http://fit.bethlin.com/

As of today, I’m updating the other one regularly and will eventually shut this one down!

My get-on-track plan is pretty simple:

• Follow a weekly schedule for workouts right now.
• Plan meals for 6 days a week, then have a free day on Sundays.  (This is the part of the “plan” that Marc has embraced.)
• Drink 64 oz of water everyday.
• Blog/journal everyday, including an SotD.

I’ve got a couple tools to help me keep to my plan,  most of them related to the meal planning/eating right goals.  The tools I’m using right now to help me with a fitness plan are pretty basic.

• My C25K mp3′s – I’m restarting week 4.
• Leash – for my running buddy, M, W & F and for both hiking buddies on Saturdays!
• Shoes – still no shin pain, so I haven’t worn them out yet!
• Dumbbells – for upper body workouts on M & F
• Gym membership – for lower body strength and interval workouts on T & R
• Yoga videos – for a workout on Sun & Wed.

In the long run, I think I’m tired of the gym though.  It’s a great way to ‘get away from it all’ – my FIL says his three-hour gym sessions (including the steam room) are better than therapy – but I think I can get more out of some other activities.

I know I want to learn a martial art, and Marc has recommended Tae Kwon Do.  Apparently, it focuses on kicks, which would make a TKD class a great alternative to my lower body workouts!  It would also be a way to make sure I got out and was at least a little social. Not working and studying through distance education, I know it’s important to make sure that I don’t end up in a completely anti-social funk.

I would also like to get back into crew when the weather is more consistently nice.  This isn’t so much of a group sport until I build up some skills, but it’s outdoors.  I am more motivated to get started when I’m going to exercise outside.  The downside is that Town Lake is much further away than the gym…I think I’d probably only end up going out once a week, maybe twice if the weather is nice.

My last “ideal” fitness activity to pick up would be mountain biking.  We have Marc’s old mountain bike, which I need to take in and get fixed up.  There are some good places to go riding, not too far from here, so this has the advantage of being (1) nearly free, (2) convenient and (3) outdoors.

I still have a gym membership until the middle of January (or maybe it’s February? I need to check), but I know that I will certainly be getting rid of that membership and going back to rowing.  I’ll spend the afternoon today researching TKD places in town and getting that set up too.

Good luck, to everyone in the new year!!

Yesterday, however, other parts of my life sort-of got on track.  I found out they need someone to cover for some documentation associates on maternity leave at a local clinical research group and got the first interview to get a job for a couple months. Woohoo!! It’s not going to be interesting, but it’ll keep my head in the game and be a chance to check out the culture at another local company while getting some more contacts.  It should be a good position while I am starting classes in January – not too stressful, etc.  The pay is nothing special, but it’ll cover some of the cost of the degree, which is great.  I had the first in-person interview today and will have another phone interview and another in-person, hopefully all this week.

And with that news, I also got my weight loss on track.  I drank a bunch of water and kept within my calorie range even though we had all of zero healthy foods in the house (turns out, I can do it if I’m creative).  I’m still not back with the exercise, but I might be able to work up the motivation this evening after dinner.  Marc’s got me into playing this video game with him every second I’m not doing something else, but I really need to carve this time out for some exercise.  We leave for Georgia on Sunday, so I’ve also got to get christmas gifts together and pack and all that.  Busy week for the childless-housewife!!

Today, I haven’t even started drinking my water and I am going out again.  This time, Yolanda is hosting an ornament exchange at her house.  I think I’ll be able to make myself behave because I’ve just been so aweful lately.  And I didn’t weigh in this morning – I don’t want to know.  When I get done with the ornament thing, I need to come home and do some sort of workout, but I don’t know how likely that is.  At the very least, I have to stay away from booze and snacks and drink water instead!  Then I’ll reward myself with a low-cal ice cream bar that I’ve already got in my fridge at home…

But wow, this was great Korean food.  Totally worth it.  Sushi was part of the meal, and was mediocre, but everything else was outstanding!!!  Worth it in a heart beat.  Frosty cold green tea ice cream on pound cake, plated with whipped cream, honey and a dust of cinnamon.  Nothing can beat that for desert. Nothing. mmmmmmmmm

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So it appears that Emerson was able to capture a deep-down fear of mine in one quick line.  How terrifying is the thought that no matter where you go, there you are?  So you can’t just run away from the problem – no matter how you change your circumstances, give it time, and your defects will catch up with you.  I know this is supposed to be empowering – You too can control everything by controlling yourself – but isn’t that also frightening?  The corollary is that problems can not be blamed on the environment, on others, on the phase of the moon – it’s you that causes the problems.  It’s so much easier to change your environment, surround yourself with different people, take a Midol.  But to change yourself?  That is  extraordinary.

