Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

Has anybody tried Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program?  It sounds like a good program, but since it's in e-book format, you can read just a little to see if you want to buy it.  I'd like a few opinions before I download it.  I have quite a bit of weight to lose (starting weight 187, goal 119).

Erin, I'll have to take this a bit at a time ;-)

About the Accu-Measure calipers, I happened to post a msg on that just a short time ago:

    http://www.calorie-count.com/forums/post/5011 6.html

That's about $20 new from the manufacturer, and I'm sure you can get it cheaper elsewhere.  It uses only the suprailiac site, just because that's the easiest site for a person to measure entirely by themself.  When I told you much earlier it only takes a few seconds, I wasn't putting you on -- pinch, click, done.  OK, they recommend doing it 3 times, and that's a good idea, but a minute is still plenty to do it 3 times.

The model I had in mind is the top one here (Fitness 3000):

    http://www.accumeasurefitness.com/products/in dex.html

As explained in the post above, I don't use it often because it happens to grossly underestimate my BF%.  I happen to get much better results (in terms of accuracy, but not consistency!) from an Omron HBF-500 electronic gizmo, so that's what I use most.  I expect most people would get better accuracy from the Accu-Measure method, and with practice its consistency is hard to beat.

As to how I find all the time for this, I'm not doing much else ;-)  I took most of 2006 as a sabbatical year, and was thinking about going back to work when my sister became ill.  That got me acutely (re)interested in health issues, and one thing lead to another.  Now that the ordeal with my sister is mostly over, I'm slowly easing back to more of a normal life (signing on for more external commitments, mostly volunteer work; not hanging around dying people nearly so much ;-)), but still have lots of spare time.

why does zig-zagging have to be slow?

For now, the same reason God lets bad things happen to good people:  we know it's true (observable fact), but everyone you ask makes up their own rationalization for it.

For a compelling answer everyone would first have to agree on very detailed models of how both fat-burning and muscle-building "work".  Good luck with that ;-)

At a high level, it's for the same reason you can't vastly increase your spending and vastly increase your saving rate at the same time:  they're contradictory goals.  Building muscle is an anabolic process, burning fat is a catabolic process, and it's physiologically impossible for the body to be in an anabolic and catabolic state at the same time.  It has to transition from one state to the other, and transitions take time.  For the time it takes for one state to get weaker and the other to strengthen, little of anything is accomplished.  That's "wasted" time from the POV of making progess toward either goal, and the more often you switch states the more time you spend in limbo.

There's also that building muscle isn't the only thing that happens in an anabolic state.  That's also the friendliest state for storing fat.  Likewise the fat-burning state is also friendliest to tearing down muscle.

Which, of course, brings us to doughnuts ;-)  You're right, there's never a good time to eat one.  A doughnut combines carbs with fats, the worst of all food combinations for someone trying to lose fat.  Carbs cause a rise in insulin, and insulin both inhibits burning fat for energy and encourages storing fatty acids as fat.  If she has to eat one, right after doing weights may be least harmful, and eat it with her protein shake.  At least then the insulin spike will also encourage the muscles to absorb protein (carbs + protein is a good combo; protein + fats is pretty much a neutral combo; carbs + fats is The Devil Incarnate).

I'm going to recommend a loooong article to you, for several reasons.  Mostly because I think you'll find large parts of it to be genuinely fascinating (you're curious & smart -- you should eat this up with relish):

    http://www.musclemedia.com/training/abcde/v58 _abc1.asp

The topic is Anabolic Burst Cycling, a then-new method of zig-zagging that made quite a splash at the time, solely on the strength of that article.  The guy who invented it was a Swedish bodybuilder, who was also a medical student at the time.  As you'll see, he's very smart, very articulate, and includes enough high-quality research references to support a doctoral dissertation.

Part of the reason I recommend it to you is that it's not about losing fat so much as gaining muscle, and whether or not you find the article itself to be useful, some of the research he discusses should be.  Another reason is so you can see his version of "the truth" about why "traditional" zig-zag approaches are so inefficient.

The last reason is to encourage your skepticism about "head theories"in a field so crushingly complex :-(  I've rarely read any article that seemed to make so much sense -- the guy had a slick answer to everything.

