Weight Loss

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OK, I was busy yesterday and didn't post an update. I discovered what Core Synergistics entails. It is using your core muscles (the ones in the torso) in conjunction with other muscles not in the core. I rank it as a moderately difficult workout. Certainly easier than Yoga and Core Synergistics, but more difficult than some of the others I've done.

Last night, the workout was Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps, which is a combination I've never seen before. (I've seen Chest and Triceps together, but never with Shoulders thrown in.) Lots and lots and lots of sets. All together, there were 30 of them, with no set repeating. Tony recommended doing each set to failure, which I didn't do, because I didn't see the point. If I'm doing 30 sets, and I do the first one to failure, then there's no way I'm going to be able to do much on the next 29 sets.

I was certainly going to failure by the end of the workout though. Tony puts a lot of the more difficult sets at the end of the workout. For example, the first set was regular pushups, while one of the last sets was clap pushups. Clap pushups are, obviously, much more difficultt than regular pushups, even assuming you aren't fatigued at the time you're doing them. My wife was much displeased with the inclusion of clap pushups, simply because, like most women, she cannot do clap pushups.

Tonight is back and biceps. One thing I find curious is the high frequency with which we do back exercises - this is the 3rd workout of 12 that has some combination of back in it. Although I do suppose we also hit chest three times in two weeks as well. After that we have Cardio (ugh) and Ab Ripper as the final two in the first two week cycle.

 

Training chest, shoulder and triceps together is quite common, at least in split programs. Lots of synergy: shoulders work with chest in bench presses and triceps work pretty much in all upper body presses, pushups etc. Some full body workout programs don't even have isolated tricep exercises as they take enough damage while training chest and shoulders. Back and biceps have the same kind of synergy.

 

You do understand that by doing everything until failure you are building up muscle quicker. Each time you go back to that workout you will surpass your previous achievement.

I biggest change I noticed on my body so far has been the loss of my double and trip chins. It feels good looking in the mirror knowing I don't have so many chins. I'm waiting for my man boobs to go away. I know I have a long way to go before that happens but I'm going to continue to work my butt off.

 

Sometimes - I'm no newbie to the workout thing. It is recommended that you workout to failure, but usually working out to failure means doing so on the last few sets - not all of the sets. For example, when I work out on bench press, I lift the last few sets until I cannot lift them again. Sure, I could lift my first set of 155 lbs to failure - it would probably take in excess of 20 reps to do so - but certainly I could. That is likely to build some stamina but it wouldn't make me be able to lift more than what I normally do on my last set, which is 245 lbs currently.

Gassing yourself on the first few sets WILL result in you getting less reps out of later sets. The sets you want to max out on are the ones you are the poorest at. If I do 40 pushups to failure, as opposed to 25 pushups to work up a good sweat, it does not follow that I'll be able to do 41 to failure next time. However, with something like diamond pushups, where I can only do 7 or 8, it totally makes sense to do as many as possible. However, if I did 40 pushups five minutes previouisly, maybe I'll only get 4 or 5 diamond pushups to failure. That is not the most productive way to build muscle. (That is, unless you're my wife - she generally only gets a few pushups out of every set, so she does go to failure.

 

I see your point and it does make sense.

You probaly already know this that you should be hitting failure between your 8th and 15th rep; if you are not than you need to increase the weight unless you are going for 20 reps sets.

 

That is true. And I've learned at this point that is is easier to just make up a few dumbbells in the beginning of the workout so you have what you need. Unforunately, I am limited by both the total number of weights I have and the number of adjustable dumbbell bars I have to not pause on occassion to adjust the weight. Most of the time, I can get away with a 25 lb or 35 lb dumbbell, but occassionally I need more, and occassionally less.

I record all of my reps and weight used in a journal of sorts. (Actually, it's a bunch of pieces of paper paper-clipped together, so not a journal per se.) Since this is the first time through these workouts, I'm taking notes next to them, such as "more weight" when the biggest I had ready was a 35lb dumbbell, and I could have used a 40 or 45.

Tonight is Cardio, which I expect will go down with Plyometrics and Yoga as difficult - especially if it's like most workouts, lasting about 45 minutes. (Actually Yoga is the oddball in the workouts - it's much, much longer than all the other ones at nearly an hour and a half.)

 

OK, I did Cardio on Friday, and Ab Ripper on Saturday.