You have to be a shrink – you have to be able to analyze yourself, to see yourself as objectively as possible and identify the areas of good and bad.  That alone is hard enough.  How can you judge yourself objectively?  There are characteristics that, at one point in your life, seem vital and ideal.  Give it five years and, yes, a change of circumstances, and those characteristics seem somehow tarnished.  Maybe not completely ruined, but those ideals are replaced by something that seems more real, more true.  Is that a defect of character – the inability to hold on to ideals through time and changes in circumstance?  Or is that an ideal – the ability to learn from adversity and diversity and adapt?

So let’s say you do figure out what your ideal is – even if it’s a temporary ideal, it’s something.  Now you have to figure out how to change yourself to meet that ideal.  I love to make plans, to make lists, so this part can be kind of fun.  Make sure you identify the strengths you need, the weaknesses that must be cut out; then make a plan, work the plan.  Here’s the problem for me – if the ideal is not perfect, if it’s not spot on, just right, then motivation goes out the window. I can make all sorts of plans, but when it comes to changing something I feel is fundamental about part of my character, I will balk at the last minute.  And my other concern is over planning – if one thing falls apart, then will the entire plan go downhill?  But wait, isn’t this inability to commit and stick to a plan just another weakness in my character??? How am I supposed to repair the defect of character that I don’t stick to plans to repairs defects in character??? Arrrrrrrrrrgggggg!!!!!!!!!!

And of course, all of this assumes that you, your character, is mutable.  You can be changed to meet the ideal, you can remove the weaknesses and enhance the strengths.  This assumes that your character is not the essential you.  Maybe there is no essential you – if the essential ideal to which you devote yourself is a moving target,which you constantly reshape yourself to hit, what remains?  (Wait, did I just talk myself into or out of a belief in the soul?  Damnit.  Free form writing is dangerous, that was so not my point.)

Most importantly, I don’t think I agree with much of this.  (Yes, most important is what I think.  My journal, deal with it.)  People change, life changes, people are mutable, people have fundamental selves, self-improvement is possible, it is ideal, it is a weakness.  And this sounds vaguely hopeless, which I’m not.  I’ve written myself into a place I don’t believe in! And I’m spending more time on this than I probably need to if I want to have some time today to improve my character.  And do the laundry (there is lots of laundry). I’ll leave this with one more quote:

If I want to be great I have to win the victory over myself… self-discipline. – Harry S. Truman

Today, my weight loss goals are to (1) run with Isis, (2) still not drink any booze, (3) not eat any of the cookies and (4) drink more than the 64 oz of water I already drink everyday.

But trying to research the gender question as an amateur looking stuff up on google is CRAZY.  You get a lot of self-serving “articles” and posts that really don’t help at all, ending with someone selling their book on the perfect method to achieve greatness. Boring.  And boring to slog through.

Side note: Instead, I ended up, somehow, on a pro-ana website that just made me realize the world was full of crazy people with much worse body image problems than mine.  Also, looking at “thinspiration” pictures made me hungry, so I ate a snack I probably didn’t really need.  Still glad I did it.  I do not, incidentally, recommend reading that stuff (you can’t look away, it’s a train wreck, complete with flames) then going to your weight loss support message boards.  Whiplash.

So instead, I’m focusing on HIIT research and interval training research in general.  Later, I’ll probably look into adding weights. Which I’m not looking forward to.

Personal side note: For my own fitness program, I’m currently doing the Couch-to-5K program, which is really non-intense interval training.  I’ve got that down now, thanks to my running partner (Isis, the dog that is part greyhound) and my discovery that I can create my own running mixes (woohoo Audacity, my fav freeware).  I need to step up the weight training (I’m lazy) and get back into yoga (I’m stiff).  But I keep getting drawn back into discussions about interval training.  Cardio just makes me feel so good!  And despite dressing up strength training by doing it in front of my newly-acquired Ugly Betty, Season 1 downloads, I just don’t like doing things inside when the weather is nice.   I’m interested in doing more cardio, but am not eager to burn out or get that weird hip pain that sidelined me for months last time I jumped into too much running, too quickly.  I also like the gym, just not on a more than once-a-week basis.  What to do….

I’m going to add in a once-a-week interval training session on a gym machine and a once-a-week full body strength program.  Yikes.  Tonight, I’m focusing on finding out more about interval training so I can be all over-informed and, thus, inspired rather than tired. (ha!)

So what is HIIT?