But if you start checking, things start to sour.  For example, early on he references a famous study that showed that healthy female volunteers who were merely overfed for 21 days, with no exercise, enjoyed increased levels of testosterone, insulin and IGF-1, and gained a significant amount of lean mass.  As (re)told in the article:

the test subjects in this study gained 3-6 lbs of lean body mass and gained a few pounds of bodyfat as well

However, if you go to the source (here's a link to the abstract), you'll see they actually gained more fat than lean mass.  The gain in lean mass was still significant (averaged more than a pound per week), but one of the cornerstones of his theory builds on that more lean mass than fat is gained when overfeeding for a sustained but relatively short time.

And so on.

If you look for references to Anabolic Burst Cycling today, you won't find a lot.  You'll find a few people who swear it works great for them, others who swear it made them extremely fat, more who say they kept going up and down by the same 10 pounds each time through a 24-day cycle, and a few authors trying to build on the once-intense buzz by making up their own variations and testifying "ya, the original sucked, but my brilliant variant works -- well, at least, for me, at least through one cycle so far" ;-)

jfswartz, which e-book is that?  The only one for $12 I found on philkaplan.com was called "Ultimate Fat Loss":

.... It is designed for experienced exercisers and is not for beginners. It is also designed to be performed in a health club. ... If a complete program, including detailed explanations of exercise, nutrition, supplements, health, etc is desired, you might consider TRANSFORM! or the Best You?ve Ever Been.

Searching more, "TRANSFORM!" appears to sell for $249(!), and "Best You've Ever Been" for $44.99.

I haven't seen any of these, so can't comment.  From the free stuff I saw, his message looked fine:  good nutrition, 6 small meals a day, resistance training, & cardio, but presented too dogmatically for my tastes (I like to see options, explanations, and discussions of tradeoffs -- everyone's different).   The real truth ;-) is that many ways of doing weights and cardio work fine for fat loss.

THANKS so much for all the great information.  I downloaded and started reading BTF today (FINALLY!!) and I am really pleased and excited. 

Good for you, msspeech!  You won't be sorry.  Or, if you are, feel free to blame me ;-)

Looking at your profile, I see you set measurable goals that excite you, and that means you either anticipated or understood ;-) chapter 1.  That's an excellent start.  Next time you reach for a doughnut, just remember that, ya, you could do that, or you could be gliding across the ballroom floor instead :-)

Seriously, if you stick with the frequent-small-meals-a-day idea over time, cravings shouldn't be a problem.  That does wonders for keeping blood sugar levels stable, and absolutely stopping uncomfortable hunger (of course I still get hungry, and especially after a weight session, but it's not ravenous hunger, just the pleasant kind that adds real enjoyment to meals).

You're gonna be so happy you did this :-)

Erin, about your neighbor:

she wants simple, practical advice ("tell me exactly what to do to lose weight") not a ton of explanations or hard-to digest info,

The good news is that there really aren't any secrets here, so pretty much everyone who knows what they're talking about agrees on most points.  In reply #23, jfswartz pointed to a site I can recommend too (after reading a bunch of it).  In particular, check this page out:

    http://www.philkaplan.com/thefitnesstruth/ult imatefatloss.htm

That's very prescriptive (do this, do that, don't tell me you'd rather do something else ;-)), and with your help I bet she could make an effective plan out of it.  Or she could buy one of his e-books to flesh it all out.

i know that she counts calories, but i think that her counting is probably off

Unless she has a metabolic disorder, way off.  Since she consulted with a doctor about bariatric surgery, I assume rare things (like impaired thyroid function) were ruled out?  If so, she's getting more calories than she thinks she is, and you know what it takes to correct that -- although it could be very hard to get her to do what's required to get an accurate count.

There's a different way (my way :-)) to proceed, but it's probably too "play by ear" to suit either of you:  if I lose, say, a pound in a week, I simply accept that means I averaged a 3500/7 = 500 calorie deficit per day.  I don't bother counting total calories at all, but I'm acutely aware of the calorie content of everything I eat, and eat much the same basic meals over and over (about a dozen different small-meal "templates", with endless variations due to substitutions).  So if I want to create an additional 500 calorie/day deficit over the last week, I just eat about 80-100 caloires fewer per meal than I ate the last week.  With practice it's dead easy to judge how much of something amounts to about 80-100 calories, and since these are all rough guesses anyway (no, Virginia, not every large orange contains exactly 86 calories ;-)), stressing over absolute accuracy is pointless.