Cardio was difficult, but not as bad as I had anticipated. I had to pause a couple of times for a minute or two to catch my breath, but overall it was not terrible - certainly it wasn't worse than Plyometrics or Yoga.

Then came Ab Ripper. Suffice it to say that I underestimated Tony. It's the shortest workout of the series - 12 sets, 25 reps to a set, 16 minutes. Tony says at the begining of the workout - "This isn't Abs 100 or 200 - it's more like Abs 400."

My underestimation was twofold. First, while I certianly do more than 400 total reps in my abs workout, I never work abs by themselves. I do an ab workout along with something else, and rotate between a set for my abs, along with whatever else I happen to be doing - usually chest or back. So while I do that many reps I never do them in 16 minutes. Secondly, I do three different exercises when I work abs - five sets of decline situps, five sets of leg raises, and five sets of crunches. Tony does 12 different exercises, of which none of the three I do are included. So there's no "muscle memory" there - I'm doing exercies which my abs don't typically do.

In fact I had great difficulty even doing two of the 12 sets - one due to a flexibility issue and the other due to a mental issue (yes, that's right - I had a mental problem with one). I'll cover the mental one first, as that's more interesting. One of the first exercises we did was called "bicycles". You lay on your back, thighs perpendicular to the ground, lower legs parallel to the ground, and you do 25 revolutions in a pedeling motion. No problem.

As soon as you're done, Tony says now do 25 backwards. Easy, right? Actually, it's not. I don't know if the countless hours I spent in my youth riding a bike has hard-wired into my brain a forward pedeling motion, but I found it extremely difficult, even while concentrating on doing it, to pedal backwards. At first I thought, WTF? Am I this much of an idiot (which is certainly a plausible scenario), but after a couple of seconds my wife says, "I can't do this." So it wasn't just me. It's hard to pedal backwards.

The second one I had trouble with was one of the last exercises, and this is another one that's a lot harder than it looks. You sit on your butt, knees bent, feet raised off the ground. You interlock your fingers on your two hands, and keeping them locked together, you twist with your feet raised and touch the ground with your knuckels on the outside of your left thigh, and then on the outside of your right thigh. It sounds easy, but it's much more difficult than it looks. I was turning to my maximum to get my knuckles to the floor. I found that I either had to go slower than Tony to do the exercise, or not quite touch the floor if I wanted to keep up with him.

Tonight is weigh-in number 2, and also the first repeat workout - we're back to DVD #1 -Chest and Back.

 

Hmm... I thought you told me the Ab workout would be easy and yet I still warned you not to expect it so...

I have not lost any more weight since the end of March. I'm guessing it is my diet. I'm not usre if I'm eating enough calories or if I'm eating too much. Since Good Friday I have not followed my diet by any means. I honestly might be hurting myself by not sticking to it. At least I'm still putting in the exercise.

Tonight I plan to start it all over with new pictures and a new desire to get through 90 days of exercise and eating right.
Now I just

 

I know - that's why I said I had "underestimated" Tony. That was an attempt to admit my error while salvaging what little remained of my dignity.

I would hazard to guess that it's not an issue of eating too much or too little, but specifically what it is you're eating. A little over or under your recommended caloric intake is not likely to have any major effect. That said, the end of March isn't even two weeks ago - it's not like you've gone a long time without losing weight. I would concentrate more on the general trend rather than a two week interval in time.

The other issue I would bring up is that you now weigh considerably less than when you started working out. While the number of calories you were consuming may have been good enough to bring your weight down to its present level, perhaps you need to adjust your diet again to go lower. Of course, I'd still go back to your previous diet first, because it sounds like the lack of weight loss may be simply due to what you've eaten in the past two weeks.

 

Aldeth I was eating around 1200-1500 calories for the first 4 weeks. The past 10 days I've been eating like crap and eating junk food. Hopefully starting tonight I can go back to the diet I was doing prior to 4/2/2010 which was...

Breakfast:
1 cup of kashi go lean or oatmeal
1 cup of 1% or skim milk
A small fruit

Lunch
2 slices of whole grain bread
3-4oz of protien (tuna or 3 egg whites)
1 apple
12oz can of V8 - I'm lazy and don't have the time to eat veggie at work

Snack
Kashi Granola bar - Good mix of protien and carbs

Dinner
6-8 ozs of broccoli or another dark green veggie
Baked potato or 1/2 cup of wild/long grain brown rice
3/4 cup of low fat cottage cheese or egg whites

This time around though I'm taking out red meat all together. I want to see how my body repsonds to not eating red meat.

