Step Away From the Cake

See what's happening here??? I'm getting back into the grove and I start posting more frequently. Interesting connection, no?? I find the responses I got to my last post interesting. I'm guessing the common knowledge is changing. I really thought I'd have people saying lots of aerobic work is the only way to lose fat. So I was pleasantly surprised. Although I am by no means an expert, I'd thought I'd address some of the comments. Ellie said: Sounds interesting. I think the connections between endurance cardio and fat-burning is that it's supposed to enhance your ability to use fat, of which most of us have more than enough, rather than glycogen, which is limited, over long periods of extended exercise. According to Afterburn : "The body literally adapts to anything we attempt to do by responding in the reverse manner. Don't drink any water? Your body tries to retain water. Does weight training build muscle? No it doesn't. What actually...

Back in December I ordered Afterburn . I received it a little before New Years, read it through, and got all ready to follow it. I did follow it, faithfully for a few weeks. And it works. For the past monthish I've been following it kind of half heartedly and it's still been working kind of half heartedly . I'm really hooked on it. So, what is this you might ask. It's a fat loss program that makes incredible sense and works for me. The program is basically a calorie restriction of 20% and a weight training and cardio program (short bouts of high intensity). The author, Alywn Cosgrove , says that long bouts of cardio do nothing for your fat burning mechanism. You need to build muscle and do focused cardio in order to turn on the fat burners and keep them going. He, of course, says it way better than I do but that's the general idea. He also advocates a nutrition ratio of 40% protein/30% carbs /30% fat. But all these elements, calories, ratios, we...

Life is what happens while you're making other plans. That could be the theme of the last 2 months. Well, enough of that. I have 45 days until my birthday and I have goals I want to achieve by that date. Since I have lost 2 months I am revising my goals slightly. A little over 6 weeks till that day. I will lose 10 pounds in that time. In spite of everything that has been going on, I've managed to lose 4 lbs this month. So I think with a little focus on me I could lose 10 in 6 weeks. Goal #1. Goal #2: My exercise has been sporadic at best. The good thing about this is that my back and hip do not hurt at all anymore. The bad thing is I feel like a marshmallow person. There are actually 46 days till I age. I will exercise everyday until then. I will have 1 day a week that will be very light; walking, biking, etc; the other 6 will be tough. I guess that's all the goals for the next 6 weeks. I don't have any races planned and probably won't do many this ye...

Sorry about yesterday's post. I was going to delete it and decided to leave it, at least for now. There are definite stages I go through when things like this happen, disbelief, depression, and white hot anger. Well yesterday depression was winning out. The only anger I experienced was in writing that post. They say, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Well, I tired of being lunch. I don't really have anything to say today. I just wanted to apologize for that post. I have been reading blogs though and it's interesting. IronWil has an entry about Girl Scout cookies. What I find so interesting about this post is that we are done with those cookies. We get them in January when we are still drunk from the holiday eating and it's very easy to resist them. I don't know if I could resist their siren call now. It's 2 months after the holidays, the good intentions of New Year's is wearing off, and I haven't had any real suga...

We went out yesterday afternoon to just cruise some areas and see how we felt about them. Sunday afternoon is open house day in Hawaii and I since it's only from 2-5 p.m. I don't want to waste time going to places we don't like and wouldn't live. So yeah, that's what we did. And what did we learn from this? This is not going to be easy. Hubby has certain ideas. I have certain ideas. I'm not sure we can get those 2 ideas together enough to settle on a place. Also, he has a terrible habit of letting me take the lead and make the decision if he's not positive. I'm pretty decisive and tend to speak my mind (ya think??) so if there's something I don't like I'll just say so. Hubby won't necessarily do that. I'll ask what he thinks and I'll get a response like, " ummm , yeah, it's okay." Now what exactly does that mean. Then of course if I push him he'll get angry, "I said it's okay" then I ge...