In practice, once you "get close", weekly corrections are generally much smaller than that.  What she needs to accept is that her results do the best job of revealing her actual calorie deficit; a priori guesses are just that:  guesses.

Erin, time to talk about your weight training!  The bad news is that I'm not a doctor, not a fitness pro, and have no experience helping friends, relatives or coworkers with obvious metabolic disorders.  OTOH, the good news is that, since I'm not a pro, I have no ethical qualms about giving stupid, or even dangerous, made-up advice ;-) Caveat emptor, and apply your own common sense and doctor's advice.

After reading about your workout, this is what I'd say to just about anyone without complicating factors (whether disease- or treatment-related):

1. Your weight sessions are way too long.  Keep them under an hour.  BTW, this could account for your salt cravings after long weight sessions but not after (presumably much shorter) cardio sessions:  electrolytes (like sodium) are exhausted by long periods of heavy exercise, even when they're intermittent.
2. You're doing way too many exercises per session.  If you keep it under an hour, you'd be doing well to get 6 exercises in.
3. Taking a smoke break during a weight session is just plain nuts.  All the cells being worked need to get oxygen and need to get rid of carbon dioxide, and smoking interferes with both.
4. Your approach to abs is perfect :-)  People spend way too much time on ab exercises -- they're just another muscle group, after all.

Now for the complications:  I don't know what they all are, and it doesn't sound like anyone does, but some effects are becoming clear:  despite that you're eating enough to make two "healthy" women your height obese in short order, you gain weight slowly, lose weight quickly, and tire easily.  You're right that this has nothing to do with your age -- you're far too young to "tire easily" because of age alone.  Hell, I'm 55, and I'm too young for that to apply.  OTOH, whether or not you know it, you're making rapid progess with pullups.

So I'm left thinking that, for whatever reasons, your system has a hard time maintaining an anabolic state, an easy time maintaining a catabolic state, and you'll probably respond well to "powerlifter" kind of training (heavy load + low reps -- exactly what pullups were for you at the start).

So I'm going to suggest that you try BBB training:  basic, brief, but brutal (don't look up BBB on the web -- I just made it up :-)).  First, basic:  stick to the same big-muscle, multi-muscle lifts beginners thrive on:  squat, deadlift, bench press, standing press and (for you) chinups and pullups.  Do those five 3x a week, and don't try to do much more.  If it's true that your screwed-up metabolism leaves you with you a brief "anabolic window", we want to fit the most valuable lifts into that window, and do it fast.

More basics:  review everything about good form and correct breathing when lifting.  For example, you want to take several deep breaths before a set starts, to oxygenate the blood, then during your reps breathe very deeply, exhaling on the "power part" and inhaling on the "return part".  That's helpful for everyone, and for a smoker especially so (do note that I'm not nagging you to quit, just to stop smoking during a weight session ;-)).

Now for the sets, and consider trying it even if it sounds crazy (but not if it sounds harmful!) to you:

1. Do a warmup set, with no more than 50% 1RM load, and only 6 or so reps (depending on how you feel).
2. Rest until you're recovered.  FWIW, I find "lightly active rest" most refreshing:  walking or bouncing lightly (on a rebounder) between sets.
   
3. This is it!  Your working set.  There is only one, so give it all you have.  Pick a load aiming for failure after 4-8 reps, about 2 seconds up, 2 seconds down, no pause at top or bottom (except maybe for squats at the top -- or anything that gets you sucking air).  If/when you "know" you won't be able to do another rep, don't push to failure on another futile rep, but instead finish your current rep as a negative rep (do the "return part" of the rep very slowly).  If you don't know in advance, and fail during "the power part" of a rep, try to finish the failing rep as a negative rep.
   
4. If you believe you really did the best you could do, stop.  Else add drop-sets, but get them out of the way quickly.
5. Rest until recovered.

In most respects, this is the opposite of "metabolic lifting" often recommended for weight loss.  You're getting in, working your ass off before you can suffer "general" tiredness, then stopping and resting just as long as you need.  BTW, it's common for powerlifters to take minutes of rest between sets too.