I heard cottage cheese is an excellent source of protien compared to red meats, etc...

I wish I could eat chicken or turkey. It would give me more flexibility with my meals.

 

That is not much at all! You should lose weight like crazy eating that way, especially considering your current weight, you're a guy, and you're still in your early 30s. I would hazard to guess that you could eat at least 2000 calories per day, and probably more like 2500 calories per day, and still lose weight.

Most cheeses are an excellent source of protein and cottage cheese is no exception. Heck, even milk isn't a bad source of protein. The only issue is that you need to go with the low/no fat varieties to minimize the calories and fat intake.

Why can't you eat poultry? How about pork as an alternative? A nice pork chop or pork loin generally has fewer calories than most steaks, although more than chicken and turkey.

I completely PWNED the chest and back workout last night. I went up to 230 lbs for all the pull-ups and chin-ups (remember I don't have a pullup bar, so I do pull-downs, and was still able to get 20 in each one-minute period. Went up to a 60-pound dumbbell for the lawnmowers and squat lifts. I was able to do a set of 10 and 8 for the two sets of diamond pushups, compared to 8 and 5 of two weeks ago. I also got sets of 8 and 7 for the dive bomber pushups, compared to 5 and 3 of two weeks ago.

If this is any indication of what is to come, it appears the second time through the videos is considerably easier. (This kind of makes sense though, because even seeing it once before helps.) Tonight is plyometrics. I can only hope my performance in this workout shows similar improvements. I'm confident that I can get through it - I just am unsure about how many times I'll have to hit the pause button.

 

Don't worry about plyometric so much; you will do just fine.

As for calorie intake I can eat around 1800-2200 calories a day though I want to loose fat quickly so I'm trying to eat a couple hundred less calories a day.

I thought I posted on here more than once I'm allergic to Chicken and Turkey; my allergic reaction is the same that most people have to nuts.

 

That's right - I apologize that I forgot about that. Still, pork is an excellent alternative (well, maybe not if you're Jewish). At least it would provide some additional diet flexibility, and an alternative protein source.

 

I do eat pork but I'm trying to do Tony's updated food plan that he posted on mybeachbody.com website.

He recommends no red meat, no dairy (I'm eating fat free cottage cheese as I'm limited in my protien choices) no processed sugar and white flour. As well as some other things which aren't that hard to follow.

Since I'm limited in my lean protien I decided to go with his no red meat idea; this means no cows or pigs. This leaves me with egg whites, fish, beans, soy and dairy for protien choices. Since I'm not a big fan of soy protien it limits me even more. So I'm now leaning more on fish, eggs whites and dairy and when I say dairy I'm going with fat free cottage cheese.

I'm only going to do this for the next month or at least 2 weeks to see if it actually works. Those who follow Tony's food plan and does moderate exercise of 30 minutes (walking) have lost 30-100 lbs in 6 months to a year.

 

MB - first off I want to congratulate you for what you're doing. I've been reading through this journal of yours, and now Aldeth's, and it's awesome that you both are so committed to trying to better yourselves and get healthier. Unfortunately, in my case, my excessive weight gain has to do with my thyroid being so out of control (lack of $ for doctor and meds the past two years - am finally able to see a doctor this upcoming Thursday, yay!) and not so much with my lifestyle, though it's not the best either lol.

One thing you mentioned really put me on guard in regards to what this Tony person suggests in the way of diet. You said that he suggests to cut out dairy completely. To me, that's not healthy. I don't know which report is right - that keeping dairy (as long as you don't go overboard) in your diet will help lose weight, or that it doesn't do anything one way or the other, but the body needs its calcium. Unless you're getting it from other sources (and from what I've researched when taking anatomy & physiology classes when I was planning on going into the health field), dairy, especially milk, is one of the best ways to keep your body from becoming calcium deficient. Not to mention, milk itself is also one of the best ways of getting your daily intake of Vitamin D, outside of being out in the sun. While supplements can help, they can also be detrimental (studies show that in some cases certain supplements, including calcium, can actually increase the possibilities of heart disease, etc.) and that ingesting the vitamins through their natural means (vegetables, dairy, meat, etc.) is actually healthier. If you have the chance, I would highly suggest talking to your doctor or to a licensed nutritionist before cutting dairy out of your diet... just as I never understood some of the fad diets out there saying to completely remove carbs from your diet because the body needs carbohydrates for certain cellular functions - as long as you're eating healthy carbs and not gorging yourself on the unhealthy varieties. Didn't hurt that my anatomy & physiology professor is a licensed physician as well so we learned some interesting facts and figures on top of what was in our books

