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Go, go, go, go: STOP

Green tea leaves steeping in an uncovered zhon...

Green Tea

I tend to exercise at night and in general I’ve evolved a lifestyle that includes go-go-going until I am ready to flip the switch into relax and sleep mode a process which usually does not begin until at least 10:30PM. Of course the body doesn’t work that way. Months ago I began drinking a cup of Tension Tamer tea when I am finally ready to settle down.  I have also tried L-Tryptophan which seemed beneficial though the form in which I was taking it was expensive and when I switched to a cheaper one it was  not as pleasant to use and I stopped using it. One beverage that is always relaxing is alcohol. I would sleep even less if it weren’t for this standby.

I do drink less caffeine now than I did even six months ago. I accomplished this by swapping out routine daytime coffee for green tea which I carry around in a really scary looking water bottle. Green tea is good to drink–Tom Venuto recommends about 4 cups per day–because it contains Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) which helps the body use fat as fuel when exercising.  About 15 years ago I actually completely stopped using caffeine when a doctor recommended it to reduce fibrocystic breast disease. I was amazed at what a difference that made. The road back was slow and began with my gateway drug Diet Coke. I am happy to report that I have primarily cut that out of my diet–I used to buy it by the box;  now it’s a “treat.” I don’t know what the research is on this but I have a feeling that it gives you brain cancer.

My current philosophy is that being aware of and reflecting on my habits is important even if I can’t do the optimal thing at every turn.

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Straightening out My Thinking

Mashed rutabaga

Explain to me how mashed rutabaga was a recommended photo for this post

I  am a recovered person with “issues” about food. And by “issues” I mean things that cause one to eat for reasons other than being hungry. Like everyone else, I lived what I learned. I grew up around people who had problems with food–used it to meet emotional as well as as dietary needs– and it took a while being out of that environment to stop having them myself.

I started my first diet at about 14 years old and I have watched my mom struggle with her weight over many years. I used to feel like if I didn’t pay attention I might suddenly balloon to great proportions though I know that doesn’t actually make sense.

My spouse of nearly 25 years has a healthy relationship with food and also is has been our primary cook and food inventory manager in recent years. Observing him and just doing what he did over the years helped me to adjust my relationship with food so that it grew simpler over time.

Also helpful has been using my body to do things I like including lifting weights. I can’t say I am there totally, but now I think about what I eat with respect to the goals I have and what’s best for me to put into my body.  Working to transform my body with weight lifting and diet provides a good demonstration of cause and effect. I now understand that you can’t train enough to make up for a poor diet and I anticipate that over time I will be able to come closer and closer to a diet that is optimal for me and for the achievement of my fitness goals. And I can proudly say that now my poor decisions about food stem from lack of self-discipline or commitment to goals and not from any lingering emotional weirdness. Oh happy day.

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That Protein Thing You Do

A bowl of cottage cheese.

Cottage Cheese Beautiful Cottage Cheese

So you’ve read the recommendation that you start eating a diet consisting of a gram of protein per pound of lean body mass and that is 30% protein, 30% fat and 40% carbohydrates or even like a successful powerlifting friend of mine 40% protein, 30% fat and 30% carbohydrates. How do you do that?

Since few of us eat this way without making an effort to do so, a good place to start is to get an idea of how what you are currently eating looks like. You can do this by tracking your food. There are a couple of web-based ways of doing that. My favorite is www.livestrong.com which has within the site “my plate.” I like this site because the food listing is pretty robust and you don’t have to do a lot of data entry. I have also heard good things about www.fitday.com.  Both sites are free. Livestrong.com has an option of a pay program which allows you to set custom nutrition goals so if you wanted to continue to track from a 30/30/40 perspective, you could. Since I am not prepping for a contest I prefer to just get an idea of how the whole thing should look and aim to stick to it in general.

My major sources of lean protein are chicken, tuna, non-fat cottage cheese, powdered egg whites, low fat cheese and whey protein powder. Packing food for the day helps a lot. Most of the fitness diet gurus will recommend eating up to 5 small meals per day. Depending on the number of calories you need each might have, say, 350 calories in it. I find it easier to think of them as large snacks. These are to be eaten at about 3 hour intervals throughout the day. With the whole calorie goal and the target percentages in mind, you need to come up with meals that can be combined on a daily basis and become the building blocks of your daily diet. With a bit of practice you will identify things you like that you can put together easily to take with you for the part of your day lived away from home.

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Hardest Birthday

Dental floss monster

Dental Floss Monster

For me the most difficult birthday so far was 46. As far as I can tell this was due to the simple fact that I deemed my early forties to be an extension of my thirties; sort of my really late thirties. Thus when I hit 46 there was no longer a way to tell myself that I was 30+ anymore: it was undeniable: I was closer to 50 than even the tail end of my thirties.