The rep range I'm suggesting is a compromise between what powerlifters and bodybuilders usually emphasize.  Powerlifters usually don't have the "big, showy muscles" bodybuilders develop, but nobody could confuse them for "skinny" either.  They're meaty!  Just not as meaty, in general, as their bodybuilder brethren.

spirochete is right that most drug-free women simply can't develop big "bodybuilder guy" muscles, so you can forget that unless you start taking steroids.  And while I have no proof of this to cite, it's been my repeated observation that bodybuilders "deflate" quicker than powerlifters when they stop training.  If true, it's probably due to that powerlifters emphasize a different kind of muscle fiber.  Besides, "slower to gain, slower to lose" sounds catchy ;-)

Doing just one working set may sound like heresy.  And it is, but most bona fide research on the topic doesn't show a difference in results between doing one set and multiple sets, provided that the one set is done just as hard as can be.  An easily observed fact is that most people doing multiple sets hold back on all but the last set anyway, "saving up" for the effort they know is coming in their last set.  If most sets are just glorified warmup sets anyway, better to stop pretending and face that up front!

Get a protein shake and carbs an hour before lifting, and immediately after lifting too.  Take creatine, and take whatever other supplements you feel good about.  All of this is to encourage an anabolic state, as well as to feed the muscles.

You clearly have abnormal protein metabolism, but I really can't even take a guess about whether that's due to problems with digestion (breaking protein into amino acids to begin with) or occurs later in the chain -- or both.  For pre- and post-lifting nutrition you could experiment with food sources of protein vs whey protein powder vs amino acid tablets (listed from hardest to easiest to digest).  Since whey protein is "in the middle" of that spectrum, probably the best place to start.  If it's not a problem with digestion, casein protein should be especially helpful to you at other times, since it's broken down slowly (feeds amino acids into the bloodstream for a longer time than whey protein).

Will any of that help?  Sorry, no real idea.  But there's one way to find out :-)

Hey, Erin, I wonder whether you've seen this study.  This is one of the only studies I found on the use of anabolic steroids for treating HIV/AIDS-related weight loss in women -- there's quite a bit more on men.

Anyway, give it a read.  The results looked good:  highly significant gain of lean mass, no significant change in fat mass, and while by raw count there were more instances of (seemingly mild) virilizing ("male-like") side effects in the steroid group than in the placebo group, the difference wasn't statistically significant.  Several of these (& in both groups) were related to menstrual cycles, and that's not an issue for you anyway.  The steroid tested was nandrolone ("Deca"), one of the least androgenic (virilizing) of the anabolic steroids.  The women seemed to adapt over time, with the greatest benefits occurring in the first 12 weeks.

I found one other relevant study, which-- alas --I lost the link to and am having trouble finding again.  It tested nandrolone alone too, but also progressive resistance training alone, and a combination of both.  Unsurprisingly, the results of doing both were synergistic:  more lean mass gained by doing both than the sum of lean mass gained by doing each alone.

Still, a tough one to judge.  There's at least the complication that nandrolone depresses natural testosterone levels, and that persists for some time after a cycle ends (or so I'm told).  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any study that followed up on women after steroid "therapy" ended.  "Is new lean mass retained?" is a good question to ask if you care to pursue it.

tgpish....you are so right about the Burn the Fat and Feed the Muscle book.  It is a wealth of really good information and I am incorporating new stuff into my lifestyle with every chapter.  I can't follow it exactly yet (too much change to fit in), but when I finish I'm going to start the book over and add more.  Anyway, I need a little advice about some things in it...and about some of the good information you are posting:

I'm doing weight training and cardio at our community center.  It doesn't have free weights...just about 8  machines, a couple bikes and two treadmills.  But...it is only ten dollars a month and there is never anybody on anything...so I never have to wait and can get in and out really fast (a plus because I'm a working mom).  I figure since I am so new anything I do will be a plus coz my body is so shocked at what's happening!!  I also salsa dance from 2-4 hours on Sunday nights (hubby and I used to dance competitively).