Again, good luck! Sounds like you're doing a great job so far. And also as a head's up - having been there before - don't be surprised if you hit a plateau for a while where you're doing everything right and yet you don't seem to be losing an ounce. It's natural. If/when it happens, don't get discouraged but keep on truckin'.

 

Celtic -

I agree with your analysis on dairy products. I don't see much harm in consuming milk, especially if it's skim milk. It's low in calories, and in addition to being a great source of calcium and Vitamin D* milk is also a solid protein source. It doesn't have the same amount of protein as you'd get from meat, but in a case like Munchkin, where his choice of meat is extremely limited, having a supplemental protein source is a good thing.

* Almost all store bought milk contains a healthy amount of Vitamin D, but it is artificially added. Regular milk straight from the cow contains almost no Vitamin D.

Regarding vitamins and other dietary supplements, they are unnecessary if you eat a healthy balanced diet. You only need to take dietary supplements if there are certain foods you cannot eat and cannot get certain necessary compounds into your body through alternative foods.

It occurred to me that I forgot to post my weight loss yesterday. I went down 0.4 pounds. So not nearly as much as week one, but in all honesty, I'm using this workout as much as a change in workout routine as I am doing it to lose weight. I would like to lose some weight, and in all likelihood I will. But I don't have a set weight loss goal. If I can lose 15-20 pounds, that would be outstanding, but that's not to say I wouldn't be content if I lost 10 pounds. So my general feeling is as long as the number for any given week is lower than the number of the previous week (even if it is only about half a pound lower) that's fine by me.

I also noticed that the majority of the "hard" workouts are concentrated in the odd numbered weeks (1, 3, 5 etc). The odd number weeks feature Plyometircs (regarded as the most intense workout), along with Yoga (much harder than it looks), and Kenpo (which is definitely cardio). Also, a lot of your big muscle groups are worked out in the odd weeks, such as the main chest and back workout and the main leg workout. Conversely, the even numbered weeks focus more on arm and core exercises, and only lightly hits the big muscle groups. There is a cardio on even weeks, but this is balanced by a stretching workout, which isn't really a workout. It's certainly a useful routine for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of flexibility, but I cannot imagine I'm burning many calories doing it. This is a long-winded way of saying that based on the workouts, I would expect to lose more weight during odd numbered weeks as compared to even numbered weeks.

I started weight training about 10 years ago, so I'm not a novice when it comes to working out. However, two things were lacking in my routine. I didn't do any cardio, and other than some basic warmups at the start of the exercises, I wasn't doing any type of stretching to improve flexibility. P90X covers that (as well as weight training). The other thing was I hit a plateau in my workouts. I haven't had a serious imporovement in the amount of weight I can lift in over a year. My muscles have become accustomed to the workouts, and so I've kind of stagnated. When I workout chest, my last set on the bench press is 255 lbs - which is exactly what it was a year ago at this time.

I was able to get through Plyometrics last night with minimal breaks by not trying to be a hero. The first time I tried to do everything exactly the way they were doing it in the DVD. However Tony also shows a lower impact, easier way to do some of the exercises. I discovered that if I went the lower impact route on those exercises where it is presented as an option, I can get through the entire DVD without making excessive use of the "pause" button. While I am capable of doing the exercies the harder way, I'm gassed by the mid point of the workout, and I'm pausing after every other exercise to catch my breath. Perhaps once I get used to the lower impact workout, I can move up the more difficult forms. Plyometrics is just a tough workout.

EDIT: Munchkin - when I started P90X, you asked me to let you know if it was worth moving up from P90 to this workout. There are many times during the workouts when Tony mentions the standard P90 workouts, and that if you are a graduate of the P90 program, you'll recognize some of the moves. He even goes so far as to say that Cardio is a more advanced form of Sculpt 2, and Ab Ripper is a more advanced from of Abs 200. I've never done P90, so I don't have any experience to draw from, and no means of making a direct comparison. However, based on some of the things Tony says, it appears that P90X is a logical progression from the P90 workouts.