Heading towards 50 got my attention though and I decided that my practice of always trying to get away with things with respect to my physical well-being had to go. I read “You the Owner’s Manual” by Drs. Oz and Roizen and incorporated a lot of their advice into my normal routines including  adding some supplements I had not previously taken such as fish oil and flossing more. They got me to do that with the advice to only floss the teeth you want to keep.  I cut out diet pop except as a treat. I drink more water. I’ve learned that my best bet is to make things easy for myself; keep water handy if you want to drink water. I recently added drinking about 3 cups a day of green tea to my regular routine and have cut way back on coffee though I don’t think it’s really bad for you, it just contributes to worse sleep habits for me.

I sometimes backslide when I get busy but in general I am trying. I think that’s all we can expect from ourselves.

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Finally Back to NROLFW

Front of right upper extremity.

Typically I learn the names of body parts by injuring them

I started New Rules of Lifting for Women the first time in March of 2010. I loved it. I was amazed by how quickly my body seemed to be changing. Then in mid April I was carrying some furniture at work to set up for an event and without realizing I was straining my arm to this extent, managed to tear both my right biceps and brachialis. This manifested itself in a bloody, purple bruise the origin of which I did not immediately grasp. Being me I figured since I didn’t hurt my arm working out, I didn’t have to stop working out. I know that makes no sense. But the injustice of doing something that isn’t really even my job at work, hurting myself and as a result being forced to stop doing what I love was just too harsh to accept. I kept working out another three months with a sore arm.

Around July I clued in that I was never going to heal this way and I dragged myself to a sports medicine physician who in turn sent me to a physical therapist (PT). When the latter told me our work together was to get me pain free I almost cried I was so tired of being in constant pain. I spent the summer doing my PT exercises and working on walk-run intervals and abdominal/core work.  My core was abysmally weak I had learned in starting New Rules and I was eager to improve that before getting back to it.

In November 2010 I took the plunge and started Stage 1 again. This time for any exercise that involved the  brachialis in any significant way I substituted my PT exercises.  I completed Stage 1 this way. As it was still clear that I was not going to be able to push myself in New Rules, I opted not to  continue with this program sought interval and body-weight exercises that I could continue to do without needing to push my arm too far.

I finally felt able to get going again in June 2011 when I started the Female Body Breakthrough program. Having just completed that I am now ready to return at last to New Rules of Lifting for Women. I am coming back to it quite a bit stronger than I was when I began. I also credit FBB with continually allowing me to progress in terms of strength without hurting anything.  I think this is due to the super long full body warm up that precedes and is part of each workout. Though it sometimes bored me– it remains the same throughout the whole program– I think it was the reason the program was so successful in allowing me to build strength injury-free. More on that in a future post.

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My Longest Love Affair

I’ve never really enjoyed participating in organized sports. I don’t have particularly stellar hand-eye coordination and always had little confidence in my ability to connect ball and bat. Thus over the years the athletic endeavors I did enjoy generally involved my competing against a clock or myself. Not that I was particularly good at that either. Over the years I swam, ice skated and jogged. I participated on a water ballet team. I even practiced ice hockey for a bit.

My love affair with weight lifting began in high school where Mr. Johnson the gym teacher introduced me to resistance training. We had some choices about how to fulfill the required gym classes and I don’t remember if I signed up for it or received it as part of a class. I do remember that Mr. Johnson was an attractive, blue-eyed, relatively young African American man. In any case I liked weight lifting a lot though I didn’t really get back into it until after college. I was a good and diligent high school student and I do remember another teacher ribbing me about weight lifting.

Shortly after college I had a job at a YMCA. That was the first time in my life that I had easy and regular access to a good place to work out. I took full advantage of it, even training to teach an aerobics class-though I was terrible at learning dance steps–especially when they changed every 8 weeks. The Y had air resistance equipment and also a traditional weight room and working out became a regular thing for me.  When I later relocated and left that job, I joined a health club briefly and continued to build my collection of equipment for home use including a set of dumbbells of various weights and eventually a weight bench, barbells and even a high/low pulley machine.  All of these allow me to work out in my unfinished basement.

I love weight lifting for many reasons–principally for its impact on my physique. If there is any sport for which I might make the argument that I have a gift it is probably this one. This is not to my credit but is rather due to an accident of genetics. If you believe in somatypes, I have a mesomorph’s physique and tend to put on muscle easily. (Regrettably I am not similarly gifted in the self-discipline department.) Weight lifting meets the requirement of something in which I can compete against myself. And for a person who likes keeping track of things on spreadsheets it’s a delight.

With the realization that few people that are actually known to me share my enthusiasm for my fitness pursuits, and not entirely indifferent to the way the eyes of most people I know tend to glaze over when I talk about said pursuits, I am embarking on a way to give voice to this passion whether it’s only for my entertainment or for others’ benefit as well.

A complete weight training workout can be perf...

Adjustable Dumbbells