Question 1:  Since it is summer (I go back to work in 2 weeks), I've been able to take some belly dancing and Bikram Yoga (105 degree heat) classes in addition to what I usually do.  They both make me feel really good.  The belly dancing has done incredible things for my back (feels like I've had a massage) and I can count it as a cardio.  The Bikram yoga has really helped my arthritis.  I have osteoarthritis in both knees (virtually cartridgeless in right knee), elbows and fingers (not so bad).  Anyway, I  come out and I'm pain free in the joints (though the muscles are sometimes complaining).  When school starts, I will not be able to work out as much and be as flexible.  If I continue Bikram (it is 90 minutes), I will have to give up a little of the cardio or the weights, because I won't be able to do anything more on those days.  I know you have experience with yoga in the past and didn't find it all that helpful with weightloss/muscle gain, but I think it will be helpful to me because of the pain issue and I'll be able to maintain the weights and cardio longer because of it.  I would like to do the Bikram at least two days per week.   Any thoughts?

Question 2:  I got a scale that also does body fat.  I measure first thing in the morning, before eating or drinking.  The weight will sometimes fluctuate as much as four pounds, which I know might be mostly water weight.  But the BF is also fluctuating a bit too...is that for the same reason?  They recommend weighing at the end of the day because water weight is more stable (I think that was the reason) and I notice that other posters have recommended drinking the same amount of water 1 hour before weighing.  I'd hate to have to do that because I don't want to measure at night.  (No privacy.  Once my husband realizes I'm on a diet/fitness thing, he'll start bring home "gifts"....like chocolate cover strawberries or coffee cakes).  So just to confirm....as long as I see a general downward trend, I shouldn't worry about the fluctuations and can  weigh in the am, right?

Question 3:  Do you have any ideas on some resistance/weight exercises I can do at work sporadically with hand weights or tubing?  I thought maybe I could keep some small items at each of my offices and work a little bit in during the day....15 minutes here or there.  Or is that stupid?

Question 4:  I'm a speech therapist and sit at a table most of the day.  Somewhere (maybe here) I saw a thread that people were replacing chairs with exercise balls.  Is that a good idea...or just silly?

Question 5:  (Last one...really).  I have a hard time getting all my calories in on some days...especially work out days!!  Bedtime comes...check my logs....and I'm way short on calories.  Should I have a snack right before bed, even if I'm not hungry....or just skip it?  I've added some "EAS" protein drinks (17 g protein, minimal fat and carbs) to increase protein and calories on those days.

I just have to be really efficient with my time when school starts.  Otherwise, the day will go by with just the necessities of work and hauling kids to soccer, to band, to orchestra, to bible studies, blah, blah, blah...and I will have left myself out...again.

Thanks     

msspeech, sounds like you're doing great!  Keep it up :-)

Going thru the book slowly is absolutely fine.  You've heard of the Pareto principle?  "80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes".  It's roughly true of many things -- including this.  More and more fine-tuning will help, but most of the results really do come from getting the basics down (keeping your goals in mind, better eating, and doing your strength & cardio work).  Adding the rest over time will help keep good results coming more than it will dramatically improve results.

While some lifters will disagree, I think much the same is true of strength-training, and especially at the start:  most of the benefit is gotten from pushing your biggest muscles really hard, and regardless of how you do that.  Yes, free weights are better overall, but for purposes of preserving muscle while cutting calories, and providing some fitness benefits, machines will get the job done.

Q1:  Tradeoffs are, of course, yours to make.  If you compromise on your strength or cardio work, you will slow progress, but pain relief is a legitimate goal too.  Maybe you can't have it all -- if so, that's life.  Because strength-training is crucial to preserving lean tissue, cut back on cardio first.

BTW, have you tried conventional yoga?  I'd be surprised if it didn't also work for pain relief -- yoga has been around for thousands of years, and Bikram Choudhury's gimmick of doing it in high heat is plain bizarre to me (it's certainly not part of traditional practice).  Not to mention to yoga "authorities":

    http://www.yogapoint.com/info/article9.htm

There's no doubt that Choudhury is the most successful yogi in history at making himself rich off "yoga-like" practice, but that's not the top thing I look for in a teacher ;-)  A conventional teaching (& teacher) will be inviting and gentle, not authoritarian and stressful.

A confounding factor:  joint pain will decrease as excess fat is lost too, right?  Carrying extra pounds is hard on joints.