Of course, it would also make sense that you master the P90 workouts before moving up to the P90X workouts. If you're doing all the exercises in the P90 workout, you're keeping up with Tony and not hitting the pause button, you're probably ready for P90X.

 

You know that eating 1 cup of an onion, yes an onion, has as much if not more calcium than a cup of milk. Broccoli, spinach and other green veggies also have calcium as do alot of the other foods we eat.

Many reports both for and against dairy products state x, y, and z. To be honest it is truly hard to tell who is right when it comes to dairy products.

As for removing dairy from the diet I did that in 2001. I lost 40lbs in 2 months with just walking for 30 minutes a day and avoiding red meats and dairy. In fact I was a full blown vegan. I had almond and soy milk to replace dairy milk. I lost weight quickly and I had a ton of energy to do things that I wanted to to. I'm trying to get back to that. It is hard to enjoy some of life food (veggies) when living with someone who is not all the keen on trying out new foods.

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I'm still using Sculpt and Sweat 1-2 and Ab Ripper 100. I'm very close to mastering these two workourt.

Sweat 1-2: The legg and arm exercises still get me with the second set. I'm able to make it through the first set without resting the arms now. My goal is to get through both sets without rest my arms. Besides that there are two other exercises I do the modified move for because I don't want to shake my house to death or I would be also done mastering Sweat 1-2.

Sculpt 1-2: When I started I could only do about 5-6 standard pushups followed by maybe 5 wide pushups and 7-7-7 on my kneees for the wide, narrow and standard pushups. I'm now doing 15 standard, 13-14 wide and 7-6-5/6 pushups. As for the rest of this video I'm started off with 8lb weights and was doing 15lbs weights last week. I rotate between the bands and the weights every 2 weeks. So this week and next are band weeks for me.

Abb 100: I could not even get 30 crunches off the first week; yesterday was the first time I did all 100 and my stomach was very sore afterward. But it felt good I was able to get through all 100.

After I master these DVD's I plan to move onto the 3-4 DVDs. Once I master the 3-4 DVDs I plan to move onto the 5-6 DVDs. Once I master those I will move onto P90X or Insanity. By than I should be close to 200lbs or so.

 

Finally got myself a lifting partner again, at least in the loosest sense of the word. With my next paycheck (two weeks) I'll be able to get a gym membership and go with a cool guy from work. Only trouble is... the dude is ripped and I haven't had a proper work-out in far too long.

Just helps to have someone else with you, especially if it is dumbbell or core exercises.

 

Take your time and don't over do it. You want to lift weights that you know you can lift. After you get the form down than go ahead and start increasing the weights.

As for having a partner or not. That choice is yours. You don't really need a partner unless you are doing exercises where one is need to spot you.

 

Most of the time I workout with my wife, but on the few occassions where I do the workouts on my own, I find I go faster without her. On a lot of the workout DVDs, she goes over the prescribed time, because she's going for tone over muscle bulk. So I do my 8-10 reps and I'm done by the time Tony is moving on to the next exercise, while she is trying to get to 15. Sometimes she even goes to more than 15. I tell her that if she can do more than 15, she probably should just use a heavier weight and do fewer, but as with most disagreements between spouses, I have the disadvantage of being the man, and thus I start off as being wrong.

So I agree with Munchkin that there are generally two situations where you want to work out with someone else: 1) You need someone to spot you and 2) You want the motivation of actually going. Some people will not make the effort to go by themselves, but are more willing if they are doing it with someone else.

We did shoulders, biceps and triceps last night in the workout. Ton o' sets. In each grouping, Tony does a shoulder exercise, then a bicep exercise, then a tricep exercise. You then go and do those same three exercises a second time. That's considered one "group" and there's a one minute break between groups. Since there are five groups in the video, that's 30 sets, which is quite a lot. It's really a lot when your workout partner does 20 rep sets, and you do 10 rep sets. Having done the workout before, I thought it went very well. I knew what weights to use, so it went faster.

Tonight is yoga. If I show similar improvement as I did in the first three workouts, this one should be OK. It will still be hard, but at least I'll have some idea as to the form I'm looking for.