An article I found on SparkPeople about HIIT is a great introduction.  HIIT, which stands for High Intensity Interval Training, is all about doing quick sessions of intense work, then recovering before doing another quick session of intense work.   My understanding is that this type of interval training is great for fat loss because it’s constantly challenging the body and because it sparks you to use anaerobic capacity, not just aerobic capacity.  The article in SparkPeople mentions that the distinguishing characteristic between HIIT and other interval training (like the C25K program I’m using) is that the “intense” work is actually your physical maximum.  Personally, this type of maximum worries me for two reasons – (1) I’ll injure myself again and (2) this will hurt like hell and will not motivate me to keep doing this type of crazy stuff.  These are two of the major disadvantages to HIIT training for beginners, although there are other potential problems for advanced athletes.  Since I’m not one, I don’t really care about those.

What is Interval Training?

Regular ol’ interval training is very similar, except, of course, doesn’t have that “HI” aspect. Duh.  You still do quick intervals of intense work followed by recovery, but that intense work probably won’t push you into the anaerobic area.  You are still challenging your body to respond to changing conditions, which is good for overall fitness and to keep things interesting.  I like this approach and use it right now because it allows me to work up to a longer steady-state cardio (ok, not that long, just a 5K in like, 35 minutes) without as much injury-risk or pain and because I don’t have to quantify my workouts – I just put on my shoes, grab the dog & head out to run to my favorite workout tunes.

Where’s the science?

I am disappointed in some of the scientific stuff I’m finding available on the web – ever heard of a control group??  Not that the results are invalid, I just love those controlled studies and will always place more value on them in my little blog posts.

• 2007, J Appl Physiol., Population: 8 females, healthy 22-year-old-ish.  No control group.  Two weeks of HIIT (7 sessions)  “Seven sessions of HIIT over a 2-wk period offer a short-duration stimulus to improve whole body fat oxidation and the capacity for skeletal muscle to oxidize fat.”
• 1979, European Journal of Applied Physiology. Population:  15 females, (3 groups), 18-25 years-old. One control, one continuous training, one interval training. 12 weeks of training program.  “These results indicated that, in response to high intensity training, women may demonstrate similar cardiovascular adaptations to training as have been observed for men.”
• 2008, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Population: 8 males, sedentary, obese.  Crossover design, each participant tried endurance exercise at a particular intensity, then did interval training at +20% of that intensity. “A continuous exercise training protocol that can elicit high rates of fat oxidation increases the contribution of fat to substrate oxidation during exercise and can significantly increase insulin sensitivity compared with a eucaloric interval protocol.” (An interesting commentary on this article is available here.)
• 2008, International Journal of Obesity. Population: 45 females (3 groups), BMI of 23.2±2, 18-22 years-old.  One control, one steady-state, one high-intensity intermittant exercise.  15 weeks of training program, measuring subc. & trunk fat and insulin resistance.  “HIIE three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of SSE exercise was associated with significant reductions in total body fat, subcutaneous leg and trunk fat, and insulin resistance in young women.”

Want another reference, maybe something that doesn’t require a PhD in exercise physiology to understand? A great introductory article is available in pdf format here.  Be warned though – this article is an ad for a work out machine, disguised as research.  It’s still valuable information, but I would ignore most of the end of the article.

So, while most sources point to the value of SIT/HIIT/HIIE or whatever you want to call it, there are some researchers out there questioning it.  And the Medicine and Sci. in Sports and Exercise article where continuous exercise beat out intervals definately has some points, especially if you are looking at insulin resistance.

What are you going to do with all of this information FitBethlin?

Well, overall, I think I’ll just do a quick intense-interval workout, once a week, in addition to my current running, which is what I would have done even if I hadn’t read this stuff. If my legs could take it, I’d rather do an intense-interval run outdoors with a stopwatch.  I just don’t think the legs will survive, so instead I’ll try to hit the gym and use either a bike or an elliptical.  The current plan is to follow the SparkPeople suggested intervals, below.  I’ll do each “week” twice, then move on to the next one.  So this week, I’ll run on Monday, Wednesday & Friday on the C25K program.  On Tuesday, I’ll do the 20 min intense workout on the elliptical or the bike at the gym.

And after the first week of this, I’ll need to get serious about adding in some strength training, probably as a circuit.  I’ve tried High Intensity Strength Training as slow-sets before, and that just bores me to tears by myself and is only marginally more interesting with a partner.

Does this all sound like too much work?  Then read this post on Cranky Fitness.  After I read this, I almost deleted everything above becuase, really, what ould top the article on S.H.I.I.T.®?

So now I’m nervous.  Will my subconsious mind trick me into believing that I can just eat whatever I want? Will I completely loose what little motivation I’ve got to step up my exercise routine (need to incorporate strength & flexibility)?  Will I ever get this damn ringing in my ears to go away?  Stay tuned for the next installment.