Q2:  Enroll your husband at once in a course on supportive behavior, and don't speak to him again until he passes ;-)

BF% scales do flucuate a lot -- it's a fact of life.  They're somewhat sensitive to many things besides fat, and especially so to hydration.  Here's an article with tips for increasing consistency.  I'll add that you should also clean & dry whichever parts of your body come in contact with the electrodes before measuring, as dirt, moisture and skin oils can affect them too.  So can calluses!  Do all that, and even so your scale may give a BF% reading 1 higher or lower from day to day for no obvious reason.

So there's a lot of "noise" in the measurements.  I use mine first thing after peeing in the morning, and because I'm generally well hydrated (drink lots of water all day), and am male (don't have routine monthly hormonal changes), my total weight is actually quite steady from day to day.  Still, everyone is least hydrated after a night's sleep, and your scale will give you an artificially high BF reading in the morning because of that.

I don't care about that, because I don't care what my BF% actually is -- I only care how fat and lean mass are changing over time, and absolute accuracy is largely irrelevant to that.  I use a spreadsheet and use my scale's daily total weight and BF% guesses to compute total pounds of fat and total pounds of non-fat.  Those are the only things I care about.  I plot them both in graphs, and fit a trendline to them (much as this site computes a trendline for your daily total weight, assuming you log your weight here).  That's effective at filtering out most measurment noise.

If you don't have a spreadsheet program, it's still worthwhile to plot those two weights by hand on graph paper, and judge "by eyeball" the general trends.

If measurement noise spooks you, don't measure more often than every 2 weeks.  The scales really aren't sensitive enough to give a reliable idea about how things change over a measly week (let alone day).  Nevertheless, I willfully pretend my scale is 100% accurate, and make small weekly changes (to eating & exercise) based on that fantasy.  That's actually helpful (or so I believe -- don't know of any supporting research):  small weekly changes help (I believe) stop the body from adapting to an ever-fixed routine.

Venuto advises something similar based on caliper-based BF% guesses, but isn't as up-front as I am about what a fantasy this really is ;-)

Q3:  strength-training is hard.  Do your 2 (or 3) whole-body sessions per week, and don't pretend that anything else you do is "strength training".  You can't do more than 3 whole-body "real" strength sessions per week effectively -- muscles need at least a full day off to repair, and working them hard again before repair is complete will defeat the purpose (hard lifting breaks muscle down -- but repair builds it back up -- lifting without adequate rest breaks muscle down more and more, exactly what we're trying to avoid).

Slinging light hand weights is fine, but call it "cardio work" instead, because that's what it is :-)  Do all the cardio work you like.

Q4:  sorry, no real idea about replacing chairs with exercise balls.  The president of a company I once worked for didn't have anything to sit on in his office -- he stood at a lectern all day.  Not only was he lean, but standing encouraged visitors to get out of his office quickly :-)  Of course anything that gets/keeps you more active will help some.

Q5:  Coming up short on calories means you're not planning all your meals at least a day in advance, and/or are skipping meals.  You know which of those applies to you, so you also know the solution ;-)

I have an ongoing problem with skipping meals myself.  Life interferes, and, alas, it shows up in poorer results some weeks.  "Strive to be more consistent" is what I tell myself, and that really helps until life interferes again :-(

In general, forget snacks.  If you need to eat something, eat a small balanced meal.  If it's been 3 hours since the last time you ate, definitely eat a small meal, even if it is bedtime.  You want to keep amino acids feeding into the blood, you want to keep the digestive furnaces burning calories, and you want to discourage your body going into a highly catabolic state -- that last will happen (whether you like or not) while you're sleeping anyway.

Your profile says you're aiming for 6 meals a day.  That's very aggressive "for a woman" (not really because of gender, but because your total calorie intake is probably less than a man's, due to lower weight).  Cut back to 5 meals a day and you're less likely to miss meals.  I gave up trying to do 6 per day myself, because I almost never managed to do it.  5 I can get in most days.

It can also help to make breakfast the biggest meal of the day.  Your body will love that, and the remaining meals are easier to plan because they're lower in calories "than average".

BTW, are you getting enough "good fat"?  If not, starting to do so is an easy way to boost calories in a hurry.  For example, a measly tablespoon of flaxseed oil packs about 130 calories all by itself.

Before school starts, get your priorities crystal clear:  don't skip meals, don't get even a little dehydrated, and don't skip strength workouts.  Add yoga to that too if you like.  Everything else is optional ;-), although the more of the rest you skip, the slower results will be.

tgpish...

