opposite. Just be aware that your mind is the most powerful organ in your body and can play some really nasty tricks on you when you least suspect it.

Thanks to Meg for having helped me formulate some of these thoughts- hope I haven't stolen your post. Please feel free to reiterate, object, or add to it!

Argh- I have to go to work!
mel

Following Up On Mel's Post ...
 

Actually, Mel, rather than “stealing’ anything from me, you’ve inspired me to some thinking, too. Like we all have talked about before, most of weight loss is a process that happens between the ears and I’m still learning and thinking and analyzing every day!

It’s funny that you brought up the whole “competition diet” thing, because when I was at the doctor’s recently to follow-up on last summer’s shoulder injury, he asked me if I was training for a competition. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I assured him that I had no intention of competing. But it got me thinking about the extreme diets that bodybuilders have to use in order to manipulate body fat levels to competition levels. One thing I’ve discovered as I’ve lost weight is that my body gets more and more stubborn about giving up fat, especially once I got into the teens of BF%. When you realize that most women compete at — I think — 10% BF or lower, you realize how incredibly hard it must be to drop that low. So deprivation diets become necessary to pry off the body fat.

However, I know that a competition diet would be the worst possible thing in the world for me. Having lost 125 pounds and kept it off for a year now (hurray!), I have come to find out what a challenge it is just to maintain a large weight loss. Just like Mel has discovered, any extreme diet will eventually lead to binging. If you are a bodybuilder routinely entering competitions, weight swings are not unusual — they have a competition weight and an off-season weight, in a limited range. And for someone who has never had a serious weight problem, it probably wouldn’t be too difficult to stay in that certain weight range, both in and off-season.

But competition diets, by their very nature, seem to be skating very close to the edge of eating disorders -- obviously you have to do some pretty extreme stuff to get into comp shape. For those of us who have struggled with “morbid obesity” (I think that’s 100+ pounds overweight) like I have, or eating disorders, like Mel, that kind of extreme dietary manipulation could quickly become a runaway train. Physically, because you are really starving your body and it is going to do everything it can to get you to put the weight back on when the competition is over and you may not be able to stop that gain, and psychologically, because you get into that binge/purge, up/down, lose/gain syndrome and may not be able to jump off the roller coaster (remember how Anne Fletcher in Thin For Life talks about the importance on maintaining your weight in a small range).

Sadly, I’ve read about bodybuilders who eventually crash and burn from this cycle of gain and loss (I think there are even folks who post here at 3FC who used to compete and now struggle with weight issues). They get incredibly lean, compete, get lots of attention and glory, and then pack on the pounds of fat and can’t lose it. I don’t know if it’s for physical or psychological reasons or (probably) a combination of both.

I know that there are a lot of diets available out there on the Internet (some free, some you pay for), and some are these “competition” type diets. I have been tempted to try them myself for that short-term (and oh-so-gratifying) weight loss, but, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I would be setting myself up for long-term disaster.

Yeah, there isn’t any glory in maintaining a weight loss. No one gives you a trophy or takes your picture or idolizes you on the Internet. But in the end, that is what it means to win at weight loss.

Thanks for bringing this up, Mel! What’s tomorrow's topic? :D

Meg

hey all!

I am proud to say that at the gym yesterday, i didn't trip, stumble, fall or embarass myself in any way. I did tidey's bicep curls and preacher curls and also changed the angle on my bench press and MAN was that a different feeling. I have back and triceps tonight and am going to try new exercises for those as well.

Battle between the ears. I LIKE THAT! and all of you are reinforcement troops to help motivate the General to act like she knows she is supposed to.

And there is glory in weight loss. Self praise and self appreciation goes way farther and is worth much more than anything someone on the outside says. At my heaviest weight people would say You look nice today Tika, but that didn't mean a thing because I felt horrible. At the lower weights, even when people don't say a thing, I tell myself I am beautiful, not because I can fit a smaller size pants but because I am healthier and stronger and I feel empowered because I am actively working to improve my life. After battling and overcomine a low self esteem, I have learned that an "I Love You and You are Wonderful" from myself far outweighs what anyone else can say.

EXCELLENT posts both of you!!!
 

Just got home from the gym and what great, mindful reading!!!

Wish I had read that around this time last year. Trust me, y'all...Meg is speaking the absolute truth here. I honestly believe she is right - if you're severely obese and get down to a 'normal' weight/clothes size, and more IMPORTANTLY, maintain that weight (I generally dance around a 5 to 7 pound range myself) through learning and practicing healthy maintainable lifestyle changes - that in itself is a HUGE triumph in my book! ;)

Now, myself, I was never anorexic or bulimic...I was a pudgy bookworm kid, always on diets (at first enforced by my parents who meant well of course...but later in my teens I would go to the library and check out diet books to try for a few days or a week). I DID try to 'purge' but ya know, I'm just not that crazy about vomiting, and to top it off I'm not all that great at it (I've only hurled twice in the last 7 years that I can recall - last time was about 3 years ago the morning after a big 'mudslide' fiesta with our then-neighbors, one of whom used to be a bartender...I'm not a drinker...so there ya go... :lol: ).

I'm not dissing BB comps in the least - I think that there are people out there who are eminently suited for them - the folks who have never had a weight problem, who have *always* been fit, but just need to lose 5-10 pounds of fat and do extra training in the gym to be in shape. Again, it's the racehorse analogy...you can take two thoroughbred horses with the exact same bloodlines...one will be a Secretariat who can easily win...and then you have his full sister, who couldn't run a lick. It comes down to genetics and sheer luck - a good base to start with and some intelligent training and nutrition - lots of work....

Something else that doesn't seem to be covered in detail are the lengths that many BB competitors go to - even the 'natural' ones - to be as lean and cut as possible (for only one day!). Of course all of us here know about fat burners, creatine and glutamine, etc. but there's a few other tricks that competitors use - I'm not saying I know ALL of the tricks, or even most of them. The one I'm thinking of is a diuretic sold as Taraxtone. This can really mess up your system - liver and kidneys. Is a moment on stage really worth the possibility of permanently messing up your system? I've said this before - bottom line, we are doing this for our HEALTH. Period.

If you check some of our old threads, I've posted in the recent past a quote about 'losing weight slowly'. I didn't have that quote when I started my journey back in 1990...but I realize I'd been doing that, by trial and error. Basically, if you have a lot of weight to lose, set small goals to lose it in increments...then for a few months, whatever it takes, MAINTAIN that small loss...then set another small goal (I'm thinking 7-10% of weight here) and keep going until you get to your ultimate destination.

Sure...maybe you won't get accolades and trophies and adoration...but you'll get something SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT - you'll learn HOW to keep that weight off and you won't screw up your metabolism...just IMO...

Hope y'all have a great day!

PS - I guess I'll have to check out the Diet Reviews on the main page here - I admit I just go right to the forums... :)