Again, you have such good information.  I hope in a year or so I will be able to be giving back some of what I've learned to others on this site.

I'll try what you said about doing 5 instead of 6 meals.  Usually the in between meals are more like snacks, but I call them meals because I try to make sure they are balanced like meals, with fat and protein and carbs.  [I try to keep the fat especially low to make up for when we end up going out and I have no/little control over what is in my food, but do take Omega 3 capsules with my vitamens.]  

I did regular yoga years ago, and still do tapes occasionally, but the heat of Bikram (which is absolutely unholy) has an incredible effect on the joint pain I have--end up being painfree almost 24 hours.  It's too bad it has to be so inconvenient.

Thanks for setting my head on straight about those little hand weights and balls.  It's so easy to fall for all those gimmicks and they package them so nicely.  Plus the girls in the pictures are PERFECT!!  Hah!

Tomorrow, I'll go get the graph paper and graph my results like you said.  Right now, it's all in a little chart, but the visual aid will be helpful.  I'm not too bothered by the noise in my weight changes (I spend a good part of my day dealing with statistics and explaining them to parents and other professionals), but I wanted to be absolutely sure that the time of day I was doing my weight/BF measurements wasn't just going to completely blow it. 

You are so awesome to help all of us new and ignorant (but working to change that...) folks out.  I know I appreciate it. 

Well, I know I have good info for me, cuz I've cut fat before with no loss of muscle and am happily doing it again now.  I find it really interesting to share that, and hear how others do with it.  There's also a selfish purpose:  the basics really do account for the bulk of the results, and typing about them over & over again keeps them fresh in my mind.  That's helpful in keeping my own program on track.  It's amazing how easily slacking off just a little can turn into a habit, and even more amazing how easily the mind can fail to notice this.  So whenever I type something, I ask myself whether I'm truly still following that advice "all the way" myself.  What a treat it is when the answer is "no" ;-)

So no thanks really needed -- I'm getting what I want out of this too.  And you don't need to wait a year to do the same!  You're already finding things that do & don't work for you, and trying to shove them down someone else's throat is highly educational ;-)

About "small meals", yes, they're usually what most people would be more likely to call snacks, and I emphasize the "meal" part for the same reason as you:  nutritional balance.  At least protein and complex carbs in every meal, no matter how small.  "A snack" to me lacks at least one of those, like just munching on raw carrots.  If I'm hungry enough to do that, fine, then I'll also add (e.g.) a few ounces of tuna on a slice of whole-grain bread.  Voila!  Instant genuine nourishment, despite only about 200 calories total.

You probably guessed ;-) I'm not a fan of Bikram yoga, but if it's working for you that's great -- by all means keep it up.  I do have to wonder if it's really mostly just the moist heat that's relieving your joint pain, though.  Ever try light stretching in a suana?  They won't lock the doors if you're "late" for a sauna :-(

Along with the graph paper, get some kind of clear rigid plastic, like a transparent ruler, or a plastic slide transparency sheet.  When you plot enough points to make this possible, use an edge of the plastic to "fit a line" to the points, aiming to get about half the points above the edge and half below (the plastic needs to be transparent so you can see "points below").

People can do a remarkably good job of fitting a line "by eyeball" this way close to a computed "least-squares linear regression" line (which is what you'd ask a spreadsheet to do for you).  If you've been exposed to statistics, you'll recognize that linear regression is a standard technique for filtering out random variations, and you'll feel like a brilliant scientist instead of like some kid putzing around in art class ;-)

BTW, as you suspect,  the to-die-for ladies posing for promotional pictures on dinky exercise equipment probably never saw the stuff until an hour before the photographer showed up.  The word "truth" doesn't actually appear in "advertising" ;-)

Yeah...I kinda wondered if it was mostly the heat making the arthritis feel better.  (But I don't belong to a gym to get to a sauna...the community center has to do for now.)  However, it also has the element of being hard and rising to the challenge has been fun...sort of like a mini goal.  My son's personal trainer recommended it for him (he plays soccer) because of the pounding the joints get in that sport.  I just went along to see how it was.  'Course, it's probably a "food thing"...the professional chef next door to the Bikram yoga brings over organic vegan meals to purchase when the class lets out.  While I have decidedly carnivorous tendancies, he does make some pretty good tofu and vegetable stuff!!